Experience with geeks in OST forums

[Artur F. Silva]

At 23:21 16-12-2001, Alan Stewart wrote:
>Hi All
>
>This request stems from an approach to me from a person commissioned to
>promote better communication among
>IT people in a large corporation and their customers.
>
>Anyone have experience in working with "geeks/nerds" ie the technical
>people who create
>software and the hardware that runs it - on issues that cannot be
>addressed through engineering
>brainpower? And stories of where this happened?



Hello Alan:

Like Paul, I would suggest that the expressions "geeks" and "nerds" should
never been used if you want to reach your objective ;-)

I also assume that you are speaking of "internal customers" or "users". (If
you are speaking of external customers things are a little different)

I have been trying to address this problem (not with OST) for more that 20
years and the thing that doesn't work is through training - especially if the
training addresses the two communities in different actions. Also trying to
teach IT terminology or products to users is not normally very useful.

What I have find more useful is to address the question in real
projects where both communities have to participate. This can be "IS
development" projects where the project is considered as a
"socio-technical" projects where users and IT people have to collaborate,
or IS planning projects where managers and IT people will be involved.

I have not yet used OS for those types of projects joining users and IT people
but that will be my next experience and I am convinced that it will work.

The best solution depends on the concrete situation and problem and it is not
easy to address in general terms. Please feel free to ask any further
questions.

Regards

Artur
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