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• Changing Focus on my Blog

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I try to limit these types of blog posts – the ones where I communicate some change as if I have a loyal subscriber base that will be somehow affected. Still, I think its of worth if for nothing else than to document for myself an acknowledgement that my career is evolving. For the last who knows how long, I’ve had this as my banner: It’s funny how technology focuses change over time. 3.5 – 4 years ago I was wanting to immerse myself in BizTalk. Then I shifted, focussing on Silverlight. I even started a short-lived Silverlight user group here in Winnipeg that had, IMO, one of the *best* UG logos ever (do a Google search for the old school Winnipeg Jets logo if you don’t catch the reference)… And even how I identified myself – as a Developer – isn’t really accurate anymore as I’ve shifted more into an architect/analyst role at Online Business Systems as well as getting much more involved in business development. So I’m switching the focus of this blog a bit. Nothing too great, but you’ll find my posts aren’t necessarily tied to a technology or platform. Instead I’ll be focussing on current passions and interests. Solution Architecture Before a line of code is written, a solution is envisioned. The process of performing solution analysis and architecture is an intriguing process that encompasses negotiation and interpersonal skills as much as technical knowledge. Business & Entrepreneurship Creating things, building things, and working with others – business is fascinating and exciting! Entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship, are growing trends that I’ve been exploring over the last few years through my conference (www.prairiedevcon.com) and within Online. Microsoft At Online one of my roles is “Microsoft Practice Lead” and my entire career has been built around the Microsoft stack of technologies. That focus won’t change here on my blog, and there’s tonnes of exciting new products and technologies coming out of Redmond. Adoption This is a very personal subject that’s extremely close to my heart. I’m not talking about technology adoption, I’m talking about human adoption. Almost three years ago we adopted our first daughter, Sadie, and two years ago we adopted our second daughter, Skylar; an amazing new chapter in my life as I became a “parent”. Adoption is very much misunderstood, and many people have questions about it. Hopefully I can shed some light into our experiences and provide some guidance for those that are looking into it. So come along with me as I start chronicling the next phase of my career and life.

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• The Kids Are Alright. With Facebook and SMS. But Not Twitter

  - by ultan o'broin

  I delivered a lecture to business and technology freshmen (late teens, I reckon) in Trinity College Dublin recently. I spoke about user experience in enterprise applications, trends that UX pros need to be aware of such as social media, community support, mobile and tablet platforms and a bunch of nuances around those areas (data and device security, privacy, reputation, branding, and so on). It was all fairly high level stuff given the audience, and I included lots of colorful screenshots. Irish-related examples helped to get the message across. During the lecture I did a quick poll. “How many students here use Twitter?” Answer: None. “How many use Facebook?” All (pretty much). So what do these guys like to use instead of Twitter? Easy - text messaging (or SMS if you like). They all had phones. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised about Twitter, but it’s always great to have research validated by some guerilla UX research on the street. There’s already quite a bit of research about teen uptake (or lack) of Twitter, telling us young adults don’t tweet. Twitter is seen as something for er, older people. Affordable devices and data plans that allow students to text really quickly are also popular (BlackBerry, for example). Younger people just luuurve to text each other. A lot.  Facebook versus Twitter for younger folks? Well, we know the story. No contest. I would love to engage more with students like these. I’ll plan for it. It will also be interesting to see if Twitter becomes more important to them over time. There were a few other interesting observations about the lack of uptake of Foursquare, Gowalla and mobile apps like that. I  don’t think there’s a huge uptake in these kind of apps in Ireland anyway, but maybe students have different priorities anyway?   I’ll return to that another day. Technorati Tags: Gowalla,FourSquare,Twitter,UX,user experience,user assistance,Trinity College Dublin

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• What will be important in Training in 2011?

  - by anders.northeved

    Now that we have started a new year I would like to give you a list of topics I think we will be discussing in training and learning in 2011. Some of the areas we have discussed earlier will still be just as important in 2011: Time-to-knowledge Still one of the most important issues for the training department. Internal content production Related to time-to-knowledge. How do we convert internal knowledge to a format that can be used for teaching others? LMS integration How do we get our existing LMS fully integrated with our other ERP modules like HCM, Order Management, Finance, Payroll etc. Some areas have been discussed before, but we’ll focus more on these in 2011: Combining internal and external training A majority of training departments use a combination of external and internal training. Having the right mix is vital for the quality and efficiency for most training organizations. Certification More rules and regulations means managing all employee certifications is more important than ever. Evolving trends in 2011: Social Learning We have been talking about this for a long time, but 2011 will be the year where we will start using it for real (OK, I also said so last year – but this year I’m right…). Real-life use of SCORM 2004 Again a topic we have talked about for a long time, but we are now actually starting to use it to give learners a better e-learning experience. How do we engage and delight the learner? e-learning makes economical sense, it can be easy to understand, it is convenient – but how do we make it more engaging and delight our learners? How to include more types of training in LMS One of the main focus area of 2011 will be how to manage and measure mobile learning , on-the-job-training and other forms of training in the LMS. Mobile Learning With the ever growing use of smart phones mobile learning will be THE hot topic of 2011 in the training world. New topics we will begin discussing in 2011: What is beyond web 2.0 and social learning? - could it be content verification and personal accreditation? Why gaming will not be the silver bullet for all types of e-learning Many people believe gaming can be used for any kind of training, but the creation is too expensive and time consuming for most applications. Do you agree with these predictions? What are your own predictions? Let me see your comments! (photo: © Marti, photoxpress.com)

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• Manage Your Favorite Social Accounts in Chrome and Iron with Seesmic

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you looking for a way to manage your Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, and Foursquare accounts all in one place? Using the Seesmic Web App for Chrome and Iron you can access your favorite accounts and manage them in a single, simple-to-use interface. A feature that we loved from the start was the ability to access Twitter without creating a special Seesmic account. And in these days of multiple accounts who needs another one to complicate things up? All that you need to do is to sign in with your user name/e-mail along with your password. You do have to authorize access for Seesmic to connect with your account but the whole process (login & authorization) is handled in a single window instance. Now on to a quick look at some of the UI features… The sidebar allows you to add additional columns to the main interface, set your favorite location for Trends, and tie in additional social services as desired. You can also access additional options and controls in the upper right corner. When you are ready to start tweeting click in the blank at the top and enter your text, etc. in the convenient drop-down window that appears. Another nice perk is the ability to switch to a black and grey theme if the white is too bright for your needs. The Seesmic web app provides a simple-to-use, highly efficient way to manage your Twitter account and other favorite social services in a single tab interface. Seesmic [Chrome Web Store] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) Manage Your Favorite Social Accounts in Chrome and Iron with Seesmic E.T. II – Extinction [Fake Movie Sequel Video] Remastered King’s Quest Games Offer Classic Gaming on Modern Machines Compare Your Internet Cost and Speed to Global Averages [Infographic] Orbital Battle for Terra Wallpaper WizMouse Enables Mouse Over Scrolling on Any Window

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• MDM Poised for Growth

  - by david.butler(at)oracle.com

  David Nixon, an Oracle colleague of mine, was doing some research on MDM the other day. He came up with some well founded insights that I thought I’d share with you. Gartner recently published a note asking “Should Organizations Using ERP 'Do' Master Data Management?”  It may seem a bit strange but that’s a question Gartner has been asked by a number of companies as organizations are beginning to understand the importance of data governance and data stewardship.  That’s because ERP Suites typically “focus on integrating their own applications within suites, but have little interest in making their suites interoperate with the applications or suites of other vendors.”  Therefore, Gartner is advising customers that “have deployed or plan to support multiple packaged application suites (even from the same vendor) that have different semantic data and/or process models” to add an MDM solution. And it appears that customers are taking note.  In a more recent note entitled “Search Analytics Trends: Master Data Management”, Gartner noted that MDM searches on gartner.com in November 2010 “were 300% higher than [in] May 2009, indicating the increased interest an importance that businesses are placing on MDM.”  Why the increased interest?  Moving towards a single version of the truth is a familiar theme, but customers are talking more about the underlying business value that this enables.  For example, businesses are talking about the need to fix master data before they can successfully move forward on SOA initiatives.  And the growing demands for compliance continue to be a major driver.  In short, companies are talking more about specific and tangible business value, and they are looking for help creating business cases for an MDM initiative. Why This Matters Gartner’s notes make three things clear.  First, MDM is poised for growth as organizations gain a greater understanding for it and the need they have.  Many are still sorting it out, but the demand is growing and is sure to rise.  Second, any organization with a heterogeneous computing environment should invest in MDM.  Even solutions from the same vendor may have different data models and could benefit from MDM.  But the key to growth, or which vendors will benefit the most from it, is the third and perhaps most critical point: companies need help with the business case for MDM. Oracle can help your organization build a compelling business case for MDM. We have seen our 1100+ MDM customers gain competitive advantages in a wide variety of implementations. Give us a ring.

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• Go Big or Go Special

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  Watching Shark Tank tonight and the first presentation was by Mango Mango Preserves and it highlighted an interesting contrast in business trends today and how to capitalize on opportunities.  <Spoiler Alert> Even though every one of the sharks was raving about the product samples they tried, with two of them going for second and third servings, none of them made a deal to invest in the company.</Spoiler>  In fact, one of the sharks, Kevin O’Leary, kept ripping into the owners with statements to the effect that he thinks they are headed over a financial cliff because he felt their costs were way out of line and would be their downfall if they didn’t take action to radically cut costs. He said that he had previously owned a jams and jellies business and knew the cost ratios that you had to have to make it work.  I don’t doubt he knows exactly what he’s talking about and is 100% accurate…for doing business his way, which I’ll call “Go Big”.  But there’s a whole other way to do business today that would be ideal for these ladies to pursue. As I understand it, based on his level of success in various businesses and the fact that he is even in a position to be investing in other companies, Kevin’s approach is to go mass market (Go Big) and make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (or something along that scale) while squeezing out every ounce of cost that you can to produce an acceptable margin.  But there is a very different way of making a very successful business these days, which is all about building a passionate and loyal community of customers that are rooting for your success and even actively trying to help you succeed by promoting your product or company (Go Special).  This capitalizes on the power of social media, niche marketing, and The Long Tail.  One of the most prolific writers about capitalizing on this trend is Seth Godin, and I hope that the founders of Mango Mango pick up a couple of his books (probably Purple Cow and Tribes would be good starts) or at least read his blog.  I think the adoration expressed by all of the sharks for the product is the biggest hint that they have a remarkable product and that they are perfect for this type of business approach. Both are completely valid business models, and it may certainly be that the scale at which Kevin O’Leary wants to conduct business where he invests his money is well beyond the long tail, but that doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot of money to be made there.  I wish them the best of luck with their endeavors!

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• MySQL - Powering Online Media & Entertainment

  - by bertrand.matthelie(at)oracle.com

  @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Times"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } If you're reading news, watching videos, or playing games online, you're probably relying on MySQL to do so.   Facebook, YouTube, BBC News, Zynga, thePlatform and many other leading Media & Entertainment organizations chose MySQL to power their online news, gaming, social networking, advertising or other applications.   During the past decade, the Media & Entertainment industry experienced a spectacular transformation.  The mobile Internet is becoming the dominant media platform, and the boundaries between the different types of media (i.e. Print, TV, Radio, Internet) have increasingly blurred as we've gradually come to perform more and more of our daily activities online.   To better understand how MySQL can help you win in the fast paced world of Media & Entertainment, check out our whitepaper "MySQL - Powering The Online Media & Entertainment Industry" in which we cover:   ·       The key trends shaping the evolution of the media & entertainment industry.   ·       Their implications, and the requirements they place on the infrastructure of information & entertainment services providers.   ·       How you can leverage Oracle's MySQL technologies to quickly and cost-effectively deliver new highly scalable and highly available online media & entertainment applications.   You're welcome to download it here.

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• Leveraging Social Networks for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  For retailers, social media is all about B2C2C. That is, Business to Consumer to Consumer, or more specifically, retailer to influencer to consumer. Traditional marketing targeted mass media, trying to expose the message to as many people as possible. While effective, this approach has never been very efficient, with high costs for relatively low penetration. Then it was thought that marketers should focus their efforts on a relative few super-influencers that would then sway the masses. History shows a few successes with this approach but lacked any consistency or predictability. After all, if super-influencers were easy to find, most campaigns would easily go viral. Alas, research shows that most wide-spread trends were the result of several fortunate events, including some luck. So do people exert influence over each other when it comes to purchase decisions? Of course they do, all the time. But that influence is usually limited to a small set of friends and specific specialization. For instance, although I have 165 friends on Facebook, I am only able to influence my close friends and family on PC purchases, and I have no sway at all for fashion purchases. People trust my knowledge on technology, but nobody asks my advice on shoes. How then should retailers leverage social networks in order to reinforce brand image and push promotions? Two obvious ways are Like and Share. Online advertisements or wall-postings receive more clicks when the viewer sees that friends have "liked" the posting. That's our modern-day version of word-of-mouth advertising. Statistics show that endorsements from friends make it more likely a person will engage. If my friends and I liked it, then I might also "share" (or "retweet" in the case of Twitter) it with other friends. In that case the retailer has paid for X showings of the advertisement, but sharing has pushed it to an additional Y people at no cost. And further, the implicit endorsement by the sharer makes it more likely the recipient will engage. So a good first step is to find people active in social networks that will Like and Share in order to exert influence. Its still tough to go viral, but doubling engagement is still a big step in the right direction. More complex social graph analysis would be a second step, but I'll leave that topic for another day. If you're interested in the academic side of social dynamics, I suggest reading Duncan Watts' work.

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• Social Analytics and the Customer

  - by David Dorf

  Many successful retailers put the customer at the center of everything they do, so its important that the customer is modeled correctly across all their systems.  The path to omni-channel starts and ends with the customer so at ARTS, our next big project is focused on ensuring a consistent representation of customers across our transactional data model, datawarehouse model, and XML schemas.  Further, we've started a new whitepaper that describes how Big Data and Social Media Analytics should be leveraged by retailers to add and additional level of customer insight. Let's start by taking a closer look at the meaning of social analytics.  Here's my definition: Social Analytics, in the retail context, describes the analysis of data obtained from social media sources in an effort to better comprehend and interact with the community of consumers.  This discipline seeks to understand what’s being said by the community about brands and products (“monitoring”), as well as understand the behaviors of those in the community (“profiling”).  The results are used to enforce the brand image, improve product decisions, and better focus marketing, all of which lead to increased sales. To help illustrate the facets of social analytics, I drew the diagram below which was originally published by Retail Touchpoints. There are lots of tools on the market that allow retailers to monitor social media for brand and product mentions.  These include analysis of sentiment, reach, share of voice, engagement, etc.  When your brand is mentioned, good or bad, its an opportunity to engage with the customer and possibly lead to a sale.  Because products are not always unique, its much more difficult to monitor product mentions, but detecting product trends early can help a retailer make better merchandising decisions, especially in fashion. Once a retailer understands what's being said, the next step is learn more about who's saying it.  That involves profiling customers beyond simple demographics to understand their motivations.  Much can be learned from patterns, and even more when customers voluntarily share their data.  Knowing that a customer is passionate about, for example, mountain biking allows the retailer to make relevant offers on helmets, ask for opinions on hydration, and help spread marketing messages. Social analytics has many facets that benefit retailers, some of which are easy but many of which are hard.  Its important for the CMO and CIO to work closely together to plan for these capabilities and monitor the maturity of tools on the market.  This is an area that will separate winners from losers.

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• Closing the Gap: 2012 IOUG Enterprise Data Security Survey

  - by Troy Kitch

  The new survey from the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) titled "Closing the Security Gap: 2012 IOUG Enterprise Data Security Survey," uncovers some interesting trends in IT security among IOUG members and offers recommendations for securing data stored in enterprise databases. "Despite growing threats and enterprise data security risks, organizations that implement appropriate detective, preventive, and administrative safeguards are seeing significant results," finds the report's author, Joseph McKendrick, analyst, Unisphere Research. Produced by Unisphere Research and underwritten by Oracle, the report is based on responses from 350 IOUG members representing a variety of job roles, organization sizes, and industry verticals. Key findings include Corporate budgets increase, but trailing. Though corporate data security budgets are increasing this year, they still have room to grow to reach the previous year’s spending. Additionally, more than half of respondents say their organizations still do not have, or are unaware of, data security plans to help address contingencies as they arise. Danger of unauthorized access. Less than a third of respondents encrypt data that is either stored or in motion, and at the same time, more than three-fifths say they send actual copies of enterprise production data to other sites inside and outside the enterprise. Privileged user misuse. Only about a third of respondents say they are able to prevent privileged users from abusing data, and most do not have, or are not aware of, ways to prevent access to sensitive data using spreadsheets or other ad hoc tools. Lack of consistent auditing. A majority of respondents actively collect native database audits, but there has not been an appreciable increase in the implementation of automated tools for comprehensive auditing and reporting across databases in the enterprise. IOUG RecommendationsThe report's author finds that securing data requires not just the ability to monitor and detect suspicious activity, but also to prevent the activity in the first place. To achieve this comprehensive approach, the report recommends the following. Apply an enterprise-wide security strategy. Database security requires multiple layers of defense that include a combination of preventive, detective, and administrative data security controls. Get business buy-in and support. Data security only works if it is backed through executive support. The business needs to help determine what protection levels should be attached to data stored in enterprise databases. Provide training and education. Often, business users are not familiar with the risks associated with data security. Beyond IT solutions, what is needed is a well-engaged and knowledgeable organization to help make security a reality. Read the IOUG Data Security Survey Now.

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Big Data

  - by Clint Edmonson

  As the name implies, what we’re talking about here is the explosion of electronic data that comes from huge volumes of transactions, devices, and sensors being captured by businesses today. This data often comes in unstructured formats and/or too fast for us to effectively process in real time. Collectively, we call these the 4 big data V’s: Volume, Velocity, Variety, and Variability. These qualities make this type of data best managed by NoSQL systems like Hadoop, rather than by conventional Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). We know that there are patterns hidden inside this data that might provide competitive insight into market trends.  The key is knowing when and how to leverage these “No SQL” tools combined with traditional business such as SQL-based relational databases and warehouses and other business intelligence tools. Drivers Petabyte scale data collection and storage Business intelligence and insight Solution The sketch below shows one of many big data solutions using Hadoop’s unique highly scalable storage and parallel processing capabilities combined with Microsoft Office’s Business Intelligence Components to access the data in the cluster. Ingredients Hadoop – this big data industry heavyweight provides both large scale data storage infrastructure and a highly parallelized map-reduce processing engine to crunch through the data efficiently. Here are the key pieces of the environment: Pig - a platform for analyzing large data sets that consists of a high-level language for expressing data analysis programs, coupled with infrastructure for evaluating these programs. Mahout - a machine learning library with algorithms for clustering, classification and batch based collaborative filtering that are implemented on top of Apache Hadoop using the map/reduce paradigm. Hive - data warehouse software built on top of Apache Hadoop that facilitates querying and managing large datasets residing in distributed storage. Directly accessible to Microsoft Office and other consumers via add-ins and the Hive ODBC data driver. Pegasus - a Peta-scale graph mining system that runs in parallel, distributed manner on top of Hadoop and that provides algorithms for important graph mining tasks such as Degree, PageRank, Random Walk with Restart (RWR), Radius, and Connected Components. Sqoop - a tool designed for efficiently transferring bulk data between Apache Hadoop and structured data stores such as relational databases. Flume - a distributed, reliable, and available service for efficiently collecting, aggregating, and moving large log data amounts to HDFS. Database – directly accessible to Hadoop via the Sqoop based Microsoft SQL Server Connector for Apache Hadoop, data can be efficiently transferred to traditional relational data stores for replication, reporting, or other needs. Reporting – provides easily consumable reporting when combined with a database being fed from the Hadoop environment. Training These links point to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. Hadoop Learning Resources (20+ tutorials and labs) Huge collection of resources for learning about all aspects of Apache Hadoop-based development on Windows Azure and the Hadoop and Windows Azure Ecosystems SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Enterprise 2.0 Conference recap

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  We had a great week in Boston attending the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. We learned a lot from industry thought leaders and had a chance to speak with a lot of different folks about social and collaboration technologies and trends.  Of all the conferences we attend, this one definitely has a different “feel”. It seems like the attendees are younger, they dress hipper, and there is much more livelihood all around. A few of the sessions addressed this, as the "millenials" or Generation Y, have been using Web 2.0 tools, such as Facebook and Twitter for many years now, and as they are entering the workforce they are expecting similar tools to be a part of how they accomplish their job tasks. It's important to note that it's not just Millenials that are expecting these technologies, as workers young and old alike benefit from social and collaboration tools. I’ve highlighted some of the takeaways I had, as well as a reaction from John Brunswick, who helped us in staffing the booth. Giving your employees choices is empowering, but if there is no course of action or plan, it’s useless. There is no such thing as collaboration without a goal. In a few years, social will become a feature in the “platform”, a component of collaboration. Social will become part of the norm – just like email is expected when you start a job at a company, Social will be too. 1 in 3 of your employees are using tools your company doesn't sanction (how scary is this?!) 25,000 pieces of content are created every second. Context is king. Social tools help us navigate and manage the complexities we face with information overload. We need to design products for the way people work. Consumerization of the enterprise - bringing social tools like Facebook to the organization. From John Brunswick: "The conference had solid attendance, standing as a testament to organizations making a concerted effort to understand what social tools exist to support their businesses.  Many vendors were narrowly focused and people we pleasantly surprised at the breadth of capability provided by Oracle WebCenter.  People seemed to feel that it just made sense that social technology provides the most benefit when presented in the context of key business data." Did you attend the conference? What were some of your key takeaways?

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• links for 2011-01-04

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcasts (tags: ping.fm) Five Key Trends in Enterprise 2.0 for 2011 (Oracle Enterprise 2.0 Blog) Kellsey Ruppel shares insight from Oracle's Andy MacMillan. (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0) Victor Bax: Lost in Service Oriented Architecture? "SOA is a concept, no more, no less. SOA is not a technology, or a piece of software. It is an architecture, a model." - Victor Bax (tags: oracle soa) Jan-Leendert: Oracle 11g SOA Suite read multi record data from csv file with the file adapter (master-detail) "The file adapter is a very powerlful tool to read files with structured data. Most of the time you will read simple csv files with one record per row. But what if your csv file contains multiple records with different types?" - Jan-Leendert (tags: oracle soa soasuite) @myfear: Five ways to know how your data looked in the past. Entity Auditing. "Whatever requirements you have. I can promise you, that it will never be a simple solution. In general it's best to evaluate your purpose for auditing in detail." - Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele (tags: oracle otn oracleace java) @fteter: Buffing Up The Crystal Ball "While I'm already tired of seeing these types of posts (I'm writing on New Year's Day), I'm also feeling guilty about not making my own set of predictions." - Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter (tags: oracle otn oracleace ec2 cloud fusionmiddleware) @bex: ECM New Year's Resolutions "Happy new year! Most people use the first post of the year to go over their own blog statistics of popular posts... but since my blog's fiscal year ends in April, I decided to do new years resolutions instead." - Oracle ACE Director Bex Huff (tags: oracle otn oracleace ecm enterprise2.0) Izaak de Hullu: Embedded Java in a 11g BPEL process "In an earlier blog my colleague Peter Ebell explained how you can create an extension of com.collaxa.cube.engine.ext.BPELXExecLet to do your coding in a regular Java environment so you have code completion and validation..." - Izaak de Hullu (tags: oracle otn bpel java soa) @gschmutz: Cannot access EM console after installing SOA Suite 11g PS2 Oracle ACE Director Guido Schmutz encounters a problem and shares the solution. (tags: oracle otn oracleace soa soasuite)

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• Should CSS be listed on your resume under Languages?

  - by Sandeepan Nath

  I have some doubts like Whether CSS should be put under Languages or not? Although Wikipedia says Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language ... But do they write CSS under the languages section of the resume, along with PHP, etc? Similarly what about HTML? I have some doubt and I don't want to sound like someone who is not aware of the trends. Just to give an example, currently I have the following languages,frameworks, technologies, etc. listed under the "Technical Expertise" section of my resume - Technical Expertise * Languages - Proficient - PHP 5, Javascript, HTML ?*,CSS ?*,Sass ?*. Beginner - Linux Bash. * Databases - MySQL 5. * Technologies - AJAX. * Frameworks/Libraries - Symfony, jQuery. * CMSes - Wordpress. Although my domain is Web-development/design, I welcome domain-agnostic answers which can provide some generic ideas/reasoning. I have seen, a lot of people messing up these sections (even more serious than my doubts :) ), putting things under wrong sub-headings and thus putting a big question mark on their understanding of those things. I don't know much about XML, Comet Technology etc. Considering those are included too, What things should be put under Languages? E.g. Should CSS be put under Languages? Please give some reasoning to support your views. Where should the others (XML, Comet, cURL etc. ) be put? I welcome some examples of how you put it. Or do you have an additional Keywords section where you write all the unsortables ? Considering a set of standards like W3C standards, etc. do you have a standards sub-heading? I guess I have put the contents of other sections Okay. But do let me know about your ideas and reasoning. After all, I understand there may not be a single answer to this, but let's see what is the trend. Thanks Updates Further, do you mention design patters you have used? Web Services etc.? Where do you mention SOAP, XML etc...

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for November 8, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Webcast: Meeting Customer Expectations in the New Age of Retail Keep your eye on this live webcast as Sanjeev Sharma (Principal Product Director, Oracle Exalogic), Kelly Goetsch (Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Commerce), and Dan Conway (Senior Product Manager, Oracle Retail) offer real-world examples of business value derived by running customer-facing applications on Oracle Engineered Systems. Live, Thursday Nov 8, 10am PT/ 1pm ET. Solving Big Problems in Our 21st Century Information Society | Irving Wladawsky-Berger "I believe that the kind of extensive collaboration between the private sector, academia and government represented by the Internet revolution will be the way we will generally tackle big problems in the 21st century. Just as with the Internet, governments have a major role to play as the catalyst for many of the big projects that the private sector will then take forward and exploit. The need for high bandwidth, robust national broadband infrastructures is but one such example." — Irving Wladawsky-Berger SOA Still Not Dead: Ratification of Governance Standard Highlights SOA’s Continued Relevance So just about the time I dig into Google Trends to learn that the conversation about governance peaked in 2004, along comes all this InfoQ article by Richard Seroter. And of course you've already listened to the OTN Archbeat Podcast about governance, right? Right? Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for Oracle E-Business Suite Users | Steven Chan The short version is: "Nothing will change for EBS users after February 2013." According to Steven Chan, "EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6." You'll find additional information on Steven's blog. ADF Mobile Custom Javascript – iFrame Injection | John Brunswick The ADF Mobile Framework provides a range of out of the box components to add within your AMX pages, according to John Brunswick. But what happens when "an out of the box component does not directly fulfill your development need? What options are available to extend your application interface?" John has an answer. How Data and BPM are married to get the right information to the right people at the right time | Leon Smiers "Business Process Management…supports a large group of stakeholders within an organization, all with different needs," says Oracle ACE Leon Smiers. "End-to-end processes typically run across departments, stakeholders and applications, and can often have a long life-span. So how do organizations provide all stakeholders with the information they need?" Leon provides answers in this post. Thought for the Day "(When) asking skilled architects…what they do when confronted with highly complex problems…(they) would most likely answer, 'Just use Common Sense.' (A) better expression than 'common sense' is 'contextual sense' — a knowledge of what is reasonable within a given content. Practicing architects through eduction, experience and examples accumulate a considerable body of contextual sense by the time they're entrusted with solving a system-level problem…" — Eberhardt Rechtin (January 16, 1926 – April 14, 2006) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Business Strategy - Google Case Study

  Business strategy defined by SMBTN.com is a term used in business planning that implies a careful selection and application of resources to obtain a competitive advantage in anticipation of future events or trends. In more general terms business strategy is positioning a company so that it has the greatest competitive advantage over others in the markets and industries that they participate in. This process involves making corporate decisions regarding which markets to provide goods and services, pricing, acceptable quality levels, and how to interact with others in the marketplace. The primary objective of business strategy is to create and increase value for all of its shareholders and stakeholders through the creation of customer value. According to InformationWeek.com, Google has a distinctive technology advantage over its competitors like Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo. Google utilizes custom high-performance systems which are cost efficient because they can scale to extreme workloads. This hardware allows for a huge cost advantage over its competitors. In addition, InformationWeek.com interviewed Stephen Arnold who stated that Google’s programmers are 50%-100% more productive compared to programmers working for their competitors.  He based this theory on Google’s competitors having to spend up to four times as much just to keep up. In addition to Google’s technological advantage, they also have developed a decentralized management schema where employees report directly to multiple managers and team project leaders. This allows for the responsibility of the technology department to be shared amongst multiple senior level engineers and removes the need for a singular department head to oversee the activities of the department.  This is a unique approach from the standard management style. Typically a department head like a CIO or CTO would oversee the department’s global initiatives and business functionality.  This would then be passed down and administered through middle management and implemented by programmers, business analyst, network administrators and Database administrators. It goes without saying that an IT professional’s responsibilities would be directed by Google’s technological advantage and management strategy.  Simply because they work within the department, and would have to design, develop, and support the high-performance systems and would have to report multiple managers and project leaders on a regular basis. Since Google was established and driven by new and immerging technology, all other departments would be directly impacted by the technology department.  In fact, they would have to cater to the technology department since it is a huge driving for in the success of Google. Reference: http://www.smbtn.com/smallbusinessdictionary/#b http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192300292&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=

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• Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld

  - by Christie Flanagan

  This first-ever Oracle Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld kicked off yesterday, bringing together established thought leaders and practitioners in customer experience. The first day saw noted marketing and customer experience thought leader, Seth Godin, take the stage to discuss how rapidly accelerating change and adoption are driving new behaviors and higher expectations in a massively disruptive transformation in which the customer now holds the power. His presentation gave us in-depth insight into this always-connected, always-sharing experience revolution we are witnessing.If you haven’t yet made it over to the Oracle Customer Experience Summit at The Westin St. Francis and the recently made over Oracle Square (aka Union Square), there’s still time today and tomorrow to network with industry peers and hear best practices from those who have steered their ventures through the disruptive trends of customer experience and have proven, successful strategies to share for driving strategic customer-centric initiatives. If you’re interested in learning how Oracle WebCenter helps businesses meet the demands of the customer experience revolution, be sure to check out these sessions at the Oracle Customer Experience Summit later today:Using the Online Customer Experience to Drive Engagement and Marketing Success Thursday, Oct 4, 4:15 PM - 5:15 PM - St. Francis - GeorgianMariam Tariq - Senior Director Product Management, Oracle Stephen Schleifer - Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Richard Backx - Business IT Architect/Consultant, KPN NL Netco CE Channels Online The online channel is a critical means of reaching and engaging customers. Online marketing efforts today must be targeted, interactive, and consistent to provide customers with a seamless experience. These efforts must include integrated management of Web, mobile, and social channels—supported by cross-channel customer data and campaigns—and integration with commerce to drive an engaging and differentiated online customer experience. Attend this session to learn how you can use the online channel to increase customer loyalty and drive the success of your marketing initiatives.Empowering Your Frontline Employees: Sales and Service Enterprise Collaboration Thursday, Oct 4, 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM - St. Francis - Elizabethan ABStephen Fioretti - VP, Product Management, Oracle Peter Doolan - Group Vice President, Sales Engineering, Oracle Andrew Kershaw - Sr Director Business Development, Oracle Marty Marcinczyk - VP Customer Experience Engineering, Comcast A focus on the employee experience is critical, because it can make or break your customers’ experiences, directly or indirectly. Engaged and empowered frontline employees become your best advocates and inspire your brand champions. This session explores proven approaches and tools, including social collaboration tools, that can help you empower and enable your frontline teams to improve customer and employee experiences.And before you go, you'll also want to explore the Innovation Tents in Oracle Square which feature leading-edge customer experience demonstrations; attend our customer journey mapping workshop; and learn at sessions focused on innovating differentiated experiences that drive cross-functional alignment.

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• CIO's Corner: Achieving a Balance

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  Author: Rick Beers Senior Director, Product Management, Oracle Fusion Middleware All too often, a CIO is unfairly characterized as either technology-focused or business-focused; as more concerned with either infrastructure performance or business excellence. It seems to me that this completely misses the point. I have long thought that a CIO has probably the most complex C-level position in an enterprise, one that requires an artful balance among four entirely different constituencies, often with competing values and needs. How a CIO balances these is the single largest determinant of success. I was reminded of this while reading the excellent interview of Mark Hurd by CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo in a recent issue of USATODAY (Bartiromo: Oracle's Hurd is in tech sweet spot). The interview covers topics such as Big Data, Leadership and Oracle’s growth strategy. But the topic that really got my interest, and reminded me of the need for balance, was on IT spending trends, in which Mark Hurd observed, “…budgets are tight. What most of our customers have today is both an austerity plan to save money and at the same time a plan to reapply that money to innovation. There isn't a customer we have that doesn't have an austerity plan and an innovation plan.” In an era of economic uncertainty, and an accelerating pace of business change, this is probably the toughest balance a CIO must achieve. Yet for far too many IT organizations, operating costs consume over 75% of their budgets, leaving precious little for innovation and investment in business-critical technology programs. I have found that many CIO’s are trapped by their enterprise systems platforms, which were originally architected for Standardization, Compliance and tightly integrated linear Workflows. Yes, these traits are still required for specific reasons and cannot be compromised. But they are no longer enough. New demands are emerging: the explosion in the volume and diversity of Data, the Consumerization of IT, the rise of Social Media, and the need for continual Business Process Reengineering. These were simply not the design criteria for Enterprise 1.0 and attempting to leverage them with current systems platforms results in an escalation in complexity and a resulting increase in operating costs for many IT organizations. This is the cost vs investment trap and what most constrains CIO’s from achieving the balance they need. But there is a way out of this trap. Enterprise 2.0 represents an entirely new enterprise systems architecture, one that is ‘Business-Centric’ rather than ‘ERP Centric’, which defined the architecture of Enterprise 1.0. Oracle’s best in class suite of Fusion Middleware Products enables a layered approach to enterprise systems architectures that provides the balance that an enterprise needs. The most exciting part of all this? The bottom two layers are focused upon reducing costs and the upper two layers provide business value and innovation. Finally, the Balance a CIO needs.  Additional Information Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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• The Social Business Thought Leaders

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  Enterprise Gamification, Big Data, Social Support, Total Customer Experience, Pull Organizations, Social Business. Are these purely the latest buzzwords to enter the market or significant trends that companies should keep an eye on? Oracle recently sponsored and presented at the 5th Social Business Forum, one of the largest European events on the use of social media as a business tool and accelerator. Through the participation of dozens of practitioners, experts and customer success stories, the conference demonstrated how a perfect storm of technology, management and cultural change is pushing peer-to-peer conversations deep into business processes. It is clear that Social Business is serving as a new propellant of agility, efficiency and reactivity. According to Deloitte and MIT what we have learned to call Social Business is considered important in the next 3 years by 86% of managers (see Social Business: What Are Companies Really Doing?, MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte). McKinsey further estimates the value that can be unlocked in terms of knowledge-worker productivity, consumer insights, product co-creation, improved sales, marketing and customer service up to $1300B (See The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, McKinsey Global Institute). This impacts any industry, with the strongest effects seen in Media & Entertainment, Technology, Telcos and Education. For those not able to attend the Social Business Forum and also for the many friends that joined us in Milan, we decided to keep the conversation going by extracting some golden nuggets from the perspective of five of the most well-known thought-leaders in this space. Starting this week you will have the chance to view: John Hagel (Author of the Power of Pull and Co-Chairman Center for the Edge at Deloitte & Touche) Christian Finn (Senior Director, WebCenter Evangelist at Oracle) Steve Denning (Author of The Radical Management and Independent Management Consulting Professional) Esteban Kolsky (Principal & Founder at ThinkJar) Ray Wang (Principal Analyst & CEO at Constellation Research) Stay tuned to hear: How pull organizations are addressing some of the deepest challenges impacting the market. How to integrate social into existing infrastructure and processes. How to apply radical management to become more agile and profitable. About the importance of gamification as an engagement lever. The first interview with John Hagel will be published tomorrow. Don't miss it and the entire series!

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• What does it mean to treat data as an asset?

  What does it mean to treat data as an asset? When considering this concept, we must define what data is and how it can be considered an asset. Data can easily be defined as a collection of stored truths that are open to interpretation and manipulation.  Expanding on this definition, data can be viewed as a set of captured facts, measurements, and ideas used to make decisions. Furthermore, InvestorsWords.com defines asset as any item of economic value owned by an individual or corporation. Now let’s apply this definition of asset to our definition of data, and ask the following question. Can facts, measurements and ideas be items that are of economic value owned by an individual or corporation? The obvious answer is yes; data can be bought and sold like commodities or analyzed to make smarter business decisions.  We can look at the economic value of data in one of two ways. First, data can be sold as a commodity that can take the form of goods like eBooks, Training, Music, Movies, and so on. Customers are willing to pay to gain access to this data for their consumption. This directly implies that there is an economic value for data in the form of a commodity because customers see a value in obtaining it.  Secondly data can be used in making smarter business decisions that allow for companies to become more profitable and/or reduce their potential for risk in regards to how they operate.  In the past I have worked at companies where we had to analyze previous sales activities in conjunction with current activities to determine how the company was preforming for the quarter.  In addition trends can be formulated based on existing data that allow companies to forecast data so that they can make strategic business decisions based sound forecasted data. Companies that truly value their data are constantly trying to grow and upgrade their data and supporting applications because it is the life blood of a company. If we look at an eBook retailer for example, imagine if they lost all of their data. They would be in essence forced out of business because they would have nothing to sell. In turn, if we look at a company that was using data to facilitate better decision making processes and they lost all of their data then they could be losing potential revenue and/ or increasing the company’s losses by making important business decisions virtually in the dark compared to when they were made on solid data.

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• What's the best way to install the GD graphics library for Nagios?

  - by user1196

  While trying to install Nagios 3.2.3, I ran their ./configure script and got these errors: checking for main in -liconv... no checking for gdImagePng in -lgd (order 1)... no checking for gdImagePng in -lgd (order 2)... no checking for gdImagePng in -lgd (order 3)... no checking for gdImagePng in -lgd (order 4)... no *** GD, PNG, and/or JPEG libraries could not be located... ********* Boutell's GD library is required to compile the statusmap, trends and histogram CGIs. Get it from http://www.boutell.com/gd/, compile it, and use the --with-gd-lib and --with-gd-inc arguments to specify the locations of the GD library and include files. NOTE: In addition to the gd-devel library, you'll also need to make sure you have the png-devel and jpeg-devel libraries installed on your system. NOTE: After you install the necessary libraries on your system: 1. Make sure /etc/ld.so.conf has an entry for the directory in which the GD, PNG, and JPEG libraries are installed. 2. Run 'ldconfig' to update the run-time linker options. 3. Run 'make clean' in the Nagios distribution to clean out any old references to your previous compile. 4. Rerun the configure script. NOTE: If you can't get the configure script to recognize the GD libs on your system, get over it and move on to other things. The CGIs that use the GD libs are just a small part of the entire Nagios package. Get everything else working first and then revisit the problem. Make sure to check the nagios-users mailing list archives for possible solutions to GD library problems when you resume your troubleshooting. ******************************************************************** Which package do I want? libgd2-xpm-dev? libgd2-noxpm-dev? php5-gd? I'm not looking to do any image processing myself - I just want to get Nagios working.

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• Five Best Practices for Going Mobile

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  76% of IT decision makers indicate mobile trends will have a high to extremely high impact on their organization. Has your organization gone mobile? Looking for some ideas on how to get started? John Brunswick shares his Best Practices for Going Mobile. Mobile technology has gone from nice-to-have to a cornerstone of user engagement. Mobile access enables social networking, decision support, purchasing, content consumption, and location-based searching, extending experiences beyond what is available in traditional desktop computing.  Organizations rushing to ensure their brand's mobile availability may have taken a tactical approach to implementation, but strategically approaching mobile can enable greater returns on a similar investment and subsequent mobile projects. Here are some strategic considerations for delivering products, services, and information to mobile constituents.  Who, Why, and What? Ask yourself these key questions: who are you attempting to engage through the channel, and why are they engaging you through this channel? What experience will satisfy their needs? What outcome will support your core business? Will you be informing and/or transacting with this person?  Mobile Behavior. Mobile users generally engage for a very specific purpose. Ensure that access to information, services, and products is streamlined. Arriving on a mobile site through search only to be asked to search again frustrates users.  Mobile Is Broad. After establishing the audience and goal, review technology requirements to support them. Do you need a mobile Website, native mobile application, or both? Do you need to support multiple devices? Know the difference between native mobile and mobile Web.  Social Strategy. Users are more likely to trust reviews from peers than marketing information from a vendor. If you are selling products or services, be sure to make social integration part of your strategy.  Content Management. Consider a shared content platform strategy for Web and mobile projects. Fresh, consistent content is important for high-quality experiences. Read more from John Brunswick.We'll also be talking mobile strategies and how you can transform your portal experience and optimize online engagement -- making your portals more interactive and more engaging across multiple channels in a webcast tomorrow. We hope you'll join us!

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• Stuff I learned at Innovate 2011

  - by David Dorf

  After returning from the NRF Innovate 2011 conference, I picked up few nuggets I thought I'd share here.  These thoughts are a bit random, but I hope they're useful nonetheless.Kevin Kelly opened the conference with six verbs that represent the future.  They were Screening, Interacting, Sharing, Accessing, Flowing, and Generating.  It struck me that these are all ways in which we merge the digital and physical worlds.  The internet of things continues to gain momentum.Some buzzwords:  deal economy, subscription commerce, discovery (instead of search), curationThat last one, curation, came up over and over.  Retailers, especially those in fashion, are finding value in helping their customers organize and present their own collections.  Social media has made sharing such collections easy, and mobile lets them take those ideas into the stores.  Mannequins are becoming less relevant.I heard from both HauteLook and Gilt Groupe (flash sale retailers) that a large percentage of their visits come from mobile devices, and most of those are iOS devices.  I find it interesting that even though Android has passed iPhone in units shipped (and will eventually pass iOS as a whole), its still the Apple crowd that leads the way.RadioShack mentioned their Holiday Heroes campaigned was very successful.  They asked their Foursquare users to check-in at a gym, coffee shop, and transportation hub as part of being a hero.  For this feat, customers were awarded a special badge that was worth 20% off at their next store visit. They claim a 3.5x increase in ticket size vs. regular check-in customers, and a 5x increase vs those that don't check-in at all.I also learned of RadioShack's #28 campaign, which is apparently one of the largest Twitter trends ever.  Their partnership with LIVESTRONG has gotten them followers, impressions, and credit for supporting the fight against cancer.The guys at Invodo showed the importance of video to e-commerce.  They gave compelling examples of how video can show customers the value of products better than just words.The highlight of the show was Guy Kawasaki's talk on innovation, which was not only informative but also peppered with humor and personality.  Back in the early days of the internet boom, Guy turned down the CEO position at Yahoo! because the commute was too long.  By his calculation, that was a $2B mistake.There are other good accounts of the conference at the NRF Blog.

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• Office 2010 Professional Plus (Top 10 reasons to upgrade)

  - by mbcrump

  Being a huge nerd, I decided that I would go ahead and upgrade to the latest and greatest office. That being, Office 2010 Professional Plus. The biggest concern that I had was loosing all my mail settings from Outlook 2007. Thankfully, it upgrade gracefully and worked like a charm. So lets start this top 10 list. 1) You can upgrade without fear of loosing all your stuff! As you can tell by the screenshot below, you can select what you want to do. I selected to remove all previous versions.    2) Outlook conversations: Just like GMail, you can now group emails by conversations. This is simply awesome and a must have. 3) The ability to ignore conversations. If you are on a email thread that has nothing to do with you. Simply “ignore” the conversation and all emails go into the deleted folder. 4) Quick Steps, do you send an email to the same team member or group constantly. With quick steps, its just one click away. 5) Spell check in the Subject line! 6)  Easier Screenshots, built in just click the button. No more ALT-Printscreen for those that are not aware of the awesome SnagIT 10 that's out. 7) Open in protected view. When you open a document from an email attachment, it lets you know the file may be unsafe. You can click a button to enable editing. This is great for preventing macros.       8) Excel has always had a variety of charts and graphs available to visually depict data and trends. With Excel 2010, though, Microsoft has added a new feature called Sparklines, which allows you to place a mini-graph or trend line in a single cell. The Sparklines are a cool way to quickly and simply add a visual element without having to go through the effort of inserting a graph or chart that overwhelms the worksheet. 9) Contact actions. If you hover over a name in the form or fields on an email, you get a popup giving you several actions you can perform on the person such as adding them to your Outlook contacts, scheduling a meeting, viewing their stored contact information if they are already in your contacts, sending an instant message or even starting a telephone call. 10) Windows 7 Task Bar Context Menu – I love the jumplist. I don’t know how much that I would actually use it but it just rocks.

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• Architects, Leadership, and Influence

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Technical expertise is a given for architects. In addition to solid development experience, extensive knowledge of technical trends, tools, standards, and methodolgies (not to mention business accumen) provides the foundation for the decisions the architect must make in the effort to get all the pieces to work together. But even superior technical chops can't overcome a lack of leadership. Leadership is about influence: the ability to effectively communicate — to sell your ideas and defend your decisions in a manner that affects the decisions of the people around you. Leadership and influence are especially important in situations in which the architect may not have the authority to simply tell people what to do. And even when the architect has that kind of authority, influential leadership can mean the difference between gaining real buy-in and support from colleagues and stakeholders, and settling for their grudging acceptance (or worse). Guess which outcome is likely to produce the best results. In a previous post I presented some examples of the kind of criticism that is leveled at architects, a great deal of which can be attributed to a lack of leadership and influence on the part of the targets of that criticism. So it was serendipitous that I recently ran across a post on the Harvard Business Review blog written by Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe. That post, When Your Influence Is Ineffective, includes this: [I]nfluence becomes ineffective when individuals become so focused on the desired outcome that they fail to fully consider the situation. While the influencer may still gain the short-term desired outcome, he or she can do long-term damage to personal effectiveness and the organization, as it creates an atmosphere of distrust where people stop listening, and the potential for innovation or progress is diminished. The need to "see the big picture" is a grossly reductive assesement of the architect's responsibilities — but that doesn't mean it's not true. That big picture perspective must encompass both the technological elements of the architecture and the elements responsible for implementing those technologies in compliance with the prescribed architecture. Technologies may be tempermental, but they don't have personalities or egos, and they are unlikely to carry a grudge — not yet, anyway (Hello, Skynet!).  Effective leadership and the ability to influence people can help to ensure that all the pieces fit and that they work together, today and tomorrow.

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