Expert, schmexpert

Here are the categories for our new company expert programme:

1. Multi Channel e.g. IPTV, Mobile, Tablet PCs


2. Emerging Technologies eg, Vista, Ruby on Rails


3. Transactional Merchandising


4. Social Computing & Networking


5. Convergence


6. Youth Market & Online behaviour


7. New Online Business Models


8. Information Management, Enterprise Search & Dashboards


9. Rich Media


10. Inclusive Design


11. Youth trends

These are the subjects where my company sees itself at the forefront of thought and wants to produce a PowerPoint each quarter to prove it.
Some notable absences from the list: content management, systems integration, CRM, business process improvement, scalability and performance, security. What I'd call the fundamentals.
I have two main issues with the list: firstly, there's no place for me to show expertise unless I appropriate information management as being a broader understanding of content management (which it isn't really) and secondly, it's so bloody assumptive. If you're some kind of futurologist determining strategy and saying these are the things we should be interested in, why do you assume dashboards are going to be valuable, when all the current user research shows how much people hate adopting them? And why are Tablet PCs in there? Is the act of clicking on a website with a pen on a tablet radically different to using a mouse with a laptop? Why are multi-channel and convergence different subjects? Why are youth trends and youth market separate?
Then there's the final issue, which is that for each subject, the company is going to nominate four experts from different streams to contribute their expertise. How can you talk about new business models and about social networking and then prescribe who you define as an expert? Have these people never heard of wikis? Oh yes, they tried to implement a wiki but failed to grasp the fundamental concepts: there are 19 company wikis, where you can't add documents, can't use HTML and which can't be searched across. Nice.