Introduction
Welcome to Goggins.com, the personal website of Sean P. Goggins, PhD/agent of socio-technical change. My industry experience includes leadership of software engineering and design teams at Fortune 500 and Global 50 corporations, small startups and firms in between. Creativity and engineering are often at odds. My experience and research enables me to help companies large and small improve the coexistence of creativity and engineering.
Free advice: Focus on small groups and teams if you desire change. Institutions and individuals resist change, while small groups assigned a task recognize the central importance of change to getting through their work.
The funniest and most tragic stories I have about change are all related to what happens when a small, innovative firm is acquired by a large, multi-national corporation. In the tech sector, the disappointment usually peaks in the third year. Organizational change is hard, and its even harder when the value of a firm is its people; And they do not really want to work at a large company. How do you engage them? How does a large, global corporation create an environment where the value of its acquisition grows through continued creative energy; and doesn’t die as the geniuses flee the ship? That kind of advice depends on the situation, and isn’t free. Some time in the the next five years, there will be a book from me on that topic, because the entertainment value, and value for reducing corporate employee suffering is too great to ignore forever.
My current focus is socio-technical research, focused at the small group unit of analysis. I am especially interested in technologically mediated small groups. In order to separate that web presence from my significant experience beyond academia, I have just, as of September 20, 2010, launched a new website. Dedicated to my research, and research collaborations.
Check out my new research website, Group Informatics
A little about me: I went through graduate school as both a full time student and full time interaction designer, technologist and leader of small software development teams. Last year, 2009-2010, was the first year in a decade during which I had “only one job”.
Today, I am an assistant professor at Drexel University’s College of Information Science and Technology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My research focuses on what I and others call the socio-technical, which is what it sounds like – social interactions and organization that is supported by or occurs exclusively through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).
Check out Group Informatics dot Org for more information on my current research!
