:Thomas.Connery:
"live like you own the dream"
Social Media Strategy v1.0
May 28th
Social media and online community involvement and collaboration is not a fad, it’s the future. As Don Tapscott might put it, the Net Generation get’s it, uses it, and is going to change the way web technology is used and perceived. Even better, social media tools are expanding and getting the online communities offline as many users are meeting in person to discuss issues, news, entertainment, work, partnerships, you name it.
I began using Facebook in February 09’ and Twitter in December 09’. Used Linked-In since 2008, not sure exactly when. Ya, I used MySpace back in the day but it doesn’t seem relevant anymore. I recently deleted my Facebook account which is explained in this blog entry. Until the spring of 2011 I’m serving as communications officer for the CA Clarity Global Community and I tend to use CA.com forums and community content frequently but am also interested in many other technology and collaboration based sites and communities. A partner of mine recently called me a community evangelist. It felt super cool to be recognized in something I’m passionate about but not really experienced in. At a recent CA World discussion group, I was lucky enough to be on stage with four others talking about social media, the impact of it, and why we all use it and like it. It was staggering to me how many people don’t use Twitter when I see adoption rates are sky high and ever increasing. The more time I spend in the social media realm, the more I realized I would need a personal strategy on how I use each tool which ultimately impacts how I brand myself. I can’t take all the credit really, since I first saw my pal, Josh Shear, with a write-up on his blog on how he uses social media. I feel it’s important to step back and think about your own goals and objectives in using a social media or collaboration based application. Your own strategy is a living, breathing thing that you should most likely revisit annually as your interests, habits, and even role and responsibilities change.
Twitter:
By far, my most frequently used social app. As Twitter grows, I feel it will replace email or at least take away a ton of email traffic due to the simplicity of the tool and the volume of users. Primarily, I use Twitter to learn and stay current. At times I’ll make personal posts but the majority of the time I stay in my technical world. With Twitter I apply fewer rules for myself but am careful about how my tweets are perceived. I use the hashtag, #in, to synch certain tweets to my LinkedIn account which I find helpful from a professional standpoint. Problem is, once you do that, your professional contacts know you use Twitter and may follow you, giving them read access to all of your Twitter activity. You can put a lock on your Twitter account and approve your followers, but to me, that defeats the primary purpose of Twitter. My strategy here is: This is who I am, this is what interests me, and I follow who and what I’m interested in. Tweet while you’re at work in limited fashion, unless it’s part of your job. Lastly, following people and organizations local to you is a great way to break out of your ‘online-only’ shell and connect with some real people. You can also learn about what events are occurring in your neighborhood.
Linked-In:
Ahh, the online resume of choice. Linked-In took me a while to understand, yes, dumb I know. My caution with this app was who do I connect with and why? If it’s an online resume and professional networking tool, why link to friends and family? You shouldn’t… unless they are also professionally connected. Now, I have a few rare exceptions to that rule, but the majority of the time, I eat my own dog food. Why link to your current boss or co-workers? This one is tough as I agree with two sides of the fence. For one, if you work with them every day, why do you need to link with them online to communicate and collaborate? You’re most likely already doing that within your organization, if not, you should be. Two, taking the no fear approach and connecting to your closest team members sends a different message. It says you’re not afraid that they know who you are, where you come from, what’s on your mind, what activities or groups you’re involved in, what you’re doing, etc.. This ultimately leaves you responsible and accountable for your online actions and how you represent yourself and your employer. Accountability is the buzz word for me because I don’t think there’s enough of it in today’s corporate or enterprise environment. Using Linked-In and Twitter together can really help you build a professional network. I’ll end on a pet peeve though. If you’re going to signup for LinkedIn, use it. Many people create an account and login once every six months. If you do that, you’re not doing yourself or your connections any favors.
Facebook:
The largest social network in the world today and yes, I’m going to create a new personal account. I’m not a big fan of Facebook given their history on selling customer data and lack of privacy concerns. Since I deleted my account though, I realized that there are specific family and friends I want to stay in touch with and they all use Facebook. I’m at Facebook’s mercy because it’s the easiest way to share family information. Facebook is a great way to share stories of your kids, pets, hobbies, or whatever you have or love. To keep this one simple, my strategy here is: Share my personal life with family, let them know I have a blog, band, career, children, etc. Keep them informed of my life. You’d be surprised how many people miss you as you grow older. I think many people are like me where they either move away or are consumed with their own immediate family and responsibilities that they let their close friends and family fall by the wayside. I may ‘friend’ close friends, but under limited circumstances. Initially, I let Facebook get out of control and I was friending people I hadn’t seen in 10-20 years. I was bombarded with news of all of the game-playing they were doing and not real life wall posts. Another thing that killed me is I would remove friends and they would continue to ask me to be friends again… they didn’t get the point the first time I guess. One recommendation I do have is not to turn it into a photo gallery of hundreds of photos. I say, keep your Facebook wall relatively clean, delete old data, and keep your photo albums up to date and limited. For all the youngsters out there, I’m not sure Facebook is the place you have your social/party club/girlfriends/boyfriends, etc. unless you’re going to keep your family off your friends list. How you use social media is crucial. Each app for the most part, should be tailored on how you want to use it. I guess the friends part is tough because I’m the eldest of the Net generation and I don’t have a need for that level of social activity. My needs are really family driven. If you’re in your teens and twenties though and want to enjoy a rich ‘social’ experience, just use caution. Maybe create multiple accounts.
CA World 2010
May 25th
After submitting an idea I had for community expansion, CA made me customer committee member for CA World 2010. I mildly participated in event planning, attended pre-conference calls, and had insider information on most CA World happenings. My primary goal for this event was to network with fellow community officers and members and expand user community participation. Secondary, I wanted to learn the CA Clarity roadmap, explore cloud computing, and get an understanding for CA’s role, if any, in social media and collaboration.
The Big News: CA is now ‘CA Technologies’ and is investing heavily in SaaS.
The CA Regional Exchange (CARE) was fantastic. In fact, the networking aspect of my visit went very well. I was able to attend invite-only meetings with CA community management, business analysts, and web developers on CA’s new online portal. Because I am an advocate on social media and enterprise collaboration in general, CA also asked me to participate in an open forum discussion. It was the most rewarding aspect of the conference for me. I knew I had made some good points throughout the hour-long discussion when multiple attendees, from different countries, either messaged me or chatted with me, lending positive remarks about my points. In one reply I had made, I received applause. The topics I brought up included social media strategy and personal branding. The venue was on a stage with about 130 in attendance. I’m the guy in the chair to the far right below.
Social Media Discussion
From my perspective, it does seem as if CA Technologies is focusing as an organization on customer satisfaction and fulfillment. From a community perspective and even product perspective, CA is listening to their customers, as they are clearly enhancing the Clarity application based on user feedback. CA marketing is greatly pushing two mantras or themes. One being ‘partner’ not a vendor, the other being, ‘we can’. CA is also leaping into cloud computing as that topic was the hottest of the conference. They are growing their SaaS offerings and the majority of their new customers are choosing SaaS solutions. For those not familiar, CA has branded their SaaS offerings as On-Demand. ie. CA Clarity PPM On-Demand vs. CA Clarity PPM
Clarity and the word Kilimanjaro never came up. I could tell based on attending CA World 2008 that MUCH had changed in the user interface and CA was greatly expanding usability, simplicity, and integration. In Clarity 12.1, the next major release set for the end of August, is including a new graphical interface that sits on top of Xog and allows drag and drop like table matching from an SAP database to the Clarity database. The goal would be to build xml feeds using SAP or Oracle templates as needed. For Clarity v13 and On Demand, the user interface has changed and includes a larger footprint as the left side navigation menu auto hides when you’re not using it, the binocular browse is gone as you click in a cell, begin typing and it autosenses the value you’re looking for. Overall, there are multiple user interface enhancements and I’ll need to obtain CA documentation on in order to specify them in greater detail. One breakthrough I had at CA World was in regard to dashboards that call web services, connect to external and internal data, and then display the information needed. I spoke to a local vendor out of New Jersey that specializes in the dashboard creation and web service connections. Although using web service calls to another database is more of a tactical decision, rather then importing the data into the Clarity database directly, from a visibility perspective, it may be best to explore the use of web services as they can help in automation, productivity, and even increase data visibility.
Clarity’s release model has changed. CA understands the complexity in putting out quarterly releases for on-premise customers. As a result, customers who do NOT subscribe to the SaaS solution will only receive major product updates and releases annually. I’m assuming hot fixes would be thrown into that mix as needed but in most if not all cases, CA would not want or ask their on-premise customers to install their own updates throughout the year. For Clarity On Demand, CA manages and publishes all changes. With On Demand, CA will auto release 3-4 updates per year and also align major releases at the exact time an on-premise customer would receive their release, keeping major releases in synch. The advantage for the On Demand customer would be, they get the latest and greatest enhancements first, they have a 24/7 web or cloud environment, and no disaster recovery worries. CA with a SaaS solution does all technical management of the application environments. This allows the customer to focus on ‘doing’, not managing. With that in mind, I’m not sure if Clarity On Demand is something that aligns to my organization’s needs but we will investigate it. As such, I’m going to get a 30-day Clarity On Demand trial setup that includes the new user interface for us to test out. Note, Clarity 12.1 will NOT have the new interface, only the On Demand product will. CA will release the new interface to on-premise customers with Clarity v13 set for spring (June) 2011.
Summary:
CA World 2010 was good, the keynotes given by James Cameron and CA management were awesome, and the Maroon 5 concert topped it all off. I found myself running to session after session, meeting after meeting, and there was actually too much to do. That’s a bad thing for me because I missed many things I wanted to participate in and research. The CA Regional Exchange (CARE) was by far the biggest reward I got from the event and if the opportunity is there next time, I would like to only attend CARE and not CA World. Because I have been fortunate to go two years in a row, I’d rather send a co-worker in my place for the next one. As long as I am a leader in the user communities, I will continue to attend CARE which runs over a weekend. I did tweet a lot from CA World, and users of Twitter can follow the hashtags #CAWorld and #CA_RE to read countless ‘live’ posts made by many event attendees including myself. People tweeted in the middle of sessions as they learned product information, they tweeted quotes from the keynote speakers, pics from the concert, you name it. It was awesome and even made the Twitter people into a tight knit group. Using Twitter at an event was a great way to meet people as well as take notes on the event. I’ve written this entire summary without even reading through my Twitter timeline. I’m going to see if I can extract or report on my Twitter timeline and attach it to this summary, maybe as an additional post. It’s an innovative look at event participation and a very fast way to record notes and share them with the world in an instant. Why do I love that opportunity? It allows the people who can’t attend CA World to follow what’s happening based on tweets. I could stay home, follow hashtags on Twitter for the next CA World and learn an awful lot about CA’s product news and information, speakers, and celebrations. Lastly, I’m going to try and get PowerPoint copies of all event sessions. I’m guessing for legal reasons I shouldn’t share those though. CA World 2010 was great. It was the best IT or technology event I have ever attended and contributed to.
Clarity Groups w/Memberships SQL
May 25th
Not exactly a complex query but I’ve been asked by a couple of people how to display the security groups used in CA Clarity along with the members or users associated to those groups. The SQL query below returns the security group name, user’s last and first names, username/login, and status. Of course, there are better ways to report this but at least here is the rough idea. Please note, a basic NSQL output is also provided below for portlet creation. Please build on this or expand it as needed.
SQL:
SELECT G.ID,V.GROUP_NAME,U.LAST_NAME,U.FIRST_NAME,U.USER_NAME,CASE WHEN USER_STATUS_ID = 200 THEN ‘Active’ WHEN USER_STATUS_ID = 201 THEN ‘In-Active’ ELSE ‘Locked’ END AS STATUSID
FROM CMN_SEC_USERS U, CMN_SEC_USER_GROUPS G, CMN_SEC_GROUPS_V V
WHERE U.ID = G.USER_ID
AND G.GROUP_ID = V.ID
AND V.LANGUAGE_CODE = ‘EN’
ORDER BY U.LAST_NAME
NSQL:
SELECT
@SELECT:DIM:USER_DEF:IMPLIED:RG:G.ID:GID@,
@SELECT:DIM_PROP:USER_DEF:IMPLIED:RG:V.GROUP_NAME:GROUPNAME@,
@SELECT:DIM_PROP:USER_DEF:IMPLIED:RG:U.LAST_NAME:LASTNAME@,
@SELECT:DIM_PROP:USER_DEF:IMPLIED:RG:U.FIRST_NAME:FIRSTNAME@,
@SELECT:DIM_PROP:USER_DEF:IMPLIED:RG:U.USER_NAME:USERNAME@,
@SELECT:DIM_PROP:USER_DEF:IMPLIED:RG:CASE WHEN USER_STATUS_ID = 200 THEN ‘Active’ WHEN USER_STATUS_ID = 201 THEN ‘In-Active’ ELSE ‘Locked’ END:STATUSID@
FROM CMN_SEC_USERS U, CMN_SEC_USER_GROUPS G, CMN_SEC_GROUPS_V V
WHERE U.ID = G.USER_ID
AND G.GROUP_ID = V.ID
AND V.LANGUAGE_CODE = ‘EN’
AND @FILTER@
Passion and Intensity
May 6th
It dawned on me last Saturday evening, following my first band gig, that all of the effort, practice, and technicality meant nothing. We’re a foursome, guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. We have all been around the block in the local band scene, all been in multiple bands. What really made the difference for us was the emotion, realism… no script. Tony, my best friend and our bass player agreed with me that it was ‘passion and intensity’ that people want to see and feel. Good music helps, good melodies help, as do good lyrics, but all of them are meaningless without passion and intensity. Needless to say, I’m planning on writing our next song based on that concept.
Keeping that in mind, think of yourself, think of now. What are you doing (besides reading this blog), are you on autopilot? That’s the theme and that’s the poison. Step away from yourself and use a third person perspective. Analyze what you do everyday, what you work on, who you love, what you care about. If we approached everything we do and everything we care about with passion and intensity, not only will you reward yourself, you’ll reward others by your actions. Ok, so you may have trouble pouring your heart and soul into your 9-5 job or role in your organization but try it! What do you have to lose? This week for me was different, the autopilot was turned off, and I have multiple changes coming my way. My primary job role has changed, I have an idea for the first eBook I’d like to publish, I can’t wait to record our two song demo and contunie writing, I want and need to blog more, and I happened to turn 33 this week.
What if Success = Passion + Intensity + Opportunity? I found this blog post online and it fits my new perspective. Although Kimberly’s blog post is minimal and references quotes from Biggest Loser’s Gillian Michaels, she focuses on being authentic. So it appears I’m not the only person to apply, understand, or respect the combination of passion and intensity, big deal. What really matters is how one can use it in their own life. From this point forward, I’m going to ingrain this combination in my head. Never again will I ever step on stage without putting all of the raw emotion I have into a song, I will sincerely be vested in what I am doing for my employer, and I’m going to try and take less shortcuts in my life overall. Easier said than done, sure. All I want to do is show how to succeed with passion and intensity.
MIA and for Good Reason
Apr 28th
Wow, I knew at some point my blog would get neglected I just didn’t think it would be this soon. Due to spring activities, family responsibilities, band development, and normal workload, it’s been difficult to make the time to blog but I really enjoy doing this and am trying to make it a professional objective or habit. Excuses aside, I’ll primarily cover personal items in this post surrounding my latest adventure, my band, as well as my recent pursuit in social media, community involvement, and collaboration.
The band I sing in and write lyrics for, Against Apocalypse, was mentioned in The Valley Advocate this week. The article covers our drummer interviewing with the writer, Gary Carra, about the band and how we came up with our name. Our previous band, Nitro Nine, from 2003-2004 was mildly known in the Western Mass local scene as we were given opportunities to open for such rock acts as Seether, Shinedown, and Ra. It’s been over three years since I did the band thing and I forgot how rewarding it was. Knowing you have a show booked, seeing your name in the paper, getting some demo material ready, starting a website, …. it’s too much fun. This coming Saturday night (5/1/10) we’ll be on stage at Finnegan’s Tavern in Springfield MA. It’ll be exciting for us…. all I need to do now is find an outfit so I can pretend to be a rock-star!
CA World is just around the corner and I’m going to network as much as possible during the event. I’ve been invited to multiple discussion panels on web portal usage, external social media, and product specific user forums. CA as a company has always made me feel welcome. They listen to comments and ideas whether good or bad and always seem to appreciate me, the little guy, out there supporting their Clarity product and helping other customers and organizations to be successful. Based on my experience with CA, they are top on my list as a company I could see myself working for. By the way, CA used CrowdVine to setup a community site for the CA World 2010 event and I love it.
It’s official that I have spoken to my manager about my interest in social media, communications, and collaboration. I did some research on Twitter usage in the enterprise and submitted my ideas and analysis as a PowerPoint to her. The result? A meeting with an AVP in collaboration services as well as the hiring director. After meeting with both of them, it was clear that the only way I can find a job opportunity in this space is to make one for myself. Why? There’s no current positions open and it’s been difficult for us to sell the community and collaboration concept to senior levels. My goal over the next couple of months is to research social media usage in the enterprise and the benefits of it. I’m not simply talking micro-blogging. I’m talking user profiles, resource skill listings, blogs, groups, document storage, version control, retention, … you name it. If you have any adice or pointers, please feel free to send them my way. It would be greatly appreciated. It seems like the biggest roadblock I continue to run into as far as technlogy and process improvement go is culture. Driving and changing coprorate culture must be one of the most challenging things to accomplish and that’s what I feel we’re up against where I am. Prove the value exists, the return on investment is high, and the level of risk is low, and it’s hard to knock the recommendation.
So that’s what I’ve been up to. I’ll be back …
How To Be An Application Owner
Mar 28th
My official job title states I am a systems specialist and have commonly been referred to as an infrastructure engineer, yet my primary role is an application owner. I spent some time researching how to be an application owner and tried to pinpoint specifics on what an application owner actually does. It’s important to take the time and research your role in order to understand the scope of your responsibilities. Some benefits in researching your role include the discovery of similar open positions, enlightenment on your skill-set, depth in job requirements, and even a sense of worth and pride. Mentally, for me, finding other application owners and reading generalized and even detailed role requirements made me feel alot more confident and valuable in my new role.
First off, what is an application owner? High level, an application owner holds ultimate responsibility for a specific system or application. They are accountable for incidents, problems, and changes that impact the system or application and they need to understand system capacity and capabilities. They are also required to research and provide management with recommendations toward business objectives or deliverables. In some cases they are commonly referred to as subject matter experts (SME) but don’t be fooled by the technical complexity. An application owner needs to know how to communicate to all levels of management, put a face to their application, and politically support customers or end users.
How to be an application owner? From my perspective, and I’m learning every day mind you, you need to form a tight vendor relationship with your application. Become known to them to the point where you’re most likely not just another customer. Obviously this doesn’t apply if your application was built in-house by your own development team and your company may or may not be a large dollar spender with that specific vendor but you have to try regardless. In addition to the responsibilities listed above, I have gone out of my way, and even wish I had more time, to browse and participate in vendor user forums. Locate and participate in application communities. One of the first places to look is on Linked-In. Can’t find a community or group for your app? Start one! Just recently I have adopted social networking and in a very short time I have expanded my network greatly. When it comes to being an application owner, think outside the box and think forward. You know the depth and capabilities of the application more than the business owner/sponsor and end users. Conduct yourself as a business professional because you’re no longer the person who sits in a cube coding all day. You are the face of the application and you need to get out in front of the business and help guide and support them.
In closing, I’ll list some more specific common details on how to be an application owner but don’t miss out on vendor relationships and community involvement as they are crucial to your success and reputation. The application owner is a special role where you have the ability to brand yourself and establish the relationships that could greatly increase your chances in career success. As promised….
- Stay up to date as much as possible on product announcements.
- Know vendor plans for 6 months to a year down the road so you can plan accordingly.
- Manage day-to-day support issues. Work internally and externally to resolve them.
- Document, perform, and cross-train common procedures or maintenance activities.
- Form and utilize a communication strategy to keep critical users and management informed.
- Coordinate and often implement changes to the system.
- On a scheduled basis, review system operations and services to insure they are functioning as intended.
- Conduct periodic reviews of system data for integrity purposes.
- Quarterly review environment documentation and update as needed.
- Provide a process for provisioning and gaining access to the application.
- Get involved in end user training as it can help you identify gaps in the application as well as quick or complex usability fixes.
