Prepare for Mind Control

Now who's the nerd?

I was engaged in an intense debate the other day as to whether of not people who play D&D are more or less nerdy than those people who play fantasy football. The person with whom I was debating this was a jock sports fanatic who regularly beat up nerds for sport in high school. Or at least that's how I imagine it happening. Anyway my contention was that D&D was actually less nerdy than fantasy football, because it all comes from your imagination. I think it's way more nerdy to fantasize about things that exist, and not only fantasize, but have an organized draft day, bet on it, watch cable shows about it, and follow it on the internet. It's as highly organized as D&D. Management of time and resources is paramount. It all boils down to this.

The content management system (CMS) is nearly ubiquitous with most of the web applications that I use the most. Google is essentially one large CMS, with several valuable applications all connected by one single sign-on portal. I can't tell you how much easier it is to sign on once and be connected to all of these services. This is especially valuable at my place of employment, which uses Google Docs, Gmail, Picasa and several other applications collaboratively.

This same employer is also struggling with system-wide growing pains by not utilizing a consistent CMS. This of course provides the benefit of a single sign-on portal. As it stands now, there are just too many interests that need to communicate that are not able to because they lack the ability to access the content behind the portal. When one hand does not know what the other is doing, it can cause problems. This would also benefit the end-users who need to access the front-end content. Currently this employer is exploring both Drupal and Joomla as an open-source solution to some of the woes listed above.

So in reality, the ability to organize and manage content, be it football stats or hitpoints, is what ultimately unites all nerds.