No – I’m not in IT.

I speak enough IT to get by, some of my friends are even ‘in IT’, but no … I’m not in IT.

Everyone from my (almost) 80 year old mother to my four year old son uses it in some way or other, so why is there still a strong sense that the internet is still ‘all IT’ and not just another channel?

Historically you needed a pony-tailed IT person of ambiguous job purpose to knock you up a website or intranet. Then the time came when they were then joined by a goateed designer (head to toe in black) and the two would argue about form versus function while you wondered how to get that 40 page corporate brochure “on … line” and then find some plausible justification for the outlay.

A while back I spent some time at an organisation where the Comms team’s admin support – a lady close to retirement – would ceaselessly and unforgivingly refer to me as “the technical expert”. She would also profess that she “knew nothing about IT” and that she “didn’t really understand computers”. This I accepted at face value, despite her conspicuously competent daily use of a computer and a number of standard Office software packages.

The point where I had difficulty believing that she “knew nothing about IT” and “didn’t really understand computers” was when she produced the memory card for a digital camera and said something along the lines of “I just don’t know what to do. I’ve tried downloading straight from my camera at home, but I can’t open the files in Paint or Photoshop. I’ve tried the memory card in this USB memory stick card adapter thing [I’d never seen one of these ‘card adaptor things’ before!] but I can’t get my work computer to recognise it at all … You’re technical – can you help?” Let’s just play back the line – she “knew nothing about IT” and “didn’t really understand computers”.

And the point of this rant is…?

The web is just another medium. Anyone who can read can publish information on it. It has as much to offer as other channels and with interaction, feedback, multimedia and an instant global reach at time of publication it has a lot more as well.

Yes, understand its peculiarities, but treat it as just another channel. When it’s treated separately, you end up with gems like the article in my local county newspaper ‘Bucks Free Press’ (no relation) whose headline on the 16th of January 2009 ran “Sorry you heard about your job losses online”, where “Angry county council staff were shocked to learn on the internet that hundreds of their jobs are set to be axed”. Perhaps some of those jobs were in Internal Communications?

Joined up thinking please, ladies and gentlemen, and don’t be afraid of the web – come on in, the water’s lovely.

The Long Dog.