I just read about this thing called shiny object syndrome in my business book. I begrudgingly admit that I have this. The phrase originated from how magpies tend to collect objects with sheen in their nests. When applied to business or real life, it means latching on to new ideas constantly because they seem like good ones. It’s a lack of clear focus and moving in 360 different directions at once. I realized this might be one of my shortcomings. Oh well, I’m grateful for the insight.

I know that I want to teach technology to high schoolers and adults. I love technology when I can experiment with it. The segue into technology experimentation for a living is teaching where breaking and fixing systems is part of learning. This would be one way of turning my interest into a money earning one without it becoming something I hate. Plus no after hours emergencies or anything like that. Don’t get me wrong though as this kind of business has its challenges; albeit different but they are nonetheless there.

I’ve had my idea validated that it seems to have something going for it and I can turn it into an opportunity. It is my belief that IT education has fallen short because it’s been designed to be a form of vendor indoctrination. Let’s go back to teaching people to become good IT generalists and not lock them into one way of doing things when there are many different ways of reaching a solution. We also need to teach the budding professional that Cisco products, for example, don’t belong at every business. This is why it’s so important to have good generalists.

Good generalists understand the “reference” implementation of technology. This is the one which the standard is built around. Each vendor modifies this slightly to suit it’s marketing terminology but it’s more or less the same thing.