NotAPixelOfSanity - Biff Mitchell Invites IT Workers to Share the Pain and Be Published

Summary: Author Biff Mitchell is running a contest for all members of the information technology (IT) industry to submit their most ridiculous work experiences and have them published in a book about the absurdity of the industry, NotAPixelOfSanity.

“The insanity of the IT industry can be so extreme as to be hurtful,” said Biff Mitchell, author of Team Player (Double Dragon Publishing, ISBN: 1-55404-314-X), a satire on the information technology (IT) industry. “I’ve seen it drive people nuts, smash families, crush dreams, and turn otherwise intelligent people into idiots. There are millions of stories about foolhardy projects, stupid management decisions, and situations that don’t fit into even the most inclusive definition of a sane world. I want to put as many of them together as I can in NotAPixelOfSanity.”

“I’m running the contest through the corporate web site for ErectSoft INC,” said Mitchell. “In Team Player, ErectSoft INC is the largest custom software company in the world, but it’s never actually produced a single product, or finished any project that it’s ever started. Nothing ever gets past the initial project definition and project planning stages.”

“This isn’t far off from the real world,” said Mitchell. “I know about a dozen former employees of the first big IT company in the area where I live. They were all thoroughly trained, met regularly with the clients, produced thousands of pages of project specifications, needs analyses, and other documentation, but after nearly three years, not a single project had actually been started, and not one of the employees had a chance to apply the training they’d received when they first started their jobs.”

According to Mitchell, companies like this blossomed throughout the IT industry prior to the Dot Com Bust. “I think the Bust was nature’s way of cleaning out the chaff,” said Mitchell. “But it didn’t clean out the absurdity. I’ve been handed Gantt charts that showed me three weeks behind schedule before the project even started. I remember a senior manager who was told he would be promoted to a VP position Friday afternoon and was laid off Monday morning. I summed up the nature of my job as an instructional designer once by saying: I’m almost caught up to where I was this morning.”

The home page for the ErectSoft INC web site (www.erectsofinc.com) is like most other corporate web sites … until the visitor realizes that none of the information under the headings for Our Products, Partners, and Media Release makes any sense. The About Us section starts off with the same meaningless corporate drivel and then lets the cat out of the bag by referring the visitor to Mitchell’s novel. “The product descriptions are taken word-for-word from Team Player,” said Mitchell. “And they’re not much different than the wording you’ll see on a lot of corporate web sites, especially for consulting companies.”

One of the menu bars at the top of the screen reads Absurd Contest. It opens a page with a silver-toned theme for the cover art for NotAPixelOfSanity, based on the cover art for Team Player by Brock Parks. “The contest is open to anyone even remotely connected to the IT industry,” said Mitchell. “That includes a lot of professions, such as programmers, graphic artists, interface designers, instructional designers, project managers, quality specialists, sales and marketing clones, HR managers, media specialists, documentation writers, technical writers, system architects, technical consultants, tech support staff, courseware authors, and knowledge engineers. And this list is just scratching the surface.”

The contest is free to enter and people can enter as many stories as they want. “I’m going to include every entry I receive,” said Mitchell. “But there may be some completely random editorial changes.”

“I’ve listed a few categories on the site,” said Mitchell. “Things like absurd projects and products, absurd management decisions and development processes, and a few others … but none of the entries I’ve received so far fits into any of these categories, so I’ve had to create new ones. I have a feeling there may be as many categories as there are stories.”

There will be ten prizes, awarded to the ten most absurd stories, of an autographed copy of Team Player. “All those whose stories are published will receive a free copy of the finished ebook version of NotAPixelOfSanity.”

Contest details are posted at http://www.erectsoftinc.com/Contest.html. In keeping with the occasion, no deadline for entries has been determined. Team Player is available in ebook format from Amazon.com and Fictionwise.com.