Edward Frost's Weblog

Powerpoint – an alternative approach by Seth Godin

edwardfrost — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:53:05 +0000

How many PowerPoint presentation have you at through in the last month? How many have you given? It’s a reasonable bet that most of the presentations looked much the same and were. well, dull. There are books about how to make a good PowerPoint presentation. Every sales training course, every MBA curriculum includes rule-setting about PowerPoint presentations.

As a technical communicator there are plenty of Ph.D. dissertations that conclude with rules about how to give and not give PowerPoint presentation. Typically these involve Information Mapping-esque thinking like “your bullet points should ideally number 7, but always between 5 and 9 points”. I follow these rules, because my left brain tells me that ‘best practice’ is an important concept: we should inherit wisdom and use it and improve it, right?

If you haven’t already discovered it, I recommend to you Seth Godin’s blog. My right brain really enjoys this marketing guru. He’s right almost all the time (imho) fun, funny and truthful. I want to connect you to this post about his method of giving PowerPoint presentations. It’s a really interesting perspective not just on using PowerPoint but the bigger issue of how to give a presentation. I’m pretty sure I can build the principle of emotional connection into most any communication. However, I’d have liked him to talk about some boundaries..avoiding manipulation…becuase that would dishonest communication. I am sure Mr. Godin is a thoroughly ethical chap, so I’m not worried about it.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/really_bad_powe.html

Enjoy,

Eddy

edwardfrost — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:38:28 +0000

Business Growth Without the Pain

Cloud as a tool for competitive edge is considered in this article from Maxima:

People matter more than technology

edwardfrost — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:22:17 +0000

As anyone who has run a successful company will attest, although we work in the technology industry, it’s people that make success, not just technology. The human aspect of the ‘solution’ is the most important part. A solution architect can bring brilliant technological solutions to a dysfunctional team or to dysfunctional people, and it just won’t deliver business success. Of course the reverse is also true, but to a lesser extent. A rocking team of rocking people can do quite a bit with dysfunctional technology. The ‘win’ is when we get rocking technology with a rocking team of rocking people. That’s the goal. Technology needs to be the servant of the people. Humans need purpose, respect and freedom to grow – and even freedom to fail…safely

I am reminded of this as my annual obsession with Formula 1 gets underway tomorrow. Adrian Newey, the 52 year old ‘rock star’ chassis designer, who is arguably the central piece in the phenomenal rise and success for the Red Bull racing team said something very telling in an interview quoted by the BBC: “I’ve had offers from Ferrari in the past and I’ve considered them seriously. But F1 is a people sport, not a marque sport.” Ferrari, of course, is the ultimate brand in Formula 1 and fast cars in general. Their technology is stunning (including their SharePoint based web site!). However, they do not have a great reputation in the human department. Red Bull understand how to let brilliant people work, and the technology enables that. The result is a loyalty and ‘culture of success’ that transcends share-price and bottom line revenues. They follow, to be sure.

How about your business – your team? Are your ‘A’ players allowed to grow and stretch themselves, safe from micromanagement and judgement when they fail? Reward innovation, loyalty and hard work with a little freedom and technological investment, and the good people will blossom and grow.

Key SharePoint truth #1: Governance

edwardfrost — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:43:57 +0000

SharePoint is phenomenally successful. The last two releases (2007, 2010) typically experience rapid adoption across organbizations that implement it – or perhaps better – release it. Several CIO’s have told me the same thing – once ‘released’, SharePoint grows like a weed. People understand it, learn how to create workspaces and mysites. Before long IT has issues on it’s hands – who has the right to delete websites, libraries, workspaces? What happens to the information there? Who judges what is worth keeping and what needs to be ditched? Who actually owns this thing?!

The answer is that the right time to work out the answers to this question is…before you start. It’s called governance – at least that’s the word that that Microsoft use, so it’s now the word the SharePoint community uses. A Governance Plan. There is a lots of experience and expertese that is needed to get a Governance Plan right – to cover the essentials for today – and leave flexibility in the right places for growth tomorrow.

If you are already into SharePoint and are feeling the need for that Governance Plan that you didn’t create…it can still be done. However, it’ll need some extra special attention to be given to the stakeholders who may or may not have helpful ideas about who ‘owns’ what about SharePoint.

Speak to your Microsoft Gold Partner of choice about working with you to develop a governance plan. It’s the only way to do SharePoint.

IE9 and Microsoft CRM 4

edwardfrost — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:41:32 +0000

So it wasn’t many hours into using the new Beta release of Internet Explorer 9 that I discovered it doesn’t work with one of Microsoft’s flagship applications: CRM release 4. Basically, CRM4 implements with heavy use of Javascript, and IE9′s Javascript engine just doesn’t work with it. So Microsoft – this is a pretty major fail! It’s hard to believe that their Alpha testing didn’t pick up on something so major. Indeed I was convinced it must be something I was doing wrong. But the forums are flooded with people registering the same errors.
I’ve backed out to IE8 for my business work because CRM is a core critical app for me. For personal browsing – Google Chrome is my choice.

Overall, IE9, when fixed, looks like it will be a big jump forward for Microsoft and puts it at the head of the class of browsers.

Internet Explorer 9

edwardfrost — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:29:06 +0000

Dare I say it but recently I’d started to use Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer 8. That was partly because I picked up a rogue Browser Helper Object for IE8 that pretended to be the Search Provider for Google. I just could not get rid of it. But mainly it was becuase Chrome is such a good browser: fast, lots of real estate for the web site and the address bar doubled as the search box.

Microsoft have just issued the beta of IE9 and I am liking what I see…mostly. As expected it does all that Google does – maximaize the website and minimise the screen space used by the browser itself: check. The address bar doubles as the search box for your preferred search provider: check. Finally, finally, Microsoft have built in support for SVG graphics – years behind Firefox and Chrome: check. Support for HTML 5 is there…and that’s where the problem is, at least for me. The support for scripting in IE9 is bitty. For instance, as I type this blog post using a PERL editor, it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. IE8 was better at this.

But hey, it’s beta code, so I will stcik with it and hope the bugs get worked out.

Pinning my favorite web sites to my task bar is nice enough. Sure I could have done that with a simple URL shortcut, but this is tidy. A fun feature is that the color scheme for the browser toolbar etc changes to the dominant color of the web site/app you are using.

What will Chrome do next?

SharePoint 2010

edwardfrost — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 14:38:54 +0000

I’m delighted to blog that here at Maxima US, we have our first implementation of SharePoint 2010 on the books. It’s a regional healthcare network of clinics that serve over 130,000 patient visits a year. We’ve looked after this client for some years now, implementing document management, and policies and procedures online reference libraries. We’ve recently rebuilt their intranet around SharePoint 2007 and upgraded some older SharePoint 2003 sites to 2007. With the whole palette of MOSS 2007 available to use, we’ve been able to do some nifty things including developing a Google search web part. The whole team is psyched about the prospect of getting to work a full SharePoint Server 2010 implementation. We’ve been modelling 2010 virtual machines for a while now, so it;s familiar ground. More later!

SharePoint Conference 2009 – Day 1

edwardfrost — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:59:10 +0000

Report card: SharePoint 2010 – A; Conference organization B; Steve Ballmer: D

SPC2009 in Vegas is 7000 geeks ignoring the fleshly lures of sin city and scurrying from session to session clutching their cell phones and notebooks while each trying to look nonchalantly like they just understood everything in the last session. Not!

Truth #1: SharePoint 2010 is a very large and complicated thing. Microsoft are struggling to call it what it is. It’s a platform, a matrix of applications, the way from here to the future of middleware. However you describe it, it’s easier to use than SP2007, so long as you grasp 40 concepts and hold them all in your mind simultaneously. I may leave Vegas with a good understanding of what Microsoft are SP2010, but there is surely a long training road ahead before I start consulting in it. One has to focus and be selective. I’ve chosen the new searching functionality and “ECM for the masses” as my two areas of interest. That will keep me plenty busy.

Truth #2 Steve Ballmer needn’t have turned up. The opening keynote speaker sauntered on stage in an ill-fitting suit and scuffed shoes and read from the teleprompters for 45 minutes while pacing across the stage telling us how enthusiastic and excited he is about SharePoint. His body language and general demeanor said exactly the opposite. He was dull, dispassionate, carrying the air of a man who wanted to be somewhere else. He talked airily about ‘the future’ and how SharePoint was going to take Microsoft there. I always worry when the CEO chooses to talk about the indistinct future rather than about the concrete tomorrow. It was unconvincing. In passing, as if it hardly mattered, he mentioned that the beta release of SP2010 would be ‘sometime in November’. What?! You’ve got 7000 SharePoint enthusiasts to give up 5 days of life, travel hundreds/thousands of miles and pay thousands of dollars, and you can’t even clean you shoes or get a beta release to us in time for the conference? Sigh.

Next up was Jeff Teper, in a suit that fitted him, shiny shoes, with a spark in his manner and a well prepared message as he overviewed the new release with humor and flare. I thought I heard the sound of a helicopter taking Ballmer on to something more important.

Truth #3: Microsoft can put on a great conference but I think the leap from 3800 last year to 7000 this year has strained them a little. The WiFi only works in some rooms, the sound system is horrid – being only intelligible in the center of the rooms, and sessions are switched from room to room without any notice. I missed the first 15 minutes of two sessions today just because that’s how long it takes to slog up or down two floors in this gargantuan location.

Noodles with friends in the evening then off to bed for some zz’s. Let’s hope tomorrow finds me able to get into the product more…

SharePoint Conference 09

edwardfrost — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:36:00 +0000

2 weeks to go before SPC09 in Vegas: 6,000 SharePoint professionals getting together to celebrate SharePoint 2010. You can follows my experiences here at my blog or at my Twitter (if I see anything Tweet-worthy). I am especially looking forward to seeing Steve Ballmer and the new Business Data Catalog functionality. I’m also keen to see if Microsoft have managede to pull off improvements in the usability of the SharePoint administration tools. If this is to be a Content Management tool for the masses, then the admin side could do with some streamlining. And then…what about the compliance holes that are big enough for a Risk Manager to drive a bus through? My expectations are high!

EPUB: The Next PDF?

edwardfrost — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:59:47 +0000

This came in on ‘the wire’ this morning. While Adobe has opened PDF as a public standard, it is still an unweildy and cumbersome document format. Microsoft’s XPS is good alternative. How we have EPUB added into the mix:

EPUB: The Next PDF?

EPUB, an XML format for reflowable text made from three open standards, is on its way to becoming an e-book industry standard. The standard, developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), is gaining support from publishers and technology firms, including Adobe, Sony, and Google. IDPF executive director Michael Smith says that five e-book formats are used in North America, but the United Kingdom, Germany, and France have all taken an EPUB-only approach. EPUB became a standard in September 2007, and the Association of American Publishers issued an open letter to IDPF announcing their support for EPUB in May 2008. Because EPUB is XML-based, it can be converted into other proprietary formats, enabling publishers to create a single EPUB file that distributors can convert, lowering costs and allowing publishers to introduce more titles to the market. EPUB is best suited for text-based materials, and does not lend itself well to documents that rely on a fixed design with heavy graphics.

From “EPUB: The Next PDF?” Computerworld Canada (07/21/09) Kavur, Jennifer