Change Management: Change is good. But not always

Rene Carayol has been a contributor to and reader of silicon.com for the past four years. In this column, he says new ownership must make the service better - or else he, for one, will be having words...

Back when I was an IT director I was wined and dined by the good, bad and ugly of the industry. Name a sporting venue - an Ascot, Lords or Henley - and I was there, always at someone else's considerable expense. I never missed an opportunity to be seen and part of that was - freebies aside - to mix with my peers from other organisations.

Unfortunately, many of the IT directors I met would be there as clients of the big vendors, convincing me software they had bought from them was the best thing since sliced bread. Business transformation - you bet they promised it.

So to get independent advice I had to look elsewhere. There was Gartner and names like Wentworth Research but the field wasn't as deep as it is these days.

Then there was the computing press. The biggest weeklies had some good journalists but I always felt they never understood me. They never really 'got' my sphere of conflict and the way I would sit inbetween my bosses, vendors and IT professionals.

Then silicon.com came along. It gave me what I wanted, mostly in the form of a forum made up of my peers. We, the IT chiefs, started talking to each other more. We shared notes on what our CEOs were each saying, who was doing what and with which vendor. We hadn't done that before.

I remember one of silicon.com's first campaigns, about getting IT directors on company boards. I spoke at an event - as a board level IT director - and my message immediately went beyond the 70 or so people assembled because it was also videoed to be streamed on demand. And that made the 'website as meeting place' all the more valuable.

Now, as many of you reading this column will know, silicon.com has become part of a bigger, multinational organisation, CNET Networks. This article isn't about building up or lambasting the new parent company. Nor is it about romanticising a silicon.com of old.

I'm a firm believer that change is good - but the change needs to be the right change. As someone on the outside of the organisation but lucky enough to find a voice on its pages, let me briefly tell you what silicon.com must remain.

Like all good publications, it mustn't pander to the sponsors. It must be able to take the Sun dollar one moment and the next moment tweak Scott McNealy's nose. The same goes for Microsoft or HP or Oracle or any of those guys. Payola doesn't exist for silicon.com.

That's an ethics thing but my next point is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Humour. silicon.com has always tried to make the driest stories enjoyable and it's a godsend for people working in IT. Especially when joking and communication within actual IT departments can be so thin on the ground.

As a member of a committed readership and fan base I will continue to be drawn in by a focus on the big issues and a championing approach which is all about taking on those who think they can rip off the user.

silicon.com gave many of us in IT a lead. The independent voice, the campaigning, the choice of stories must be kept. It would be a crime to lose them.

And to draw a line under this, all I will say is let's take another look in a year's time. I'm positive about the change to new ownership, and want it to work. But I, like other readers, will be watching.