The World According to Sam

Even though he has been dead for several years, I still find myself thinking about my dog Sam.  Once in a lifetime a dog comes along that is more friend than pet.  These loyal and intelligent dogs form a unique and unspoken connection with their owners.  This bond between dog and owner is a remarkable thing that truly earns the dog the title "man's best friend."  Sammy just wasn't that kind of dog. Sammy enjoyed a homicidal mix of bull terrier, german shepherd and doberman ancestry, and he epitimized all that was uniquely wrong with each of those breeds. He was moody, disloyal and destructive.  Sammy really did prove that the whole dog could be far more unstable and psychotic than the sum of its breeds.  And like the idiot that I am I loved him dearly, although I slept with one eye open while he was stil alive. 

I bring him up in my blog post because despite his homicidal tendencies, Sammy taught me a great deal about managing centralized network data stores.  Really.  Sammy's basic life philosophy was pretty simple:  "If you see something on the floor then you should eat it.  After all, if it turns out to not be food then you can always barf it up in the living room." Without a Taxonomy and Governance Plan, your organization's only other option is to adopt the Sammy-like information management philosophy that states "If you have some random file then you should store it on the U drive.  If it turns out to be worthless then you can always just spin it around at 7200 RPM until the company ceases to exist.

 

 

© 2008, Mark Ragar Schneider, All Rights Reserved

Comments

[daniela barbosa]

It is a shame that Sammy never had the change to meet Townes- i think they would have gotten along. see this post to see why that is:

http://synapticacentral.com/content/why-my-dog-search-engine-without-taxonomy

[mark@vitalskill.com]

Wow! Love your blog. Clearly information management is "going to the dogs." :-)