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• @CodeStock 2012 Review: Leon Gersing ( @Rubybuddha ) - "You"

  "YOU"Speaker: Leon GersingTwitter: @Rubybuddha Site: http://about.me/leongersing I honestly had no idea what I was getting in to when I sat down in to this session. I basically saw the picture of the speaker and knew that it would be a good session. I was completely wrong; it was the BEST SESSION of CodeStock 2012.  In fact it was so good, I texted another coworker attending the conference to get over and listen to Leon. Leon took on the concept of growth in the software development community. He specifically referred David Hansson in his ability to stick to his beliefs when the development community thought that he was crazy for creating Ruby on Rails. If you do not know this story Ruby on Rails is one of the fastest growing web languages today. In addition, he also touched on the flip side of this argument in that we must be open to others ideas and not discard them so quickly because we all come from differing perspectives and can add value to a project/team/community. This session left me with two very profound concepts/quotes: “In order to learn you must do it badly in front of a crowed and fail.” - @Rubybuddha I can look back on my career so far and say that he is correct; I think I have learned the most after failing, especially when I achieved this failure in front of other. “Experts must be able to fail.” - @Rubybuddha I think we can all learn from our own mistakes but we can also learn from others. When respected experts fail it is a great learning opportunity for the entire team as well as the person who failed. When expert admit mistakes and how they worked through them can be great learning tools for other developers so that they know how to avoid specific scenarios and if they do become stuck in the same issue they will know how to properly work their way out of them.

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• ODI 11g - Faster Files

  - by David Allan

  Deep in the trenches of ODI development I raised my head above the parapet to read a few odds and ends and then think why don’t they know this? Such as this article here – in the past customers (see forum) were told to use a staging route which has a big overhead for large files. This KM is an example of the great extensibility capabilities of ODI, its quite simple, just a new KM that; improves the out of the box experience – just build the mapping and the appropriate KM is used improves out of the box performance for file to file data movement. This improvement for out of the box handling for File to File data integration cases (from the 11.1.1.5.2 companion CD and on) dramatically speeds up the file integration handling. In the past I had seem some consultants write perl versions of the file to file integration case, now Oracle ships this KM to fill the gap. You can find the documentation for the IKM here. The KM uses pure java to perform the integration, using java.io classes to read and write the file in a pipe – it uses java threading in order to super-charge the file processing, and can process several source files at once when the datastore's resource name contains a wildcard. This is a big step for regular file processing on the way to super-charging big data files using Hadoop – the KM works with the lightweight agent and regular filesystems. So in my design below transforming a bunch of files, by default the IKM File to File (Java) knowledge module was assigned. I pointed the KM at my JDK (since the KM generates and compiles java), and I also increased the thread count to 2, to take advantage of my 2 processors. For my illustration I transformed (can also filter if desired) and moved about 1.3Gb with 2 threads in 140 seconds (with a single thread it took 220 seconds) - by no means was this on any super computer by the way. The great thing here is that it worked well out of the box from the design to the execution without any funky configuration, plus, and a big plus it was much faster than before, So if you are doing any file to file transformations, check it out!

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• Oracle Launches Mobile Applications User Experience Design Patterns

  - by ultan o'broin

  OK, you heard Joe Huang (@JoeHuang_Oracle) Product Manager for Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) Mobile. If you're an ADF developer, or a Java (yeah, Java in iOS) developer, well now you're a mobile developer as well. And, using the newly launched Applications User Experience (UX) team's Mobile UX Design Patterns, you're a UX developer rockstar too, offering users so much more than just cool functionality. Mobile Design Pattern for Inline Actions Mobile design requires a different way of thinking. Use Oracle’s mobile design patterns to design iPhone, Android, or browser-based smartphone apps. Oracle's sharing these cutting edge mobile design patterns and their baked-in, scientifically proven usability to enable Oracle customers and partners to build mobile apps quickly. The design patterns are common solutions that developers can easily apply across all application suites. Crafted by the UX team's insight into Oracle Fusion Middleware, the patterns are designed to work with the mobile technology provided by the Oracle Application Development Framework. Other great UX-related information on using ADF Mobile to design task flows and the development experience on offer are on the ADF EMG podcast series. Check out FXAer Brian 'Bex' Huff (@bex of Bezzotech talking about ADF Mobile in podcast number 6 and also number 8 which has great tips about getting going with Android and iOS mobile app development too.

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• "Oracle Coherence 3.5" Book - My Humble Review

  - by [email protected]

    After reviewing the book in more detail I say again that it is a great guide for sure. Lots of important concepts that sometimes can be somewhat confusing are deeply reviewed, including all types of caching schemes and backing maps, and the cache topologies with their corresponding performances and very useful "When to use it?" sections. Some functionalities that are very desirable or used a lot are reviewed with examples and best practices of implementation, including: Data affinity Querying Pagination Indexes Aggregations Event processing, listening and triggering Data persistence Security Regarding the networking and architecture topics, Coherence*Extend is exhaustively reviewed, including C++ and .NET clients, with very good tips and examples, even including source codes. Personally, I am also glad to see that the address providers (<address-provider> tag), new feature in Coherence 3.5 which is a way to programmatically provide well-known addresses in order to connect to the cluster, is mentioned on the book, because it provides new functionalities to satisfy some special configuration requirements for example: Provide a way to switch extend nodes in cases of failure Implement custom load balancing algorithms and/or dynamic discovery of TCP/IP connection acceptors Dynamically assign TCP address and port settings when binding to a server socket Another very interesting and useful section is the "Coherent Bank Sample Application", which is a great tutorial, useful to understand how Coherence interacts with third party products establishing a clear integration with them, including the use of non-Oracle products like MS Visual Studio.  

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• Touchpad stopped working on an Acer AspireOne D255E

  - by Gustavo

  I have a less than a year old Acer AspireOne D255E with a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10. Everything has been working fine. Great OS and great netbook. But today the touchpad stopped working. It had been working fine. I closed the netbook and when I opened it again, a couple of hours later, I could not move the pointer with the touchpad. I can not get the pointer to move. I cleaned the touchpad surface well, just in case. Everything else is working fine. All the software updates are up-to-date. I have rebooted several times with no solution. I have attached an USB mouse and the pointer works well. What can I do to troubleshoot the problem? I have gone to the System Settings, touchpad section, and there is not much that I can do there. I would like to determine first if it is a hardware or software issue and then how to resolve it. Is there a way that I can reinstall the touchpad drivers. just in case it is a software problem? I have been using Ubuntu for nearly a year now and am very happy with it. Are there any wise Ubuntu gurus out there who can help me? Thank you for reading this note.

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• Broadcomm WIDCOMM A2DP Quality Adjustment

  - by snicker

  So I got a sweet pair of bluetooth A2DP headphones for a sweet, sweet price (Motorola A805, if you were wondering). They sound great paired with an iPhone. However, when I pair with a computer using the latest and greatest WIDCOMM drivers, the quality is quite poor, almost un-listenable... clicking, popping, scratching. The remedy on one machine was using BlueSoleil, another bluetooth stack, as there is an adjustment for the Bitpool settings that allow you to jack the quality up. Sounds great. However, the bluetooth chipset in my other machine is not supported by BlueSoleil... so I'm stuck with the WIDCOMM stack. So the question is... Is there an undocumented way to turn up the quality for A2DP in the WIDCOMM drivers? first question on SU, usually lurking on SO.. =]

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• Ubuntu unstable, showing awkward behavior

  - by Christophe De Troyer

  Let me start off by saying that this problem can't be described in such a way that allows me to find other topics, which have some relevance to this problem. That's why I created this question. In case this question might have been asked before, I apologize. So what is the problem: My computer (Intel Core I5 2500K - with HD3000 graphics -, 6 gb DDR, 1 SSD, 3 HDD's and an Asus P8Z68 mobo) runs Windows on the SDD. But I decided to give Ubuntu a chance to be my daily OS for basic needs since it's open source and I find it a handicap of not being able to work with it. I decided to run the windows installer and install Ubuntu 12.04 to my 320 Gb hdd which was not being used in my computer. After installing it and booting it, it worked great! I spent the rest of the day/night using it, and falling for it. Great, today I booted Ubuntu (I had the choice in the bootloader as I expected). It asked me for my login and it started logging in. Now, after a few (literally) minutes of letting it "boot" I tried determining the cause of this. What I've figured out so far: When I left click on my desktop it freezes completely for a few seconds I have something like tearing in the left side menu (in games, you know) when I move my mouse around It runs well when just hovering around with my mouse, but from the point I click on something it freezes. What have I tried? I ran a HD Tune diagnostic on the HDD but the performance seems to be very close to the stock values, so I'm taking it as a good HDD. I'm trying to get to the drivers update panel for Ubuntu, but with the state it's in, it's taking a lot of time.. Could anyone point me in a direction for troubleshooting this? I'm not really a noob at all, just when using Linux.. :) Thanks in advance! Christophe,

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• How do you manage a complexity jump?

  - by glenatron

  It seems an infrequent but common experience that sometimes you're working on a project and suddenly something turns up unexpectedly, throws a massive spanner in the works and ramps up the complexity a whole lot. For example, I was working on an application that talked to SOAP services on various other machines. I whipped up a prototype that worked fine, then went on to develop a regular front end and generally get everything up and running in a nice, fairly simple and easy to follow fashion. It worked great until we started testing across a wider network and suddenly pages started timing out as the latency of the connections and the time required to perform calculations on remote machines resulted in timed out requests to the soap services. It turned out that we needed to change the architecture to spin requests out onto their own threads and cache the returned data so it could be updated progressively in the background rather than performing calculations on a request by request basis. The details of that scenario are not too important - indeed it's not a great example as it was quite forseeable and people who have written a lot of apps of this type for this type of environment might have anticipated it - except that it illustrates a way that one can start with a simple premise and model and suddenly have an escalation of complexity well into the development of the project. What strategies do you have for dealing with these types of functional changes whose need arises - often as a result of environmental factors rather than specification change - later on in the development process or as a result of testing? How do you balance between avoiding the premature optimisation/ YAGNI/ overengineering risks of designing a solution that mitigates against possible but not necessarily probable issues as opposed to developing a simpler and easier solution that is likely to be as effective but doesn't incorporate preparedness for every possible eventuality?

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• Event notifications for Reporting Systems

  - by Marc Schluper

  The last couple of months I have been working on an application that allows people to browse a data mart. Nice, but nothing new. In this context I have an idea that I want to publish before anyone else patents it: event notifications. You see, reporting systems are not used as much as we’d like. Typically, users don’t know where to look for reports that might interest them. At best, there are some standard reports that people generate every so often, i.e. based on a time trigger. Or some reporting systems can be configured to send monthly reports around, for convenience. But apart from that, the reporting system is just sitting there, waiting for the rare curious user who makes the effort to dig a bit for treasures to be found. Wouldn’t it be great if there were data triggers? Imagine we could configure the reporting system to let us know when something interesting has happened. It would send us a message containing a link that would take us to the relevant section of the reporting system, showing a report with all the data pertaining to that event, preparing us for proper actions. Here in the North West this would really be great. You see, it rains here most of the time from October to June, so why even check the weather forecast? But sometimes, sometimes it snows. And sometimes the sun shines. So rather than me going to the weather site and seeing over and over again that it will be raining, making me think “why bother?” I’d like to configure the weather site so that it lets me know when the rain stops. Now, hopefully nobody has patented this idea already. Let me know.

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• Inspiring the method of teaching. Example- C++ :)

  - by Ashwin

  A year ago I graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering. Considering C++ as the first choice of programming language I have been in the process of learning C++ in many ways. At first - five years back - I had many conceptions, most of which were so abstract to me. It started when I knew almost everything about Structs in C and nothing about Classes in C++. I went through a great time experimenting them all and learning a lot. I had a hard time evaluating Procedural programming vs Object-Oriented Programming. Deciding when to choose Procedural or Object-Oriented Programming took a great deal of patience for me. I knew that I cannot underestimate any of these Programming styles... Though Procedural programming is often a better choice than simple sequential unstructured programming, when solving problems with procedural programming, we usually divide one problem into several steps in order regarded as functions. Then we call these functions one by one to get the result of the problem. When solving problems with Object Oriented Priciples we divide one problem into several classes and form the interaction between them. Evaluating these two at the beginning (as a learner) required a lot of inspiration and thoughts. Instructing to think step by step. Relative concepts to understand deeply. Intensive interests to contrast both solving in both POP and OOP. If you were ever a mentor: What ideas/methods would you teach to students in which it will Inspire them to learn a programming language (in general, computer sciences)?

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• Finding a mentor online [closed]

  - by Athena Santos

  Possible Duplicate: How to find programming mentor? I'm a programming intern, but I want to "transition" into a product manager role after graduation. I just know that I will never be a super A++ Rockstar programmer, but from my internship I know that I can be a great program manager..one of those presumably rare people who can code well (enough)/speak programmer-ese and management-ese. Being a girl, I am looking for both male and female mentors. Female, because they know what its like to be a minority, and male, because..well, you guys are tough, and I believe to succeed in tech, a girl's gotta know how to act like a man (when appropriate). I've found some really amazing people I'd like to ask to be my mentor (in blogs, magazines, etc), but sadly, I live far, far away from them. Will be awkward/rude if I shoot them an email about being a mentor? What is the best way to establish a relationship with people like these that I admire? Any volunteers? :) Thank you in advance, and I hope you all have a great day/night.

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• Nordics OTN ACE Tour 2013 - Recap

  - by Mike Dietrich

  The Nordics OTN ACE Tour 2013 with stops in Stockholm, Ballerup/Copenhagen and Oslo is over. A very intense week with plenty of excellent presentations from Lonneke Dikmans, Sten Vesterli, Tim Hall and others. I'm always impressed how much those people know and how good they present. It's such a great learning experience. And there's always some time to talk about weired things apart from the Oracle cosmos. So thanks a lot, folks - it was a pleasure to travel with you. And many many thanks also to the people from ORCAN, DOUG and OUGN. Everything worked out so well. And thanks for the great gifts. the dinners, everything!!! Of course a special thanks to all the people who went to my presentations. Hope you've enjoyed it - and sorry for any overtiming But as Tim said yesterday in the Shuttle Bus back to the airport: "45 min slots don't work out at all" The final slide set about "Different Ways to Upgrade, Migrate and Consolidate into Oracle Database 12c including Oracle Multitenant, New Features and other stuff" can be downloaded via this link. Hope to see you all again soon - and let me know once you have successfully upgraded to Oracle Database 12c or in case you'd like to become one of our Upgrade Reference Customers. Cheers - Mike PS: One thing I couldn't really understand - why is that thing below not labeled simply GRAPE JUICE??? And who's honestly drinking that?

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• Designing rules to fight smallpox in Civ-style TBS games

  - by Williham Totland

  TL;DR: How do you design a ruleset for a Civ-style TBS game that prevents city smallpox from being a profitable or viable strategy? Long version: Civ-style games are pretty great. Bringing a civilization from cradle to grave is a great endeavor, and practicing diplomacy with hard-line human players is fun and challenging. In theory. In practice, however, many of these games has, especially in multiplayer, exactly one viable strategy: City smallpox, a.k.a. infinite city spread, a.k.a. covering all available space with 1-citizen cities, packed as tight as they will go. I suppose this could count as emergent gameplay, but still; it could hardly be considered to be in the spirit of the class of game. The Civilization series, of course, is stuck in their more or less fixed rule sets, established with Civilization. Yes, there have been major changes in some respects, but the rules pertaining to city building and maintenance have stayed pretty similar. So the question, then: If you build a ruleset for a TBS from the ground up; what rules should be in place to prevent Infinite City Sprawl from being a viable strategy? Or should ICS be a viable strategy?

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• @CodeStock 2012 Review: Leon Gersing ( @Rubybuddha ) - "You"

  "YOU"Speaker: Leon GersingTwitter: @Rubybuddha Site: http://about.me/leongersing I honestly had no idea what I was getting in to when I sat down in to this session. I basically saw the picture of the speaker and knew that it would be a good session. I was completely wrong; it was the BEST SESSION of CodeStock 2012.  In fact it was so good, I texted another coworker attending the conference to get over and listen to Leon. Leon took on the concept of growth in the software development community. He specifically referred David Hansson in his ability to stick to his beliefs when the development community thought that he was crazy for creating Ruby on Rails. If you do not know this story Ruby on Rails is one of the fastest growing web languages today. In addition, he also touched on the flip side of this argument in that we must be open to others ideas and not discard them so quickly because we all come from differing perspectives and can add value to a project/team/community. This session left me with two very profound concepts/quotes: “In order to learn you must do it badly in front of a crowed and fail.” - @Rubybuddha I can look back on my career so far and say that he is correct; I think I have learned the most after failing, especially when I achieved this failure in front of other. “Experts must be able to fail.” - @Rubybuddha I think we can all learn from our own mistakes but we can also learn from others. When respected experts fail it is a great learning opportunity for the entire team as well as the person who failed. When expert admit mistakes and how they worked through them can be great learning tools for other developers so that they know how to avoid specific scenarios and if they do become stuck in the same issue they will know how to properly work their way out of them.

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• Best of OTN - Week of November 4th

  - by CassandraClark-OTN

  It was another exciting week at OTN!  Lots of GREAT content to share.  If you had a favorite that you don't see listed let us know in the comment section below.  Java Community - JavaOne Sessions Online - We've posted 60 of the JavaOne sessions online, and we'll be rolling out more sessions every few weeks. This content is free, courtesy of Oracle.NetBeans 7.4 Released  - NetBeans 7.4 features HTML5 integration for Java EE and PHP development; support for Apache Cordova and JDK 8 preview features; enhancements to Maven, C/C++, and more.vJUG: Worldwide Virtual JUG Created - London Java Community leader and technical evangelist Simon Maple has created a Meetup called vJUG, with aim toward connecting Java Developers in the virtual world.Tori Wieldt, Java Community Manager Friday Funny: This is what REALLY happens when you give someone your business card ow.ly/q6aKUArchitect Community - Don't forget to register for the free Virtual Developer Day - Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence.  December 3rd, 2013 - Two great tracks, Design & Develop and Build, Deploy & Manage.   Why wait, register now!  Multi-Factor Authentication in Oracle WebLogic - Shailesh K. Mishra - Really good technical article on using multi-factor authentication to protect web applications deployed on Oracle WebLogic.Coherence*Web: Sharing an httpSessions Among Applications in Different Oracle WebLogic Clusters - Jordi VillenaUnderstanding when and how to select session attributes that must be stored in the local storage of the Oracle WebLogic instances and which should be leveraged to an Oracle Coherence distributed cache.  Bob Rhubart, Architect Community Manager Friday Funny - "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken." Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 - November 30, 1900) Irish writer and poet.

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• Rule of thumb for cost vs. savings for code re-use

  - by Styler

  Is it a good rule of thumb to always write code for the intent of re-using it somewhere down the road? Or, depending on the size of the component you are writing, is it better practice to design it for re-use when it makes sense with regards to time spent on it. What is a good rule of thumb for spending extra time on analysis and design on project components that have "some probability" of being needed later down the road for other things that may or may need this part. For example, if I have the need for project X to do things A, and B. A definitely needs to be written for re-use because it just makes sense to do so. B is very project specific at the moment, and I can hack it all together in a couple days to finish the project on time and give everyone kudos for being a great team, etc. Or if we say, lets spend a whole friggin' 2 weeks figuring out what project Y/Z might need this thing for and spend a load of extra time on on part B because someday we might need to use it on project Y/Z (where the savings will be realized). I'd imagine a perfect world situation would be a nicely crafted combination of project specific vs. re-use architected components given the project. However some code shops might feel it would be a great idea to write everything for the intention of using it at some point down the road.

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• A Poem Before OpenWorld

  - by Oracle OpenWorld Blog Team

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} (with apologies to Clement C. Moore) By Karen Shamban ‘Twas the days before OpenWorld, and all through the city Many people were working, for them not take pity; At Moscone the reg booths were built with true care, Knowing that thousands would soon be right there; The riggers on Howard were raising the tent, The results are all worth it, the money well spent; ORACLE TEAM USA sails into YBG, Knowing that many the team will come see, Backstage the techs and designers do work, Ensuring the keynotes will see not a quirk; Here many things social will come to fruition, Use Twitter or Facebook or your intuition, Exhibits there are many in two great big halls, Moscone West, Moscone South—who needs those malls? There will be great music throughout all the town, See some or see all and you won’t wear a frown, The sessions are thousands, and demos, it’s true, Labs, lounges, and meetups there are more than a few; You can shuttle, and hustle, and pedicab while there, Getting from one place to another can take quite a flair, So let the conference begin and the thousands descend, Throughout San Francisco their ways they will wend; It’s Larry’s big keynotes they all come to hear, Let Oracle OpenWorld begin - it's the best of the year!

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• PeopleSoft and PeopleTools at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by PeopleTools Strategy

  From Jeff Robbins PeopleTools 8.52 Gregory Sawyer October 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Oracle Open World is once again just around the corner.  This is a huge event for Oracle with thousands of individual sessions that cover all sorts of topics.  Here’s a link to a note from Paco Aubrejuan about PeopleSoft’s plans for this year’s conference: [link: http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/utilities/pfst-oow12-letter-1841052.pdf] Each year, PeopleTools sessions prove to be among the highest rated and best attended sessions of the conference. Once again we’ve put together a broad program of sessions and a great Hands on Lab, so be sure to use the Open World Schedule Builder to pre-register for the sessions you think will be of greatest value to you: [link: https://www.oracle.com/webapps/token/scheduler] Highlights of our program include: · Customer success with PeopleTools 8.52 · Great new features of the upcoming PeopleTools 8.53 · PeopleSoft’s new mobile solutions · Innovative technologies for your PeopleSoft system: Integration, User Experience, Lifecycle Management and more We’re excited about all that we have planned and look forward to seeing you there.  Stop by the DEMOGrounds to ask questions, see new features or just say hello. See you all there Jeff

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• Are your personal insecurities screwing up your internal communications?

  - by Lucy Boyes

  I do some internal comms as part of my job. Quite a lot of it involves talking to people about stuff. I’m spending the next couple of weeks talking to lots of people about internal comms itself, because we haven’t done a lot of audience/user feedback gathering, and it turns out that if you talk to people about how they feel and what they think, you get some pretty interesting insights (and an idea of what to do next that isn’t just based on guesswork and generalising from self). Three things keep coming up from talking to people about what we suck at  in terms of internal comms. And, as far as I can tell, they’re all examples where personal insecurity on the part of the person doing the communicating makes the experience much worse for the people on the receiving end. 1. Spending time telling people how you’re going to do something, not what you’re doing and why Imagine you’ve got to give an update to a lot of people who don’t work in your area or department but do have an interest in what you’re doing (either because they want to know because they’re curious or because they need to know because it’s going to affect their work too). You don’t want to look bad at your job. You want to make them think you’ve got it covered – ideally because you do*. And you want to reassure them that there’s lots of exciting work going on in your area to make [insert thing of choice] happen to [insert thing of choice] so that [insert group of people] will be happy. That’s great! You’re doing a good job and you want to tell people about it. This is good comms stuff right here. However, you’re slightly afraid you might secretly be stupid or lazy or incompetent. And you’re exponentially more afraid that the people you’re talking to might think you’re stupid or lazy or incompetent. Or pointless. Or not-adding-value. Or whatever the thing that’s the worst possible thing to be in your company is. So you open by mentioning all the stuff you’re going to do, spending five minutes or so making sure that everyone knows that you’re DOING lots of STUFF. And the you talk for the rest of the time about HOW you’re going to do the stuff, because that way everyone will know that you’ve thought about this really hard and done tons of planning and had lots of great ideas about process and that you’ve got this one down. That’s the stuff you’ve got to say, right? To prove you’re not fundamentally worthless as a human being? Well, maybe. But probably not. See, the people who need to know how you’re going to do the stuff are the people doing the stuff. And those are the people in your area who you’ve (hopefully-please-for-the-love-of-everything-holy) already talked to in depth about how you’re going to do the thing (because else how could they help do it?). They are the only people who need to know the how**. It’s the difference between strategy and tactics. The people outside of your bubble of stuff-doing need to know the strategy – what it is that you’re doing, why, where you’re going with it, etc. The people on the ground with you need the strategy and the tactics, because else they won’t know how to do the stuff. But the outside people don’t really need the tactics at all. Don’t bother with the how unless your audience needs it. They probably don’t. It might make you feel better about yourself, but it’s much more likely that Bob and Jane are thinking about how long this meeting has gone on for already than how personally impressive and definitely-not-an-idiot you are for knowing how you’re going to do some work. Feeling marginally better about yourself (but, let’s face it, still insecure as heck) is not worth the cost, which in this case is the alienation of your audience. 2. Talking for too long about stuff This is kinda the same problem as the previous problem, only much less specific, and I’ve more or less covered why it’s bad already. Basic motivation: to make people think you’re not an idiot. What you do: talk for a very long time about what you’re doing so as to make it sound like you know what you’re doing and lots about it. What your audience wants: the shortest meaningful update. Some of this is a kill your darlings problem – the stuff you’re doing that seems really nifty to you seems really nifty to you, and thus you want to share it with everyone to show that you’re a smart person who thinks up nifty things to do. The downside to this is that it’s mostly only interesting to you – if other people don’t need to know, they likely also don’t care. Think about how you feel when someone is talking a lot to you about a lot of stuff that they’re doing which is at best tangentially interesting and/or relevant. You’re probably not thinking that they’re really smart and clearly know what they’re doing (unless they’re talking a lot and being really engaging about it, which is not the same as talking a lot). You’re probably thinking about something totally unrelated to the thing they’re talking about. Or the fact that you’re bored. You might even – and this is the opposite of what they’re hoping to achieve by talking a lot about stuff – be thinking they’re kind of an idiot. There’s another huge advantage to paring down what you’re trying to say to the barest possible points – it clarifies your thinking. The lightning talk format, as well as other formats which limit the time and/or number of slides you have to say a thing, are really good for doing this. It’s incredibly likely that your audience in this case (the people who need to know some things about your thing but not all the things about your thing) will get everything they need to know from five minutes of you talking about it, especially if trying to condense ALL THE THINGS into a five-minute talk has helped you get clear in your own mind what you’re doing, what you’re trying to say about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The bonus of this is that by being clear in your thoughts and in what you say, and in not taking up lots of people’s time to tell them stuff they don’t really need to know, you actually come across as much, much smarter than the person who talks for half an hour or more about things that are semi-relevant at best. 3. Waiting until you’ve got every detail sorted before announcing a big change to the people affected by it This is the worst crime on the list. It’s also human nature. Announcing uncertainty – that something important is going to happen (big reorganisation, product getting canned, etc.) but you’re not quite sure what or when or how yet – is scary. There are risks to it. Uncertainty makes people anxious. It might even paralyse them. You can’t run a business while you’re figuring out what to do if you’ve paralysed everyone with fear over what the future might bring. And you’re scared that they might think you’re not the right person to be in charge of [thing] if you don’t even know what you’re doing with it. Best not to say anything until you know exactly what’s going to happen and you can reassure them all, right? Nope. The people who are going to be affected by whatever it is that you don’t quite know all the details of yet aren’t stupid***. You wouldn’t have hired them if they were. They know something’s up because you’ve got your guilty face on and you keep pulling people into meeting rooms and looking vaguely worried. Here’s the deal: it’s a lot less stressful for everyone (including you) if you’re up front from the beginning. We took this approach during a recent company-wide reorganisation and got really positive feedback. People would much, much rather be told that something is going to happen but you’re not entirely sure what it is yet than have you wait until it’s all fixed up and then fait accompli the heck out of them. They will tell you this themselves if you ask them. And here’s why: by waiting until you know exactly what’s going on to communicate, you remove any agency that the people that the thing is going to happen to might otherwise have had. I know you’re scared that they might get scared – and that’s natural and kind of admirable – but it’s also patronising and infantilising. Ask someone whether they’d rather work on a project which has an openly uncertain future from the beginning, or one where everything’s great until it gets shut down with no forewarning, and very few people are going to tell you they’d prefer the latter. Uncertainty is humanising. It’s you admitting that you don’t have all the answers, which is great, because no one does. It allows you to be consultative – you can actually ask other people what they think and how they feel and what they’d like to do and what they think you should do, and they’ll thank you for it and feel listened to and respected as people and colleagues. Which is a really good reason to start talking to them about what’s going on as soon as you know something’s going on yourself. All of the above assumes you actually care about talking to the people who work with you and for you, and that you’d like to do the right thing by them. If that’s not the case, you can cheerfully disregard the advice here, but if it is, you might want to think about the ways above – and the inevitable countless other ways – that making internal communication about you and not about your audience could actually be doing the people you’re trying to communicate with a huge disservice. So take a deep breath and talk. For five minutes or so. About the important things. Not the other things. As soon as you possibly can. And you’ll be fine.   *Of course you do. You’re good at your job. Don’t worry. **This might not always be true, but it is most of the time. Other people who need to know the how will either be people who you’ve already identified as needing-to-know and thus part of the same set as the people in you’re area you’ve already discussed this with, or else they’ll ask you. But don’t bring this stuff up unless someone asks for it, because most of the people in the audience really don’t care and you’re wasting their time. ***I mean, they might be. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re not.

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• Customer Experience in the Year Ahead

  - by Christina McKeon

  With 2012 coming to an end soon, we find ourselves reflecting on the year behind us and the year ahead. Now is a good time for reflection on your customer experience initiatives to see how far you have come and where you need to go. Looking back on your customer experience efforts this year, were you able to accomplish the following? Customer journey mapping Align processes across the entire customer lifecyle (buying and owning) Connect all functional areas to the same customer data Deliver consistent and personal experiences across all customer touchpoints Make it easy and rewarding to be your customer Hire and develop talent that drives better customer experiences Tie key performance indicators (KPIs) to each of your customer experience objectives This is by no means a complete checklist for your customer experience strategy, but it does help you determine if you have moved in the right direction for delivering great customer experiences. If you are just getting started with customer experience planning or were not able to get to everything on your list this year, consider focusing on customer journey mapping in 2013. This exercise really helps your organization put your customer in the center and understand how everything you do affects that customer. At Oracle, we see organizations in various stages of customer experience maturity all learn a lot when they go through journey mapping. Companies just starting out with customer experience get a complete understanding of what it is like to be a customer and how everything they do affects that customer. And, organizations that are further along with customer experience often find journey mapping helps provide perspective when re-visiting their customer experience strategy. Happy holidays and best wishes for delivering great customer journeys in 2013!

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• Announcing SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2010

  - by Brian Jackett

  It is with great pleasure that today I can announce the very first SharePoint Saturday Columbus.  SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2010 will be happening on August 14th at The Conference Center at OCLC in Dublin, OH.  As many of the readers of my blog may be aware I’ve attended or spoken at over half a dozen SharePoint Saturdays in the past 8 months alone, but this will be my first time actually organizing one.  Myself and a group of very dedicated individuals have been hard at work the past few months getting the ball rolling and we’re happy to see it taking shape.   Pertinent Resources Website – find announcements and up to the date details at www.SharePointSaturday.org/Columbus Twitter – follow us at @SPSColumbus Email – email us at [email protected] with any questions, comments, or concerns   What can you do?     There are three main areas that we are looking for your help at this time. Spread the word – simply put start spreading the word to friends, coworkers, user groups, clients, and anyone else you think may be interested in SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2010.  We’ll be opening registration in early July so look for an announcement with details closer to that timeframe. Sponsorship – if your company or a company you know is interested in sponsoring SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2010 we have many opportunity levels available.  Email [email protected] for more information and we’ll send you a sponsorship packet. Speakers – if you or someone you know is interested in presenting at SharePoint Saturday Columbus 2010 please fill out a speaker submission form found here and email it to [email protected] by July 10th. I hope you can join us for this great event!         -Frog Out

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• November 2012 Chicago IT Architects Group Meeting Recap

  - by Tim Murphy

  So the year is coming to an end.  A hearty few came out two days before Thanksgiving to discuss adopting agile in the enterprise.  While Norm Murrin claimed to be nervous about talking in front of a group your wouldn’t have known by his presentation.  He really made a topic that has always been hard to relate very personal.  This lead to some great discussion.  I came out of looking for ways to investigate agile further.  His presentation can be found here. This was our last meeting for the year.  We are looking forward to next year and are starting to line up some speakers and topics.  At this point we have an Azure presentation coming in February and are ironing out talks for January and March.  If your would like to join us and have topics you would like to see presented contact me through this blog.  Either leave a comment here or use the contact page.  I would love to hear from you. Have a great holiday season and we will see you next year. del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Information Technology Architects Group,CITAG,Agile,Norman Murrin

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• Is it possible to procure venture capital based on in-progress ideas? [migrated]

  - by Clay Shannon

  I hope this is not the wrong forum for this question, but I can't find one in the Stack Exchange "family" that would be more appropriate. I have ideas for two web sites which I think will be quite popular (they are totally unrelated to each other). I am a programmer, and a "creative" (photographer, author, musician). So I have the "vision" as well as the technical know-how to bring these websites into being. My "problem" is that I'm champing at the bit to complete them, and don't have much time to work on them (being employed fulltime, etc.) If I continue to work on them in my so-called spare time, it will probably be a year or more before they are both done. If I was in a position to work on them fulltime (IOW, if I had a "silent partner" willing to invest enough money that I could quit my job), I could have them complete in about three months. I would be willing to partner with somebody or some group who would back me financially in this way. My vision/work combined with their monetary investment could bring about "great things" or at least moderately great things. I know you can "crowd fund" startups and so on, but for that you need to expose your idea. My ideas are not something I would want to make public, as somebody might "steal" them. I'm willing to discuss them with serious individual potential investors, though (provided they were willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement). Does anybody have any recommendation on how I might find a suitable partner[s] for this/these ventures?

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• Windows 7 on 1st Gen Macbook Pro (Q4-2008), power management problems.

  - by typemismatch

  I have the first generation macbook pro, purchased Q4 2008. I've been trying to run Windows 7 and can get it all installed great with the BootCamp 3.1 64 bit drivers however ... power management isn't great. The screen and keyboard don't automatically dim - the laptop gets too hot. I noticed on some newer macbook pros that windows 7 works perfectly and the above doesn't happen. Does anyone know if there really is a hardware issue with this 1st gen or is there some firmware update I can use to fix this? Thanks!

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• Software vs Network Engineer (Salary, Difficulty, Learning, Happiness)

  - by B Z

  What are your thoughts on being a Software Engineer vs a Network Engineer? I've been on the software field for almost 10 years now and although I still have a great deal of fun (and challenges), I am starting to think it could be better on the "other" side. Not to degrade network engineers (i know there are many great ones out there), it seems (in general) their job is easier, the learning curve from average to good is not as steep, job is less stressful and pay is better on average. I think as software developer I could make the switch to networking and still enjoy working with computers and feel productive. I spend an enormous amount of time learning about software, practices, new technologies, new patters, etc...I think I could spend a much smaller amount of time learning about networking and be just as "good". What are your thoughts? EDIT: This is not about making easy money. Networking and Software are closely related, I love computers and programming, but if I can work with both, make more money and have less stress in my life and can spend more time with my family, then I am willing to consider a change and hence I am looking for advice that Do or Don't support this view.

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