All industries have heroes and heroines. People who have transformed not just their industries but also the world around them. I’d argue that the IT industry has fewer than it should do, given the scale of the IT revolution in the last fifty years. Outside the States, the industry still struggles with a ‘geek’ image. It’s a serious image issue which can steer children away from studying computing and computer science and turns people away from what ought to be an attractive, global career. BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, has launched today a campaign called ‘Information Pioneers’ to ‘nudge the needle’ on this image issue (it’s a campaign we helped create). See the trailer to the right…
We asked people like Dom Joly, Phil Tufnell, Miranda Raison as well as IT and tech afficionados Kate Russell and Ortis Deley to work with the Institute to tell the story of five out of a list of 150 IT ‘greats’. To stimulate the debate, we have created a micro-site and will be hooking up with MSN soon to broadcast the stories. The movies themselves won’t air till next Thursday but in the meantime, we’re hoping that PR’s and internal communications executives inside IT companies will check the site out. Many of their CEOs or founders – people like Larry Ellison at Oracle – will be on the long list of 150. We’re hoping they’ll see the corporate PR value of getting behind their CEO and their corporate brand by voting him or her up the league table. We’re also hoping they’ll see the value to the industry too of inspiring young and old of the socially valuable role the IT industry and profession is playing in their lives.