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Perhaps the most exciting (and challenging) aspect of working in a progressive IT organization is the pace of technological change. It requires that IT staff — and our customers — are continuously learning. Managing this rapid change and fostering innovation while "keeping the trains running on time" is the primary leadership role required of any CIO, new or old

Highest rise in marketing spend in six years

  The latest IPA Bellwether survey published last week shows a sharp upward revision in marketing budgets in Q2 2013. The rise is the highest in almost six years.

"These are very positive and welcome figures indeed. It is no surprise to see internet spend comprising the lion’s share of the increases - a trend that is only set to continue. Digital no longer represents a tick–the–box exercise for companies; it is clearly an essential revenue driver and fertiliser for the green shoots of economic recovery.”

There are great reasons for why The Stream triumphed. In a world of infinite variety, it's difficult to categorize or even find, especially before a thing has been linked. So time, newness, began to stand in for many other things. And now the Internet's media landscape is like a never-ending store, where everything is free. No matter how hard you sprint for the horizon, it keeps receding. There is always something more.  Nowness also transmits this sense of presence, of other people, that you get in a city when you go to a highway overpass and look down at all the cars at any time of the day or night. Things are happening. I am not alone. Look at all this. 

Schonfeld cited Betaworks CEO John Borthwick's thinkpiece, "Distribution Now," which he wrote in April of 2009, just as all this was really getting going. Borthwick concludes his post on the rise of The Stream with two quotes from musician Brian Eno. The old (and better) one begins like this: "In a blinding flash of inspiration, the other day I realized that 'interactive' anything is the wrong word. Interactive makes you imagine people sitting with their hands on controls, some kind of gamelike thing. The right word is 'unfinished.' Think of cultural products, or art works, or the people who use them even, as being unfinished. Permanently unfinished. "

I am not joking when I say: it is easier to read Ulysses than it is to read the Internet. Because at least Ulysses has an end, an edge. Ulysses can be finished. The Internet is never finished.