A Personal Blog
Archive for November, 2003
Caught With My Pants Down
Nov 26th
One of my colleagues is leaving work soon. He’s half cleaned his desk. Upon leaving for lunch today he looked at his desk and said “gee, it looks like I’ve already left it’s soooo empty!”
For those who don’t know I’m … Well, I enjoy a decent prank now and again (nothing dangerous, nothing disgusting).
So, he leaves for lunch and we hide all his audio, video and computer equipment. But, really, that wasn’t enough for me. So we’re emptying his drawers and moving the contents to an empty desk beside his. We’re about 60% of the way through and in he walks.
The scene goes something like this:
INT-TACF OFFICE
::: In walks main character, Will Elder
Jeremy: CRAP!! Will: What? Jeremy: Crap crap crap! Will: Where’s my computer? Jeremy: Crap crap crap!!! Will: What have you done?
::: Jeremy falls to the ground in shame
Agh. Really.
Spam: Removing the Incentive
Nov 26th
Okay, comment spammers. Evil folk, really. They spam for a single reason: because it increases links back to their website.
They really don’t expect most people to visit the site, they are really looking for extra weighting in the various search engines.
So, search engines.
Search engines scan the HTML of a page for ‘context’ as well as for URL’s. One key thing about all the major search engines, though, is that they patently ignore JavaScript, or anything in <SCRIPT> tags.
So, I’ve changed my MovableType templates. Instead of the $MTAuthorLink$ or whatever was on the Individual Archive template (as well as Comment Listing); I’ve put:
<script language=javascript> <!– document.write (“<a href=></a>”) //–> </script>
Later on I’ll add some logic in terms of email addresses, stripping out stuff, whatever. If someone else wants to do this feel free, but an tag really would be ideal.
Still, for now this fulfills the purpose that even if a spammer spams, they don’t get the search engine benefit of it.
Power of Communities
Nov 26th
An interesting thing happened last month. A guy went to buy a car from EBay. The auction ended. The guy tried to collect. The dealer refused.
A massive upswell in various car communities ensued. More than 1 million people got involved. More than 3000 calls were lodged to the dealership.
No need to read it all, it’s just interesting to see the … Power? No, power is the wrong word because it often gets abused.
Just interesting to see what happened and the resolution.
Culture Of Business
Nov 26th
Earlier I briefly mentioned the culture here.
I realise this really won’t apply to any other organization, since I work for a large (100 staff) church.
Just to go back a bit. Until about 3 years ago we were a ‘small church’. Everything was fly by the seat of our pants, take it as it comes, slack off if you want to, ‘oh, aren’t you special’.
About 2 years ago, a “CEO” was hired. He changed things to be much more corporate. In fact, wholly corporate. From extreme to extreme.
Both had their benefits, but the corporate atmosphere is definitely getting to people. 6 months after the last layoff, people still feel unvalued, discouraged and hate their ‘jobs’.
Ideally we never really wanted anyone to have ‘jobs’. They are working for a church, it should really be more than a job. Really.
So, I’m quickly realising that any change I make actually affects this atmosphere. Any action I engage in. Anything I say. It’s not that I see myself as overly important, trust me. It’s just that it’s true.
Every action, word and decision will either reinforce a ‘church’ (caring) culture, or it will reinforce a business (uncaring) culture.
Our culture is currently hanging in the balance, and not very well. Hopefully it doesn’t break us apart.
Microsoft CRM – Telus Presentation
Nov 26th
Well, yesterday was Telus’s presentation of Microsoft CRM. MS CRM is essentially a mid-market (not enterprise and not SME) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) package. Others in the field include Goldmine.
We are essentially looking at this as one of the options to replace our current business application system.
So, yesterday was half presentation and half user discussion. The few things that caught my eye, for us (since our current system actually does it’s job quite well) are:
1. Ability to delegate tasks and responsibilities through the organization. Similar to email, really, but within a single workspace.
2. CTI (Computer Telephony Integration). Basically when someone calls their phone number is identified and you can do a variety of things with that (pull up record, pull up potential record, modify record, etc).
This is useful for us mainly because we know our phone records are inherently IN-accurate. This would be almost like kicking off a change management process.
The issue with MS CRM, as with any third-party application, is that it will fundamentally change our process. Of course Telus will send in a Business Process Engineer to understand what we do, talk through what we do with individual user groups and suggest improvements to them.
It’s not that they will necessarily redefine our process, but that our process has to change because of the way the system is now.
And because it has to change, users will be upset no matter how high their level of buy-in.
Ultimately we will be choosing between a tool which emulates what we do now and makes the current people’s jobs easier (while solving our issues) and a tool which takes a bigger picture view and makes peoples jobs easier for the future.
It might seem like an easy choice, but it isn’t really. From a business standpoint ‘sacrifice the few for the good of the many’ makes sense. But it doesn’t when I realise that there is in fact a culture here. A fragile culture. One which I really don’t have the right to mess with.
