It's been a quiet month on my blog. I recently commented about this to a regular reader, so I thought the day before Thanksgiving was a good day to post an entry. Two things recently hit my desk:

Good news, Bad news
The good news (if you believe what you read) is that things are getting better. The bad news is that "better" is measured in the "not as many bad things are happening" kind of way. -- Full Story -- So take heart. If you are out there still working, you are part of the "bone". Hopefully, our industry can go on a training regime that will again start adding some muscle.

A Motivational Poster
I was recently reading an article in Software Development by Robert Martin titled, "The Bottom Line". -- Full Text -- He jokes about how development managers try to motivate the worker bees by giving us posters & coffee mugs with pictures of rock climbers & seagulls. What made this even more humorous for me was that I was reading the article while drinking from a coffee mug given to me by my manager -- the text? "DARE TO SOAR -- Your attitude almost always determines your altitude in life". No seagull, but it did include an eagle.

In that spirit and in keeping with the subject matter of this blog, I offer this motivational poster that a co-worker of mine shared with me.

Too Much To Ignore?
Today's main link from TechWeb - Study: Outsourcing's Benefits Too Much To Ignore shows that there are still plenty of lemmings to run off the cliff. In the interest of being "Fair and Balanced" the article does at least point out that the risk increases with potential savings. After pondering this story, "it" thinks that the this trend will continue as no senior executive wants to look foolish by:

1) ignoring potential "savings".
2) being seen as unable to manage risk.

Here's the direct link (this is the web after all) to the AMR study. You can get the highlights, but for the details you would of course have to pay big $$. Hey, good advice doesn't come cheap.

How about another Research Firm
Speaking of "Fair and Balanced", how about another industry analyst you ask? Here's the Gartner Group - Gartner: Business units to drive more outsourcing deals