DIVIDENDS & INTEREST

Follow the E-Leader

Craig Chappelow

“This paper was completely written on a personal computer.”

I had the feeling of breaking new ground when I wrote that line as a graduate student in 1981. Today if I attached that statement to something I wrote, I imagine the reaction from people would be the same one that I get from our teenage baby-sitter when I say something that is painfully obvious: “Well, duh!” Many would think, “How else would you write a paper other than on a PC? With a piece of coal on the back of a shovel, Abe Lincoln style?”

I laughed out loud when I found the paper recently as I rummaged through some storage boxes in our house. Its subject was the potential for personal technology in business, and at the time I wrote it all of my classmates were still using typewriters. If they were techno-hip they got their hands on an IBM Selectric. I had had to go to considerable pains even to find a PC back then. First, I trudged over to the university's computer center and queued up for the single Tandy PC. Then I submitted the text for printing and went to the building next door to pick it up. It emerged noisily from the gigantic dot-matrix printer on green and white striped paper. When I turned in my masterpiece, I felt as if I were riding a wave of technology so far out ahead of everyone else that no one would ever catch me.

When I got my paper back, I saw that the professor had written on the bottom: “Yes, I agree. It seems as if computers will have some impact on businesses.” Well, duh! I think it is fair to say that that was the last time I was ever in the technological lead.

Is keeping up with technology, especially the Internet, a part of your job? If so, do you break out into a cold sweat every time you hear that a new version of your favorite Web browser is being released? Do you fear being left behind in the information game when you see the daily articles in The Wall Street Journal about how one e-company.com is merging with another? Do you avoid meeting your boss in the hallway lest she ask you about the potential application of streaming broadband something-or-other to the business? My suggestion to you is to give up now. Show the white flag. First, quit buying those insultingly titled self-help books like HTML for Cro-Magnons. Second, stop signing up for seminars where you sit slack-jawed in front of a computer screen while someone, usually a lot younger than you, yaks in front of the room.

Instead, log on to the Net to play cards. That's exactly what Joe Downing, a sales representative for Carolina Container Company, did. Since moving to North Carolina, Joe had been looking for people with whom to play euchre—a uniquely Midwestern card game—and he found them on the Web (www.pogo.com). As a result of playing cards on line, he has conceived of a system for tracking sales calls through the company Web site. Joe claims that he never would have developed the technical confidence necessary to make such a proposal without first finding his euchre site.

A great way to keep up with Web technology is to find something you like—all the better if it is completely unrelated to your work—and pursue it on the Internet. As you keep one eye on your hobby, keep the other eye focused on the way a particular Web site works. Constantly ask yourself how you could apply these principles to your business. You just might learn more than you would from slavishly reading computer trade journals. Here are a few more suggestions.