Simple Rules for web site design

• Frequency of web content change is inversely proportional to publishing control
• Frequency of web content change is proportional to number of people able to publish
• Content quality is inversely proportional to frequency of change
• Engagement is proportional to ability to comment and track replies

Thoughts?

Open Letter regarding PDC

It’s almost Microsoft PDC (Professional Developer’s Conference) time. The organisers of this excellent event have published the following open letter I went to the last PDC and I strongly recommend this event to anyone who wants to know what Microsoft will be doing over the next few years.

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Dear {Enter Your Manager’s Name Here},

I enjoy my job and have always appreciated how well you manage me. As you know, I don’t ask for much. I am a humble employee with simple needs, and I would like to attend Microsoft’s Professional Developer’s Conference in Los Angeles, October 27th-30th.

Wait! Before you respond, let me explain. This is not the typical conference that is more boondoggle than substance. The PDC (which is what the kids on Facebook call it) is where the best and brightest come together with the technical geniuses of Microsoft.

The PDC is where the speakers are not marketing folks, but actual developers and technologists who build the products. Remember those tough questions about Microsoft tools we had last week that we could not find an answer to? Well, I will have an opportunity to talk directly to the product team from Microsoft. In fact, one night they all gather in one place where I can ask all the questions we ever had and get real answers! And business cards!

But it isn’t just the speakers; it’s the other attendees. These are some of the smartest folks using the same tools and technologies we are. I can learn a lot from them and see how they have overcome issues we have run into. I keep reading the blogs (on my own time, of course) and everyone says that networking is one of the top reasons to attend.

I promise I won’t come home empty handed. I just read that they are making Windows 7 available to attendees! We will be able to get a first look at the operating system before everyone else. They are also are giving out a hard drive, called The Goods with all kinds of bits and bytes on it that we can use. Plus, I will come back with a ton of business cards.

Finally, I will come back inspired. The PDC is where Microsoft lays out its future strategy. You had the most spectacular idea yesterday about how we need to be a little more cutting-edge. By going to the PDC, I will see the technology roadmap for Microsoft and come back with ideas how we can make your genius idea a reality.

Thanks in advance for your approval on my humble request and I promise to bring you back a t-shirt, trip report, Windows 7, The Goods and a very inspired and much smarter employee.

Your favorite employee,

Mike MacDonagh

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Source

My Blog Stats

MMD WordPress Extension screenshot

I a blog stat fanatic. I’m obsessed. It’s so bad I wrote a FireFox extension to show me the current daily hit count of my blog. I started this blog in April 2008 and since then the readership has gone up month by month:

If you look at this on a weekly basis rather then on a monthly basis some more info is apparent. This graph below shows a slow start then some action starting when I started writing about IBM Jazz. Then the next peak was some RSDC blogging in June. All was then returning to the baseline readership level of about a 1000 hits/week until I posted some Google Chrome screenshots on the morning before Chrome was released. This led to over 3,000 people turning up in one day!

Finally the daily chart. Normally this goes up and down a bit (slow weekends, mid-week peaks etc.) Unfortunately the 3k Googlers completely flattened my graph At least that peak is about to drop off the side and the normal scale will resume

RSDC UK 2008 Review

So RSDC UK is over and I’m finally getting a chance to blog about it. It was cool to meet so many old friends and new make new connections. There were even some blog readers that were able to recognise me IRL by mentally adding 6 years and a beard on to my blog picture Very impressive!

I think it was the best UK Rational event for a long time, and there were some great speakers. Unfortunately the chairs were uncomfortable, some of the rooms too small and the venue would do well to invest in some air conditioning. I suspect that going to an event at the Royal College of Phyicians in the height of summer (assuming we ever have one in this country again) would be enough cause to need a doctor. Regardless of that, and the amount of walking up and down stairs I did, I think it was a great event. The buzz was mainly about the Jazz platform and associated tools (RTC, RQM, RRC).

Day 1

The conference was opened by Graham Spittle (IBM SWG UKISA VP) and Danny Sabbah (IBM Rational Worldwide VP) who set the scene well for Erich Gamma (in real life) and Grady Booch (in Second Life). Unfortunately the Second Life link went belly up and we did’t get all of Grady’s keynote. Which must have been extremely annoying for Grady since it was 3:30am for him! Erich then took over and gave an excellent Rational Team Concert demo (RTC). When he started his demo I was a bit worried he was going to cover all of my planned demo too, but fortunately it didn’t overlap completely. Since he did the Monday keynote and I did the last slot on Tuesday there was enough time and quantity of information for the delegates so a little overlap didn’t hurt. Erich also did a panel discussion on Agile development in the context of Geographically Distributed Development along with Scott Ambler and Julian Holmes moderated by Anthony Kesterton.

The great TQ (Terry Quatrani) was also present speaking on Agile Modelling, I had a meeting to attend so unfortunately didn’t get to see her speak which is a shame because she’s always great. I did speak to people that did go who just confirmed that I’d have rather gone than have a meeting!

Following the break it was then time for me to speak along with Linda Weedon of PwC and Matt Archer (also of IJI) on “CUPID – Implementing the IBM Rational Unified Process at PricewaterhouseCoopers” which is all about our experiences in deploying UP using a practice based approach. I think the session went really well, we had some pertinent questions which is always a good sign of people staying awake and listening To close the day Ian Spence gave an excellent (as usual) talk on “Conversations in Context: Using Use Cases on Agile Projects”. Following an excellent dinner and a few glasses of wine kindly provided by a competitor it was time to commute home and eventually get to sleep at around 1am. It’s much easier at conferences when you’re staying at or really close to the venue! During the dinner there was a caricature artist or two wondering around who came to our table. Naturally we volunteered Ian to be caricatured and I managed to take a quick pic with my phone of him with his Mad Scientist caricature.

Ian Spence - the Mad Scientist

It’s a little known fact that Ian is also a Kung Fu master which is why his hand appears blurred in this pic. Fractions of a second later my phone was whisked from my hand at the speed of lightening.

Day 2

Day 2 was for some peculiar reason started 30mins earlier than day 1. This didn’t impress me, especially since like most people I hadn’t noticed until I was texted while on the train on the way in. Fortunately I was early enough anyway to get there on time. Mike O’Rourke opened the day with some description of the Rational 2.0 Roadmap (Jazz and future products). Rumours were confirmed about Rational Project Management and Rational Enterprise Reporting being released Q1 next year.

Ivar Jacobson then gave an excellent keynote on “Back to basics: Getting Good Software Quickly and at Low Cost” which focussed on using practices in a smart way, not following processes. I’ve seen Ivar speak many times, and many times on practice based development, which isn’t that surprising since I work for him but it’s always entertaining to hear the man speak.

I also had some meetings on Day 2 but the sessions that really stood out for me were Peter Eeles talking on “The Rise of the Development Environment Architect” which was based on his paper on DevelopWorks. This is an excellent formalisation of something that has been part of my job for some time. I also enjoyed Derek Holt’s talk on “RTC and the Agile Development Strategy”.

Finally to wrap up Day 2 I presented on own this time on “Live Jazz: Process Execution in IBM Rational Team Concert”. This started off with a demo of EssWork in Eclipse, shell sharing with RTC and creating a new process by composing practices as described in Ivar’s slideware at morning keynote. I then started executing my new process in RTC. It was the end of a long two days in a really hot room so I kept it quite light and I think it went well – and hopefully the audience got something different and new from the talk. If you are now kicking yourself that you missed this talk, fear not I’ll be repeating most of it as part of a webinar I’m doing in October – more details here.

Thanks to all those who attended my talks and came and said hello, especially those that read the Mac Daddy! I’ll post the slides in a few days

Tweet at your peril!

Tweet at your peril

Pinched from the ReadWriteWeb

Twiffid: See What Your Twitter Friends Are Blogging About

Cool site that shows you the latest headlines of your Twitter friends’ feeds in a Twitter-style format. Of course it gives you that as an RSS feed as well so it’s a good thing to add to your aggregator:)

read more | digg story

MMD WordPress.com FireFox Extension v1.1

I’ve released a new version of the MMD WordPress.com FireFox extension, that fixes a bugette I had in the clickability of icons in the about box and has added a couple of new options to the status bar panel. If you have a WordPress.com blog you simply must have this extension.

I’ve also nominated the extension to become public on the mozilla firefox addons site. To help with this I really need people who download it and use it to review it. There have been over a hundred downloads so far and only 2 reviews! Add a review people, I shall send you an email full of e-karma if you do so

Screenshot of v1.1

MMD WordPress Extension screenshot

Please leave comments on the extension page here

Ubiquity – language integrated internet

Mozilla Labs » Blog Archive » Introducing Ubiquity.

Check it out, this is seriously cool stuff. I’m using the prototype and I’m impressed!

MMD WordPress FireFox Extension – know your hit count!

I often want to know how many hits my wordpress blog has had without loading the stats page, mainly so I can compete with a fellow blogger who sits opposite me in the office

So I made the MMD WordPress FireFox extension, install it and you get a tiny status bar panel that shows your current daily hits. You can right click the panel and hit “View Stats Details” and FireFox will happily take you to your normal stats page on WordPress.com

To Install:

The MMD WordPress FireFox extension is brand new! That means it’s an “experimental” extension according to mozilla.org and so it needs people to try it out and post a review to become publicly listed on the main FireFox addon website.

You can install it here – please add a review!

The Future:

I’m thinking about adding some stuff to do with the normal browser right click menu to add:

• Add link to BlogRoll (when hovering over a link)
• Post link to blog (which would just open the normal WordPress posting page but prefill the form with stuff link the link, title etc. ready for you to edit)

And other suggestions please comment!

Great Web 2.0 presentation

Saw this presentation by Sacha Chua and thought it was really good