As a newcomer to blogging and somebody who is old enough to remember using a Telex machine to send a proposal, I needed to use something that was pretty intuitive. After about an hour working with WordPress I can say that WordPress is as good as it gets; it is as close to “free, perfect and now” as I have seen. I can see that there is tons of functionality that I have not yet used and I am motivated to experiment and learn more as my experience to date indicates that my frustration level will be low.
During 30 years in the software business, I have got used to the idea that software is mostly pretty bad - no, lets be frank very bad. Pre the PC I learnt that software was monumentally hard to develop, always (I mean always) over budget and and the green screen text stuff was for people in back offices and data centers only. My first hands-on experience was with a Mac (great) and then decades of frustrations with Windows.
WordPress is part of a new wave of software that looks like it may actually get it right. This looks like second generation Net native software. The first generation of Net native got the “wow” factor but rather the same way one goes wow when you see a dog walking on its hind legs (amazing that Rufus can do it, but he still does it very badly). The second generation takes Net native as a given and really focuses on usability. It has to be usable as adoption is based on thousands of individuals voting every minute with their mouse.
This is not how the Enterprise works. Somebody makes a decision and everybody has to use the clunky monstrosity. Of course people do still vote with their mouse but in destructive, passive aggressive ways that derail the project. These are the projects where the CFO at the post-mortem meeting asks “So are are you telling me that after 3 years and $x million we are facing a write-off decision? Can somebody tell me how we got here?”
I can see how systems like WordPress can avoid this by growing more organically. Add a few colleagues/partners as posters. Add some traditional semi-static pages. Add some social network, a bit of video and a podcast or two. Pretty soon I have a modern CMS, with minimal implementation costs and all on a pay as you go basis - it has been free so far 
This is what the analysts are touting as Enterprise 2.0. The problem of course is how much we are all invested in legacy systems. I suspect that these new systems will come in the back door, through a totally new projects, departments, services that get set up without having to use the legacy inheritance. Then some time later the old and the new get compared and by then people are familiar and comfortable with new system…
I am hopeful that this is a genuinely new era for software and that the teams who have enough experience with the old ways will stick to their design vision and keep it growing with Einstein’s famous phrase in mind:
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”
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