After my wonderful time in Australia at the itSMF event (sorry I didn’t write a blog, Ivor was too busy and I couldn’t remember much because I spent a lot of time between a lady called Simones’ breasts)…
I packed my Pengi suitcase and headed on over to Chris Matchett’s house. I had high expectations, I had heard he liked Japanese food so Sushi was bound to be on the menu. Needless to say I was very excited.
Bathtime
After my multiple trips to Las Vegas, my adventures in Sweden, tour of Australia and getting down and dirty with Andrea Kis in London, it would appear that I was a stinky penguin. I must admit I was looking forward to the high velocity Jacuzzi on offer at Chris Matchett’s house, I had my slippers and robe all ready and was even thinking there might be an opportunity for a little Pengi massage (I do love a good massage oil) but clearly human jacuzzi’s are not the same as Penguin jacuzzi’s. That’s putting it nicely. I’m not certain that I enjoyed it that much. It was nice to have clean feathers again but I was dizzy for a couple of days afterwards. I smelled of clean clothes too for some reason.
Remarkably ITSM seems to make more sense when one is dizzy.
The Small Human
Chris has a small human who is very cute.
She liked to give me lots of hugs and look for me when I got lost (I do tend to wander off…). She’s still very young and learning about the world but she spoke more sense about ITSM than a lot of people I’ve met. In fact I nominate her for a starring role in the AXELOS venture.
As an added bonus, she’s too little to eat cake so I was glad to help out with that. Every family needs a penguin.
Stamford
Time to return to the USA (maybe I should get a green card?) to Stamford, Connecticut which is by the sea and therefore has access to lots of tasty fish.
I think this trip was supposed to be a training week for new Gartner analysts, but they didn’t teach me anything that I didn’t already know.
Everybody there seemed very clever but nobody knew some these obvious truths about the industry:
- Fish has two unique properties on the Hype Cycle:
- Fish has skipped the Trough of Disillusionment
- While existing on the Plateau of Productivity, fish is also riding high at the Peak of Expectation
- The Magic Quadrant for Fish has almost all types of fish in the Leaders section with Fugu (Puffer Fish) as a Challenger (it’s tricky to eat safely) and the lead singer from Marilion as a Niche Player.
- On the Market Clock fish is best found at 5 o’clock. If you wait until 6am all the fresh stuff will be gone
I tried to educate the group as best I could over dinner, but I can’t promise they listened.
Of all people I would have thought Mr Greene would have known this stuff.
I can’t really say anything else about the training. I was threatened with Polar Bears if I ever spoke about their analyst secrets. I don’t like polar bears so I am going to keep the gossip to myself. Unless you have fish to share… then maybe I could tell you a few things over a cod or two (provided you keep your mouth zipped and also act as a human shield against the Polar Bears).
Oh and I should wave my flipper at Jenny and Jennifer who made me feel very welcome and gave me much more attention than that boring Chris did.
Oh I almost forgot, I caught up with fat cousin Bob on this trip! It was good to see him, although I didn’t hang around for too long for fear of being eaten.
Belfast
Belfast is near the sea. The sea has fish in it.
Seriously, what more do you want me to say about Belfast? Except Matchett has his own music shop there?
ITAM
There was a fancy Gartner event in London that I attend with Chris – the Gartner ITAM Summit (I think it stands for Investigating Turbot and Mackerel) I saw lots of humans talking about boring IT stuff. It would appear that it’s not just ITSM that humans don’t understand, it appears they don’t get ITAM either. One of these days I’ll sit everyone down and tell them what it is really about… In fact I was going to do just this when some BMC bloke (I believe his name was Jon Hall) interrupted me (I was warned about this particular vendor from that ServiceNow bunch but that’s another story).
Things spiced up a bit when some dude called Martin Thomson tried to eat me. I’m still not sure why. He was a strange man.
I’m sure the analysts and events team worked really hard behind the scenes, but I’d say the real credit must go to the hotel staff keeping us (me) fed on salmon bagels.
I met some former apprentices that used to belong to Chris. They didn’t try to eat me so that was a step in the right direction.
AXELOS (just for a change…)
For my final trip with Chris I got to meet my other friend called Chris from AXELOS. He was explaining to the BCS Service Management Specialist Group about the changes coming now that they own ITIL (but he seems to have trouble remembering what we agreed last time). Luckily I was on-hand to flap up to the top table and put everyone straight.
There still seems to be no penguin mascots in their plans for world domination, which lets face it is a major mistake. Everybody knows that you need at least one cute penguin to do the marketing and distract attention whilst the humans run in, change all the ITIL exams and create ITIL version 23972496.
Food
If there are two things that I learnt about Chris Matchett during my stay with him, it would be 1) he is very anal (or was that that he liked… wait no… I was right the first time), and 2) he should really weigh 25 stone because that guy likes his food! Had I stayed any longer I would probably have needed to borrow Cousin Bob’s clothes (if penguins wore clothes).
Where next?
Well, now I am on my way to a place called Israel to see my friend Joe the IT Guy from SysAid. I hear they drink vodka in the office on Thursdays so this penguin could be getting well and truly S.M.A.S.H.E.D. It should be good fun, I haven’t been drunk since the last time Patrick Bolger breathed on me.
I hope those guys at SysAid have a fish platter ready for me… this travelling lark makes me a very hungry penguin.
And finally
Thank-you for looking after me Mr Matchett. I had a lovely time. So long (until next time) and thanks for all the fish!
itsmpenguin 