In one of my entries a couple of weeks ago, I asked what do you do with people who are putting off learning .Net. Larry O'Brian, Scoble, Julie Lerman, Darrell Norton and several other people got in on the conversation. After thinking about this question for a couple of weeks, I think I now need to rephrase it. After reading Joseph Cooney's blog entry yesterday, I think the problem in my company goes a little deeper than .Net or technology in general. The people who are putting off learning .Net aren't in to it, or should I say aren't fully engaged and aren't passionate about what they do.

I (like alot of other developers) would love to work at Microsoft, but right now I would have no idea where I would fit in over there... so I am trying instead to figure out how to make my current environment a little more like an environement I would really like to be in (ie. Microsoft). So I guess a better questions about the people I was referring to in a previous post would be: How can you get your IT department fully engaged and passionate about technology?

Pat Hyndes was one of the speakers at DevDays Boston, he says he has passed 55 Microsoft Certification Exams! and of course claims to not have a life ... that is passion about learning technology. Pat is at the far end of the spectrum of engagement and passion about technology and my department is basically at the other end. How can I get them to move at least a little closer to Pat's end?