RealityIT

RealityIT was a series of approximately 33 single page articles appearing in Network Computing Magazine NWC between 2004 and 2006 and using the anonymous byline of an author who was the MIS Director at a commercial company. Two senior leaders at NWC identified the author and worked the initial ideas, Fritz Nelson (now Executive Producer of TechWebTV) and Rob Preston (now VP/Editor in Chief at InformationWeek). The series continued under the leadership of Art Wittmann as the new editor at NWC
The author wrote the articles under the name Hunter Metatek. His firm had 500+ employees and multiple sites along with a fairly good-sized information technology department. The author had been working in the information technology and network field for over fifteen years and has held various technical titles including network engineer and network manager. His experience included employment with commercial, consulting, government contracting, dot-com, and telecomm firms. The author wrote on topics of interest to the IT community while using humor and anecdotes to convey useful lessons learned.
The significance of this series of articles was to put in print many of the topics that IT workers discuss but previously only in smaller forums and informally. Due to the anonymous nature of the author, the articles were able to cover topics that could be caustic if published with attribution. Network Computing Magazine (www.nwc.com) believed that drawing on current and past experiences in information technology from an actual business should help to communicate with readers about many issues related to the real world of networking. Articles covered the day-to-day and week-to-week organizational, technical, political, and business challenges of working in an information technology organization. The articles were based on real experiences however with the names of the characters and the company changed to protect anonymity.
An initial listing of articles is below along with article taglines, the full listing will be updated and posted.
2004 NWC Print Editions
* Employee Compensation vs. The Budget - Going to bat for your employees' paychecks
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2005 NWC Print Editions
* You're Not Fired - Employee termination, onsider other options-- counseling and training
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* Building a SAN Castle - Evaluating storage area network vendors and offerings
* Make the Peer-to-Peer Connection - Working with IT colleagues from other firms can lead to success
* Vertically Challenged - Mergers can be messy for IT departments
* Burden of Spoof - Email security, spoofing, and solutions
* BPR - Business Process Re-Invention - When your internal clients believe they know best
* BRP Revisited - When choosing processes and software, it pays to get IT's two cents
* No Safety Without a Net - The network isn't much help if nobody can log onto it
2006 NWC Print Editions
* Taming the Wild Inbox - Motivating reluctant users to purge thousands of old e-mails
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* Wired or Wireless, You Decide - Major decision for wireless at a remote location
* Advancing by Degrees - Advancing your career through a graduate degree

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