The Weekly Round-Up: 06.03.09

You may be shocked at this revelation but trade show keynotes can be rather dusty affairs. At the best of times, they lack as much interest as the Round-Up's savings account. They're duller than The Very Very Best of Watching Paint Dry, volumes one to 10.

So German trade show CeBIT scored a major win this week by having Arnold Schwarzenegger - yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger - give its opening keynote.

Schwarzenegger was at the famous tech shindig not to save a young John Connor from yet another cyborg assassin but to rescue the IT industry from the credit crunch, metaphorically reaching out his hand to the industry and saying "Come with me if you want to live", while holding off the unstoppable T-1001 Recessionator with his steely gaze.

He was also there to give the keynote as governor of California, the first state to be the official partner of CeBIT - a distinction previously only given to countries such as France, Russia, India and the US. Economic heavyweights such countries may be, but none of them thought to send a sci-fi superstar - although the Round-Up reckons one of these guys would have been happy to step in.

The Governator even came programmed with some gags to wow the audience, such as: "What an amazing gathering, almost half a million people from nearly 100 different countries. This is kind of like the Olympics, except fewer muscles and more neckties." And more jaded IT execs slobbering at booth babes, the Round-Up expects.

Schwarzenegger then proceeded to give a rousing speech aimed at getting the IT industry back on its feet and innovating again.

"We can sit back and complain and whine and resign ourselves to defeat, or you can stand up, challenge yourself and challenge everyone around you to work even harder and you can refuse to fail. You can use a crisis as an opportunity to shine, an opportunity to leap past your competitors who are taking it maybe easy and taking the easy way out. That's what winners do. Losers whine but winners move forward in a strong and powerful way."

Great sentiments, although the Round-Up fears some lowly techie will be inspired by this speech to go out and create a super-intelligent, self-aware computer system which will promptly turn on its creator and set about destroying the world. Maybe even now a future version of Arnie is getting ready to travel back in time and stop him from making the CeBIT speech. The Round-Up can only hope.

Warming to his theme, Arnie went on: "It was a tiny garage and in that tiny garage in Silicon Valley, this is where they built the blocks, the building blocks for the modern computer, where they were thought up and they were built."

At this point someone should really have at least asked a question about the perils of IT innovation and the development of time-travelling killer robots and such like, but nobody did. The Round-Up would have done - but this is exactly the reason it isn't allowed out of the office unaccompanied anymore.

Drawing his CeBIT-wowing oratory to a close, the governor signed off with his classic: "I'll be back. Hasta la vista, baby."

Still, at least it made CeBIT a bit more fun than the average trade show. The big question now is who will be giving the keynote next year: R2-D2? Optimus Prime? Davros? The Round-Up is booking its ticket right now.

But bringing us right back down to Earth: next time you are tempted to make a few recommendations to the helpdesk guy who's fixing the desktop you've just frazzled by clicking on 'hilarious' links sent by complete strangers - don't.

And next time you want to offload to the IT chief about how it's unfair you can't have a Mac at work when all your mates that work at the design company have them - zip it.

And in the (fairly unlikely) event you are planning to moan about the CIO's choice of ERP system - button your lip.

silicon.com's resident man or woman of mystery, the Naked CIO, has been sounding off against those meddling folk that try to interfere with the workings of the IT department.

"The hobbyists seem to think they know what needs to be done within an IT department just because they play around at home on their computer - and last week maybe even switched out their hard drive," he/she complained this week.

After all, as the Naked CIO argues, most workers don't go home and potter around with a bit of HR or marketing - but plenty will play with their PC hardware.

This has kicked off a debate among readers about the roles of the IT professionals and the IT hobbyists (not to be confused with IT hobbits, which are something else completely).

"Hits the nail on the head with a sledgehammer!" says one enthusiastic reader in agreement, while another counters: "The users of IT may not know about IT but they do know what they want to do their jobs." It's a row that's going to continue for some time, or at least until the IT pros decide to cut off the hobbyists' access to email.

But not only is the IT department getting more militant, it's going to be providing a poorer service as well.

At an event examining how CIOs should tackle the economic downturn, Gartner analysts recommended that IT bosses should lower business expectations around tech service levels.

The idea being, if availability of a service drops to 98 per cent from 100 per cent but saves the company a significant amount, the business impact is minimal enough to make it a viable cost-cutting option, according to the analysts.

A rough translation - expect in future to wait eight rings instead of four to have your call answered by someone on the helpdesk who will tell you to turn it off and on again.

And finally this week - thinking of getting your expenses signed off today? Or even worse, do you have staff queuing around your desk waiting for your vital signature on the form? Watch out -wrongly approved expenses are costing British businesses £2bn per year, according to GlobalExpense.

The company calculates 11 per cent of all employee expense claims should never be paid because the items purchased are not covered by company policy. According to the report, claims outside company policy in 2008 included: handcuffs; condoms; a bribe to border guards and nine personal massages charged because the claimant had had: "a really stressful day".

Not as stressful as the man on the wrong end of the border guards and the handcuffs, the Round-Up expects.

And elsewhere on silicon.com this week:

There are two good reasons why Apple doesn't have a netbook and we've got them both.

Here comes Microsoft's workplace of the future.

And of course, see how you do in the fantastic silicon.com caption competition.