Nick Bradbury: If You Want to Write Useful Software, You Have to Do Tech Support Quote: If you really want to write useful software, stop spending all your time keeping up with technology. Don’t worry if your resume isn’t filled with the latest buzzwords. Instead, invest your time in talking with your customers. They don’t care what programming language you use – they only care whether your software meets their needs, and the best way to ensure that is by breaking out of your cone of silence and opening the lines of communication. (categories: businessdevelopmentsupportcustomerservicesoftware )
scottberkun.com » The Lefferts law of management The Lefferts law of management: It is your fault. There are a dozen reasonable excuses in any situation for why things are not going well: don’t use them. If you need more help, it’s your job to ask for it. If someone let you down, it’s your job to plan better next time or find a way to recover. If you are the bottleneck, it’s your fault for not delegating more. Whatever the thing is that isn’t going well, you are the primary person to do something about it. If you’re not sure what to do, it’s your job to ask others for advice. If you have the title ‘manager’ in your name, step up. Practice the habit of absorbing blame for what is going on, while distributing the rewards. When all else fails, be the fall guy. If people see you take enough bullets for them, soon they’ll be taking some for you. (categories: businessmanagementscottberkunfailure )
apophenia: I want my cyborg life Had multiple conversations about iPhones / laptops in meetings last week. Agree that it’s helpful to be connected during a meeting / presentation, but I wonder sometimes if we could cut meeting time in half if everyone was paying attention for the entire thing. Half of the onus is on the presenters IMHO: get better at presentations. (categories: attentionlearningsocialmediatwitterconferencesbackchannel )
The Content Conundrum – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design Quote: Whether it’s visual comps, or a prototype, it’s important that whomever is responsible for creating and approving the content is actually involved with the visual designer and prototyper as they ‘package’ that deliverable. It’s impossible to fully evaluate the effectiveness of a web experience without having the content represented and under the same microscope as the design. Brand, product, and even training teams all have their own perspectives about what the content must communicate and are contributing to its development and we don’t want our design to fall apart once this ’collaborative’ writing process starts. Assign accountability to content upfront and place content professionals under the same creative deadlines you’re marching to. (categories: designiauxusabilityprocess )
Military Open Source Software Couple interesting companies we should hit that are attending: Redhat, Accenture, Alfresco. Interesting to note that we could have participated / attended under the guise of Openfire. (categories: opensourcemilitaryconferencesevents )