I have just completed a bit of a revamp of my online presence. This was prompted by the repeated emails from Google about the closure of Google Web Pages (which I love as a simple web platform) – I had to do something to move my web site content. I have also had much more exposure to WordPress over the past few months and absolutely love it as a CMS platform. Finally, an excellent post from Kate Carruthers about your online presence finally prompted me to act.
My Website requirements are pretty simple. It is mainly a blog, a bit about me, how to contact me, and my Resume. I also had previously set up Google Apps for your domain (GAFYD) with my email and website. I never used any of the other GAFYD tools such as Calendar and docs as I use them already from my main gmail account.
I could have gone to a self hosted WordPress.org site but for my personal site I don’t really see the point in spending around $100 per year for hosting. That’s why WordPress.com is so great. And now they have made it even better!
You can now have your full domain linked to your wordpress.com site (for US$1o per year), so rather than http://blog.jodiem.com.au I can now map http://jodiem.com.au to my wordpress.com site. To do that you need to remove your current DNS hosting and let wordpress.com handle it. That is great, except for the email.
But WordPress.com now has email covered too! You can now use your wordpress.com hosting to link to your GAFYD email account! Brilliant! Now this is a full domain solution from worpress.com for US$10 per year. I would highly recommend this solution for any personal account or very small business.
There are a few downsides to this approach, but they are not a big deal for me:
- I can no longer have subdomains for my other GAFYD services such as calendar.jodiem.com.au, but that is fine as I never used them anyway (and I can still access them through the google.com/a/yourdomain/ link)
- WordPress.com is still a bit limited in what you can do with it. I wanted to embed a google calendar on another wordpress.com site and they won’t allow embeds of anything other than the few specific things they will allow, like You Tube and Google Maps.
- You can chose to customise the CSS but that’s an extra US$15 per year and I found a great theme (Viligance, which has some customisation options) as part of the standard Themes gallery.
One small tip when setting this up is how to find your unique google verification string in GAFYD to re-verify the site ownership with wordpress.com. Twitter came to the rescue for this one, so here is how to find it:
- Log into GAFYD dashboard and click on Email
- Click on “Instructions on how to activate Email”
- Click on Change MX Records
- Click on Verify Domain Ownership
- Choose Upload a HTML file and the unique string will be there!
Easy when you know how!
Just a quick post about my thoughts from Web Directions South 2009. Overall I was very impressed with the conference. As with all conferences there will always be some speakers that don’t hit the mark and some that stand out. But for me, overall it was very positive.
Another positive thing about the conference this year (I last attended in 2007) was the food and coffee. Real Tobys Estate coffee is great, if you can get in the line early… and the food at lunch times and in the breaks was excellent. It really does make a difference to a good conference if the little things like that are worked out.
It would be great to have some of the really cool things from TechEd like Power in almost every seat, but at least they had a re-charge station and great WiFi that worked over 90% of the time. So well done to the organisers for getting the basics right.
The overall theme from this conference for me was “what’s old is new again” and nothing we are doing is new, so why don’t we learn from the past. There were at least 3 talks that I went to that I got this vibe from, and other people may not have got the same out of it as me… it’s just what resonated with me.
The closing keynote was the one that had the most impact on me. It was an interesting keynote and seems to be from chatting to people about it that it was 50/50 and people either loved it or hated it. Dan Hill is quiet and unassuming and with a delivery style that is not as “pumped up” as Mark Pesce (who did the past 2 years closing keynotes), but his topic was no less inspiring.
I suppose it is because of my construction background that I really got what Dan Hill was talking about, and I don’t even know that I can put it into words about what his talk was even about. All I knew is that it impacted me, and that I really really want to combine my construction knowledge and skills with my passion for the Web and Web 2.0 technologies – what we are trying to do with Be2Camp anyway.
It is also interesting that part way through the talk I thought that some of Dan’s stuff was familiar and realised that it was he that spoke at the first Interesting South 2 years ago and I was so impressed by him then that I blogged about it then – here is the post about Interesting South.
There are some Podcasts up on the Web Directions site from a few of the major speakers, but without the video I think some of them will loose their meaning. I would love to see future Web Directions release video of all the talks in future, but I know that would be a huge undertaking.
For the past few months I’ve been working on a contract to build an automated web testing suite for a large and complex web application. I have used Selenium to build the automated web testing framework so this post explains why I chose Selenium and how great Selenium is as a tool for web testing.
At the September 2009 meeting of the Sydney Business and Technology User Group (SBTUG), I was able to present a high level, business focussed overview of using Selenium for automated web testing. I focussed mainly on IDE but did delve a bit into the code by showing some C# code and running the tests from within Visual Studio. You can see the slides from the presentation on SlideShare. I will present this topic again at the Sydney Alt.Net user group with a bit more of a .Net developer focus.
So to start with, I love Selnium. It’s free and it comes in 3 different flavours that can be used by different parts of your team. The end users and the testers can use IDE, the dev team can use RC and the people doing the serious performance testing can be using Grid – all with the same test code (or versions of the same code).
But this project was not your ordinary Selenium project. Most selenium projects are done in Java or Ruby and if they are done in C# they use NUnit. My project was done in C# using the Visual Studio Team Suite Test Edition (VSTT for short). This is because all the tests for the main non web-based app are built in VSTT and I needed to work in the same environment.
Also, the website I was testing is built with a Javascript Library called ExtJS. One of the “features” of ExtJS is that it builds the HTML Element ID’s on the fly, each time the application is run. Other constraints my project has is that the app only works in Firefox 2 (yes Firefox 2 – yes, it is not a supported browser any more, and whilst not as bad as IE6, it is still an issue!), so therefore I could not use the in-built recorder in VSTT, which only records in IE.
So, I wanted a testing tool that I could record the actions that the users took through the system, that would handle the issues with the ExtJS framework, would work well with VSTT and would scale up to the eventual result of running 1000 web tests in a 2 hour period with 27 concurrent browsers operating. Selenium provided me with all that goodness, and it can run tests on all the major browsers also.
I’m not going to go into the basics of creating web tests in Selenium as there are some great tutorials out there, and the step by step guides on the Selenium website are very good also, and I’ve covered a lot of it in my presentation slides. I will delve a bit into what made this project so challenging and how Selenium helped me overcome it.
ExtJS is an interesting JavaScript framework, and I understand why developers want to use it. From my limited understanding of it, it seems to build the HTML on the fly as it’s needed. So if there is a grid that is 50 columns wide and 500 rows long and many of the fields have a combo box behind them, it will not create the combo box code for the specific cell until you click on the cell. (You could say, why does a Web App have a table that big, and you would be making a very valid point).
However, from a black-box testing scenario (ie I was given access to the Web App but no access to the development team), ExtJS is a very difficult framework to deal with. The element names are uniquely generated long ID’s that change every time the app is run. It means that rather than referencing a simple input box by the name assigned to it, we have to use an Xpath reference to refer to the input box. Selenium is great that it can handle Xpath refrerences, but Xpath references are a pain in many other ways. Firstly, they are long and cumbersome – especially with ExtJS. Eg a pop up box is not on a separate HTML page, it is just built with a DIV at the bottom of the main code, so to interact with an input box inside a pop up box, I first have to find some way of uniquely identifying the pop up box (ie maybe by the title), then find out which DIV holds the whole pop up box, then search within that div for an input box that is next to a label that I know the name of.
This is one way of doing it but it is very fragile and is not a great long term strategy as it needs to be re-built any time there are small changes to the Web App. It is amazing then, when after I had worked out this strategy that I found an excellent post explaining this very problem that I had encountered, and explaining a fantastic way how to overcome the fragility of testing with the ExtJS framework. Now it’s not something I could do in my short 3 month stint, but if you are ever thinking about testing an ExtJS Web App with Selenium I would highly recommend it. It was great to connect with Lindsay Kay, the author of the post just to say Hi and know that someone else in the world understood what I was going through to build these tests.
Again, I won’t delve into the wonders of Xpath in this post, but there are some great links in my slides about how to use Xpath, and the No.1 tool to use for Xpath if the Firebug Console – it Rocks!
I am also not going to bore you with the intricacies of the VSTT test suite, except to say that once it is set up and running it is a very good test environment as it has excellent reporting and debugging and great integration with TFS (but we only had VSS to work with and it worked fine). However, I have seen a few short demo’s of the new test tools in Visual Studio 2010 and I can’t wait to actually use it in a real test environment. The only drawback is that it does require TFS, which for some small dev houses can be a bit of an expensive option.
What I do want to finish this post of with is about scaling selenium using the Selenium Grid. I was really apprehensive about using Selenium RC and Grid as they seem difficult and use Java and the command line and Apache Ant, none of which I was familiar with. The Selenium Grid step by step guide actually makes it very straightforward to get it all up and running. In no time you can fire up a grid and multiple browsers and then run multiple tests in parallel, each within its own browser.
Purists say that you can’t use Selenium for Load Testing, mainly because of the hardware required to run multiple browsers on the same machine (I used a server box dedicated to just running browsers and was able to run about 15 at once and I could do around 5-8 on a single desktop PC). However, there are two great companies out there both using the goodness that is Amazon EC2 to solve this hardware issue for you.
Sauce Labs allows you to use your own code and run tests in the cloud. It has many environment / browser options to choose from and it is amazingly cheap. It is currently in early beta and probably has some things it could improve with reporting but it is a great service, with great support. It is really cool firing off tests on your own desktop and having them run in the cloud.
BrowserMob is a bit more expensive than Sauce Labs but also has fantastic support and lots and lots of options, including bandwidth limiting and the ability to use real browsers or just send http header requests. Browser Mob requires that the tests are built in their app and this can be a bit time consuming. They also have a great range of reports and the ability to run SQL queries against the result set.
Overall, I have found this 3 month contract very interesting and I have learnt a whole heap of new skills. I could not have done this project with out the team around me setting up the VSTT Environment and teaching me some much needed C# skills, but with all the Selenium, Xpath and ExtJS stuff I just had to learn all that by myself. It has shown me that I really can do anything, that I have the right mind set to just learn new stuff, work out how it all works, then document it and hand it over to the team that will be taking it on from now.
Now onto the next challenge, what ever it may be…
A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend my first Microsoft TechEd which was held on the Gold Coast. It was a great event and just as good for networking and catching up with friends and acquaintances from all parts of the Microsoft World.
My key take away from the 3 day event was about the 2010 platform. Consisting of Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Exchange 2010. These 5 products together are fantastic – it’s like Microsoft have been playing up until now, and these products are the real deal. However, that comes with one big caveat. They rock becuase they all work so well together. So don’t expect to install Office 2010 and have some of the cool new features in Outlook, because they don’t work without Exchange 2010. So with this in mind, I think it is a tough ask to have businesses upgrade their whole business platform all at once (not to mention the cool Dev tools of Visual Studio 2010 also). I hope businesses do come on board with this, because there is so much benefit in the whole platform, but I think it will be a while.
The SharePoint 2010 launch is happening in October in Las Vegas (which I sadly won’t be attending), so I can’t wait to see what excellent features will be in the new version.
However, the conference that I am attending very soon is Web Directions South 2009 on October 8 and 9 in Sydney. This is the premier Web Industry event and I previously attedned in 2007 and can’t wait to see how much I learn at this event.
Yes Google Wave will be realeased to 100,000 or so people this week (30th September). I can’t wait to try it out for real and see what new features they now have since the Wave Sandbox was launched a few months ago. And I can’t wait to have more integtration with my regular Gmail account and many more people to interact with on Google Wave. I will post more about my thoughts about the release after it happens.
There is a bit of debate over whether you should or should not use SharePoint for an externally facing public website (on the Internet rather than an Intranet or private Extranet).
In this post I will outline a few of the things to consider about using SharePoint for a public facing website, but please note, this is just my opinion, and there may be some inaccuracies, and you may not agree with it, so please feel free to comment.
Some of the important considerations for SharePoint as a public website are:
- Content Management and Office Integration
- Versions, Licencing and Support
- Hardware
- Web Standards and Accessibility
- Design
- Coding and Development
- Security and Logins
- SEO
But firstly who is already using SharePoint as an externally facing public website? There is a great site called WSSDemo that lists all of the externally facing public SharePoint sites on it, categorised by industry. Some Australian examples are WesternAustralia.com, AGL and MYOB and the government site of WA Dept of Premier and Cabinet. Interestingly, Microsoft’s own SharePoint site was recently released on SharePoint. A tip when looking at websites is, that if the URL has /Pages/ and the page is a type of .aspx then it is probably a SharePoint site.
Now onto those considerations…
Content Management and Office Integration
One of the main reasons for using SharePoint as an externally facing website is it’s excellent content management features. If you have SharePoint within the enterprise anyway then there is no duplication of training of staff to learn to update different systems for the Intranet and the website. The web content management features of SharePoint allow for the same content to appear on both the Intranet and Internet sites (avoiding duplication of information) and it has built in features for localisation and multilingual sites.
Also SharePoint works with your existing Microsoft Office implementations, allowing you to use the tools familiar to you to author and approve content on the site.
Versions, Licencing and Support
SharePoint MOSS 2007 comes in 2 flavours, Standard and Enterprise. To build an externally facing site, you need the Enterprise version PLUS you need the External Connector Licence. At over US$40k it is a hefty price tag and on top of all the other licencing you need it all adds up. (See the Bamboo Solutions SharePoint Price Calculator for more info).
Another thing that a lot of corporates need to know about is supportability. There are a lot of fantastic tools for SharePoint available on CodePlex, but as they are not officially supported by Microsoft this could be an issue for some companies. However, I think that for SharePoint you will need some of the CodePlex projects so companies may just have to compromise on this supportability issue a bit.
Hardware
On top of all the licencing costs is the hardware. SharePoint can’t just be installed on a server you have lying around, or one that you have in use for another purpose. Plus then there is the SQL Servers, the Dev, Test and Production environments etc, and all of the other servers that may be required depending on the site size and load. As I know very little about the hardware requirements, I won’t delve into them, except to say that you need a SharePoint Architect to assess the current hardware in the organisation and plan out the full requirements for the new SharePoint installation.
Web Standards and Accessibility
This issue is not a SharePoint issue but one that any public website has to deal with. At the recent Remix event in Sydney, Tatham Oddie and Damian Edwards gave a great presentation about building web standards compliant websites with ASP 4.0. A lot of what they went through will be relevant to SharePoint also (plus it’s a very interesting presentation, which is well worth a look).
SharePoint is not fully accessible out of the box, and requires a bit of tweaking to get it to be more accessible. Thankfully Microsoft is aware of this issue and have partnered with HiSoftware to release the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint which is free with a valid SharePoint licence. This is a good article outlining the issues with the Accessibility features in SharePoint.
There is also the ARF framework that helps developers to build Accessible websites with SharePoint. It does change the way developers need to approach SharePoint but as they need to do that anyway the ARF helps with the process.
Design
As with any website design, the more complex the design the more it costs. With SharePoint it is the more Master Pages and Page Layouts you have the more it will cost to design and build the site.
It is interesting that you can build a site in SharePoint that is not really SharePoint. Eg, one of the very first Australian sites to be an externally facing public SharePoint site is the WA Tourism Site. There is a really interesting talk by Jeremy Thake, one of the lead developers on the project talking about the development of the site (it’s quite long so I recommend watching the whole thing only if you are really interested. Part 1, Part 2). What I got most out of that talk is that the original WA Tourism Site is not 100% SharePoint, there is a lot of hand coded components to the site, just in a SharePoint framework. When you look at the newer WA Tourism regional sites (eg SouthWest and NorthWest , you can see that the design is a lot simpler, with one or two master pages, and only a few different page layouts (you will notice all the pages have a much more consistent look and feel).
There is a great article on Heather Solomon’s site explaining how all the SharePoint design components fit together. It’s an essential resource to at least understand some of the terminology of SharePoint.
So, you can do anything you want as far as design goes in SharePoint, but the more you do, the more it will cost. So stick to a simple design with one Master Page and a few Page Layouts and that will minimise the costs.
Coding and Development
This is one area where I know that I do not know enough about SharePoint… So this is my opinion only and it could all be factually wrong. But it just seems to me that SharePoint development is hard, and there is not a lot of Best Practices around for how to develop in SharePoint well. Now this is probably not specifically a SharePoint issue either, I’m sure any large Website, especially public facing, will have many issues about which is the best way to do things for them.
Thankfully there are some great resources starting to surface. The excellent SharePoint Dev Wiki is aiming to share best practices for SharePoint development, and anyone can contribute to the site.
Getting the SharePoint development environment set up well, having a good, documented process for development and deployment from Dev to Test to Prod servers and having a good dev team that works well together are essential for any successful SharePoint Project.
Some of the key people you need for a SharePoint development are:
- SharePoint Architect – works out the structure of the overall SharePoint site, the hosting requirements and even the hardware.
- SharePoint Administrator – (overlaps with the Architect). Makes sure all the SharePoint sites are installed, patched and up and running at all times.
- SharePoint Consultant – works with the business to understand the requirements, does the customistation and configuration of SharePoint to meet the business needs. Works with the developers to ensure the business requirements are met, and does testing and training of the SharePoint installation with the business.
- Designer – if not a specific SharePoint designer, needs to work with the developers to ensure that their design is translated into the correct CSS and themes by the developers.
- SharePoint developer – for any custom development required (eg Web Parts, Line of Business applications, Custom Themes etc)
Thinking that you can build a successful SharePoint project without all of these people is just heading for disaster. And thinking that a SharePoint Consutant and a SharePoint developer can be the same person is also a concern. A person that can talk to the business has a completely different mindset than a person who can cut code. To have those two very different approaches in the one person requires a very special kind of person – one who probably would be doing something more than building SharePoint sites.
There is a great presentation by SSW on building a successful SharePoint public website for www.worleyparsons.com It’s quite technical but there are some very good points in it.
Security and Logins
As with any Website, security is a major concern that needs to be addressed in the very early architecture discussions of the site.
For people just browsing the website on the Internet, this is called Anonymous access, however, with any SharePoint site, people are going to have to interact with it, usually by logging in. SharePoint can have domain logins where every user needs to be authenticated on your Active Directory (not desirable for an Externally facing site) or Forms Based Authentication. I know very little about either, so I’m not going to go into it. But here are some articles that may be of interest.
- SharePoint Security Concepts
- SharePoint Forms Based Authentication Site
- Links to some MSDN articles on FBA
There is a lot to understand about SharePoint security and it is a significant part of the overall SharePoint architecture discussion.
SEO
Again, SEO is not specifically related to SharePoint, but as with all things SharePoint there is some specifics about dealing with SharePoint that you need to know about. There is a whole site devoted to all things SharePoint and SEO called MOSSSEO.
Summary
In Summary, I don’t think SharePoint is any worse or better a platform than any other for building public facing websites. All public facing websites have to meet a number of requirements that make them much more difficult to deliver than a basic Intranet, so if you do already use SharePoint for the Intranet or are an exclusively Microsoft house, then SharePoint is definitely a candidate.
If you want to pay hundreds of dollars for an expert opinion on SharePoint for public facing websites, then try this one or this one.
So Friday was the Google Wave Developer Day in Sydney or #wavedaysyd.
What a great day! Thanks to @pamelafox for organising and for all the Google Wave team being there. It was like we had our own I/O Keynote in the room.
So I now have my Google Wave Sandbox account, and a new appreciation for developers, since trying my hand at downloading eclipse and setting up the basic wave demo was a complete failure (hopefully it had something to do with Win 7 or my eee pc and I can try it again on my desktop).
So, I was going to do the Part 2 of my Google Wave for Project Collaboration post after the WaveDay, but Wave is not quite ready yet to see exactly where it will be heading as a really solid piece of enterprise software, so I’m going to hold off on that one for now.
For now, I will just go through some of my first impressions of Google Wave. Overall it did live up to my expectations as a concept. It’s just in very early development stage at the moment, but you can see where it is possibly heading.
Look and feel
The main panel of waves is a bit crowded and it really needs a big screen to give it room to look good. You can hide the panels as you need to which helps for productivity.
Flakyness
Yes, it’s a bit flaky at the moment. It’s got a lovely feature called Dr. Wave that pops up when it’s about to die, and a cool error message if the wave itself is getting a bit flaky. If it’s going to be flaky it may as well have some fun doing so.
Seeing other people type
This was really cool – I didn’t think it would be. Seeing someone start to answer your question before you have even finished typing it, because they have go the gist of the message was really great. I think this will be one that takes just a little bit of time to get used to, but within a short time normal IM conversations will be very boring.
Missing things
There are a few missing things to the UI right now like folders, saved searches, draft editing mode, different views on the wave, spam etc, and the Mute function and archive functions are a bit hit and miss but you can see that it is coming at least.
Shift+Enter
You need to either click on Done or press shift+enter when you are done writing a blip… in a fast moving wave this can be a bit annoying. I would love a setting to have enter as done.
Deleting
It’s also annoying that you can’t easily delete a blip. If you start a blip in the wrong place you can’t just do Esc to undo it, you actually have to go to the menu and choose delete… it would be good to just be able to undo what you are typing (even though people may have already seen it as you type).
Reading Blips
In a fast moving wave, it is quite hard to follow where the updates are happening… I think some more work needs to happen on seeing the updates – like a keystroke (eg j, k like gmail and greader) to quickly go to the next unread blip. Plus the blips currently need to be clicked on or you need to click on the Read button to mark as read. A scroll past and mark as read feature like greader would be good.
Indenting
The indenting of the blips can get a bit unwieldy, but it wasn’t till the end of the day that we found out we could do shift+enter to create a new blip at the bottom of the wave… I think if we all knew that little gem of a tip, it would have been a lot easier.
Wave Etiquette
This one is going to take a while to get used to. Whether to reply, or to edit, and where to reply in the wave is all a bit confusing. It helps if someone states up front in the Wave header as to what they expect. It determines if the wave is a document type wave, a wiki type wave or an IM conversation type wave… and just as in email the same rules such as not using the same wave thread for other topics or not cc’ing in other people all need to be worked out by the wave participants.
@replies
There is no @reply feature to show you that someone has specifically replied to you. This could be just an etiquette thing (ie typing the @ symbol or similar) but it also needs a way to alert you that someone has replied to you.
User Names
It’s a bit of a pain at the moment that the system won’t autocomplete or recognise names from part of the name, so you have to type in the full name (eg jodiem@wavesandbox.com) when you are adding someone new (after that it is just drag and drop to communicate with them), and if you make a mistake, at the moment you can’t delete contacts.
Photo Management
This is where I was hoping for a lot and there is not a lot there – just yet… but I can see the possibilities and we may one day get to a level of photo management that I described in my previous post. At the moment you can’t select single or multiple photos and copy them into a new wave – you can only copy all of the photos in a blip to a new wave (you can then delete them but it’s tedious and if there are photos in multiple blips it doesn’t really work at all). There is a great slideshow viewer but again you can either see all photos in the wave or just one… not the ones you want. Drag and drop to upload did not work for me, but apparently I need a newer version of chrome to do it.
Bots and Gadgets
There were some really really fantastic bots and gadgets developed on Friday and I can’t wait for some of them to be essential bots that we have to have in every day use of Wave. There is a small limitation at the moment that makes it difficult for gadgets to be useful, in that they can’t interact with the wave – eg a Gadget can’t create or edit text on the wave, only a bot can. So my idea of a form filling gadget that displays XML data on the wave is well off into the future.
So overall Wave is the start of something very new, and something that I’m so exited to be using, even in it’s current, flaky state. And I’m off to play another game of Hangman with a bot made by @mrspeaker.
Tomorrow, I’m going to the Google Wave Developer Day in Sydney (#wavedaysyd). I’m really looking forward to finding out what ideas developers have for Wave. I’m not a developer but I do have some ideas as to what I want it to do, hence this post. This post is Part 1 and I will follow up with a part 2 after the event.
I was completely blown away when I first saw the video of Google Wave, because I immediately thought how good it would be for project collaboration. My background is in construction so I am specifically referring to construction project collaboration, but due to the intricacies of construction project collaboration, the features can be used for any type of project.
Since my initial wave (pardon the pun) of enthusiasm, I have put up a post of some of the things that Google Wave must have before I think it can be really useful. See the post here.
If you need a refresher on Google Wave terminology you can see this article or this post.
Email vs Wave
One of the very interesting points about Wave is that it’s not like email – the wave does not go anywhere (unless it’s going off to a federated wave server… but we will talk about that later), it just sits in the same place it was created. The users log into the wave server to see the wave… all the participants on the wave log in and see the same wave. This is not anything new. In fact, it is how a number of construction collaboration products work already (Aconex, ProjectCentre and Keystone are three that I know work this way). This works really well because there is no way for the message to get lost in transit, so it builds trust in the system and the knowledge that if a person has been added to the message, it is a guarantee (almost, apart from some small limitations – eg you spelt the name wrong) that that person can see the message. So it is really good to see this feature come to our regular communications.
Meetings
The Wiki-like features of Wave will enable meetings to be planned and recorded quickly and easily, with the Agenda, scheduling, attendees and minutes all in the one wave. Imagine if the notes of the meeting were recorded as blips as they were happening in real life, the playback feature of the wave will be a great record of what happened in the meeting… Imagine several people in the meeting all writing blips as they pick up something of interest in the meeting. With a tablet PC this could even be a direct handwritten blip.
But what if we took that further – what about recording the audio or even video of the meeting and time syncing the notes with the recordings (Wave does not do this yet, but the possibilities are endless). The possibilities for embedding the live video (eg something like tokbox) of all the participants, whether physically in attendance, or virtually, would be amazing.
Quick Resolution
Not being disrespectful to construction folk, because they do a fantastic job, but the most technologically advanced that most construction people are is with the use of the mobile phone and email (just a year or so ago it would have been the mobile phone and a fax machine, so we have come a long way there already recently). So with Wave being so much like email it will be quick and easy to sort out problems before they get too big. It would be so easy if the Architect happens to be online at the time the Wave was started so the conversation could immediately turn into a real time chat and things are recorded as they happen.
Please see my previous post about security, privacy etc for concerns about the real time chat aspects of Wave.
Document Management
I think it’s a long-shot that Wave will replace specific document management software (eg Aconex, ProjectCentre or even Woobius for construction, or enterprise document management suites like Documentum, SharePoint and Trim) at enterprise level, but imagine the possibilities for small projects. Start a wave called Current Documents and attach all the current documents. Split the wave into document subject areas (eg Floor Plans, Elevations). Attach the current documents, add people to the wave. These people now have exactly the same view of the information that you do – “one version of the truth”. Split off particular documents into a new wave (eg drawings for the electrician or the plumber) and add the correct people to see only the documents that they need to see. When a document gets updated with the new version it is instantly updated to all the participants because they are all seeing that one and only copy of the wave.
Of course, SharePoint, specialist Document Management systems and even a Confluence Wiki could all handle document management simply and easily, but Wave is free (as far as we know right now, but there will probably be a premium version, like GAFYD) and is as simple as email. Now I don’t know if all of this can actually be done right now, but I hope to find out soon.
Forms
Forms are a vital part of Construction Project Management. The hark back from the good old days when nothing happened on a construction site without it being written on a form in triplicate and distributed to the relevant parties. It kept a level of control on the project and all parties knew where they stood contractually. But it was S-L-O-W. Email has obliterated the comforting level of control that we used to have, with decisions now being made on the fly, which has made it faster, but we have lost most of the control and often find ourselves catching up with the “official” paperwork months down the track. The overhead is enormous. ProjectCentre, (and I think Keystone) try to overcome this by having e-forms as the basis for their communications (Aconex just uses email templates). So it would be great if there was a way that the Wave could be a bit more structured with templates, form fields, controls and a concept like a “submit” button. To give a simple way to submit and transmit more structured data that may be required in some cases.
Now if this was then XML based and could have a bot that updates a corporate database once submitted, then that would be even better!
Photo Management
The amount of time wasted on construction projects with photo management is incredible, and a simpler way to share, track and manage photos is critical. Of course, on construction projects photos are critical and a picture tells 1000 words. Photos are used to solve disputes, record defects, record progress, record delays – anything (As the whole philosophy of a modern construction project is based around the concept of “Cover Your Arse”, the invention if the digital camera has been a revolution in construction).
Photo management as easy as snap, upload, drag onto the wave, tag and share is a long way from folder upon folder of untagged and undated photos on the corporate file share. Of course, flickr and just about any other web based photo album app makes it easy to upload photos and the wonderful EyeFi card makes getting the pics off the camera simple, so Wave does not have an advantage there. But I think the sharing of the images is what is going to make the difference.
So there are 30 pictures of some defects in a room. 15 are for the plumber, 10 for the plasterer and 5 for the electrician – and 2 are good enough to send to the client as progress shots. Just drag the 30 photos on to the wave and tag them. Highlight the 15 shots for the plumber and add him to the wave for those shots. Do the same for the electrician and the plasterer. Then grab the two images for the client and publish them to the project progress blog. Simple! And a full discussion can be had with the electrician back and forth until the issues are resolved – all captured and recorded.
Now lets take that one step further and have the images sent directly from the mobile phone on site onto the wave – geotagged with their location. I’m sure that is going to be possible soon enough.
Mapping and Photos
This may not be specifically Wave related but it is just something I have been thinking of for a while now. We are so used to geotagged photos now that immediately appear on the map as soon as we upload to flickr. At Remix last week (the video for the keynote is not up yet but here is the link to the videos site in case it appears), Incite Keystone showed a prototype of a photo being taken on a mobile phone and then appearing on a map (not sure exactly what technology it was, something Microsoft – Bing Maps, DeepZoom, DeepEarth – not quite sure… and I’m not entirely convinced the whole thing happened automatically as it could have been a bit of smoke and mirrors, with the image having being pre-placed on the map for the sake of the demo, but I love the concept, regardless).
So what if we could take it one step further and rather than the map, have the photos placed on the location on the floor plan (or how ’bout inside the 3D model – but hey, one step at a time…). Now I know that GPS is not accurate enough to do this to the few hundred millimetre accuracy that it would have to be, so I would be happy to be able to drag a marker for the photo onto the correct location on the floor plan – just as you would placing a marker on o a google map. I think this would be really useful – anything to make photos of construction projects easier to manage would be.
Federated Wave Servers
Now this is taking things to the Nth degree but it is still important. A lot of companies will be reluctant to use Wave at the moment because they don’t want Google “owning” their data. Thankfully many construction companies are “getting over” this limitation and using multi-tenanted databases with SAAS vendors like Aconex and ProjectCentre. However, there are still a number of industries that can not even think of having their data even off site, let alone in a database in a row next to someone else’s (Lawyers being a good example). So let them have their own Wave Server hosted on-premise, and all these issues go away. (I still think this is quite a long way away, however).
Another reason for a company to build their own Wave Server is for the volume and size of the documents… if they are big documents (eg large photos, or video) that need to be downloaded often, then it will be best to have the Wave Server in house.
Other Articles and Ideas
- http://www.extranetevolution.com/extranet_evolution/2009/05/google-wave.html – As Paul Wilkinson mentions on this topic, once we can get Wave integrating with existing collaboration systems out there, we will start to see the full benefit of online collaboration systems. I can’t even begin to imagine what some of these integrations will be, but the possibilities are endless.
- http://www.ddmcd.com/wave.html – I like this article as it talks about Soft Collaboration (eg Wave) vs Hard Collaboration (eg Aconex), and it also talks about the financial aspects of the project – after all it’s what the whole project is about – money. I will need to cover off money in another post… but the forms idea will work for the money side of things anyway.
- http://www.thechangebusiness.co.uk/TCB/Blog/Entries/2009/5/31_Google_waves_for_construction.html – This article starts to talk about the design process – Wow, that brings in things like BIM and the whole design process – again lots to think about.
- What about the social aspects for construction – Social Networking in any form has not ventured into Construction – you won’t even find many construction people on LinkedIn… will this change and evolve?
- Facilities management – Everything you can do to manage a project during construction you can use to manage the building during it’s occupancy phase, so Wave will have a definite place there… but what about the possibilities of bots hardwired to the building talking to Wave and to each other… now that’s getting exiting…
I’m going to leave it there before my ideas start getting even more absurd, and I will be really interested to see if I come back from my first hands-on look at Wave tomorrow either way more exited or a bit more disillusioned.
This is the contents of a talk that I gave at the May 2009 meeting of SBTUG. It was a session on comparing the features of the wonderful enterprise wiki product Confluence by Atlassian and the wiki features of SharePoint.
The session content was delivered to the user group using the confluence online trial sandbox where you can try most aspects of confluence online before you buy.
This talk will not go into the following
- Other Wiki’s other than SharePoint and Confluence – See WikiMatrix for a complete comparison of all Wiki Software http://www.wikimatrix.org/index.php.
- The whole debate over the use of Wiki’s and whether you can trust the content on Wiki’s – this is for a corporate usage where there is unlikely to be anonymous comments allowed.
- WikiPatterns – although you should look at this site if you are interested in Wiki’s at all - http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns.
What is a Wiki
According to wikipedia, a wiki is:
A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked (often databased) Web pages, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites … originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work.”
SharePoint and Wiki Features
Wiki Features
- No external Editor, no uploading documents, edit button on the page
- Wiki pages are constantly a work in progress - http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WorkInProgress (but Confluence has some add-ins for Page Status)
- Revision Comparison
- Recently Edited Pages
- Links can go anywhere (not a structured hierarchy)
- Comments and Discussions
- Document Management
- Integration with MS Office
No Matter how structured and organised your content is and how good your search is in SharePoint, a Wiki still makes the information much more discoverable as it’s not hidden away in documents, it’s just a few clicks away at all times.
But Structured Publishing pages on SharePoint could just about do the same thing.
Confluence and SharePoint Comparisons
Confluence
For
- Has many many features for corporate Wiki useage
- Many installation options (eg Database could be MySQL, Oracle or SQL Server)
- Is the most extensible Wiki platform through the Macro’s and Add-ins
- Atlassian have won multiple awards
- Confluence is now the defacto standard for corporate wiki’s
- It can integrate with SharePoint
- Has excellent Word and Excel editing capabilities
Against
- Built on Java – many MSFT only businesses may be scared off by that
- Smaller company – people may think, will they be around in a few years time
- Has to be integrated with Active Directory to be useful for business – this can be difficult
- Output to PDF limited and very hard to customise
- Not there just yet with Office 2007 support (although it is coming)
Other
- Does not use CamelCase linking notation (like other wiki’s), uses Free Linking (Square Brackets) instead – seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki#Linking_and_creating_pages
- Atlassian’s own Comparison Page but it is very old (2005) http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DISC/Comparison+Matrix
SharePoint
For
- Is already part of SharePoint – nothing extra to maintain or install
- Features of SharePoint that can be used with the Wiki (from http://woodywindy.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!773832677F575173!653.entry
- Setting Alerts to be notified of changes *
- Setting the permissions of the library, or even individual pages *
- Adding metadata fields – for example, subject tags, or even links to supporting documents
- RSS feeds *
- Requiring approval and document check-out for changes
- Creating different views of the information
- Friendly URL’s *
- Add Web Parts to your Wiki Page
The items above with a * are available in Confluence also
Against
- It’s not really a Wiki
- Only uses SharePoint’s basic editor
- Uploading images is a really big pain
- A list of things that SharePoint can’t do from http://www.henricodolfing.com/2009/05/sharepoint-as-enterprise-wiki.html
- There is no support for standard Wiki markup language.
- The content editing capabilities of the default SharePoint Web Editor are limited.
- There is no taxonomy solution, i.e. content tagging and hierarchical categories.
- There is no content rating
- There is no support for subscription RSS feeds.
- No support for comments on Wiki pages. You can add discussion boards, but those are something different than what you would expect from a Wiki.
- The capability for generating reports on the Wiki activity are rather limited.
- There are no Wiki content templates (but this you could easily solve by creating a few page templates yourself).
- There is no easy way to attach files to Wiki pages. You have to do this by adding the content to a document library, and then include the link in your Wiki page.
- There is no support for things like Wanted pages, Orphaned pages, Most/Least Popular Pages, and Recent Visitors.
Other
Here are some links to articles about the SharePoint Wiki feature
- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc162514.aspx
- http://www.wikisym.org/ws2008/index.php/How_good_is_MS_Sharepoint_as_a_wiki%3F
- A Demo http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointtechnology/HA102348881033.aspx
- http://woodywindy.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!773832677F575173!653.entry
- http://blog.seibert-media.net/2009/02/arbeitstechniken/ms-sharepoint-as-a-wiki-few-functions-less-compatibility/
- http://blogs.atlassian.com/news/2009/03/comparing_sharepoint_to_confluence_wiki.html
- http://www.henricodolfing.com/2009/05/sharepoint-as-enterprise-wiki.htm
- http://www.wssdemo.com/Wiki/default.aspx
To Wysiwyg or not to Wysiwyg
There are a lot of for’s and against for wysiwyg editing of wiki’s. See http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WysiwygWikiUsefulArguments
- Wiki syntax is much simpler than HTML - like a simple conversion layer between rich text and html
- One of the main advantages of a wiki is its lightweight structure Confluence has a few basic formats, if you can’t say what you need to say with a few heading styles and bold and italic, it’s probably too complex.
- Wiki syntax is simple, straightforward and intuitive - once you get used to working with it, it is much quicker to create documents
- Keyboard shortcuts make editing quicker - http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Keyboard+Shortcuts
However
- Large Tables are a real pain - http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Working+with+Tables
A Quote from http://woodywindy.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!773832677F575173!653.entry
One of the complaints often leveled against SharePoint’s wiki is its lack of support for “wiki markup” beyond intra-site page links. While this is true as far as it goes, it doesn’t consider what that markup is designed to do – compensate for the plain-text editing features of most wiki systems. For example, to make italic text in many wiki systems, you enclose the text in ”double apostrophes”. Yet while there are some conventions, there is no true “wiki markup” standard.
SharePoint Demos
(the demos for Confluence were done in real time during the talk).
Screen Cast Demo 1 http://screencast.com/t/oau54Mt3ONs
- Navigation
- Breadcrumbs
- Wiki Pages
- Orphaned Pages
Screen Cast Demo 2 http://screencast.com/t/MtM5ZPUC
- Create Link to new Page
- Insert a Table
- Format some fonts – yes you can easily make it very ugly
- Go to history
- Restore an old version
Screen Cast Demo 3 http://screencast.com/t/hMljFNIe0
- Insert a picture into a SharePoint Wiki – showing ow difficult it is to just add a simple picture into a SharePoint wiki.
Extending the Wiki
Confluence
- Plug ins http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/plugins/
- Intranet / Extranet
- Full Website see http://www.customware.net
- Wiki Wednesday http://www.customware.net/repository/display/WikiWednesday/Wiki+Wednesday
- See Confluence Pricing http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/pricing.jsp
SharePoint
- CKS:EWE http://cks.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Enhanced%20Wiki%20Edition
- Free
- Not Supported
- in Beta 2 now
- Beta 3 planned
- Development seems to have slowed
- SharePoint Wiki Plus http://www.kwizcom.com/ProductPage.asp?ProductID=524&ProductSubNodeID=525
- > $2.5k per server http://www.kwizcom.com/ContentPage.asp?PageId=663
The Bottom Line
My thoughts
- Use the Wiki Feature on SharePoint but maybe don’t call it a Wiki, or you might put people off Wiki’s for ever.
- The SharePoint Dev Wiki is on Confluence http://www.sharepointdevwiki.com
- SharePoint is great for structured, corporate information that are policies and procedures that do not need to be edited regularly. If you are a SharePoint house, then use the Publishing Pages and document libraries for the structured information and allow Wiki’s in smaller team sites where a few people are editing them and they are small and single subject based.
- Comparing Confluence Enterprise Wiki to SharePoint Wiki is really not fair. SharePoint is not an Enterprise Wiki, and has never tried to be.
- However, comparing a corporate Intranet built on SharePoint vs one built on Confluence may be a better comparison, but that is a topic for another session.
- In a future session we will look into the Confluence SharePoint Connector to see if it really does enable a company to have the best of both worlds.
Thoughts from others
From WikiSym 2008
- The wiki is the place for fast collaborations.
- Sharepoint is the place to go for final documents (authoritative).
From http://www.henricodolfing.com/2009/05/sharepoint-as-enterprise-wiki.html
By definition, SharePoint is something completely different than an enterprise Wiki. If all you want is a Wiki, you don’t have to spend your time on implementing SharePoint. There are better solutions out there. But a Wiki is very rarely the only thing that a company wants, and if SharePoint does the most things you as a company wants, then it is very easy to add some 3rd party Wiki functionality and that way satisfying your need for an enterprise Wiki as well.
From http://blogs.atlassian.com/news/2009/03/comparing_sharepoint_to_confluence_wiki.html
Document-centric collaboration systems like SharePoint certainly have a place in the universe. Atlassian has always maintained that SharePoint is an excellent tool for storing and managing online Office documents. That’s why we partnered with Microsoft to build the SharePoint Connector. Martin’s post forces us to think about the differences between the wiki way of collaborating and the SharePoint way of collaborating. Those differences run deeper than a few superficial features like browser support and wiki markup. At it’s core, Sharepoint strives to be something different than an enterprise wiki.
Whilst watching the fantastic Google Wave Video, here is a few thoughts I jotted down about things that Google Wave is going to need soon enough-ish to make it really really rock (not that it doesn’t really rock right now!).
- multiple google instances – at the moment you can’t log into multiple gmail accounts in the one browser – Wave seems like it will work really well if you have ALL your accounts in one place.
- multiple emails for one person – similar to above – how to deal with your multiple identities, especially since Wave will be used more in the workplace now too… I like the new service called MyHandle.com which allows all your emails to come to the same email address yourname@myhandle.com and you then divert them to the correct email account.
- authority – is this person who they say they are – a continual issue for all social networks, and since this will be a business app too, it is very important
- spam – hopefully this will utilise the great gmail spam filters so hopefully it won’t be a problme
- anonymity – will you be able to blip anonymously?
- draft mode – they mentioned this quickly – the ability to control when the blip is visible.
- stop forwarding of waves – like the digital rights management built into outlook – control who can forward waves
- groups – I’m sure it would, similar to gmail groups – a quick way to send Waves to everyone in the company.
- google contacts needs to be sorted – Gmail contacts is really not ready for prime time yet – especially importing contacts.
- will it replace email? – Will I forgoe my gmail and use Wave exclusively? this is yet to be seen.
- notifications of content updates and ignoring all future notifications – Confluence has this feature, sometimes you just don’t want to know anything else about that topic.
- event and calendaring – this was sadly lacking from the demo – I’m sure it will be included but.
- not allow playback or remove bits from playback – some things may not want to be played back.
- real time markup of video – how cool would that be?
- making waves public – probably quite possible as calendar items are public – but maybe restrictions on who in the Wave can make it public
- Spell check for other than US – but hopefully, since it is built in Aus, they have thought of this.
- People who can keep one topic to one Wave – now since most people can’t keep one email to one topic, this one is going to be hard. But this is where branching off a Wave will be useful.
Do you have any other must haves for Wave?
I watched the google wave video again tonight for the second time. Wow I love this product, platform and protocol!
Since the YouTube video won’t allow annotations, I wanted to pick out the best bits so I could easily find them again, so I decided to create my own contents with time markers… so here is the contents and the approximate time markers, and some of my thoughts… I will do another blog post or two about things I love about Wave soon.
Wave video contents:
08:00 basic wave editing with spellchecker and offline message delivery
09:38 inline reply
10:34 synchronous real time communication
11:50 private messages and adding people
13:20 playback the wave
14:46 private reply restrict access to a subset of the wave
15:22 adding photos to the wave and instant viewing of thumnails – never again issues with uploading photos (requires google gears)
18:36 start of api’s
19:05 bloggy bot adding wave content to the blog
20:45 blog comments
23:17 orkut integration so what? replace orkut with facebook then it’s cool
23:26 wave on mobile devices
26:48 editing a wave including editing other peoples waves “discussion and content creation in one tool” including markup of edits “we never said lets start a document”
31:40 a document view and playback include versioning and submit to the server and merge changes and source control integation – full document production – look out SharePoint!
35:33 synchronous editing with labels to see who is typing where – COOL!
37:20 right to left editing in the same wave as left to right editing and international text
40:19 organising waves – folders and saved searches and tags shared by all participants in the wave
40:55 Wiki Waves – COOL! – watch out confluence (although it will be a while before it matches confluence enterprise features)
41:49 Search – cool! – “the wave dance”
43:21 start of extensions
43:58 spelling – spelly – COOL! natural language recognition of words, automatic correction “icland is an icland”
43:39 Links – linky
47:08 Searchy google search inside wave – bye bye evernote!
48:00 You Tube – demo failed
48:50 open social apps inside wave
49:25 movie times
50:44 yes no maybe gadget
51:35 sudoku and chess including playback of gadgets – quite cool
52:40 google maps integration – real time zooming of google maps in both waves – COOL
52:29 real time markup of google maps – imagine the possibilities for real time markup of pdf documents or video or pictures
54:04 the YouTube example working
55:02 start of server side robots
55:19 new poll – Polly the Polster – forms inside a wave – fill them out collaboratively – options for answers, synchronous updates of graphs
57:25 installing a wave
58:05 Twitter – a Twave! including Stephanie showing her twitter password! (tab between fields not implemented yet). Proxy contacts on a different system. Includes twitter search – they were real time searching on google wave during the presentation. Use twitter searches like twitter alerts (probably similar to google alerts)
1:01:40 Buggy – real time integration between wave and the code.google.com issue tracker – COOL – Imagine real time integration with Jira or TFS
1:05:20 start of protocols
1:05:50 federation – any organisation can build thier own wave system. Open port for federation. Linking to other accounts on other wave servers.
1:08:13 Initech’s wave server – command line based – cool!
1:09:20 private replies across servers. Copies of the wave on both Initech’s and Google’s servers. Replies within the same server never leaves that server.
1:10:20 technical explanation of federation and open sourcing of the protocol
1:11:56 synchronous language translation Rosy the bot – the COOLEST!
1:14:05 applause and summary
1:17:36 URL’s for product, platform and protocol
I am a regular attendee at a number of Microsoft User groups and it is very hard to keep track of them, so I wanted to add them all to my calendar (google calendar). So I decided to create a Shared Calendar with all the user groups in there that anyone can update and maintain.
To keep with the Microsoft theme, I created the calendar in Microsoft Live Calendar (it works quite good now, almost as good as Google Calendar), and then opened the calendar as a .ics calendar within my Google Calendar.
So here is the link to the Shared Calendar http://cid-01b2dfebb16c3be5.calendar.live.com/calendar/Windows+User+Groups+in+Aus/index.html
I’ve created it so any user group in Aus can add to it, but I’ve only added the Sydney ones for now.
Each calendar item is recurring monthly event and has the URL to the user group and the twitter name of the user group in the description, and the name of the organiser. Some meetings are not recurring exactly on the month, but you can check the URL for specific details of specific meetings. I don’t mind if other non MS user groups want to add stuff to this calendar either.
This calendar is meant to be quite a static calendar for the recurring events – basically just a quick overview of what’s on which night, with a link to the specific website for that user group.
For other general tech events there is the Australian Tech Events calendar here http://www.startup-australia.org/events. If you are organising a specific Tech event, the details should be on this Tech Events calendar.
If you want to be added as a contributor / editor to this calendar please just contact me and I will add you to the calendar.
Now that I have some time on my hands I need to take advantage of some of the free online training that is available for Microsoft Products.
Next week, there is some great online training for Microsoft CRM. See the details on Catherine Eibner’s blog here. There is also some excellent free face to face Microsoft CRM training in early May in Sydney. See the details on Chris Auld’s blog here.
Then there is the fantastic series of free online courses from Microsoft called Ramp Up. The courses include the following topics:
- SharePoint for Developers – Part 1
- SharePoint for Developers – Part 2
- Visual Studio 2008
- For the VS 2002/2003 Developer: Learn VS 2005
- For the VB 6.0 Developer: Learn VB 2005
- For the Java Developer: Learn .NET
- Developer Basics
There is also a lot of Microsoft Software that you can try for free – details are here. This is from a great post by David Lean about lots of free stuff you can get from Microsoft.
For SharePoint specifically, SharePoint Designer 2007 is now available as a free download, plus there are some training video’s available also here. And if you want to try out SharePoint there is a pre-configured SharePoint VHD available for download here.
I’m sure this is not a comprehensive list, but it’s the ones that I’m going to start with now.
So, as I tend to keep this blog as a bit of a diary of major events in my life, amongst the other occasional rants. This post is about my work situation.
So I had a great new job for the past two months as a SharePoint consultant at CustomWare (www.customware.net). I love CustomWare as a company and I loved working with SharePoint and I learned so much. Yesterday I lost that job… I was an easy target for cost cutting, being an expensive resource and still being on probation (so no payout).
So back to the job hunt… this time made so much more difficult as the media is talking about the ‘R’ word now (and we know it’s inevitable). But I have been here before and I’m sure I will be here again at some time in my life, so I know what I have to do – Network, Network, Network.
I just want to put a shout out to Michael Specht’s great new Job Hunting networking site that just recently went live – www.jobseekr.com.au. I am sure I will be getting a lot of benefit from this site over the coming weeks.
So now time to update my LinkedIn and my Web Resume…
This is a great idea from Suw Charman-Anderson to blog about women in IT that inspire us on Ada Lovelace Day. See http://findingada.com/ and http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay for more information.
So I’m going to write about three women, working in the area of IT / Social Media who inspire me big time. The three are grouped together because I actually met all three of them within 2 months back in October / November 2007 and in that year and a bit they have enriched my life so significantly.
Catherine Eibner – A wonderful inspiration to me, Catherine has the bright, bubbly personality of a natural evangelist but is also very technical and loves to write code occasionally. She has also taught me lots of technical stuff and is a very patient teacher. Catherine’s SSIS blog has actually been a great resource for tips and tricks for me in my work recently.
Kate Carruthers – Kate just knows everyone and everything – she is the most connected person I know, and that is handy sometimes 
. Kate is the master at connecting people with other people and people with the right systems and technologies that they need to know about in today’s business world.
Kate has actually written a great blog post about Ada Lovelace today.
Laurel Papworth – Laurel is all about the strategy – what strategies businesses need to adopt to make it in this new world of Social Media. Laurel is also the one I call upon when I need a personal Social Media strategy, and she is always willing to help.
It’s also Laurel’s Birthday today, so Happy Birthday Pixie!
It is interesting that these three wonderful women were also mentioned in another blog post (and comments) a while back when Catherine was working in her own business. All three of them were working in thier own successful businesses – something that I admire so much because I know how hard it is, and how it is something that I know that I can’t do.
I am so very proud to be friends with these fantastic women.
This part “Christmas Message”, part Summary of the year and part thank you to all the fantastic wonderful people I have met and hung out with this year.
But, wow, what an up and down year this has been… I feel in some ways that this Christmas is a deja vu of last Christmas (ie being unemployed), but there has been so much that has happened this year that things are quite different this Christmas. So here’s a bit of a rundown of the year.
Job(s)
Well, I’ve had 2 jobs this year – a Consultant at Hands-on Systems, which I loved, but left after 3 months as I was headhunted by ProjectCentre for my perfect job, combining my IT and Construction Skills. That job lasted just over 3 months, and I loved it, and thought I was doing a great job and getting the product ready for release and then I was “retrenched” – I won’t go on about it, but I’m still very angry and upset about that one.
So back to the horrible world of job hunting and recruiters – I can’t say how much I hate job hunting! I have such specialised skills that recruiters won’t even look at my resume because it just does not “tick all the boxes”. I have found some great recruiters that really do their job well, but some of them are so bad I just have to hang up. The problem is that my Ideal job that is combining IT and Construction just does not exist as construction companies don’t think that they need to spend money on IT. However, if I can get in there and start working, they see how valuable my contribution is. For me the biggest hurdle is getting to the interview stage. I tend to do much better once I’m in front of a potential employer.
With the impact of the GFC, I’m concentrating my job hunting efforts in IT rather than Construction as I think that IT may weather the financial storm better, but I won’t rule out construction – I won’t rule out any job doing anything as long as it pays the mortgage.
I have been doing some great work on contract for the few months I’ve been out of work, and I’ve enjoyed doing it, but I can not earn enough to live… right now I’m just earning enough to keep a few bills paid and living very frugally. Also, I hate contracting. I hate not knowing where the next few hours work is coming from. I hate working alone (although I do have a small team for my current work which is good). So I do really need to find a full time job that pays well, so I can feel settled and secure once again.
In January I have some more contracting opportunities and I will be back to the job hunting again, and will try some other tactics rather than dealing with recruiters too much. So here’s hoping that 2009 will be the year I get a good job where I earn enough, I am valued as an employee and I love going to work. And I wish that for everyone else too!
Wellbeing
Another up and down year this year… I’ve had a persistent nagging bronchial infection for a lot of the year which has not been great and it curtailed playing Underwater Hockey for much of the year. Luckily there was a good stint of a few months mid year where I felt great and well, and that coincided with my Trip… so that worked well.
I’ve still been doing Feldenkrais all year, have been doing it now for at least 15 years and still get so much out of it. It’s rare for me to miss a Saturday class and I love going and love catching up with all the people in the class for coffee after.
I’ve also been doing my Nordic walking most weeks. We now have only a very small group of regular walkers and it’s difficult to keep the group running but I enjoy it so much I will keep it going.
But overall, this year has been the worst health I’ve had for many years and I really hope 2009 will be much much better.
Travel
Well this is the year that I finally did it… finally got to London, Europe and Dubai. I now feel like a real member of the human race having at least seen London and Paris, and Dubai was amazing.
Despite the GFC and the dollar crashing a few weeks before I left, I had a great time and loved the whole trip. I won’t go into a lot of detail here as I’ve written a few blog posts about it already and you can a selection of my photos on Flickr.
The highlights of my trip were Bilbao, the Be2Camp in London, Wales with Emily, Paris and Dubai.
I would love to travel again now… so hopefully an opportunity will arise some time in 2009!
Social
This is the aspect of my life that has been the best year ever! I have met such wonderful new friends this year and have been to so many great events that it has just been so great. This is mainly due to Twitter and the Sydney Tech Community which is thriving. Some of the excellent events this year have been
- New Years Eve (thanks @ceibner)
- Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (thanks to @trib for the ticket)
- Earth Hour Girls night out
- Regular STUB events (thanks @happener, @funkycoda and @alegrya for organising), including many Picnics too
- Girl Geek Dinners (@damana you rock!)
- Various catch up’s with @trib and @mspecht when they have been in Sydney
- Interesting South No. 2
- CodeCamp Oz (we missed @ceibner but I had a great time with the boys)
- Demos Happen Here Comp (thanks to @rog24 and @coatsy)
- PubCamp (thanks to @jedwhite and @mediamum)
- TechEd Week, Women in Technology event (even though I did not attend TechEd)
- Web 2.o University, Web Directions Week and AussieTUB (even though I did not attend Web Directions itself)
- GirlTUB x 2 (excellent evenings out with the twitter girls)
- Sydney Open Coffee (thanks @kimheras for an excellent idea)
- SBTUG (Sydney Business and Technnology User Group, thanks to @craigbailey & @aussienick)
- BarCamp x 2 (one which I helped organised and the other thanks to the org team esp @funkycoda)
- NSW KM Forum (thanks to @cheiftech for including me on the panel at the last minute)
- WebBlast (thanks @russmaxdesign and @happener)
- Very regular catch up’s with twitter peeps – Nano STUB’s Micro STUB’s, Mini STUB’s
I’m sure there are others that I have not mentioned, but wow, that is some list!
And the excellent non-tech events
- Family Wedding in Tumut in September
- Various trips up to the Gold Coast / Brisbane
And a very special mention to the people and events during my trip
- GGD in London
- Be2camp in London (thanks to @eepaul, @pbroviak and @martinbrown)
- Green Drinks in London (excellent evening)
- Dinners out with people in Barcelona during World Architecture Festival
- Wonderful Family and Friends catch-ups
Next year is shaping up for another big one with
- New Years Eve again (thanks to @ceibner again)
- CupCake Camp in Feb
- More STUB’s
- Another BarCamp or 2
- The remotest possibility of a Be2Camp in Sydney some time
- Definitely more GirlTUB’s and GGD’s
- We definitely need another Wild Wicked Wanton Women of the Web 2.0 event (looking at you @silkcharm)
- I really hope to get to more conferences in 2009
- I need to start to get to Social Coffee on Friday mornings (thanks to @servantofchaos that organises this)
- ooh and my Family trip in May to celebrate my Mum and Dad’s 50th Wedding Aniversary, and a family Wedding in March
And I just have to make special mention to the biggest group of wonderful people on twitter this year that I have had the pleasure to hang with
The girls: @ceibner, @kcarruthers, @silkcharm, @pixel8ted, @alegrya, @misswired, @mediamum, @damana, @headwellred, @christydena, @bronwen, @allidc, @zuzu, @aussieAna, @dekrazee1
The the guys: @trib, @funkycoda, @dizzystuff, @lstoll, @aussienick, @cadbloke, @angusscown, @nickhac, @stillgherian @apostrophepong, @snarkyplatypus, @mpesce, @nathanaelb, @rog42, @coatsy, @ryancross, @fush, @flungabunga, @seancarmody, @marclehmann, @sethyates, @jedwhite, @maniacd, @jamesbreeze, @mspecht, @aDB, @warlach, @coliwilso, @liako, @eskimo_sparky, @gregdwyer
The UK Peeps: @martinbrown, @eepaul, @melstarrs, @jodiecarnegie, @amcewen (and of course @pbroviak virtually)
And all the Perth / Melb / Canberra peeps that were around for AussieTUB and I’ve probably left many people off the list, but thanks to you all!
Wow, I really hope 2009 is even more social, I meet even more people and the Sydney Tech community has many many more great events!
I recently visited the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. I went to Bilbao only to see the Guggenheim and it ended up that the Guggenheim was not the highlight of Bilbao. Bilbao itself was the highlight and I would highly recommend anyone to go to Bilbao. The Guggenheim is spectacular to look at (see some of my photo’s of the exterior of the building, I took quite a few others also), but it is spectacular as a sculpture, not as a building. In my opinion, the Guggenheim fails as a building.
The Guggenheim
Whilst wandering around inside the Guggenheim, I had the overwhelming urge to write some of these feelings down about how this building affected me, and how disillusioned I was with Architecture as a whole after being inside this building. So this post is not specifically about the Guggenheim but about my feelings about Architecture in general.
However, some of the things I spotted at the Guggenheim were:
- Construction markings still on the glass after 10 years
- Glass that has never been cleaned and cracked glass
- Gaffa tape as a waterproofing feature plugging the joins between the glass and steel
- Construction joints that are ugly and not finished well
- Exposed wiring or conduits from new retrofitted camera’s, lighting etc
- Dust, grime, cobwebs, weathering of surfaces
- Patchy maintenance – eg can see where the walls have been painted over
That is a very short list of all the things that I spotted. The Guggenheim does not allow photos to be taken inside, which is a complete joke, and I was not interested in any of the artwork in there, just the building itself, so I could not take any pictures of the things I spotted, so I just had to write down how seeing all this affected me.
Architecture
Is it the Architect’s job to design a building that is spectacular to look at and gives the Architect great kudos, or is it the Architect’s job to design a building that functions well as a building throughout the full life of the building? And why can’t both of those objectives be achieved? I’m talking about all Architecture, from a simple office fitout (which I’ve had a lot of experience with), to a residential home, to the current architectural masterpieces such as the Burj Dubai or the BMW-Welt Centre, or any of the buildings in this year’s World Architecture Festival.
Things that are often not thought through enough when designing and constructing buildings are:
- Structure
- How to keep the building clean and well maintained
- Structure, joints, construction details – how will things look like when they are put together
- How the building will age and weather
- Dust, grime, cobwebs etc – where will it form and how to clean it
- Safety and Access – where are the anchor points for safety and access (eg Roof harnesses), so they do not just look like an afterthought
- Waterproofing – where are the joints or materials likely to fail, and can they be repaired or replaced (this is a tough one, I know)
- Inside
- Storage – there is never enough – think of what you want and double it
- Surfaces – painted gyprock walls in most commerical applications does not work – I know it’s cheap over the life of the building is it really going to be cost effective, and do we have any real alternatives?
- Furniture and equipment – what furniture and equipment is required, will it fit, can you get it into the building, will it allow for future changes
- Pictures and Signage – how are pictures, signage, whiteboards etc going to be attached to the walls, can they be changed later
- Technology
- Future proofing – eg installing new wiring for the latest technology
- Location and quantity of power outlets and other services
- Fire Services – so they don’t just looked like they are tacked on as an afterthought
- Usage
- Movement and crowd control – how are people going to be moving through the building, where are the bottlenecks, what damage will they do to surfaces
- Sun – how will the people in the building be affected by the sun – does there need to be more or controlled shading
- Ventilation and location of AC outlets – either it’s too hot or too cold – how can we get the balance right
- Spare Parts – will parts be available to replace, and will they be the same as the existing, or is this part something unique that has been created for this building
And this list does not address some of the big issues such as sustainability of both the construction and the building, and the lifecycle of the building – ie what happens to the building at the end of it’s life.
So who’s responsibility is it to think of all these things, is it the Architect’s job to think all this through? Is it the Owner’s responsibilty to insist upon these things, and if they don’t well then let’s not bring them up? Is it the Builder’s job to work out all the little details? is it the building manager’s responsibility through the life of the building just to manage how the building works? If a building can’t be cleaned properly is that the Architect’s fault for not designing it to be cleaned, or the building operator’s fault for not figuring out a way to get it cleaned?
Does the Architect’s job finish after the building is designed? Does the Builder’s job finish after Handover? Or should the Architect and Builder be on hand to manage the transition of the building through it’s first few years of life and teething problems? Who’s job is it to teach the building occupiers how to live in the building (eg learn to put a jumper on if you are cold, rather than turning the themostat up).
I know this does not work in practice, due to the economics of the situtation. The Architect has probably burned all his fee up front on the design, and can’t afford to keep a close enough eye on it during construciton. For the Builder, time is money so the quicker he’s off site, the more profit he makes, and the Building owner wants to keep costs down and can’t afford to fix problems created by either the design or construction. And commercial considerations always mean that the building needs to be opened, operating and making money before it is fully complete, but it is easy then just to forget about the finer details of completion.
So there is no quick fix to this issue, but is there some way we can improve things? How can we get all parties working together to a common purpose? Do we have to have such grand “statement” architecture or should we put more of the cost of the building into making it sustainable through the life of the building? I have no answers, just questions.
Sidebar – Defects
On the subject of handover, buildings are handed over to the owner at Pracitcal Competion, which means that the building is fit for purpose, barring a few minor defects. These days most Builders and Owners will insist upon Defect Free Construction, which is the builing is handed over complete, finished and ready to move in, with no defects. But some people’s ideas of Defect Free construction are vastly different than mine.
The old concept of the Architect specifying a quality finish and having the Architect or superintendant to approve that finish in situ before work can continue has gone. If the concrete surface is stained, or marked or has nails sticking out of it, or has construction markings on it, then it could be completely satisfactory, but in my “old school” opinion it is defective and must be cleaned and repaired before completion.
I was in a newly completed train station the other day and was quite taken aback by the state that it was in when it was seemingly “complete” with no construction signs or construction personnel anywhere to be seen. Yes it was functioning but it was no where near complete.
Again, I don’t have any answers about this, just a general feeling of dissolusionment about the direction the Construction Industry is taking in not taking pride in getting things finished properly. I don’t know, maybe I am being too critical. Maybe it’s just me that sees these things, and since no one else sees them or seems to care, it’s ok? Just puting it out there.
+61 408 560 840
jm@jodiem.com.au
jminers
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