Parking - April 2010 - 16

Tech Talk Blake Laufer
Revenge of the Nerds
(Part 2 of 2)

Last month I introduced the idea that what used to be a “simple” parking system has evolved into a far more complex beast—even to a point where the technology can no longer be managed by a parking operation. Instead the parking operation has grown dependent on the local IT representative (i.e. the Nerd). Furthermore, Nerds don’t communicate like “normal” people. And despite the quirky stereotype (picture Sheldon on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory) most IT workers are professionals. This means that just like lawyers and doctors and scientists, they also have very specific terminology that means something specific to them, while it means something different to you. Our analog parking devices are giving way to modern digital equipment—from meters to multi-space, from citation books to handhelds, from serial to fiber, from stand-alone to network. Parking is not alone. Remember the good ol’ days when the typical automobile was a shiny metal hunk of mechanical engineering? Today’s cars could hardly be described as mechanical at all: they’ve become electronic editions of fiberglass and plastic—with the carburetors replaced by fuel injectors and brakes assisted by ABS. You can’t be a weekend mechanic they way you could a few years back—even your service technician down at the auto-ship needs to be more Nerd than mechanic. And that’s a challenge for today’s modern parking manager. Communicating needs for purchasing and maintenance of equipment has become a conversation around technology. The onus is on the IT professional to try to know, learn and understand the parking operation’s goals and objectives, and not the specific requirements around things like network bandwidth, data security, uptime requirements and system performance. Specific implementation issues are the realm of the Nerd, not the parking manager. The parking operation typically doesn’t have policies around these items—in fact the typical parking operation doesn’t even know what it doesn’t know. In a complex system these types of decisions are critical for success. This comes as a surprise to parking managers who have not installed a major system in the last decade; usually they’re unprepared for the amount of technical sophistication they’re expected to have, and they’re looking around to learn quickly and gather the knowledge to make the right decisions. Here’s where the Nerds have a chance to shine—or fail miserably. The good IT professionals provide quality information and knowledge in a patient, customer-service oriented manner. These folks are truly professionals (the “Good Nerds”) and realize the value that they can add here and make a positive impression on the customer. Unfortunately the less professional Nerds will fail to provide this value, and probably reinforce those negative stereotypes by alienating the customer. It will take these IT nonprofessionals longer to learn the value of a customer-service oriented approach, running

National Parking Association PARKING April 2010

Parking - April 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Parking - April 2010