Gary,
In my view a planner should have the planning skills and in addition to that he should be clever to use the software tools. Softwares become very important for new planner because they have to show their abilities that they understands the plan and can produce the good looking reports. But for senior planners software provides data to analyse the Risks and opprtunities and that helps to convince the top management and shareholder (If you are working on potentially big project that needs to take certain investment decisions.
If you consider planners as in other decispline, engineers & Draft persion (Designer)then you can say software is not much essential for planning engineers that can be done by designers. But as per my experience planner has to do everything means making planning strategies, development of logics, scheduling and monitoring. So software is also needful. But planner can utilise the softwares in best ways only when he has all skill of planner.
Your second question about lot of discussion about Softwares, I guess it is because of planners need to get some new techniques to do the work faster.

A bit different approach in what I am good at

1. Argue/brainstorm to get others agree/convince on my method/approach towards planning methods/solutions or getting agreed by others if I feel their proposal is better than mine.

2. Not shy in asking any problem which i cant solve or anything which i cant understand on the project, from other team members.

3. Able to carry out any sort of work required on project in absence of any other team member.

Asif

My answers are…..

1. Good in organizing/putting gatherered information into perspective.
2. Good knowledge in planning (sound knowledge in construction management & methodologies, use of available planning software & tools).
3. Good in implementating what was planned (Monitoring & control system, report system, etc.).

This is a very interesting topic. My answers would coincide with the first two of Gary’s i.e.

1. I am a good at communicating the project plan to others who will use it.
2. My plans are very simple.

However, my third would be:

3. I can remove the perception that planners are agents of Big Brother!

The number of times project managers etc have visibly cringed when I approach them to ask for information are too many to count. All I tell them is that I paint a picture of the situation and show it to the rest of the company. If this picture is different to reality, then it is the PMs who will be asked the awkward questions, not me. Once this has been established, then the role of the planner is seen in a more positive light - which has to be a good thing.