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Posts tagged community
Support Your Local Farms
Aug 16th
Buy Local Foods
My family has been participating in a crop share program with Red Fire Farm in Granby Massachusetts for a few years. This year has been especially rewarding and has really demonstrated the value to me in supporting local farms. At the beginning of the season we pay a lump sum and on Tuesday, every week, we head to Forest Park in Springfield to pickup our share. It’s a crap-shoot each week as whatever the farm has available, they setup tables and distribute the rations. It’s on an honor system which I’m guessing works for the most part. They put out ‘x’ amount of food, you cross your name off on the “I showed Up List”, and then you follow the signs that display the allowed amounts for that week. In selecting, the vegetables are in whole numbers, like a head of lettuce for instance, while at other times you simply use a scale to measure your squash or cucumbers, etc. I really enjoy going every Tuesday because Red Fire Farm isn’t alone. There are multiple local vendors there selling their goods. The majority of it is organic, locally grown foods, but usually there’s flowers, a musician performing, an ice cream truck, and more. Last week I ran into a ‘small shop’ out of Southwick. The gentleman was very nice and he had a specific item I was looking for. Local, unsprayed or untreated raspberries. I picked up a jar of pickles from him too. Honestly I wasn’t blown away by the pickles but I’m glad he’s there offering local products, and I’m glad I can help support him, as well as the others.
For those of you who know me, you know I have chickens and enjoy making my own maple syrup. Being part of the local farm gig has really inspired me to do even more. Next year we’re going to take a whack at our first vegetable garden. My wife did grow a few tomato plants and a handful of potatoes this year but we’re going to attempt alot more next year. We have problems with insects, bugs, and animals out where I live but I’m not going to let them deter me from trying something I just want to do and learn more about. It’s hard to describe the reward or feeling you get, knowing you’re literally providing food for your family. You know where the food comes from. You get dirty, sweat, and spend some of your own money to deliver the product but you can’t really put a price on it. Not when it’s from your own back yard. Our primary source for 2010 has been eggs from our three hens and about six months worth of maple syrup. It’s not much I know but it’s plenty of production for our family. Hens are cheap to purchase and maintain. At times you may get a dozen eggs per week, maybe less, maybe more. Our syrup is cooked outdoors on an open flame which allows some of the smoke sense or taste to get into the syrup. It’s not overpowering at all, it’s perfect, and it’s the real deal. Curious about having ‘backyard’ chickens? Check out this site. It’s a great way to get started.
Whether or not you have the best yard for owning chickens, planting a garden, or tapping maple trees, I highly suggest you look into your local farmers markets. They’re out there and have been expanding greatly over the last 5-10 years. In fact, in the western Massachusetts area alone, (#westernma via Twitter hashtag) the number of farms selling to the public has increased 50%. Get involved. Care about your health, care about what you’re eating, and care about where your food comes from. Visit buylocalfood.org and mass.gov/massgrown for more information.
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.
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.
