Why Consult Ants?

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Apr 22, 2010 @ 19:23

As you main have noticed the blog is launching its new look today. I spent the last hour creating a quick and dirty theme for the blogs with a few simple graphics and over the new few weeks I will probably refine the look when I have a bit more time.

Some of you might be wondering why I named the blog “Consult Ants”. Besides the obvious bad pun, the name reflects my view of what the consulting business has evolved over the last decade. When I started as a consultant over 25 years ago, the profession was very different and was guided by some standards, which of course a lot of consultants were not following and giving a bad name to the profession, but it did meant something to the users of our services as the consultants that were doing a good job were respected in the industry and by our clients.

Today it seems that everybody and their cousins is a consultants, and just mentioning the name “Consultant” brings a bad connotation to a lot of people’s minds. It used to be that one would rise to the top of their field and then become a consultant, but now I see teenagers that label themselves consultants and want to sell their services at $5 an hour. That is not good for them, their clients, and for all consultants. I will rant and rave about this at length in the future, but this is what brought the name of this new blog to my mind. It seems that in lots of people’s minds us professional consultants are like a bunch of little interchangeable ants that are just running around in circles doing work and that every ant is doing the same job mindlessly. I want to bring this piece of information to the surface and dispel it, thus the name “Consult Ants” is there to bring it to the attention of most.

Since this blog will not be a structured one and will be more of a stream of mind type of blog, I am not sure exactly where this will lead, but bear with me when I try to find its directions and feel free to participate in the comment section.

Don Luc

Welcome to our new consulting industry blog!

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Apr 20, 2010 @ 12:35

I have been blogging for over 5 years now in other venues and I thought that it was time to post my thought about what has been my main business for over 25 years. I started as a food-wine consultant back in the early 80’s. I was also active in the emerging field of computer graphics and animation at the time and also started to be more and more involved in the IT world as I had trained as a programmer at university. By the dawn of the 90’s I was a full time IT consultant/programmer/graphics/animation specialist. Then the industry changed rapidly with the event of the big Internet crash of the late 90’s and I became a software developer and launch my own line of products. Now I am back where I started and I am a Business/IT/Programmer/Hardware/Robotics/Graphics/Animation/Web/Food/Wine specialist.

I have seen many trends come and go, good and bad, and lived through many major industry changes. I do deplore some of the current state of the industry, and applaud some of the new trends. My wife had been telling me for years to write about the the industry as we discuss things a lot and she always tells me that I was born to teach, or preach when I get excited about a subject. Since my motto has always been to learn something new daily, and that a wasted day is one where you learn nothing new, I decided to share some of that hard-earned let’s call it “wisdom” for lack of a better term.

I know that I am considered as a dinosaur in this business where you are considered old when you hit 25, but there are some of us old fogies at over twice that, that are still active and can still provide a full contribution to this or these fields.

Don Luc