yes, this one

February 22, 2006

I’m thinking that we’d thought about that one but you know, I just can’t remember so we should probably think about it as open unless you find what you were looking for but wait, that’s it, it was there all the time I’m sorry it must have just slipped through the net somehow like a lot of things do. anyway its the same problem as the other problem and I do know what we’re doing about that one so if you don’t mind waiting until 2008 then I think we’ll be about ready to deploy the first phase of many phases which might not happen after the first phase becomes the last phase and we change the business model and decide we actually don’t need to build it ourselves but hmm we can’t work out who else might build it for us and look its 2007 so I think I might just slip out this door and change my job title so actually if you look closely I’m not actually remotely accountable for that anymore because now I do this instead, see? but I do understand the problem, of course I do. its just that, er, I have to go now

we’ve set the implementation date already so even if you don’t know what I’m talking about it’ll happen anyway and I know you’re all interested to know exactly how we came up with that decision but I can assure you that it was based on a very long list of important things in my head which were relevant and critical at some point and we also happen to have someone there who happens to be doing something else with a similar sounding name so we should expect to be able to leverage some of that groundwork and at least excuse ourselves in the knowledge when it comes to it we really couldn’t forsee the confusion that would have been caused by overlapping programs with the same name happening at the same time in the same place being resourced and managed by completely different business units in the same company who are actually in the office next door but I don’t talk to them because, well, I don’t really like the way they look at me.

I’ll put some kind of agenda together. and then go on holiday.

you liking support sir?

February 16, 2006

you stay loyal to a company and you like a little in return, I mean, any company wants a dependable repeatable revenue stream even if it’s just the kind that comes in once a year because the product just failed outside the warranty or I’d broken it myself by being a clumsy arse. so then ideally you’d expect a technology company to provide support services to individuals who buy their products via integrated and intelligent web venues because we all know that people who buy technology products can’t speak to real people on the phone. especially if the people on the other end of the phone are girls.

having added a couple of bits to my ever-expanding brushed aluminium sony garage sale recently I figured I might register these things online like the registration docs tell you to in order to get the extra benefits of indirect marketing campaigns you didn’t realize you’d agreed to by clicking the submit button. this will be easy because I’m already registered with the MySony and SonyStyle web sites so they know all about me.

if I have to explain how painful the next 3 hours of my life were, you probably use the phone instead. if I didn’t even need to tell you that the next 3 hours were painful then you’re probably working in a techology company wondering why its taken 10 years to do single signon and it still isn’t there yet.

travelogue 10

February 8, 2006

I think we can do this tomorrow right I have the morning and probably some or most of the afternoon before I leg it back to the airport where that same woman as last time does the fast track BA check in except this time she’s not a new clerk and so hopefully I won’t have to tell her how to do it and where the homeland security stand is where I’ll have to leave behind some stem cells or something before I can buy an ice cream except this time it’s moved next to the BA gates and there’s another scary looking DIA staff member placing my body parts on the scanner before I can go to the bit in the middle of the departure lounge where you just walk round in circles for ages wondering where the rest of the departure lounge is until it slowly dawns on you that this is all the departure lounge and what’s wrong with it just being a stairwell anyway?

perhaps we can do 10 til 12 and then maybe add a 12 til 1 and add it to the end until 3 but you know I’ll really have to get going then and I agree it’s valuable use of my time here to sit next to a whiteboard and scribble the meaning of user experience life because we don’t often have all these brians in one room, especially a room where have a big enough whiteboard to solve the services into ecommerce problem but then maybe we’ll do that later because right now we should probably start to think about actually what the scenarios are that are applicable to folks in the yemen who really want to interact with us via the web to control their account information and download service plans but they actually want to do it in spanish with yen prices because that’s an acceptable local business model apparently and anyway who’s to say the yemen isn’t a growth market for us, oh, you do. so let’s just do a french person in france buying stuff in euros shall we? can we do that? oh.

right, I do really have to go now and pack up before tomorrow because I’m checking out in the morning and I’m due to go out to some place where the pope’s head spins around and spits chianti at you while cheerleaders bark around the sistine chapel and so I’m not anticipating being particularly clear headed in the morning when I have to navigate web tv to avoid breathing over the concierge when I want to check out without checking out so I’ll see you in the morning. I feel tired all of a sudden.

travelogue 7

February 3, 2006

“you wanna have your 5 year old technology platform and migrate onto our content services architecture and keep all your functionality intact because your director likes the way that he can generate a report that nobody reads? yeah. ok, have a nice day! bye! it ain’t gonna happen” and “it’s about standard practices and technologies and even if we’re not 100% there, we’re 90% there which is what we can deliver now and, oh, by the way you ain’t ever gonna get that 10%, right? oh, you want 50% of that 10%? sorry. have a nice! bye!” and “you’re the business you should be telling us” and so on.

having spent the morning in the hotel room finishing off the 3 slides I spent until 3:04 am trying to finish last night this morning I made the mistake of uploading the finished presentations to the collabspace via the hotel broadband link which has an upstream capability of around 2 bytes an hour or something and so I spent 40 minutes just watching a logo twizzle round on the top corner of a browser until what is left of my hair was scattered liberally around a gideon bible having been dragged from my scalp through the unbearable tension of network stasis and a desperate urge to just jump out the window. but it did upload eventually and I made a tom cruise mission impossible type disconnect/unlink/snapshut laptop move and dashed out the room into the maid who was just putting something unsavoury into a yellow plastic bag that said ‘medical’ on it and down the elevator and slid manaically across the hood of the suzuki gelatin like starskey always used to do at the beginning of starskey and hutch, or was that hutch, no, he did that thing where he jumped off a wall and landed on his arse on the hood of a car. I had planned to meet up casually with some colleagues to break into the 4 days ahead, but now I was going to have to screech around Interlocken Everdecreasing Loop like an idiot, leg it up to the lobby of building 5 at which point I will pass out in a sweaty white heap because I always do at the lobby of building 5 and then I’ll get lost for 20 minutes looking for a meeting room called Yellowfoot Beaver Catastrophy or something which I will eventually find by walking past it 3 times while everybody inside wonders why I’m just walking past 3 times and so I’ll stumble through the door just as somebody is reaching a climax and it’ll take all my powers of being a stupid english person to ingratiate myself with a bunch of folks who have been in this room for an hour already and really would rather be writing taglibs or something.

“think of it as a utility subscription convergence services architecture model. if you can” and “so there are really 3 parts to it. no, 4. yes so there’s the, oh, hang on, 5 parts. 5? what’s the fifth part. I though we weren’t going to, oh, right. anyway, so, there’s 5 parts to the basic…what? right, I see. so, the basic 4 parts…” and “so, back to the presentation here, this is how I see our cascading delivery model for our service orientateted model thing which is what it really is, right?” and “aha, you see, that is correct, but I wish to understand how one should begin to test that which we have no means to determine whether the potential outcomes are dependent on the allocation of and development of and attribution to, per se, those suites to which we do not yet have developement schedules against those to whom the testing will be the test of the testing under which we should be managing the scope of the discussions here pertaining to that which is preventative but untested” etc. after 4 hours of that with the occasional “we’re all shareholders, right?” I was ready to turn my back on another day and discuss things like sausages and hummers over dinner instead and so retreated to the flex space at the end of the universe for a while, plugging and unplugging ethernet cables to nowhere for about 20 minutes until I got one that got me connected and my battery died, laughing.

index schmindex

December 13, 2005

so that means you have a list of things that you can do something with like we can take it and then we have to put it through the rules that make it come out the other end as something else. or its actually just a catalogue of things that we can use to build other lists of things that we can use to just describe what we’ve got and then work out what we do with it. but really its a database of mutiple indexes that just describe everything that’s out there which mean we can query it in multiple ways to generate results that are relevant across different experiences. but perhaps we don’t have to do anyting with it, but we don’t know that yet because we don’t know what’s in it because we can’t build it because we don’t know what’s out there because we don’t know what the user experience is and that might be redundant because its about the content but we don’t actually need to do any localization because that’s a different kind of index. right?

well that’s the kind of question we need to be looking at and we know that there are inconsistencies and anomolies but we don’t know what they are because we don’t know where they are even though we know what they are there because I think we own the strategy on that and so of course its on our roadmap I just don’t have the roadmap right now, it’s in the index.

that’s art, that is

July 1, 2005

don’t make me change that. it took me ages. just because you don’t follow that particular product life cycle process doesn’t mean you can’t understand what I’m saying. I mean, of course its cock full of subsections that I didn’t even understand myself, but I filled them in and made them all look like they were valid and important, so you should at least read them. you know you want to. I crafted them lovingly in my usual prose-heavy way so that its less of a program management document, more of a novel, with compelling characters, engaging storyline and a startling and unexpected twist. alright, its only describing FY06 globalization activities and the business process changes and platform enhancements, which doesn’t sound very exciting, but don’t let that put you off. I mean, Enigma. that was about a typewriter, right? the Da Vinci Code. that’s all about puzzles or something. so, it doesn’t sound very interesting, but get into it and by page 17, you’ll be spilling your coffee into your lap with your jaw hanging open like you’ve just witnessed the second coming. you’ll have some kind of revelation on the path the monetization.

except I haven’t finished it yet. naturally. its friday.

I had that victoria silvstedt in here the other day

June 10, 2005

go away, I’m updating the stylesheet. go on, get that face and hair of yours out of my office and leave me alone. I’ve had enough of you gawping over my shoulder when I’m trying to amend the dynamic press release indexes to incorporate feedback from the central web publishing team, who incidentally are looking for a compelling reason for extra country specific venues to migrate their operations to their centralized model for hosting, maintaining and supporting the business requirements for a worldwide authoring community and so we’re trying to meet in the middle with the globalization programs for FY06 based on the common web platform architecture but we can see some potential collisions with field requirements and the approach I’m already taking with the centralized model because we both know the product set we need is ages away and so with 5 staff in iberia where’s the value add?

so having you with your breasts and the rest barely contained in that outfit and your holster strapped to your thigh that looks like it must contain an experimental ice ray gun or something, is frankly a bit unnerving. I’ve spent 9 perfectly good productive months sat in this office with my window on the world unsullied by nefarious distractions or instrusions until the day that some halfwit bill poster decided that actually the ITV celebrity wrestling adverts should go on the side of the phone box that faces directly across the street at our row of genteel victorian terraced town houses, as opposed to the side which faces into the traffic where it didn’t matter to me that “he’s finally taking her up the aisle”, because I couldn’t see it unless I popped out to M&Ms for a ginsters and some thai sweet chicken mccoys. but now, whatever I’m doing, whenever I’m doing it in this room, there’s always you, victoria, draping yourself over my shoulder like some drunken slapper from down riverside on a friday night, pressing into my back while I’m trying to work out the non-locale-specific version of Logged in as:, or sticking your thigh-length boots into my arm when I’m figuring how we’re going to tackle the issue of the syndicated catalogue. I can’t even write a meaningful email without your ridiculous hair tumbling over my keyboard while I type. so just go away and leave me alone. get c4 to stick up an advert for cheese or desperate housewives or something instead. I’m trying to concentrate.

get distracted yourself. its friday and you need a reason to look at something inconsequential and rubbish.

which way round for globalization development?

June 9, 2005

I’m not sure where this bit goes. I mean, I understand the idea of your über plan and all that, ’cause you’ve been banging on about that and doing those staroffice presentations with all those circles and arrows and things for years, but what exactly do you want me to do when somebody managing global content deletes a node in the global tree and expects the whole operation to be supported seamlessly across multiple venues and countries and languages?

er, I dunno. I only did the strategy, right? or did I do the business requirements as well? I can’t remember. oh, that’s what you mean. so what do you want me to tell you? everything we asked you to tell us 6 months ago about how you actually want this content platform to support a centralized content model at a level where we can actually write something approaching a functional spec which we can turn into something we can actually begin to engineer. have you got time to do that? oh, sure! um, but what is it you actually want me do do? I mean, have I missed something out from the globalization requirements that I did last year? well, yeah. you need to let us know how somebody might actually utilize the platform to perform some kind of task which supports the operational model that you put in those requirements so we can work out whether we need to re-architect the system to enable slurping by delta and node deletion and actually what the criteria are for us having actually delivered a globalized platform that meets your needs, which, by the way, are probably not the same as they were a year ago, because everything’s changed.

oh, right. hang on, are you telling me that my own business requirements might be wrong? you can’t do that, I am the business. there mine. it’ll take them home and not let you play with them if you start saying nasty things about them. no, we’re not saying they’re wrong, they’re just not quite, well, right. here’s a whole bunch of stuff we noted that you might want to consider, because what you’ve asked for and what we’re doing aren’t necessarily exactly converging on a neat path. oh, ok, thanks. jesus! that’s loads of stuff! yeah, but we want to make sure we do it right, right?

so we reach an agreement that I pull my dumbass finger out and actually do those process flows n’ stuff that I never get round to doing and the engineering team will do what’s right, like they always do, and if they need anything urgently to progress the globalization development, they’ll let me know, so I can make something up and filter it back into the strategy later. only joking. I’m calling it the pragmatic globalization development chain (because of course, aggressive pragmatism leads us into systemized sticky matrix approaches), which is how it’s always been really, except the engineering team know globalization as well as the rest of us these days, so I’m much more deferential when I tell them absolutely positively that global content is US-English and the tiered fallback model only goes 2 levels, because they’ll probably be able to point out to me just how that won’t really work, even from a business point of view, but in a really nice way.

globalization. head. wall.

June 7, 2005

there’s no myths associated with globalization just a simple truth. you’ve got to change all your business processes mate, cos this globalized solution ain’t gonna work if you keep producing stuff like you’re in an exam room with your arm over the answers and then expect it to spread the sharing message to where the revenue is, which is not where you are, probably. the burgeoning underclass of globalization managers have been squirrelling around for years, trying to get you in a small room with no natural light just so you can understand how it might actually be possible to transform our beautifully crafted concept album of monetization through pragmatic centralization into a workable, sustainable and accountable framework for managing our messaging and enabling our commerce venues with cascading content inheritance and local value-added content support, like what I just drew on those concentric circles in staroffice, in case you were trying to work out what that was. this projector’s a bit rubbish. and I’m in another country, of course.

I mean, it’s not like its gonna even cost you a fistful of dollars. you’re already building that central web application architecture, right? I just know you’re gonna be fully internationalized an’ that, and lookit, you got hooks into localization workflows and all that stuff going on, so its gonna be like sticking a lemon on the eiffel tower. easy innit? so why not let us talk to the authors and business owners so we can’t just have some sort of arrangement where we give them this lovely globalized platform where localized milk and internationalized honey flow across the plains of centralization and over the cliffs of subscription and into the valleys of unified content taxonomies and they just have to change the way they’ve been creating stuff for the last 10 years. I think they’ll be open to that. I expect they’re falling over themselves to break their agreements with their press agencies and design vendors and actually, I bet if we pointed out to them that copy and pasting entire sections of our corporate site into Re: Re: [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: URGENT: Re: [Fwd: emails and then expecting the intern to create the online equivalent of the cistine chapel on 15 disparate sites in 10 languages in flash isn’t the most viable authoring solution, then they’d probably have some kind of religious experience and convert wholeheartedly to the church of g11n and succumb to the divine and all-knowing truth of ‘the content model’.

so, I’m off down the newsagents to pick up my copy of Marketing Matters – But Not If I Can’t Employ My Friends To Do It magazine and I’ll leave it to you to arrange the con call that has to work for Santa Clara, Camberley, Singapore and Moscow that will kick this stuff off. but don’t do it on Wednesday afternoon, cos I have an appointment with a medico about a collapsed idea.

oi

May 26, 2005

shut it you blart. look, if I say you ave to change your business processes then you aint got a leg to stand on right? I mean, it stands to reason dunnit? you got a lahvly set of content there – oi, dave, ain’t that a lahvly set of content? look ere, look. its got tabs and everything, real class, not like that muck you get over at those cowboys down the east end. anyway, here’s the thing. I’ve got a proposition for you which I reckon you might take a fancy to. I just had an associate of mine drop round for a little chat, and we got talking in the back of the jag, see? it only turns out he’s got a bleedin globalization strategy for our web venues that massively reduces complexity in our publishing processes, enables content reuse and promotes a consistent, coherent voice to our customers, while providing a feature-rich user experience supporting local business priorities and an extensible content model that integrates localization workflow and plug-in web services on a centralized, internationalized, common web platform, dunnit?

so here’s the deal, my son. as I’m feeling generous and I’ve ad enough trouble with little narks like you today, I’m gonna let you in on a little bit of business. call it a mark of my gratitude for the loyalty you’ve shown to me over the years. I mean, you’re like a brother to me. except of course you ain’t, but you know, you’re like family, right? and what do families do? that’s right, my son, they share things. you share your takings and I share you a slap from ron here, but today it’s different, cos today, I’m sharing with you a chance to put all that behind you. what I’ve got for you today my son is only a bleedin global content model, innit? eh? geddit? a global content model. you know what that means, right? ere, ron, I don’t think he’s understanding me right. I ain’t seeing any gratitude. do I ave to spell it out for you? look, its a bleedin centralized content authoring and production environment with subscription, global tree merge, and all that nice stuff, based on a write centrally, view locally publishing model that supports the research and buy cycle in local language for a local market where we do 60% of that kind of stuff, whatever that is. it even lets you carry on authoring all those things you do youself and then sticks everything together in some kind sepository or something so it all looks like it’s supposed to be and not like its just fallen of the back of a virtual lorry and you’ve got some slave labour at 10 quid an hour to patch it up like a kipper. tell im dave,

look, this offer don’t last right? as soon as we’re out that door we’re off down whitehall to see a man about a bit of trouble with opening sauces or something, and then the offer’s closed. all I want you to do, my son, is just make a small change to your business process. that’s all. just a small change. all you have to do is stop making stuff that only works in one place and start making stuff that works in any place. then we’ll throw in the globalization bits and we’ll be laughin. that’s gotta be the best deal you’ve ad all day, right? tell him ron. make him understand the value of localization-readiness in content creation, but don’t make a mess, mind. I’ve already got blood on me Armani from that trip down camberley.

Things what I writ