Well, we’re going to try! WordCamp is a small, informal conference all about WordPress and its people.
Wordcamp UK 2008 was held in Birmingham last year. The current list of nominated venues are in Liverpool, Cardiff and London. Read the pdf attached below, and see what you think. Feedback would be great, but if you really want the WordCamp to take place in Liverpool on the 18th and 19th of July you’ll need to pipe up on the official mailing lists. More info at Tony Scott’s blog.
St. George's Hall, Liverpool - not the likely venue. Pic by Me.
At the risk of sounding like an MS Fanboi, I thought I’d bring up Microsoft Office OneNote. I’ve been using this package for general note-taking for some time now, and I’m finding it to be an incredibly useful piece of software.
Thing is – it’s quite hard to explain. It’s a freeform note taking application, but with a number of tricks up its sleeve. It allows for very easy video and sound recording, pen use if you have a tablet PC or a graphics tablet handy, and a neat screen capture tool. Throw in handwriting and image text recognition and you have a pretty potent utility.
And… AND… You can even post notes direct to your blog. In fact, here’s a screenshot of what I’m doing right now – and I’m going to try posting this to my blog to see what happens:
Screen clipping taken: 26/01/2009, 20:26
I can see this as being especially handy for certain collaborative tasks.
Total cost? Well it depends, it comes bundled with a lot of versions of Office, but if you don’t have it you can get it from Amazon and the likes. I’ve seen it on offer for £6 for certain academic licences but for most people it’s going to cost between £36 and £72, give or take a bit.
I feel strangely apologetic for bigging up some Microsoft Software – funny how that’s happened, they clearly have some failings to address with regards to how people feel about them. I do feel they’re improving on this now, and I have to remember that if it wasn’t for MS I doubt I’d have got into coding as it was their excellent yet affordable BASIC that got me started in 1982. And yes, I am that old!
It’s worth noting that in posting this it does do some things slightly strangely – I’m not sure why it adds a one point margin to the left of each<p> tag, for example, but otherwise all seems well. I’m guessing the margin could break some themes – not ours though ;o)
Blah blah blah fascinating introduction blah blah read this blah blah simple list, should only take a few minutes blah blah oh come ON you swines… just click on the link, OK?!
Success is getting something like this - courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
I’m getting tired of lists that make out that ten simple things will make your blog/company/online business/facebook profile a massive success.
What I’m going to post is no doubt contradictory, possibly inflammatory, and may well annoy some people who follow me. But let’s give it a whirl – with the tip, followed by why it won’t make a difference:
1. Blog Daily
Why? After all, if your ramblings are tedious, doing it five times as often won’t necessarily bring you five times the traffic. 90% of the daily traffic on this blog goes to just three posts and two are nearly two years old. And one of Interconnect IT’s clients has a blog that gets, typically, 20x-30x my daily traffic yet he updates his site just once a month. The site? Sniff Petrol, if you were wondering.
2. Create quality content.
Nope, didn’t work for Ebaum. All he did was find stuff other people had created and make it easy to find. Oh, and he slapped his logo over everything to make sure he got brand awareness. He’s not a top ten site, but he doesn’t care… he’s rich.
3. Run affiliate adverts.
Just makes your site look cheap. Doesn’t stop me trying it out every now and again, but I’m a hypocrite.
4. Blog about breaking news.
Pfft – if it’s big and important most of the world are going to BBC News or similar. They’ll only go to your site if you were there, took some amazing photos or video, or added some amazing commentary. And even then, the clickthroughs on adverts will probably add up to about $20 of revenue.
5. Keep your blog specialised.
I don’t. I blog about whatever hits my mind at the time, and I’m doing just fi… oh hang on no, my traffic sucks. Maybe you should do that one.
6. Use social networking.
It makes relatively little difference to the majority of the world – really, it’s a fraction of internet users who use StumbleUpon or Twitter or Digg. The best you can do is seed. People get pretty tired of seeing linkbait on social networks and it’ll lose you friends in the long run.
7. Create something of value.
Some content can be incredibly valuable. It can give superb advice and be incredibly informative. However, it won’t bring anybody to your site if they don’t know about it.
8. Use lists.
Lists always suggest an easy-to-read article that can be easily read during a tea-break or while the boss goes to the toilet… but although they bring easy traffic, they very rarely turn visitors into repeat visitors. Most will turn up, read the list, and leave. They won’t be back. Their value is almost inevitably zero.
9. Keep them wanting more.
Actually, this one will make a difference. Peep Show’s next series is being eagerly awaited by everyone because the six episodes they do each season just aren’t enough. In the online world that’d generate a lot of flack… but they don’t hear that, because the recipe is correct. So to that purpose, there’s no number 10 in this list.
Look, blog to make money, to entertain yourself, show off, get better jobs or to entertain your friends. It doesn’t really matter so long as it makes you happy. Traffic doesn’t matter either, and it certainly won’t make you happy when you discover that 1,000,000 have visited and not spent a penny on your Adsense links.
Ultimately, that one visitor a year who decides to pay for you to come advise his company for £1m is way more interesting than a million visitors who’ll pay you nothing. Sniff Petrol has won its owner plenty of business without a single affiliate link or piece of Adsense. The only important thing is that your blog is good for the people to whom it would be important and who are also important to you. If my blog was a huge hit with Uzbekistanese nose-flute players then it’d not make any difference to me in any way because if it does exist, then I probably hate their music.
Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that some big changes are being lined up for me, Interconnect IT and Spectacu.la – watch this space!
I don’t talk much about business on this blog, but I’ve decided to share what I’m doing to increase my productivity at work. So far these changes are making a great deal of difference.
An infinite blogger.
I don’t talk much about business on this blog, but I’ve decided to share what I’m doing to increase my productivity at work. So far these changes are making a great deal of difference.
Dump timewasters like the StumbleUpon or Digg toolbars from Firefox for any work related PC. I love it, but it’s there for entertainment. This is my work PC and I can’t afford the easy distraction.
Use Twitter more. I know it sounds like a potential distraction, but by being selective about who I follow I find it adds to my community connection – and that can make me more productive, rather than less. Don’t be offended if I don’t follow you back – it’s just that what you’re twittering about isn’t connected to what I do, even if it’s very interesting.
Declutter my online life. That means unsubscribing from mail-lists that I’m not really that interested in, and filtering the rest for reading when I’m not busy.
Declutter business. All companies have to deal with them – the small clients that constantly ask you lots of niggling questions which never actually lead to a sale or any real income. Work out a way of politely dumping them. You could consider referring them on to someone who’s just starting up and who needs the small clients.
Implement proper time-tracking. Use a simple grid sheet where you can quickly mark units of time against clients and jobs. That way you can establish where you’re wasting time and money.
Turn off IM except for a short period each day – especially if you have chatty friends.
Use larger monitors. I now use a 24″ screen at the office and a smaller 22″ at the home office. Both are dramatically more productive than smaller screens. And they’re not even especially expensive these days.
Use your laptop like a desktop computer. By that, I mean get to your desk and connect it a full size monitor (see point 7!), keyboard and mouse. Use the laptop screen as a secondary screen if you like, but that’s all. I don’t care what anybody says, but a laptop alone is always less productive unless you’re single-tasking most of the time – and in today’s connected world that’s rare.
Learn to use Outlook. There’s a lot of great productivity features in there. Outlook 2007 is especially neat and brings the game on. Office for the Home or for Small Businesses is pretty cheap these days and well worth it.
Actually, learn to use MS Office properly. It’s got some amazing tricks available to you. Excel can gather data from websites and keep it refreshed, so you can use it in your spreadsheets. Access can make up the basics of a decent CRM system in no time at all. And if you get a decent MS Word template your documents can be clearly structured and indexed in no time at all. In fact, if you join at Spectacu.la their WordPress User Guide has all the styles in it that you could ever need for a comprehensive document.
That’s enough for now, but needless to say that a little investment can reap incredible benefits to your work life. Yes, you’ll need to devote a little time and/or money, but if you gain more of both within a short while then everyone’s happy, no?
Health & Safety - not new, and not unique to the UK (public domain poster, thanks to Wikipedia.org)
The UK Health & Safety Executive is run by largely sensible, clear minded folk that want to help us to keep doing what we do, but ideally without losing fingers, testicles or lives.
So why do they get so much flack? Why do we keep hearing tales of children not being allowed to play in snow, in case they slip and get hurt? What about risk assessments that prevent village fetes from selling cups of soup in case visitors get scalded?
Mostly it’s bullshit. Stories made up or inflated, often with important facts removed by right wingers or libertarians who want to discredit the whole idea that people do, sometimes, need third parties to come along help protect others.
Food is supposed to be hot. If you burn yourself by drinking a soup that’s just out of the pot then that’s you’re look out. Health & Safety accept that common knowledge exists.
Health & Safety Bullshitting Consultants
So how do the more ridiculous, and genuine, cases arise? Because any damn fool can set themselves up as a Health & Safety consultant. There are no qualifications required, no accreditation enforced. There are, of course, bodies that provide qualifications in the subject, but they’re not compulsory.
So if you want to use a H&S consultant, find a real one – with experience or genuine skills and knowledge of the area concerned. When I’m racing I quite appreciate it when I’m advised that my harness is incorrectly tied into place, because I don’t want to die in an accident. It won’t be an H&S consultant, but somebody who understand both the risks and the technology.
Don’t Use H&S as an Excuse for Non Thinking
If you’re someone like a teacher who’s looking after kids and you’re scared that if the children in your charge could get hurt, don’t use H&S as an excuse for stopping them from getting outside and doing stuff. Parents present their fears without using Health & Safety as an excuse, so teachers should present them a bit more intelligently too.
If, as a teacher, you start getting scared that if your kids get hurt, you’ll end up in court, then that is a valid reason to express doubts about your involvement with these children. I can understand – some parents are morons (there is no license required to become one) and they believe their children are the unflawed product of their loins. Of course, children are actually manipulative, scheming little brats that haven’t yet learned how to behave in real company. Exposing them to risks, other people, and a bit of actual life helps them to develop. So for God’s sakes, let them play conkers once in a while, even if there’s an occassional bruised forehead.
But if you try to avoid conflict by blaming a large and relatively misunderstood public body then you’re doing us all a disservice and deserve to be severely hurt in a workplace paper-cut accident. If H&S can’t work properly, we’ll all be at more risk from exploding fuel tanks and sharp, pointy hood ornaments.
Automatic Rising Bollards – in my opinion a dangerous hazard that can cause serious damage to property and injury to car occupants. Come on guys – you can think of better ways to keep traffic out….
Image by Eric “Pause” Weigle on Flickr – cc sa
I’ve already expressed my distaste for rising bollard barriers (but the video I linked to then has long gone, sorry), and it’s not difficult to see how dangerous putting strong barriers out of the line of sight of a driver can be. You can say he shouldn’t be there, but the guy in the video attached here was just turning up to service a lift. He didn’t need to have his day ruined, and a company car wrecked, because of a poorly thought out barrier design.
SaaS rocks, but it’s not the be all and end all. But it is hot right now (again) and will continue to be so for quite some time. However, Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) driven by the likes of Flex and Silverlight could be returning us to a Client Server paradigm and is probably the way forward – bringing SaaS and local processing benefits to users.
Google Docs - still BetaI just responded on the UK Business Forums to a question about SaaS and felt that it was worth re-posting the content here:
As someone who’s worked on web delivered applications for around eight years, and on client/server and mainframe (which is actually like very thin client) I feel reasonably qualified to point out a few pros and cons of SaaS:
Pros
Deployment – in either corporate or SME environments this could be a nightmare. MS have it pretty well sussed these days, however, while Apple don’t. Which possibly explains why a lot of key SaaS proponents are Apple OSX users.
Cashflow – short term costs are easier to manage.
You’re always up to date – updates are continuous and rolling.
Data is stored and managed by professionals who hopefully know what they’re doing with regards to security and integrity.
Harder to lose data when a laptop goes missing.
Cons
Performance & Productivity – it’s definitely worse for end users although many will argue it’s fine. It’s getting better, but it’s still worse – especially for expert users. I remember how quickly expert PeopleSoft users could input data.
Because of 1, designers do have to concentrate hard on slick usability, but that means flexibility has a habit of dropping.
If you’re offline it’s a royal pain – methods of getting around this are improving, somewhat, and MS again appear to have some very good tech coming in Windows 7 to make working this way more feasible, but for the moment it’s still a major weakness in all but a few sophisticated cases.
You can be very much locked-in to a provider, far more easily than with local software, and there’s very few SaaS services that are open source. Even fewer where the export/import tools are 100% seamless. Even switching from WordPress.com to self-hosted can be painful for some.
You have to trust your provider and hope they don’t mess up. MS did a contacts screw up with Hotmail a while ago during an upgrade which affected a small proportion of their users – they kept e-mail addresses, but lost names and other information. And when something is ‘free’, especially, it’s very hard to kick up a stink. In fact, it’s worth noting that a lot of these services have an ‘at your own risk’ policy in their licences. To be safe you should be backing up your online data somewhere offline, which is painful.
SaaS rocks, but it’s not the be all and end all. But it is hot right now (again) and will continue to be so for quite some time. However, Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) driven by the likes of Flex and Silverlight could be returning us to a Client Server paradigm and is probably the way forward – bringing SaaS and local processing benefits to users.
Another thing I’ll add, which I didn’t bother mentioning on the forum, is that you’ll never get the flexibility of a local application with SaaS. The power and bandwidth simply isn’t there, and never will be. My computer can transmit data internally at multiple Gigabit speeds. By the time that kind of broadband exists at a low price for mass adoption most computers will be transmitting data internally at Terabit speeds. For the ultimate in performance you’ll always want local applications. For connected, multi-service and convenient applications you’ll want to go over to SaaS. Both will co-exist, just like Client Server failed to kill off the mainframe.
Inflate a problem, lie about it, redefine some words, and hey presto! You have a way to make a new law that will probably cause a lot of harm but will tick the boxes of certain voters whilst not alienating others.
From Wikimedia - image by Julia Costa, Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.5
There’s some subtle xenophobia in all this too, which people forget. The notion of this law will make life a lot harder for already vulnerable foreign prostitutes, but that particular reality is completely missed because… well, knock-on consequences for foreigners are never well considered when setting legislation.
So just a short post then, something bigger to come soon. I’m getting my teeth into this subject matter – there are so many easy targets in the Campaign for Thinking.