Some of you may be aware I’m currently in an Executive Master of Business Administration program right now. It is pretty exciting and I’m learning a ton. I’m currently in our marketing seminar. While I’m nearly complete with the class, I picked up a book I read a few years back. Beyond Software Architecture: Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions by Luke Hohmann.

I liked the book very much because it really gets you to think of the customer of your software solution (as us IT folks have a tough time doing sometimes). As software or solution architects we need to make sure that we have a good solution for our customers on day 1 and on day 400. The book didn’t discuss in detail how to lead development teams as it is written from a product managers view of software. Product Managers should be considered marketeers in software product companies. The book describes brand, usability, software GA & Beta release cycles, technical ease concerns (like installation and patch management) but after reading the book felt I need more and something maybe be missing.

Well I what was missing in my MBA marketing seminar. I wouldn’t recommend this book outside of a graduate level program but we are walking through Marketing Management: United States edition by Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, take a look here. I’m sure there are other books that get to the point quicker. I found that this book in combination of the Hohmann book has really given me some good insight to Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions. I knew many of the components prior to reading either book or being in the class but its been really nice to see how it all fits together.

Currently, in software companies, all the rage is a new marketing book title Blue Ocean Strategy. I haven’t read it yet as the MBA keeps me reading a lot but it’s on my book shelf for when I get a break.

Think. Thank. Thunk.

Think responsibly.

You Try to win $25 bucks!

If you’d require some assistance with your Web 2.0 initiatives and are considering Drupal please contact me.

Here is the session details:

Drupal recently became a winner of CNet’s Webware 100 award in the publishing category. Drupal is a Free and Open Source Web Content Management software and a web application framework. It is highly used and has been included in the Google Summer of Code (SoC) project. The Google SoC reference’s Drupal as being the poster child for Web 2.0 community driven web site software. I will describe and demonstrate some of the major features of the software as well as some of the limitations. Some specific features we’ll look at are the Content Construction Kit, Views, Taxonomy, and some Content Management functions.

Drupal adheres to some good content management practices. During the discussion we will look and modify some configuration areas for the more technical savvy as well as look at the content managers and content authors interfaces. Although, a computer isn’t required if you bring you laptop you will be able to log on to the site and manage content.

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We went from content silos to content management silos to enterprise silos. But by necessity, our need to share information is pushing us to collaborate beyond any arbitrary boundaries. What does this mean for our profession? By going to content management systems, are we just catching up with today, or preparing for tomorrow? Will Content 2.0 catch up to Web 2.0? Strategy A is bringing the first content management conference to Vancouver that covers content management from both the Web and XML structured authoring perspectives.

Looks like it could be an interesting conference. Check out more details at confabb.

Cheers!

Essential vocabulary additions for the workplace (and elsewhere)!!!

1. BLAMESTORMING
Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

2.SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

3.ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard .

4.SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.

5. CUBE FARM : An office filled with cubicles.

6.PRAIRIE DOGGING : When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people’s heads pop up over the walls to see what’s going on.

7. MOUSE POTATO : The on-line, wired generation’s answer to the couch potato.

8.SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What Yuppies get into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.

9.STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

10.SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.

11.XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one’s workplace.

12.IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are Annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them.

13. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

14. ADMINISPHERE : The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.

15. 404: Someone who’s clueless. From the World Wide Web error Message “404 Not Found,” meaning that the requested site could not be located.

16. GENERICA : Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and subdivisions.

17.OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you’ve just made a BIG mistake. (Like after hitting send on an email by mistake).

18.WOOFS: Well-Off Older Folks.

19. CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously passing gas while passing through a Cube Farm.

If you like these I did a quick google search and found a site with many more at Office Jargon for the 21st Century

A few years ago I spent quite a bit of time figuring out Mule. Initially on the projects homepage they referenced the EIP book( shameless ad on the right). The project really demonstrated that they were really taking the patterns in the book and were creating a real world application that implemented the patterns. After diving into the code I came to the realization that this project really is creating a good product. The developer side of me found Mule a to be very usable utility. The architect in me found Mule to be a very usable in the design. I had to take myself off the mailing list because the product was just getting too much attention and I had to drop the list due to the massive volume of posts. I’ve deployed the product once and have recommended it like a billion times. It was a great utility and since then it has turned into a good product. Take a look their getting started write up. If you’d like to work for the company directly there seams to be a few openings that has come with some venture monies. They’re headquartered in San Fran. Take a look at the open positions here.

The Mule position openings and witty title were made available by James Governor’s post

Sometimes we implementers of Content Management software take this mantra a little too much to heart. We try and design content solutions that will strictly enforce the Customer to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. When I say strictly I mean we programmatically implement software that enforces the “rules” with immediate actions taking place. For instance I was handed a requirement once that said every piece of content on a web site needs to be review every quarter or face removal from the web site. So as the developer of the system I write code that sends a note to the content manager of the piece that is 3 months after the last time it was modified or reviewed. A week later the same code removes the piece from the web site if the content wasn’t reviewed. For the most part this could be ok but we all know that this rule will execute on something like the contact us page or the legal disclaimer. Oops, my bad, I just coded what you asked for right? Well not really, but this is a poorly analyzed requirement. This is where the solution and project leads need to proof the requirement and make sure that the developers can’t infer requirements or implement risky unrefined requirements. When I proofed requirements in the past I’ve been passed over by others saying well Travis you just need to think a little more high-level. Well sorry I know that requirements like the one mentioned above happen every day and there are real ramifications because of vague or “high-level” requirements going to the implementers of content management software. So beware of vague and unproofed content requirements.

The first thing I was concerned with was the look and feel of my site. So after looking around a bit for a free theme that I liked I gave up. Most of the free and for pay themes are just variations of the same ole stuff that every WordPress blog has. I wanted something a little bit different, (un)fortunately, nothing surfaced. So I decided to create my own theme. I got some ok stuff developed working then I was point to free theme. Wow, this one is a cool one named Hemingway. At first it seemed a bit funky (but still very usable) but as I watched a few people use it, I realized that it’s simple, consistent, and reliable. So I just created my own css and put my own colors palette in it. I now have a theme in place.

In a nut shell, Hemingway puts the main focus of the page (read: content) on the top. On the bottom there are these blocks installed in the “Hemingway’s Bottombar^tm“. A block is a container for html snippets and php code. If you have a WordPress plugin that writes out html, eg. the blogroll on this site, then you would have to create a corresponding block for that plugin. Blocks are easy to create for people that have a minimal knowledge of PHP. Here is what the block looks like:

<ul class="blogroll">
	<?php get_links_list(1, '<h2>', '</h2>'); ?>
</ul>

The code above is fairly straight forward for those slightly familiar to WordPress plugins. The “Hemingway’s Bottombar^tm” offers a neat layer of abstraction between the theme and your plugin displays. This is advantageous because as the theme and the plugins needs to upgrade with the WordPress application your blocks and therefore your blocks and your html structure shouldn’t have to change.

Next, I knew I wanted to be able to print and email blog entries, some extra tagging functionality, SEO assistance, and comment spamming concerns. So the search started for plugins.

While reading Graham’s article it reminded me of a quote i read a few years back from Sir Winston Churchill. The quote is “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.

I first came by this quote in a really nice book I read, Guerrilla Pr Wired: Waging A Successful Publicity Campaign On-Line, Offline, And Everywhere In Between

The quote is in the Damage Control chapter of the book. Anyone interested in purposeful online communications would enjoy this book. It is really just a bunch of real stories put together to prove points of PR and communications.

[update]I guess my only comment to the article would be that there are project staff that make really bad decisions. Follow guidance from experienced professionals and they should assist you in not making those bad decisions. Take a read at another CMS Watch article “Don’t let your CMS get a bad rap“