I was recently at the Executive Briefing Center with some of my peers presenting to customers and prospects.  It always amazes me the quality of people that attend these briefings and their sincere interest in learning about our technology and how it can solve their problems.  They are willing to leave their very busy work lives and family/friends to travel to our offices to let us explain what we do. 

With each briefing though I am learning that is much less about us telling, but more about us listening and learning about their needs, then doing our best to apply our solution to their problems in a way that best suits those needs.  Not only is the overall experience very positive, it is also very therapeutic.  By removing people from their environment and putting distance between them and their issues, by creating a supportive setting, by allowing them to really concentrate on what is being conveyed and give them ample time to formulate questions that are targeted and specific, by giving them time to really think about what they are learning - what you get is positive quality of experience that is both productive and insightful. It is akin to going to a health professional and working together in partnership determining what the best course of action is.

During a recent briefing a customer came up to me and said, “You are that guy that is getting a doctorate in Psychology aren’t you?”

 “Yes,” I answered. 

“I guess you’ll be analyzing all of us then?” she asked.

“Nope, I haven’t taken abnormal behavior yet” I replied.

She thought that was pretty funny, but the truth was that I was analyzing them.  I was really trying to understand what problems they were trying to solve so that we could best determine the solution.  I was analyzing how they asked their questions, trying to understanding why they were asking those questions, and as we answered I was gauging their reactions to our responses.  What was fascinating about our discussion was the level of interaction between us and the attendees, but also their interactions with one another.  Often times others in the audience were able to relate their experiences with similar issues and explain how they solved them.  At times I couldn’t tell if we were in a briefing or group therapy. 

Another amazing part of these discussions is the importance and dependence of technology in their organizations.  They spend millions of dollars, time, and resources on technology.  They do incredible amounts of due diligence when it comes to technology acquisitions.  There seems to be no end or no beginning – just a continuous cycle of interdependent technology-oriented activities.  They are fully immersed in technology and because they are responsible for it in their organization they become the tent pole that holds everything up and keeps it running.  The pressure is immense and a very heavy responsibility.  Mistakes most often times are really incalculable when it comes to its impact to the business.  Those that can determine the hard costs often times don’t consider the psychological impact of these issues.  Can we even start to put a cost on the stress that is caused from these issues?   What are the short and long-term effects on people? 

Once the issue is resolved and the systems are back in working order that does not necessarily mean that people are back in working order – they are profoundly impacted and changed.  People, unlike technology, don’t just reboot back to the way before things went awry – people take much more time and effort to restore.  IT can restore the technology, but who restores people?  Is there anyone even looking at this?

Also, when it comes to solving the technology issues, it unlikely a question of whether or not this problem can be solved without technology, it is a question of which technology will solve this issue or which technology is the cause of this issue.  The adoption of the IT Infrastructure Library best practices (ITIL) has aided in bringing in how improving processes and training people can aid in these issues, but it still ends up being a technology discussion and the technology solutions that are best suited to support those processes and aid those technologists.

So the net is that as we progress forward and look to solve problems, we will undoubtedly look for technology solutions and as a result it will become even more pervasive in our lives and organizations.  As we continue down this path our dependence up on it will be even greater and as a result our dependence on technologists who can best prescribes solutions.  There may be an additional need to prescribe solutions to those impacted by those technology issues – maybe this is a need that a Media Psychologist fills.

Hello and welcome to the Psychology of IT.  My name is Brent Brightwell and I a Senior Solutions Marketing Manager at BMC Software responsible for BMC Discovery.

This is what I hope will be a lively and active forum for us to discuss technology and the people that depend upon it.  This forum is for anyone that uses, depends upon, sells and markets, builds, and buys technology.  In other words, anyone and everyone that has a vested interest in technology and wants to better understand its impact on our lives.

I have a unique background - ten years working in technology with formal business and technology education.  I have an MBA, BSB in Information Systems, and currently I am a PhD candidate working on a Doctorate in Psychology focusing on Media.  Areas of concentration are:  Media Psychology, Buying Patterns/Behavior; Theories of Personality; Psychopathology; Development Bases of Behavior; Social Bases of Behavior; Cognitive and Affective Base of Behavior; and, Biological Bases of Behavior.

What that means is that I spend a lot of time reading, speaking, writing, listening, and thinking about how people “think and feel” about stuff and why they think and feel the way they do.  The stuff we will be focusing on here is technology, but more importantly its impact us.

I spend a great deal of time in my job with the field and customers/prospects, along with working in partnership with R&D, so many of my experiences will come directly from those areas.  As I mentioned, this will be less of my pontificating knowledge to you - if you are looking for this I can direct you to others.  This will be observations with enlightening discussion and dialogue between us.  I am open, so feel free to send questions/comments and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner. 

So sit back, take a deep breath, relax, and let’s get started!