[Sigia-l] AIfIA Goals 2004 Survey Results

[Listera]

"David Heller" wrote:

> Now I would argue that in an organization that standardizing practice is
> in essence the same as standardizing format or carrier.

Absolutely, positively not!

Let's take another industry where it's easier to demonstrate the crucial
difference between format/common-carrier/exchange-media/transmission type of
standard and process/workflow/tool type of standard.

In the video industry there are many standards of the first kind:
NTSC/PAL/SECAM, DV, 4:2:2, QuickTime, MPEG, etc. Most of these are open
standards and, when they are not, they are well documented and easily
licensable.

Now there are also widely used standards of the latter kind that various
segments of the video/post industry adopt. A post shop in New York might
'standardize' on Avid hardware/software combo, a broadcast editing place in
LA might standardize on FinalCut Pro on Apple gear and an independent
contractor in Chicago might use After Effects on a Wintel machine for motion
graphics. And so on.

The beauty of it is that the very same video, DVD, special fx or broadcast
project often seamlessly moves through all these disparate production
centers which use different hw/sw and workflow standards at the tool-level
but all conform to exchange/transmission standards at the format-level.

This is what grows an industry: commonality on formats, variety on
tools/workflows. A compositing house doesn't dictate to an FX artist how to
do her job as long as her alpha layers and vector art come intact through
standardized formats so that they can be integrated into the next production
phase.

> Use Visio or Flash. I don't care.

Here's a typical IA recruitment exchange:

HR: "You did those wireframes/charts/etc? They look great."
Candidate: "Yes."
HR: "What software did you use?"
Candidate: It was ProductX. I really like it."
HR: "Hmm. Don't you use Visio?"
Candidate: "No. I prefer ProductX. I've become very proficient with it."
HR: "Here, we use Visio. You have to use Visio."
Candidate: "Why? I tried it and I find ProductX much better for my workflow.
It's better, faster, more efficient and cheaper than Visio. I can do
everything I need to do with ProductX."
HR: "Yes, but we standardized on Visio."
Candidate: "Why?"
HR: "Well, it's just that it's our corporate standard. We don't want to have
too many packages to support here."
Candidate: "Frankly, I don't need any support. I'd like to use ProductX to
generate standard PDF, GIF, JPEG, EPS, QuickTime, SVG, Flash for print,
screen and interactivity."
HR: "Yes, but we standardized on Visio."
Candidate: "..."
HR: "..."

> Again, we are, many of us, using bad standards, but that does not mean
> that all standards are bad.

My contention has been against the substitution of 'standards' and/or 'best
practices' for thinking through problems.

'Standards' have become a crutch for the IT bureaucracy. Just a few years
ago doing a feasibility study on feasibility of a project was the 'best
practice' on large-scale projects in Wall Street. It may seem obscenely
redundant to do ROI on ROI now, but you were quickly dismissed if you said
so then. Without commenting on its merits, the waterfall development
approach was pretty much an unquestionable standard/best practice until
recently. We went through a period of turning every imaginable corporate
software into a web browser-based HTTP/HTML app. For the better part of a
decade that was the standard/best practice, then even a person named David
Heller pontificated that we should move on. There's no doubt in my mind that
we're about to go through the web services standard/best practice phenomenon
in the next few years. And if you question the sensibility of that *for a
given project* you'll be dismissed by the standardizing bureaucracy.

Standards at the process/workflow/tool level have become tools of lock-in.
Of exclusion. Of avoiding innovation. Of avoiding sensible risk taking. Of
commoditization. Of bureaucratizing the workplace.

And a sure way to kill of IA's future is to supplicate it to the
standardizing whims of the IT bureaucracy.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba