cazh1 » Twitter

Five Stages of Twitter Relevance

Jim MacLennan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:36:00 +0000

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I’m already fielding internal (as well as external) questions about the application of Twitter in a manufacturing company, and I’m developing a reasonably good model, I think – one that will apply to the hard-core, salt-of-the-earth, manufacturing business leader that I’ve worked with at many organizations.

This “maturity model” approach has been used before; back in December of 2008, Bhagarva sketched out the Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance – but that model only helps existing bloggers and social networkers understand this terse little idea spitter. Kind of like explaining OOP to a COBOL developer – I get the general idea of coding (communicating), but you’ve changed some of the basic rules like procedural vs. event handling (short and immediate vs. in depth and permanent).

This doesn’t help explain YACMTTCDFE (Yet Another Communication Method That They Can’t Distinguish From Email) for those still struggling with Web 2.0 and Social Networks. If it doesn’t arrive in their Outlook inbox, I’m still facing an uphill struggle getting them to understand the mechanism, let alone the concept.

However, I’m getting a decent level of results when I draw parallels to concepts that these folks “grew up” with. The level of understanding and acceptance directly correlates to the level of relevance that the Twitterverse might have for their current information sharing needs. They typically ask …

How exactly do I understand Twitter and it’s relevance to my work day?

Pointless: This has absolutely no value add, a complete waste of time – get back to work!
Cute: An interesting and different communication medium, but I gotta get back to work. Maybe over lunch …
Web-Based Texting: Conversations about nothing in particular, but at least you’re starting to connect. Not sure how it is better than IM, but some don’t even use that …
A Cocktail Party (or maybe the corner bar): Twitter is filled with cliques that are easy to eavesdrop / butt in on – a chance to develop your skills and awareness, and engage larger, targeted networks with pointed conversations about specific topics that I deal with every day. But no pressure, we’re just hanging out ..
A Community: Like a trade group, guild, or local Chamber of Commerce, one that requires and rewards participation. At this highest level, Twitter is both a source and a use of awareness, knowledge and understanding; conversations are multi-directional, real business value is being generated.

I can illustrate these levels with examples from my favorite Twitter Search columns in my Tweetdeck (Search:SAP)

Do I really care if the sap is running this spring?
Funny, I get hits when people watch sap-py movies. Oh, those wacky homonyms …
Twitter as a job board – every SAP job listing pops up. Wait, did I just see a trend tweet by?
Hmm, lots of interesting SAP practitioners are talking about live projects and cutting edge programming work …
Interesting conversations pop up when Oracle buys Sun, or SAP announces the latest product enhancements – I can get a near-real time pulse on market sentiment

I’ve piqued their interest, but now they want to know what “real business value” really means. I’ll post on that next time … stay tuned!

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Post tags: SAP, Social Networks, Tweetdeck, Twitter, Web 2.0

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KM Overcomplicates: Heisenberg Impact on a VBA Quickie

Jim MacLennan — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:08:00 +0000

Got a simple request from one of the folks in Operations; we’re sending out Excel spreadsheets for some quick data gathering, might we do a little basic input validation before they send in garbage that needs to be scrubbed? This person is very sharp, knows a decent bit about what is possible, and this is definitely not something that is worth a major project engagement; “throwaway technology”, a particular fave of mine.

His request was simple – just want to make sure folks enter data into one or two required columns. I’ve done plenty of Excel VBA, and had figured out a simple approach while we were talking (it’s all in the Before_Save() event, naturally), but I couldn’t really tell him how to do it – he’d never programmed VBA before. However, I do have some rather large projects coming this year, and this person’s group will be very important in making timely decisions, implementing change – so I figured that a little lagniappe here would pay big dividends down the road.

Of course, I knew there would be some I couldn’t get all of his requirements right away – I’ve done many similar things in the past, and could anticipate a number of requests down the road. So, a few minutes of Q&A, and I got a decent set of requirements for future flexibility that, if I do a little extra coding now, I could make much simpler in the future.

you may want to jump to the bottom of this post for the lessons learned … gets a bit tedious here …

“Teaching Event” Explodes Scope

Of course, I didn’t want to become the maintainer of another shadow system, so I need to keep this simple. And, I really think there is a lot of potential in quick-and-dirty Excel automation that would do great things for many companies – if more folks knew how to do it. So, I resolved to make the code as modular and self-documenting as I could; I will publish a generic version of the spreadsheet on my code page, so it might be useful Out There as well.

Then again, I have written before about the difficulties of documentation, and I fully appreciate the fact that knowledge capture, while always valuable exercise, adds a lot of overhead – time and complexity, and required concentration. So, I thought I could compound the complexity even more by journaling the programming exercise “real time”, to get some measurements on how much of an impact “good” tech documentation can add. So, I’m composing this blog entry “real time”, to capture a little data.

And, because I just can’t seem to leave complex enough alone, I’ll leave my Twitter client [current fave: TweetDeck] up, and do a little play by play for the Twitterverse as well. Not that I expect much feedback, it’s Saturday evening; had a nice steak dinner with the family, hopefully I’ll stay up through the end of the experiment.

Time Line – Saturday

8:55 pm
He gets a Bright Idea, and starts the blog entry.

9:15 pm
The KM preamble (above) is done, start opening windows. Before I get going, I’ll have four apps open: Excel and the Excel VBA editor, plus a Google Doc (this entry) and Tweetdeck.

I did grab a sample of the spreadsheet to be sent out, with the various columns, header rows already defined, so that’s a nice start.

9:18 pm
Fractal nature of KM – had an idea to #hash tag all the tweets together, so had to go retroactively tag first tweet. Maybe I can code soon …

9:20 pm
Proof of concept / flow was just a message box in the BeforeSave event. Now, I’m off stealing code from old stuff – processing row/column arrays with somewhat predictable locations and dimensions. I need to make what are basically simple loops 99.99% driven with variables, no hard coding. This is the fundamental way to deliver flexibility.

I also will assume future applications that will have multiple tabs with a different data input table in each tab – so will need to build a master loop that runs thru all the tabs.

9:25 pm
Coding finally starts, with a search thru old ssheets. 2-3 more windows opened up. I’m commenting the code while I’m writing it, so the coding time isn’t just raw coding

9:50pm
All stolen code, but built basic structure to process multiple sheets, handle errors at dropout at the end. I think folks might read this source code and get intimidated by VBA – hmmm, might not be helping things. Ah well, on we go …

10:00pm
Some actual new code, still mostly cribbed from other projects – but I’m aggressively genericizing. Also, first comment from twitterverse (@faseidl). Will have to Follow commenters later.

10:05pm
Gonna steal some ReDim syntax, rarely do that, always have to reuse

10:15pm
Been coding for 45 minutes since the last debug, never timed it like this before, kinda interesting

10:33pm
Code is flying, flexible error checking loops all built – writing the magic line of code “If blank then error” now. Probably should structure this bit of code to allow for different types of error checks (<, >, limits, etc.)

10:45pm
Aha, basic loop works, but I made a mistake in my assumption of how to control the thing. I need to specify a column that I will assume is always filled – when I see a blank there, I stop checking. I’ll have to write the “end of check” to be a warning “note: I am stopping here …”

11:00pm
Ok, it’s all done, tested, working just fine. Code was about 140 lines, not a lot. Will do final documentation and code clean up tomorrow morning – kinda tired right now.

Time Line – Sunday

9:45am
Ok, back to it – should be able to finish this up right quick, one would think. Some quick math on the time line above: Roughly 40 minutes (32%) of documentation, 85 minutes (68%) of coding. Not really quantifying how much longer the coding took because I was aggressively cloning (speedup), commenting (slowdown), and genericizing (slowdown).

The sheet works fine, but I do have some work left. Need to package it all up for the original requester, so he knows how to change things; also need to genericize the final thing, so I can publish it / share the knowledge. Again, I’m trying to capture the teaching moment opportunity.

First run throuught the code was to add comments / documentation so folks know how to extend it. The target audience ranges from technically savvy, but no VBA experience, to VBA hackers – I think it’s all in how I structure the code.

9:59am
Getting some additional coding in – trying to take out as many opportunities for typos and such as possible. Restructuring the code so I only have to code the name of the tab to be checked once. I’m actually doing a bunch of coding here, trying to make maintenance as easy as possible – I know these aren’t the most elegant methods, but I am growing conscious of how much time this is all taking. Tradeoffs, always tradeoffs.

10:18am
Code cleanup done – but in testing, noted something I forgot to add. Data checking loop ends with first blank in the “check column”, but if that’s a mistake, and there are data rows below, I should give them a chance to see that – so I’ll let them know what I think has just happened. A bit more detail than just a “success” message – again, this is a data quality check based on my experience with similar spreadsheets.

10:31am
Fine, the actual programming request is done. An email to the requester to deliver, but then I need to finish the Distribution part of KM. Note how I am short cutting the knowledge transfer part of this exercise for the requester – in my email, I told him to let me know when I might drop by, to walk him through the editing / changing process.

Lazy? No, actually quite practical. I’ll be walking him thru the process of making changes to VBA, and I’m not about to document that. Just show him how the basic sheet works, and give him hints on how he can read more , make simple changes if/when interested. I also need to make sure he understands this is not something that IT will “officially support” going forward – just a quick-and-dirty bit of macro coding for a friend.

10:37am
Now, I’m carving out the code, prepping a sample ssheet for sharing … to be posted on my code page. Note that I’m doing some “documenting” by generating sample data, including an error!

10:52am
Here’s is the part of KM that really drives tech folks nuts, methinks. It’s “prep for final distribution”, making everything digestible for a broad, unknown, unanticipated audience. Up until now, the total stands at 75 minutes (39%) documentation, 117 minutes (61%) coding – but from this point on, it’s 100% documentation. Remember, if a tree falls in the forest, no one hears the sound; documentation won’t help until the code is all checked in, text is cleaned up to be made readable, and everything is put where it can be indexed and found.

11:00am
Just starting the editing pass on this blog post – typos, prose formatting When I’m documenting on the fly, I’m not trying to make it look and sound pretty, I’m trying to capture the ideas. However, must invest in the look/feel of final product, else folks won’t read it, understand it, or believe it.

12:00 Noon
I’ll stop the timer on the documentation here – this is a ton of work compared to the size of the original. Just starting the editing pass on this blog post – typos, prose formatting. When I’m documenting on the fly, I’m not trying to make it look and sound pretty, I’m trying to capture the ideas. However, must invest in the look/feel of final product, else folks won’t read it, understand it, or believe it.

Lessons Learned

Twitter definitely adds overhead – can’t quantify it easily, and it was also difficult to keep remembering to post status updates there. Might be because it’s still a new tool, I’m just getting used to it, but it’s a different kind of overhead than the blog entry.
There is a chunk of complexity added because I’m flipping between different windows. Two large monitors helps, but KM requires multi-tasking; if your teams can’t actively, effectively juggle four threads at once, you’ll never get good documentation out of them.
Programming for speed? Hardcode, don’t go for flexibility. The coding time was easily double since I was anticipating reuse, etc.
Only the one comment from the Twitterverse while the project was underway – not sure if that was time of day, target audience, or what. Twitter is still opportunisitc, hit or miss communication – hence the interst (I think) in building up follow lists (ings and ers).
Knowledge capture and sharing can be a relationship management and change management exercise as well. The ability to capture things in writing are important, but not everything
Final time stats, rounded off: Coding 120 minutes (60%), Documentation 80 minutes (40%). I can speed up coding with reuse and practice, but I can also speed up documentation with practice! Don’t give up on documentation because it’s going to shave 40% from all of your effort estimates – unless you honestly track all of the lost time spent looking up definitions, requirements, previous art.

KM is not free, but I think the value is only seen retroactively; folks that have gotten burned with lost requirements, or forced to do rework because the framer’s intent was lost – they seem to be the folks skilled at and committed to KM.

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Back to the Future: Twitter "microblogging"

Jim MacLennan — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 04:41:00 +0000

“That’s pretty good, Johnny, but that ain’t the way I heerd it. . . .”

I recall when all this “blogging” talk started, way back in 1999 or so (thanks to Hallett for a decent history). The idea was to post thoughts and feelings, observations about technology, society, or whatever – anything from a daily diary to a project notebook. Scoble and others became (in)famous for posting multiple times a day.

Time marches on, and the medium has morphed over the years. Blog post frequency (BPF?) stopped being the measure of success; sites became electronic versions of trade magazines, marketing slicks, talk radio .. along with the occasionally Really Good Blog (couldn’t resist), capturing knowledgable insights or technical tricks.

Then along comes Twitter, which has made little sense to me to date. Well, ok … let’s say my appreciation for the applicability of this site has slowly matured – along with their ability to avoid the Fail Whale. And I’ve seen another recent burst of activity – mini-Twitter apps, breaking news source, alternative interfaces, even metrics for personal validation. When talk turns to monetization and open source competitors appear, I guess you’ve arrived.

I recently happened upon Mr. Tweet, who has helpfully suggested a series of influential tweeters to follow. When Kawasaki and Scoble appeared on the list, it was like a flashback to the old days …

… but this actually got me a bit more enthused. Posting multiple times per day makes a bit more sense when it’s only a brief thought – and Twitter enforces brevity with the 140 character limit.

So, now I’m trying to post more frequently on Twitter during the day, like a blogging old-timer – encouraged, I will admit, by posting into a tweetosphere more amenable to spontaneous connection; a few thoughts during a Sharepoint presentation brought a quick response from a SharePoint guru and author, with more than a few tech details on some of the finer [Share]Points (aiw).

We’ll see how long this lasts …

Previously …

Twitter (March 22, 2007)
New Twitter features starting to make things more relevant (June 3, 2007)
Thoughts During a Power Outage (March 27, 2008)
The Right Web2.0 Tool for the Audience (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) (May 9, 2008)
Finally! Relevant Applications for YouTube and Twitter in the Enterprise! (July 11, 2008)
Enterprise 2.1: Exiting the Trough of Disillusionment (July 22, 2008)
On the Road: Business Travel, Fall 2008 (October 13, 2008)

Technorati Tags: blog, Knowledge Management, twitter, Web 2.0,

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Third Time’s the Charm? Blackberry Bold

Jim MacLennan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:11:00 +0000

I recently had to part ways with my Blackberry Pearl – some heartache, I suppose, but time and product innnovation march on. There is a lot to like about the Blackberry Bold – I am definitely happy to have made the change …

Acceptable Form Factor: Yes, the Pearl was “perfect” because of it’s candy-bar size – unlike the classic 7200 series, which felt strange when held up to your ear as a cell phone. Bottom line – the Bold still fits comfortably in jacket, shirt, and pants pockets. Plus, when I’m using it as a phone, I’ve typically got the Bluetooth headset plugged in.
QWERTY is Back: You can get used to the predictive typing on the Pearl’s compressed, two-letters-to-a-key keyboard, but the Bold’s “standard” layout has help reduce my typos considerably (alas, I have to take ownership of misspelings again).
So That‘s What WiFi is For … It didn’t register until I connected to my local Tomato to get out to the intarweb – much faster than anything I’d ever seen before, very useful.
Improved Screen: More real estate really helps here, and the applications are much more useful. Not just the “native” Contacts, eMail, and Calendar clients, but the web browser as well; pages just render better on this thing. I mean, it was usable before, but now it’s actually quite effective.
More Applications: A few more games, big deal – I don’t play in meetings anymore. However, there is a wide range of free, Blackberry-aware apps that are really useful – the Google suite, of course, plus Facebook and the Wall Street Journal. I’ve even re-downloaded Twitterberry, which has made a few updates since I last played with it (trying microblogging again …)

Subtleties that Really Deliver: No, I’m not an iPhone hater – but I have discovered a number of little features – not widely talked about, but spot-on useful – that apparently are not matched in the BBKWT. Face it – the Blackberry is spooky self-aware that it’s a phone, first and foremost; open up an eMail, and if a phone number appears in the body, you can click on it to initiate a call. Or start a conversation with Messenger, and click the green phone button – a pop up asks if you want to call the person you are chatting with. Nice.
My Desktop: I also like the fact that I can add custom folders and rearrange icons, even moving them within these new folders. The home screen gives me space for six icons, so I’ve got a folder for messaging apps (email, gmail, IM, SMS, and tberry), Internet apps (browser, Google apps, WSJ, Facebook), plus direct licks to calendar, contacts, and Google Maps (my fave application for the handheld).

No, it’s not perfect – I don’t understand why I can’t create shortcuts for my favorite web sites (Bloglines, Ping, Weather Underground, etc.) in the folders – but I can see myself growing more independent from the luggable [notebook]. If I could only get a decent VNC client …

Previously …

eMail on Blackberry Changes Definition of Acceptable eMail (September 19, 2005)
My first month with the Blackberry Pearl (February 26, 2007)
Rare event: Design problems with my Blackberry Pearl (May 24, 2007)
New Twitter features starting to make things more relevant (June 3, 2007)
Communication is the responsibility of … (August 19, 2007)
Innovation That Matters – Substance Over Style (January 12, 2008)
The Innovation Generation and User Interfaces (April 9, 2008)
Stretching Your User Interface Design Muscles (April 16, 2008)
Finally! Relevant Applications for YouTube and Twitter in the Enterprise! (July 11, 2008)
On the Road: Business Travel, Fall 2008 (October 13, 2008)

Technorati Tags: blackberry, design, hands on, innovation, productivity, technology, twitter

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New Twitter features starting to make things more relevant

Jim MacLennan — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 20:12:00 +0000

Here’s a new plugin for Firefox that’s helpful for my use of Twitter – twitterbar. Yes, there’s a number of plugins designed to integrate Twitter with Firefox, but this one seems to work fine. Note that it works better now that I’ve upgraded to Firefox 2.0 – always a good idea to keep up with your software upgrades.

Also, the good folks at Twitter have completed some nice updates to their mobile site – here’s how it looks in my Blackberry browser …

Click on the picture for a full-size image!

These are the kind of incremental improvements that applications go through until they settle into that comfortable niche of relevant, soon to become in use daily. I will admit I am forcing myself to enter “tweets”, but that’s because I now see them as adjuncts to my CV page; I’m taking them off of this blog – not sure if they are useful here – but if someone is looking to understand what I’m working on Right Now, that’s the place to look.

Technorati Tags: blackberry, twitter, Web 2.0

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