It’s been about a year since Switching to VoIP hit the shelves, and I was surprised at how well-received it was by the industry at large. I was surprised and humbled, noting today that the book is outselling many of Cisco’s own VoIP books.
Anyway, the reviews of VoIP Hacks have now begun to show up, and some folks really love it. Some folks really obviously hate it. And, again, the negative feedback seems to be coming from north of the English Channel. A lot of my job is to detect patterns, and I detect a pattern. Check what this British guy wrote about my book:

The author adopts a very idiosyncratic writing style that most European readers are likely to find condescending, perhaps even insulting. The technical content has, almost entirely, already appeared elsewhere in network security books and the IT press over the last two years. Moreover, most manufacturers have already made the (VoIP) customisation tips contained in this book available in their published manuals.

I’m not sure if the guy is more aggravated by my liberal use of such American euphamisms as “folks” and “area code” or my mention of Gavin DeGraw, or if he’s just unaware that this is a book for enthusiasts, not seasoned I.T. pros. After all, it’s a Hacks book, and it’s targeted at hobbyists and enthusiasts. Judging by the decidedly non-enthusiastic tone of Mr. English’s comments, I’d say he’s neither.

He also refers to colloquial American as inferior to “plain language”. Taking this to heart, I’ll be certain to write my next book in unapologetic colloquial Australian and really knock ‘em down. Who reads tech books for their literary appeal anyway?
But I digress.

Very early on in my career I wrote some stuff for Amiga Format magazine (towards the end of their publishing run). This was, of course, an English magazine, one which I also enjoyed reading, despite the frequent use of terms like “bollocks” and “comms”, English-style forms of past participals, and other things that seemed odd but never got me upset.  For those of you only familiar with colloquial American, “bollocks” means “sh*t” and comms means “telecommunications”, very roughly translated.

When I was trying to crack into what I thought was the upper echelon of the I.T. business back in the early 1990s (that is, the echelon that doesn’t include Ted sitting on the telephone all day answering phone support calls from geriatric business owners whose first exposure to computers was my joy and delight to facilitate, but let’s save that happy story for some other time…), I set my eyes on the prize: the holy grail of technical certifications.  If I got a paper with the word “CNE” on it, I knew I would have a lasting career in I.T.   I have a feeling a lot of us felt the same way.

CNE, of course, stands for Certified Novell Engineer, and it was the proprietary designation Novell Corp. assigned to people who had enough Nerd I.Q. to pass 4 adaptive tests on the subject of networking with Novell servers. In 1994, if you could snag a CNE, you were the bomb diggity.  I wanted to be the bomb diggity.

Interestingly, I was never dubbed CNE by the king of Novell Land. Instead, I was only good enough for the CNA (Certified Novell Administrator), which is sort of like a court jester appointment compared to the venerable old CNE.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter much. Because, as it turned out, the CNE and CNA (and MCNE, the “master” pimped-out version of the CNE) ended up essentially worthless as the network software world was turned on its ear by the Microsoft in the 1999-2000 timeframe. Novell very nearly went belly up (and still may). People didn’t dig the Novell approach any more, and those costly and formerly coveted Novell certifications just didn’t have the same lustre.

In 2003, everybody wanted to become an MCSE. (Microsoft)
Now, in 2006, it seems, everybody wants to become a CCNE. (Cisco)

ˆf you’re a job-seeker, before you go spending two years chasing a “high-level” cert at your local community college, know this: any vendor-specific tech certification is only going to get you to the entry level position. Like a fresh B.A. grad or a cocky young MBA, the real, career-defining job you seek is probably two or three positions beyond where you end up upon receipt of your tasty new papers, be they CNA, CNE, MCSE, CCNE, or what have you.

And note that, just as Novell practically disappeared from the relevance meter, so too may your technical certification.

So, the other day my wife says to me, “did you hear that radio ad from AT&T that disses VoIP services?”

And I said, “nope, haven’t heard it yet.” Then, on the six+ hour drive home from northern lower Michigan where I was camping this weekend, I heard the ad. I believe it was on an FM station called “Joe FM”.

The ad was nothing short of dirty. It features actors playing the roles of “real people” who switched back to landline service from VoIP after discovering how “awful” it was.

The ad seemed squarely aimed at Vonage, saying that users who switch to Vonage won’t be able to use their alarm systems or answer the phone when the power goes out. Sure, these things are true. But don’t people already know this stuff? I have NEVER, and I mean NEVER, met anybody who bought into VoIP service without acknowledging that it doesn’t provide power, doesn’t work with FAX machines, and doesn’t work with all alarm systems.

And I keep coming back to this idea of innovation. Why doesn’t the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (AT&T) get off their collective bottoms and turn AT&T CallVantage (the service they won’t acknowledge in their radio ad) into the REAL DEAL–why don’t they invest in one of the several broadband alarm companies? Why don’t they invest in fax-to-email services like e-Fax? Surely, they’d profit more than they will by continually dumping huge ad buys on well-produced-but-pathetic radio advertisements…