This is my last issue as editor-in-chief. After some 14 years in IT journalism, prior IT work with Telstra (then Telecom) and as a tech with then HP/Texas Instruments channel company Metropolitan Business Machines in the decade of big shoulder pads, bigger hair and small shorts, and a side track into IT PR and the NSW public service in the run-up to the millennium meltdown, I need a mid-life career change.
I’m off to the University of Sydney to retrain as a school teacher. Being the oldest in the uni class I’ll have to consider dyeing my hair — but nothing too sudden and obvious — just one strand at a time. I’ve been wished well by all sorts of people including one of my bosses Linda Kennedy, who offered to buy me a T-shirt emblazoned with “I used to be important — but now I’m just a student”. Most students including my 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son already know they’re more important than me.
Congratulations to the new editor Sandra Rossi.
Sandra joined Computerworld in May 2000, was subsequently promoted to news editor and is extremely well versed in Computerworld’s mission to produce independent news and analysis for enterprise IT professionals. Speaking of which, I urge you to tick the boxes and make your comments on the reader survey, which is printed as a pull-out form on the following pages. Return the survey as soon as you can because the results will be analysed and used to guide this paper’s content.
I’d like to thank all the IT professionals who help us on a regular basis — particularly those who lend their comments to our various news articles, editorial panel members who answer our monthly poll questions, and the IT pros profiled each week in “5 minutes with”.
Thanks also to the dozens who contributed to our special 25th anniversary edition last July. To everybody else — PLEASE — be more vocal. You could say good things about various technologies, services and support. Or you could enter into juicy discussion of IT&T’s flip side — the times when the technology and its associated services bellyflop right on top of your plans. If you don’t speak up the industry’s message will be the only one heard. Sandra (sandra_rossi@idg.com.au) will always welcome more and more letters. We also encourage you to have your say about any IT&T issue as a guest columnist right here on these Forum pages.
I better wrap up, need to get to the Co-op Book Shop for some non-IT related reading material and on to Vinnies and Dairy Farmers for new lounge room furniture. I hope my wife doesn’t kill me.
Best wishes to you and to the Computerworld team.