Simplicity the New Mantra
Posted on July 29, 2008
Every once in a while there is an idea that seems to touch on every area of my life. These recurrent themes cause me to stop and take note as they often lead to greater understanding. One theme I see recurring is the idea of simplicity, streamlined approach to organizational development.
Certainly the wave of economic shifts in response to the energy crunch would encourage a more conservative approach to operations from a business standpoint. More fundamental though I believe is a reaction to the complexity of life and a return to the essentials of getting things done. Perhaps there’s a deeper realization that "less is more" is really true.
Most recently this cropped-up at work with much talk in management circles about the book Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. The book essentially says find what’s fundamentally valuable to your customer, cut waste and deliver in an efficient and effective manner.
Borrowing some of the concepts of Lean Thinking in my personal life, we live in a small house, drive older cars and try to avoid a lifestyle of waste. By being effective and efficient at work I produce quality work that is rewarded thereby building wealth for my family.
A streamlined approach is also an effective means to advancing organizational objectives that are not economically driven as well. The application is broad as is the case with the book Simple Church. Drawing parallels from marketing such as the iPod and Google’s homepage, the authors point to a simple approach to church that is in sharp contrast to an organization that runs a plethora of programs. This book got me excited as I’ve been meditating lately on Acts 2:42-47 which gives a picture of the early church devoted to a few things that rocked the world.
Like loosing oneself from debt, letting go of waste, complexity and unnecessary baggage gives greater flexibility and freedom. I guess the writer of the ancient book of Hebrews had it right when he said in chapter 12 "let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us". Now that’s lean thinking.
Filed Under Just for Fun, Critical Thinking | 4 Comments
New Star Wars Game Distorts Right and Wrong for Gamers
Posted on July 17, 2008
Not one to usually get on any soap box, but after reviewing the new game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed I couldn’t help but be dissappointed in George Lucas. Let me say that I am a diehard fan of the original three movies. I was out of the country when the first of the next three were released and never quite got the fever for the second group. The video game’s storyline actually serves to tie the two groups of films together which sounds like a great idea. The quality of the game looks excellent and I am sure that Lucas Arts did a steller job with the project as a whole.
My main criticism if you will, is that the gamer plays the apprentice to Darth Vader and is a member of the darkside hunting down the last of the Jedi. While an interesting concept, in my opinion, it goes against my whole experience as a kid of rooting for the good guys.
The magic of the original Star Wars episodes was the triumph of good over evil going against the odds in the face of great adversity. Classic tails of good versus evil have been used to challenge and encourage young people to do what is right with noble character. Star Wars has been one of the mythological stories that shaped the psychi of so many people of my generation. To this day I still have daydreams of defeating the dark side and try to live a life of choosing right over wrong.
Yes, I am no relativist and do believe there is right and wrong. Luke, Hansolo and Leigh expect nothing less from me. The kid inside me just doesn’t get this twist on the classic tail. Call me a simpleton, but I just don’t get the joy of hunting down noble characters as a villan bent on destruction.
Filed Under Reviews | Leave a Comment
There and Back Again
Posted on July 15, 2008
Yes, it’s a great title for any adventure, Thank you Mr. Tolkein. My wife, kiddos and I embarked on the 4th of July from Austin up through Santa Fe, New Mexico on to South Central Colorado for a twelve day journey. We enjoyed Family Camp with Sky Ranch at Ute Trail where we made new friends, went horse back riding, kayaking, white water rafting, tomahawk throwing, skeet shooting, hiking, and a plethora of other activities; a wonderful getaway from our everyday life. On our return trip we hung out in Santa Fe for a couple of nights for just a taste of "Fanta Se" as one of the locals called it.
I compiled this quick video synopsis of the week. While the setting for the camp was breathtaking, the most beautiful part of the week was both the families and camp staff that we enjoyed. For those looking for a fun vacation and a spiritually encouraging experience in a Christian environment, Sky Ranch Family Camp is spot on for a worthwhile get away.
Filed Under Just for Fun | 4 Comments
KOA in Abilene, TX is OK
Posted on July 4, 2008
Filed Under Just for Fun | Leave a Comment
Lessons Learned from Leading a Team
Posted on June 27, 2008
Being a leader is an interesting and challenging responsibility, but leading a cross-departmental team where influencing an already busy group of folks kicks it up a notch. For the last couple of months I’ve been leading an intranet implementation team for a global enterprise. I work with folks from several department from more than one location and report to a multi-national executive committee. The task is large and the timeline is condensed for the initial launch in the matter of months. Some of the lessons I’m learning (or relearning) are transferable to many different team leadership situations:
- Listen. A great lesson for many of life’s situations, but listening is a key in leadership. Hearing the expectations of upper management, the concerns and ideas of the team and getting feedback from the company or organization in general is invaluable. Building surveys and interviews into the process will give some beefy information.
- Communicate. It is up to the team leader to take initiative to communicate often, thoroughly, timely and succinctly. To keep the team engaged and encouraged, consistent communication from you breathes life into the process and helps to keep the team objectives front burner.
- Plan. Planning is huge and encompassing for team leadership. Developing and continually revising issues, tasks, milestones, team meetings and reporting mechanisms is critical.
- Report. Invest time into report creation. Monthly reports are a summary of the process and are a good accountability structure. I leverage the time to tie-up loose ends and advance objectives in the process of report creation. Keeping the next report in mind with every task helps in staying the course when issues arise that would become a side eddy for the teams efforts.
- Illustrate. Nothing like pretty pictures to tell a story. Illustrations, graphs, charts, wireframes all help to paint the picture that both the team and leadership need to see.
- Work hard. Team leadership requires a level of committment and industry that is not for the faint at heart. More responsibility than authority, more service than honor, but it can be a fascinating process to see something concrete develop through the course of the project.
- Be diplomatic. Issues such as the development timeline, objectives, structure and features are often negotiable with a bit of diplomacy. The reporting structure provides a means to address key issues along with ad hoc meetings with key stakeholders.
- Make no assumptions. Everyone has the best intentions in a team meeting. Follow-up and building-in accountability structures will help folks stay on task.
- Research. Know your subject well as you will now be seen as an expert. The more you know the better communicator you will be.
- Share the load. It’s called a team for a reason. Engaging all the team members in the process is critical for it’s success.
There are undoubtably many more takeaways I’ll gain from this experience. Hopefully, I can keep these points in mind as the project moves forward. There are so many good lessons to learn from leadership. Any thoughts come to your mind? I’m always in the market for good pointers.
Filed Under Ponderings, Productivity, communication strategy | 4 Comments
Acrobat 9 is PDF on Steroids
Posted on June 25, 2008
Just released, Adobe Acrobat 9 is a major upgrade offering many slick new features such as:
- Play media within the document. Acrobat will now convert MOV, WMV, FLV and H.264 files to Flash to for playing audio and video content.
- Easy file conversion from Office products.
- Robust management for permissions, encrypted data and digital signatures.
- Drag and drop documents and multimedia content for flexible presentation creation.
- Integrate 3D representation from CAD applications.
- Dynamically interact with others via acrobat.com. The new online service allows for collaboration, live meetings, easy pdf creation, file sharing, and online storage.
Check-out the Acrobat 9 Product Comparison for the differences between Acrobat 9 Standard, Pro and Pro Extended.
It’s amazing to think what this will mean for web publishing and presentation of dynamic information. For instance, instead of a simple spec sheet for a product, why not incorporate 3D views of the product, audio descriptions and video tutorials all in a portable format that is cross-plaform compatible
Filed Under Reviews | 3 Comments
Tribal Language
Posted on June 24, 2008
This morning I dropped into Starbucks for a non-fat GRTL (Green Tea Latte). Vicariously I’m learning what one Barista called Starbonics, the tribal language of Starbucks. Tribal languages abound in every organization. To communicate effectively within any group it is important to pick-up their language. The development of a tribal language is a natural and critical element that builds cohesion between members. In some cases it facilitates higher thinking, in others more efficient processes, such as the case at Starbucks.
Some folks say, "I’m not good at learning languages." Often their experience with formal study of a foreign language resulted in a frustrating and intimidating experience. Truth is everyone learns multiple languages throughout their life. Here are just a few of the languages I speak:
- Geek Speak: Seen the bumper sticker "There’s no place like 127.0.0.1"? The default IP (Internet Protocol) address for every machine is 127.0.0.1 which is the home address.
- Design Terminology: Publishing text in a graphic from Photoshop is often kludgy (kludge meaning something is crude or inelegant). Text is more pristine when exported from a vector format such as .eps.
- Texan: Hi ya’ll.
The list goes on. Other languages I "speak": web developer, Engineering, Christianese, Higher-Ed, Austinisms, Marketing, business… and of course various standard spoken languages such as English, Spanish, Turkish and bits of Hebraic, Arabic, and Italian.
Think about all the life experience one gains over decades. With each job, each place you lived, each area of study, the first thing to pick-up is the language, the coding system for communication. Learning the right terminology is critical for success. How many tribal languages do you know? How many do you use from day-to-day? What tricks have you found in your station in life to pick-up new terminology?
Filed Under Productivity, communication strategy | 4 Comments
Is it the GWW instead of the WWW?
Posted on June 20, 2008
Filed Under Just for Fun, Google | 2 Comments
Rule of Thumb: Three or More for Categories
Posted on June 18, 2008
Realizing I probably had too many categories for my posts, well over a hundred, I decided it was time to trim the number down a bit. But what would be the criteria? Certainly dropping-off the single post references made sense. How does one then quantify what constitutes enough for a category? I’ve landed on the number three.
Categories or tags are connect-the-dot labels that group content from multiple posts together. It stands to reason that if there are three or more related posts, a category could tie them together.
As I stripped away useless categories, I discovered redundant/like categories that I combined. There was also a couple categories such as "writing" for which I knew I had many posts but only one was tagged.
As I move forward with posts, I will for the most part categorize retrospectively after I have three or more like posts. It’s really a simple idea but one that helps solidify the concept in my mind.
Filed Under Web and Tech Helps, WordPress, Blog Tip | 5 Comments
Checklist for Setting Up a WordPress Website
Posted on June 17, 2008
Setting up WordPress websites has become a regular part of my work. Much more than just for blogs, the platform is ideal for rapidly launching sites. In fact, nine out of ten WP sites I launch are non-blogging sites. I thought for my sake and for others who are looking for a checklist for what needs to be done to setup a WordPress website, I’d punch out a basic checklist for the process. This may get quite lengthy, but hopefully it will be a helpful resource to make sure all the bases are covered.
Hosting
- Search for and select domain an open domain.
- Sign-up with host and document access information.
- Setup ftp access and document access information.
- Setup MySQL database and document access information.
- Create sub-folder on host with the same name as domain (This allows easy launching of additional sites on same host) and point domain to sub-folder.
WordPress Install
- Download and unzip latest version of WordPress.
- Save wp-config-sample.php as wp-config and edit database access information in the top of the document. The documented info from your host provider, i.e. database name, host, username and password should be entered.
- Upload WordPress and go to the domain address in the browser.
- Click to install and be sure to copy the temporary Admin password into notepad and log-in to instigate the installation.
- Immediately change the Admin password to something familiar so that you don’t lock yourself out of WordPress.
Basic WordPress Configuration
- During installation check the "I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors" during the configuration process. To change the setting later go to "Settings" under the Privacy link and change the option to "I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines…".
- Search for and upload a theme to modify. For CSS gurus who want to configure I highly customized site, I recommend using the Sandbox theme. Not a lot of bells and whistles, but it provides a strip-down template to build from scratch.
- Change the Permalink. Under settings in WP 2.5+ go to Permalinks and change the default. My favorite is the simple Custom Structure: /%postname%/.
- Write a Page called "Home" and set it as the default homepage. Under "Settings" click on "Reading" and for "Front page displays" click "A static page" and select "Home" for under the "Front page" drop-down.
- Setup the basic landing pages and sub-pages for the site. When a sub-page is created, under "Page Parent" select the parent page.
- Delete the site Description. In most cases I have no need for the "Tagline" that is used for blogs. I’ll add-in my own meta tags later. Go to "Settings" which brings-up "General Settings" and delete the "Tagline".
Install Plug-ins
- Download the FCKEditor for WordPress plugin. Unzip and upload folder to wp-content/plugins/. Then activate the plugin. This will instigate a much improved wysiwyg editor for pages and posts.
- Download and install the WordPress Database Backup plugin. This nifty plugin can schedule to email you a backup of the database on a weekly basis. You will still need to download your site periodically, but what an amazing function to capture the content from the site.
- Download and instlal cforms II an amazingly powerful forms configurator. This plugin is the most robust configurator I’ve found which both drops form submissions to a user-friendly database on the site as well as sends email submissions to the designated manager of the contacts.
- For sites requiring mobile access WordPress Mobile Edition plugin detects mobile users and serves-up the page in readable mobile format.
- The Search Pages plugin enables the search function to return results from both pages and posts.
- Install Google Analytics for web stats.
Design the Theme
- Create a back-up of the site before beginning to tweak the design.
- For a simple, straightforward site: replace the header image, modify color scheme, font treatment and spacing as needed.
- Tweak the navigation to display pages and ditch the other widgets except the search form. If hard-coded changes are needed in the navigation, start by inspecting the header.php, functions.php and possibly sidebar.php files. These will most likely contain the code for the menu.
- Populate the site with enough content including images to get a feel for how well the navigation and flow of the site works.
- Make adjustments to accomodate what is stipulated in the scope document. If you are working with a client, a scope document will save you grief as you will have the stipulated requirements for the site. This will help scope creep to get out of hand.
Before Going Live
- Create an account for content managers.
- Orient the user with the site with basic update training.
- Check for browser compatibility in major and current search engines. There’s much debate on this subject. Generally I ensure at least the current and previous versions of FireFox and IE work well.
- Go back to the Privacy setting and enable search engines to find the site.
- Spell check and surf the site looking for content or graphical errors. Ideally, it’s good to ask other folks to hit the site as well.
- Use the free online ad credits the host gives with a new account to help launch the site and emphasize to the client that ranking in the engines takes time.
There’s the initial run-down. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Depending on requirements the design phase could become quite lengthy. There are also a boat load of other plugins, but those are the most common ones I use for a typical configuration. I may continue to add items down the line as they come to mind. Any good suggestions will be added as well.
Filed Under Tutorials, Plug-ins, Web and Tech Helps, WordPress | 5 Comments
« go back — keep looking »
