chris busse

How the Pomodoro Technique has reduced size of the time windows I need for programming

Administrator Account — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:00:00 GMT

I've generally found that developing software, like many maker-like tasks, requires long, uninterrupted blocks of time to get in to what I'm doing, focus on the challenges at hand, and work through the solutions that are needed.

My Problem

For me, the ideal time block is somewhere around 4 hours. The problem with this is that it is very difficult to block out all the interruptions that vie for your attention throughout a normal work day. It can be very time-consuming just to get back on task after an unexpected interruption. This is even harder in situations such as mine, where I'm responsible for managing an ad-hoc support queue on top of my normal development duties.

Enter the Pomodoro Technique

Several weeks ago I happened to notice some people that I follow on twitter mentioning the how they were "on a Pomodoro" or had a "good Pomodoro" (if I could remember who, I'd gladly give credit and thanks here!). This piqued my interest so I googled around and came across the Pomodoro Technique website which explains that the Pomodoro Technique is:

...a time management method that can be used for any kind of task. For many people, time is an enemy. The anxiety triggered by “the ticking clock”, especially when a deadline is involved, leads to ineffective work and study habits which in turn lead to procrastination.

The site goes on to explain that a Pomodoro is basically a 25 minute block of time during which you focus on a single task at hand, keeping a log of tasks accomplished, and taking short (5 minute) breaks in-between the 25 minute blocks.

A few things that attracted me to this were:

the five minute breaks give me an excuse to indulge my distractions: Twitter, email, Facebook, Google Reader, etc.
the logging gives me a place to be honest with myself about my progress on a task, since I'm the only person who's going to look at the log (as opposed to my timesheet)
the 25 minute time blocks can roughly correspond to To Dos I am tracking in Basecamp (and since I've been using the Technique, I am now more conscious about breaking down my To Dos in Basecamp into Pomodoro-sized chunks)
and perhaps most importantly:

I no longer feel the need to have a 4 hour time block set aside for programming. Knowing that my tasks are broken down in to Pomodoro time blocks, I can look at a window of 30 minutes or more and know how many Pomodoros I can expect to complete in that time span, and focus on just those tasks at hand.

A tool to help

Instead of the paper-based system described on the Pomodoro Technique site, I use a free timer/logging utility for my Mac called Pomodoro Desktop by Ugo Landini. I think it has greatly eased my adoption of the Technique. Here's a run down of what I like about it:

It runs in the menu bar:

The settings and features are such that Pomodoro Desktop will advance you through a series of Pomodoros. I've found the "Automatic Pomodoro Restart" to be a huge help in keeping my pace going and getting me back on track after I've allowed myself a five minute break/distraction:

When you start a Pomodoro it prompts you to enter a description. I use a format of Client - Project - Task which jives with the way I track my time for billing and To Dos in Basecamp:

It keeps a log of the descriptions so you can get an idea of what you've been working on and reward or chastise yourself accordingly. However, I'm not making any attempt to use this as my time log for billing purposes:

Tying it all together

When I sit down to do some work, this is the basic "getting started" routine I use:

Hide any distracting windows -- anything where incoming communications can distract me
Start a timer in my time tracking/billing application, Harvest
Go in to Basecamp and find what I need to work on, or ZenDesk if I'm closing out support tickets
Start a Pomodoro with Pomodoro Desktop
Work work work
Go with the flow of the Pomodoro timers until I need to move on to something else (meeting, lunch, etc)
Stop timer in Harvest
Review time vs. work log and make sure Harvest reflects a fair billing of what was done.

This article was written in two Pomodoros.

If you have feedback or questions, leave a comment below!

20 Similarities between Michael Mann's Heat and Public Enemies SPOILERS

SuperUser Account — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:48:00 GMT

Last night I went to see Public Enemies, and couldn't help but notice the similarties between it and Heat (they are both directed by Michael Mann). So much so that I conviced my wife we should watch Heat when we got home from the theater, so that was like 5 hours of Michael Mann which was more than enough to last me for a while. Here in no particular order are similarities I noticed, which will probably only be of interest to people who have seen both movies:

*SPOILERS ARE BELOW!*

Similar setup: Arch criminal (DeNiro/Depp) vs. dedicated Lawman (Pacino/Bale)
Love interest to a criminal hampers his effectiveness as a criminal
Very similar beach scene between bad guy and his love interest as to whether they will continue on the same path together.
Same plot point that if the bad guy can get that one last score, he and his girl can get away forever
Setting up a big score for the end with a key actor (Voigt/Ribisi)
Casing a joint from above before robbing it
Bank robberies by three people, with a getaway driver outside, very similar inside-the-bank scenes w/ standing on the counters, opening the safes (manager's keys, etc)
Females as human shields
Hockey game on TV (Heat) / newsreel (PE) -- I'm guessing this might be one of those "Director's Trademarks"
Shooting hinges off door with shotgun, entering apartment
"You want a Junior G-Man badge for that?" (Heat) / Awarding of Junior G-Man badges (PE)
Screen shown in movie becomes full screen OF movie (Thermal cam of DeNero in Heat / Clark Gable movie in PE)
"We're here for the bank's money, not yours." in both movies (credit: IMDB)
Frequent shots of the cops back in their offices regrouping
Epic shootout scenes that leave a LOT of pockmarking on surroundings (police cars in Heat, New Bohemian lodge in PE)
Quick change of aiming direction during shootout without removing eye from line of sights -- this is much more noticable by Val Kilmer in Heat, but if you watch in PE during the new Bohemian shootout scene Depp (I think) does it as well.
Long distance shooting using rifle with iron sights (Pachino/Bale) (cinematically shot in nearly the same manner)
Post shoot-out persuit of bad guys by good guys in nearby environs.
Bad guys crossing territory with good guys (Pacino & crew photographed by DeNero's crew in the shipping yard, Depp going through the FBI unit dedicated to searching for him)
Much of the same investigative techniques used - notably similar use of wire taps, flipping someone to betray the criminals

What other similartieis did I miss? Comment below...

Speaking at DotNetNuke User Groups June 17 (NoVA) & June 18 (Richmond)

SuperUser Account — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:23:00 GMT

On June 17, 2009 I'll be heading up the road to the Captial DotNetNuke User Group to give a talk on Developing DotNetNuke modules that interact with 3rd-party RESTful APIs then the following evening (June 18th) will be the first ever meeting of the Richmond DotNetNuke User Group, so please check out that page and register if you're in the area and interested in attending!

Also, if you have any questions or suggestions in advance for me for either meeting, leave a comment below or email chrisbusse@gmail.com

Diagramming my stack, a draft

SuperUser Account — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:55:00 GMT

I'm preparing to write a series of posts over the summer that outline how I use a bunch of Web 2.0 / hosted applications to manage my business and personal productivity. To help me visualize the relationship between the apps I've creating this rough diagram, which I'd really like to refine (straighten the text, adjust colors, etc).

For each of the items on this diagram, I plan to make a "zoomed" in diagram showing how I use the tool as well as articles for each one describing my processes around them, and if I get ambitious, screencasts.

Whistler quote about the value of creative output

SuperUser Account — Sun, 31 May 2009 03:01:00 GMT

While being cross-examined during a trial in which he accused a critic of libel, James McNeill Whistler was questioned as to why he charged two hundred guineas for what amounted to two days of work. His response:

"I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime."

This quote reminds me alot of a parable in Gordon Macenzie's Orbiting the Giant Hairball where an oil baron buys a dairy farm and berates the cows for not working hard, where in reality they are producing milk but the action is unseen.

How to create a custom 'Backlog by Person' report for Zendesk

SuperUser Account — Tue, 26 May 2009 01:50:00 GMT

Zendesk is a Web 2.0 / hosted application that provides an easy to use helpdesk or request tracking system in which tickets can be assigned to people ("agents"). These tickets can be Open, Pending (input from the requestor), Solved, or Closed.

"Out of the box" Zendesk provides a set of custom reports that can be used to view the overall status of a ticket queue at a quick glance. One of these reports is a "Backlog Evolution Report" which shows three points for each day:

"Backlog" = Working Tickets
"New Tickets" = Created Tickets
"Solved Tickets" = Resolved Tickets

One a new Zendesk account, the graph looks something like this:

And on a more established Zendesk account with a bit of a backlog, the graph might look something like:

As I started getting more familiar with Zendesk and how we were using it, I came to realize that this report didn't provide me with the meaningful information I needed. It showed the overall evolution of the entire queue, but in my environment I wanted to see the overall load on each agent's queue. Luckily, Zendesk allows administrators to create custom reports.

Taking a look at the way the "Backlog Evolution" report was setup, I decided to make one called "Backlog by Person", with the goal of plotting each person's "Backlog" (Working Tickets) each day. This screenshot shows the main settings of the report with a single data series. To show additional people, you add additional data series' for each person:

With these settings, and three people's data series', the report looks like:

For me, this information is much more useful than a Backlog Evolution because our goal is get the backlog as small as possible, and also make sure we're maintaining a ratio between people approximate to what is shown. The guy who has the red should have +25% or more than the green line, and the person with the blue line should always have a minimum amount of tickets. We know that if the green line gets too close to the red line, we need to reassign some of green's tickets to red.

This is just one example of how Zendesk can be easily customized to each individual user's or organization's need. Many other web apps could definitely learn some lessons from them.

Do you have any Zendesk tips to share or feedback about this post? Comment below!

Pics from last week: 'Outside the office' edition

SuperUser Account — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:41:00 GMT

We had beautiful weather last week and the gas pipeline construction through the Cary & Belmont intersection had wrapped up so buskers returned to the street corner outside of my office. A gentleman we've dubbed "Freebird" usually sets up for all-afternoon sessions, but he wasn't seen. Instead we got a mix of talent:

And lastly, this gentleman was in the alley at 10am on Tuesday, enjoying a cold beverage while having a lively conversation on his cell phone:

How I use five different web apps to track my professional communication

SuperUser Account — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:27:00 GMT

At my company we use a number of online / "Web 2.0"-style applications to track the various activities we do. Our use of these systems has evolved to the point where if you communicate with me in relation to the work I do with you, I'm tracking that communication in at least one of five systems. Additionally, another two systems are used for time tracking and accounting, and a few others to extend all of these, however in this post I'm just focusing on communication tracking.

I'm trying very hard not to interject any cynicism into the idea that "OMG it takes me seven friggen Web 2.0 apps to keep up with everything going on with my business" so the point of this post is how these apps do great things for me, or help me do great things, and it will kick off a series of posts about how I have adapted these apps (through use, APIs, add-ons, etc) to work better for my specific needs with the hope that others will find the same successes.

The five apps I use to track client communication are:

Gmail - email client, try to keep this at "inbox zero" as much as possible
Zendesk - helpdesk system for ad-hoc / standalone requests, email and web interface
Basecamp - project tracking system for multi-step / multi-milestone projects
Batchbook - contact management system
Salesforce - sales pipeline management

In more detail, here's how these systems track my communications:

Gmail
All my email runs through Gmail. Ever since I switched over from Outlook I've been hooked by the way it threads messages ("conversation view"). A couple of times I've tried to use Outlook or Mail.app and the message threading of Gmail has kept me from leaving it.

Additionally, I've developed a system of using Gmail's labels and Super Stars (the subject of a soon to be published future blog post) to make very quick work of getting to "inbox zero" when I need to. However with all of Gmail's nifty features, I wouldn't be able to get to inbox zero without being able to shift things over to these other systems...

Zendesk
Zendesk bills itself as "enlightened customer support" but I will take that further and declare it to be one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. That isn't an accolade I hand out lightly, but Zendesk deserves it. It is extremely well thought out, easy to use, and easy to configure to an organization's specific request ticketing needs and workflow.

We use it to handle support requests for existing clients that come up on an ad-hoc basis. Clients can email a certain address and a ticket is automatically created, they get a notification, and we get notifications of the new ticket via email/sms (all that is customizable).

The important thing here is they don't have to change the way they work, to work with us. I think this is very important in the world of Web 2.0 apps. I'd wager that 95% of our clients handle their work within the context of Outlook and the MS Office suite, and to ask them to go outside of that to request support or new things from us is asking too much.

On the back-end, Zendesk does an awesome job of managing our request queue, providing custom reports and exports, and providing a quick search for looking up the history of issues, among many other features.

Basecamp
For us, Basecamp excels in its ability to track Milestones and To Do lists for Projects, as well as collect the various files needed for a geographically (and sometimes chronologically) diverse project team into one place.

So much has been written about Basecamp that I'm not going to rehash a lot of it here, but my main observation about it is: Basecamp works great if you can get everyone involved in the project actively using it.

For a long time there was some criticism of Basecamp that it didn't work well with email. They've fixed that with the addition of a feature that allows for email in/out on the messages and comments section which has been a big help in getting people to use it (see Zendesk, "The important thing here is they don't have to change the way they work, to work with us." above).

However, we still have not succeeded in getting everyone who is on a project, and needs to be using Basecamp (read, our clients), to use it regularly during the course of a project. We've created a weekly review process and a custom report designed to bring anyone who has fallen out of the loop on a project back into the know every Monday.

Currently this process uses Google Docs spreadsheets and isn't automated, but we have a plan to automate it and perhaps spin it out as a standalone web app or script for others to use this year.

BatchBook
BatchBook is the newest addition to the menagerie of web apps I'm using. It is meant to be a "Small Business CRM". I switched to it a little over a month ago from Highrise for one main reason: you can track a contact's RSS and Twitter feeds on their contact record.

To me, this is a hugely important feature in this day and age. If I am going to call or email someone, I want a quick way to take a look at their latest online musings.

Batchbook accomplishes this RSS-feed-linked-to-a-contact-record through the use of "Super Tags" which are like regular tags on a record, but a Super Tag exposes additional fields for that record when the tag is applied. You can setup these Super Tags to customize the system to track just about anything you can think of (custom attributes, inventory, etc).

The RSS feed tracking, and the idea of Super Tags, is a feature I'd like to see added to the heavier applications I work with my clients on such as iMIS, Avectra netFORUM, and Blackbaud Raiser's Edge. I also think that Batchbook might be worth a look for any membership association looking for an inexpensive/lightweight way to track membership.

Salesforce
I try not to use Salesforce, but it definitely deserves a mention here because it is the one I'd like to get rid of in this mix but haven’t been able to yet. My business partner Brian, who manages the majority of our sales and marketing activities, uses Salesforce day in and day out to track the all-important "Sales Pipeline".

Whenever I've tried to get him to use another program like Highrise or Batchbook, he asks "Show me how I can manage my sales pipeline in that? Where is my pipeline report?" And I have to admit that he's right -- the other CRM packages that I like don't have the kind of pipeline reporting and management features that he needs to run sales initiatives the way he wants to.

Batchbook is getting close, and I hope that they'll be able to evolve their custom reporting (or I'll be able to hack enough with the API) and will produce the desired results. (Batchbook folks if you're reading, the ability to add more than one instance of a Super Tag to a record is going to be critical for this...)

So at least once a week I get to look at a Salesfore Pipeline Report and see what new business may or may not be coming our way. I am always happy when a new deal closes and I get to transition them over to Basecamp to kick off their project!

Conclusion
The evolution of hosted / Web 2.0 apps offers a lot of flexibility in how you can tailor them to your specific business needs, but also causes a lot of fragmentation of data and processes and occasional frustration at having to use so many different systems.

I'm not sure the problem of needing to use so many different systems is going to be solved any time soon - especially since every company has their own unique set of operating requirements. However through the use of good process, and perhaps some custom add-ons for these apps, a certain amount of cohesion can be accomplished and these apps can help you kick butt doing what you're passionate about -- that is, after all, the point, right?

This post is also kicking off a new direction that I want to take this blog -- articles about the successes I've had with these apps, what has worked and what hasn't, and how you can use to help your small business. I'll be going into more depth on these as well as others (such as Harvest, Quickbooks, etc) and the processes and customizations we use with them in the near future.

Please take the time to comment, leave feedback, or ask a question below!

Google indexing Twitter feeds on your site can increase traffic, but... (my "vtsf syke" story)

SuperUser Account — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:18:00 GMT

On this website I have a module that I created called TwitterDNN that loads a real-time view of the five most recents posts ("tweets") I've made on Twitter. It does this via a call directly to Twitter's API at the server level, and renders the results out as the page loads, as opposed to using the JSON callback that many other Twitter badges/modules use, which execute client-side Javascript to render out the results.

As a result of doing it through the Twitter API, the contents of my tweets appear within the HTML of my pages when Google and other search engines index the site.

Case in point: several weeks ago I was having a conversation on Twitter with @StyleWeekly about the fake (IMHO, disingenuous) ads for Syke Energy Drink. They are actually an anti-smoking campaign that is attempting to market to emo kids or something like that in an attempt to be hip and cool (reminds me of the L. Ron Bumquist character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but I digress). There is no actual product called Syke Energy Drink. Style published a great article summarizing what was actually going on with the Syke campaign.

During the course of our conversation they asked how I'd come to figure it out. I replied that on the TV ads, in tiny letters you can see "VTSF" so I had Googled "vtsf syke" and came across some articles with more information about the campaign.

Ironically, that tweet, which was rendered on this site via the TwitterDNN module, got indexed by Google, and as of this writing it appears on the first page of results when you search for "vtsf syke" and thusly has been sending visitors my way which caused me to notice it in my Google Analytics Keyword Referrer report, which prompted this post, which will probably get indexed by Google...

So anyway, I think my point here is that if you have a website, and use Twitter, then there is some value to rendering your tweets onto your site, and probably more so if the site content and what you're tweeting are related so that resulting traffic is relevant. Since my module only shows the five most recent tweets, the "vtsf syke" one has long since scrolled off, and this article is now the only content I have here about it.

However, if you're going to render out your tweets and you want them indexed on your site by Google, look for a module that does it through the API on the server-side, as opposed to the JSON/Javascript methods that seem to be more popular (and admittedly more accessible) because I'm pretty sure (and someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong) that those methods don't get indexed by Google the way they're rendered out.

Speaking tonight at Richmond .NET UG on DotNetNuke (designers welcome too!)

SuperUser Account — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:27:00 GMT

I am giving a presentation tonight (March 5th, 2009 at 6:00pm) on "DotNetNuke and what it can do for you" at the Richmond .NET User's Group.

DotNetNuke (DNN) is an extremely flexible, customizable, modularized Content Management System that can be used for simple web sites, blogs (like this one!) and as the basis much more complex applications.

This presentation will cover some of the skinning (ala themeing in WordPress), XHTML compliance, and perhaps a sidebar on grid-based page design (and related DNN Projects). We'll also cover how to develop a custom module for DNN, and how you can get into the business of building DNN add-ons and doing DNN consulting.

Hope to see you there!

Content, Function, Access, Metrics: A planning matrix for a DotNetNuke / CMS project

SuperUser Account — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:09:00 GMT

Today I did a brainstorming/planning session with a potential new client who is interested in a DotNetNuke-based website with some custom functionality specific to their organization's business needs.

On a whiteboard I created a matrix with four categories down the side: Function, Content, Metrics, and Access (although in retrospect, I like the order of Content, Function, Access, Metrics better).

Across the top I listed major areas of functionality that would most likely make sense as DNN modules: Classes, Self Assesment, Feedback, Events, Development (aka Fundraising), etc.

As we went through our brainstorming, we started with the left-most column, discussing the main points of functionality, special content considerations, access restrictions and user/role permissions, and lastly what metrics we'd need to get back out of the system.

Using this approach, it was very easy to map out for the non-technical folks in the meeting how certain things linked together -- a class registration to a user profile, an evaluation to a class registration, etc.

In the end, I felt that going through this exercise and taking a few additional notes really helped to draw out the main assumptions and requirements from the group about how the system should work, and gave me a good starting point to create a detailed estimate and proposal. As a bonus it was easy to do and everyone involved actually seemd to have fun.

How to order the Limited Edition Moleskine x Helvetica notebooks

Administrator Account — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:12:00 GMT

I am a big fan of Moleskine notebooks, especially the Squared Notebook (large) for keeping a work journal and jotting down ideas, sketches, diagrams, etc. Recently it came to my attention that Molekine has released a limited edition Helvetica notebook, but only in the Asian market.

Source

Yesterday I came across this blog post on ilovetypography.com where they had gotten 15 of them in. In the comments "nor" linked to the moleskineasia.com online store that carries them so I figured I'd try ordering some to see how much the it would be under the assumption that between the currency exchange and the international shipping it would be prohibitively expensive.

Pricing

They list them for HK$198 each, which according to Google is US$25.53 as of this writing -- not too bad considering the retail price of the regular Moleskine notebooks is about $16.95 (although they can be had online for less).

Shipping

It gets better though: Moleskine Asia's shipping policy is "The shipping fee will be waived for orders above HK$200 for local deliveries and orders above HK$500 for overseas deliveries." .. so if you buy at least three, you get free shipping to anywhere!

Ordering

My two main concerns were non-issues, and I wanted to buy these for gifts anyway so I was willing to pay the mark up, so I went ahead and ordered several. They had a very easy wizard-like ordering interface (although I did have to create a customer account) and after I placed my order, I've gotten an email each step of the way: received, approved, fulfilled. Now I'm just waiting for my order to arrive (about 5 days they say) and I'll post some pics.

Was this post helpful? Any other tips for easy international shopping to get nifty things that you can't get in the US? Let me know with a comment below:

Henrico CASA Gallery Opening & Silent Auction Jan 16th (free!)

SuperUser Account — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:55:00 GMT

The Henrico CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), an organization that I volunteer with and am very passionate about supporting, is holding a Gallery Opening and Silent Auction on Friday January 16th, 2009 at Crossroads Art Center.

There will be live music, free food (sushi while it lasts!), a cash bar, and a great selection of art and other things up for bidding.

If you're able to make it, I hope to see you there!

Presenting a comparison of four DotNetNuke Form modules at CDUG 12/17/08

SuperUser Account — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:34:00 GMT

UPDATE 1/3/09: Here is a a video of the talk. It was mostly done 'live' using a demo site on my laptop so there aren't really any slides to share.

I'll be heading up to visit the Capital Area DotNetNuke User Group this coming Wednesday 12/17/08 to present a talk on 3rd-party DotNetNuke Form modules.

We'll look at a business case where a client wants an event registration form for their website -- starting with a simple "submit your contact information" set of requirements, working up to "process credit cards for an event with multiple sessions" requirement -- and take a look at how each module would handle it.

Also, we'll look at how the data is stored in the DotNetNuke database and what options are available with each module (and through SQL) to do more with the data collected by the form.

Although I've presented at several .NET groups, this will be my first time attending a DotNetNuke-specific user group meeting (we don't have one here in Richmond) so I am really looking forward to meeting some new people and night of talking DNN -- hope to see you there!

5 tips for training someone to be an author in a Content Management System (CMS)

SuperUser Account — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:30:00 GMT

As a part of my consulting work with MemberPath, I often give our clients training sessions on how to use a Content Management System in the role of a content author and editor.

In our case we use DotNetNuke with several custom developed add-ons, but these tips should be useful for anyone who needs to train their clients in how to use a CMS:

1. Give an overview of the CMS but start training on a blank page.
When I first start a CMS training I give an overview of general CMS theory, showing menu structure, site navigation, pages, and content modules/containers. Generally I'll show view mode and edit mode on an existing page, but when I move to actually working with the client on creating content I always start with a blank page. That way they can focus on the actual process involved with creating content and not be distracted by what's already on a page.

2. Work from the inside out.
This tip may be somewhat specific to DotNetNuke, but I have a feeling it will apply to other CMS's as well. After I've done the overview of the CMS and have started training on a blank page, I start with the most granular unit of content and work out from there.

With DNN, this means going over inserting a Text/HTML module, editing it, inserting another Text/HTML module, moving them around on the page between panes (thus introducing panes), then showing the Page Settings of the current page, adding a new page, then showing the Pages/Tabs page under the Admin menu and showing how moving the pages around there affects the site navigation (introducing the concept of multiple pages making up a site).

3. Prepare your example text, files, and other assets ahead of time.
I learned this one the hard way when I first started doing CMS training sessions and someone asked "How do I add a picture to the page?" and the only photo I could find quickly on my laptop was from a New Year's party.

Now I have a folder on my Desktop called "CMS Training" and in it is an assortment of text samples, PDFs, Word documents, pictures, logos, and other graphic files. I've found that having these samples ready ahead of time make the training go smoother and you come off looking much more professional.

BONUS TIP: This is the ideal place to have an image prepared in several different sizes (too big, too small, just right) so that you can explain how images should be edited to the right size before they're uploaded into the CMS.

4. Use sample content and examples that the client can relate to.
Not all sites are the same, and not all users can relate their content to generic web site content. Some types of clients view themselves as being so different from organizations that might be represented by the sample content you're using for training that they actually find it to be a mental block to the content training itself.

I've had this happen more than once when dealing with non-profits: A fund-raising organization may have a hard time seeing how the content that I have worked up for a trade association applies to them and it becomes a stumbling block during our training session.

Ideally the CMS training during a web site project happens after we've already designed the site, skinned it, and set up the basic navigation and menu structure. With that in place we can use actual content from their "old" site as the training examples

5. Have relevant printed or online reference material available after the training.
I always describe using a CMS as, "If you can surf the web and you can use Word, you can edit your web site with a CMS." As easy as it might seem to you or I, not everyone will see it that way.

Just because they were attentive during a training session doesn't mean they'll retain the information. Also, everyone learns differently and giving a live training session might not be effective for all people. That is why it is important to have some sort of printed or online reference documentation that is relevant to how they'll be using the CMS.

"Relevant" is important here. Be sure to take in to consideration the role of the person using the system. If they're just going to be authoring content then there's probably no need for their documentation to contain information on configuration tags or advanced module options -- even if that means developing your own documentation for the CMS.

Do you have any tips to share for people training others how to work with a CMS? Leave a comment below.

Gmail tip: Develop a naming system for your email labels

SuperUser Account — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:25:00 GMT

To make the most of Gmail's system of labeling your emails instead of using folders, it helps to have an organized system of label names. Here's what I've found works best for me.

To start with, I use several "prefixes" to my label names, such as:

a- (action)
c- (client)
mp- (internal emails, mp is the initials of my company)
p- (people)
ref- (emails with very useful information in them)
v- (vendors)
z- (less important things that need labeling nonetheless)

The label I apply to all communications I have with my client "Meals on Wheels" is "c-MOW". As you can see, I've shortened the name to just their initials. This makes it easier to find them using Gmail's search capability.

The biggest advantage of the prefixes is that it logically groups the labels in the label list so that when I need to assign a label to an email I can find it quickly in my list. As often as possible I try to setup filters, so that when an email comes in from a Meals on Wheels address, it automatically gets the label applied.

For the action labels, I have things setup like "a-todo", "a-punt", "a-reply" (which I've stopped using). For the reference lables, I have things setup "ref-logins", "ref-addresses", "ref-files", etc.

I only go on site to Meals on Wheels once a week, but I get email from them all the time. I apply the "a-todo" label to emails that I need to take action on when I'm there. Once I get on site, I just search Gmail for "l:c-MOW l:a-todo" and I'll see the things I need to work on.

Searching on "l:" is a shortcut in Gmail for searching for "label:" -- that and keeping the prefixes short makes searching quicker than clicking around.

Lastly, although I give the example of a "p-" prefix for people, I don't much use that because I generally know what company someone is with. If I'm looking for Pete at Meals on Wheels, I can just search for "l:c-MOW Pete".

Do you have any tips for labeling things in Gmail? Leave a comment below.

This was originally posted May 2007 in a now defunct blog of mine. I have brought it back because I'm working on a followup on using the Google Labs Gmail Superstars method with this label method.

How I built twtki.com in just over 24 hours for less than $100

SuperUser Account — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

The other night I got the idea to make a website (now twtki.com) that would be a wiki of sorts, built by tweets (messages sent on the twitter.com site). I wanted it to watch for replies on Twitter to a particular user account, then parse them out into "Subject: Definition" entries into a database that would be accessed by users on the site.

I was able to build it in just over 24 hours -- really working two late nights -- for under $100 in expenses. I used quite a few third-party services to get this done so I wanted to write up how I did this incase it can inspire others to try something similar. Here's what I used, and the approximate order in which I used them:

Network Solutions: There are definitely cheaper places to register domain names, but I've been burned or at the least inconvenienced by too many of them over the past twelve years that I've been registering domain names.

After searching a few variations of what I wanted to go with, I settled on "twtki.com", also registering the .net variant and getting private registration for both. My cost for those for a year was about $85, and was the only immediate expense I incurred.

Amazon EC2: I already had an Amazon EC2 instance up and running with Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005 Express that wasn't being used for much, so I went ahead and decided to use it for this project.

Maybe this means I cheated a bit on the time it took to make it overall, but I don't think it took me more than an hour to set it up a couple of weeks ago when I did. I went ahead and set twtki.com to the Elastic IP so that the DNS could get propogating right away. The cost is pennies per hour, so while I was building this there were a few dollars in hosting and data fees, which continue as long as the instance is running.

Google Apps Email: Google Apps for Business is great if you want the Gmail-style interface for email but using your own domain name, and is free unless you need a whole bunch of extra features that I don't. I went ahead and set that up, and made the DNS entires (CNAME, MX) to get those propogating immediately as well.

Two Twitter accounts -- @twtki and @twtkiNews: I setup the two main Twitter accounts that I wanted to use for this project. I separated them in this manner because I didn't want people to have to follow @twtki to get updates on the service, thus the @twtkiNews account.

The projected reason for this is that on the off chance this site gets popular, all the folks following @twtki will see all the entries other people they're following are making to @twtki in their public timelines, and that could get annoying.

Inkscape: I love Inkscape for designing simple logos and it is free and (in my opinion) pretty easy to use. No one wants to see twitter accounts that have the default logo, so I whipped up two quick logoes, one for each of the twitter accounts that runs it:

The ASP.NET 2.0 program that runs the site: I'll probably do a separate post on this once the code matures a bit because right now it is super simple:

A database on SQL Server 2005 Express: 2 tables: one for tweets, one for topics. One-to-many relationship between topics and tweets.
default.aspx/.vb: Right now the whole thing is run off of one default.aspx file with the associated default.aspx.vb code behind.
get-tweets.vbs: Well, okay, that isn't ASP.NET 2.0, it is some old-school Windows Script Host VBScript, but it works well with Windows Scheduled Tasks to run at one minute intervals and query the Twitter API to see if any new tweets have been sent to @twtki then it processes them as needed to get them into the database.

HeliconTech ISAPI Rewrite 3: This turned out to be the most valuable piece of the project. I felt that it would be really important that the links to entries on the site could be in the simple form of "twtki.com/topic", for example "twtki.com/turducken".

This add-on module that works pretty much the same as Apache's mod_rewrite. It let me pass through the incoming URL as a querystring to default.aspx with the following regex so graciously provided by the developer Anton:

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)$ default.aspx?subj=$1 [NC,L]

I was able to use the free version, which among other things is limited to per-server, not per-site settings because this is the only site set up at the moment on the Amazon EC 2 instance I'm using.

Google Analytics: You've got to have an easy way to measure site stats, and Google Analytics is my favorite free web site traffic analysis tool. No need to go into the details here, but if you want some more info check out the video streams of a session I facilitated on Google Analytics at the recent SocialDevCampEast.

UserVoice: Lastly I added the nifty UserVoice widget to collect suggestions, feature requests, bug reports, and other feedback from people visiting the site. It warrants its own blog post in the near future, but if you're developing a web site/application that offers services to a user base, it is definitely something to check out.

What does the future hold for twtki.com?

I created it as a proof of concept / R&D project for something bigger and completely unrelated that I'm working on, but which will use some of the same underlying technologies (Amazon EC2, web service API's, UserVoice).

For twtki, before the end of the year I plan to add search, the ability to add entries directly from the page, and do a general page layout redesign to accomodate those ideas and some future things I want to do with it. Once those are in place I'll feel a bit more comfortable promoting beyond my own twitter followers (I'm @busse btw)

I plan to continue blogging on the progress of its development here, so keep an eye out for future articles on twtki and please comment below if you have any questions, suggestions, etc. And by all means, please check out twtki.com, and an entry or two, and follow @twtkiNews on Twitter -- thanks!

10 Tips for UStreaming live events (conferences, classes, etc)

SuperUser Account — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:26:00 GMT

As an experiment I streamed some sessions from Social Dev Camp East (scroll to "Agenda" for links to what I was able capture) using the free UStream.tv service.

I've gotten some questions about how I went about doing it (thanks @MissLynn13!)so here in no particular order are 10 Tips for UStreaming live events:

Use a camera better than a webcam. I used a 3CCD MiniDV camera connected directly to an old Mac Powerbook G4 laptop via Firewire. In comparison tests vs. my iMac webcam, this produced a better picture.
Audio quality is key! If you're using a good camera, hopefully it will have a good mic. The audience "watching at home" will care much, much more about the audio than the video -- unless you're getting a really good image of something being presented, most likely the audio will be the real content, and the image will be just to give the audio context.
Use a wired ethernet connection, or be sure to have a really strong wifi signal. This was probably my biggest hurdle -- my wifi connection kept dropping, or there were times where I couldn't get on the network at all. UStream does a great job of picking back up where you left off, but you'll lose viewers for sure.
If moving between rooms for multiple sessions, give yourself time. For Social Dev Camp East, several of the session started and stopped at the same time. This made it hard to break down and move between rooms. 15 minutes between sessions would have been a big help.
Avoid visual and audio distractions. Don't film the back of someone's head, don't setup under an air vent or near a coffee urn w/ noisy burner.
Engage the audience watching on Usteam. Be willing to proxy questions for them. I surprised a presenter and the room when I started off with "There are as many people watching online as there are in this room, and one of them has a question..."
Promote the event on Twitter! We made the "trending topics" list on search.twitter.com with the #sdc2 hashtag and I think a lot of it had to do with discussion about the streaming both from people there, and people watching from elsewhere.
Be prepared to miss a lot of the actual presenation. I spent a lot of time fiddling with Ustream, largely due to trying to resolve network & connectivity issues, that I felt like I really missed some of the presentation content and Q & A.
If you're streaming multiple sessions, schedule them on UStream and announce them in the chat. Ustream has a feature where you can setup a schedule for your show. Also, I would let people in the UStream chat room know when I was moving and what session I was going to next so that they would know what happened when I dropped off.
Record your stream for posterity. Ustream has a feature that lets you "Start Streaming" and "Start Recording" separately. I'd start streaming as I set up everything, then start recording right before the speaker got going. Now there is an archive of everything I was able to capture! Bonus tip: if you have to hustle between locations, worry about titling and tagging the clips later.

Hopefully you found this useful, and please comment below if you have any other tips!

Many of the StumbleUpon Referrers in your web stats don't count (or, why I love Google Analytics Goals)

SuperUser Account — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:49:00 GMT

[Originally published May 2007, republished now in new blog system]

I recently released an application that has a very niche focus and have been slowly getting the word out by getting posts up on sites that target the same market I am.

Like a stats obsessed sports fan I've been checking my Google Analytic referrers to see what blogs have picked it up already. I was delighted when one day there were 132 new referrers from StumbleUpon.com!

I'd heard of StumbleUpon but never used it. All these visits were coming from "refer.php" (131) and "refer.html" (1)

When I went to those pages, I could see that they obviously weren't going to bring up the listing for my site, so I investigated further. I figured out that a particular URL is listed on StumbleUpon as:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.yoursite.com

I found my site and sure enough, two people had given it a thumbs up and one of them wrote a very nice note about it. How cool! (ok, some people reading this might be much more popular on StumbleUpon, but it was cool for me).

But then I wondered, where did the other 130 referrers come from? Looking around the site it looks like sometimes a URL can get featured on a category page. Maybe I had been featured?

Then the next day, nothing. Not a single referrer.

Okay, fair enough, I got featured then rolled off -- but still not one referrer? A digg or del.icio.us link with a few people on it will still get you residual referrers. Maybe the dynamic or "StumbleUpon effect" just works differently?

Then a few days later, there was a 75 referrer spike, all from refer.php.

Where did that come from? I've been analyzing web logs and stats for almost ten years now and something just didn't seem to add up, so I started Googling around.

I found several SEO sites posting about how great getting listed on StumbleUpon was for getting a ton of traffic to your site (although some of them admit that the quality of the traffic was lower than from other referrers).

However, I did find at least one person who was questioning whether this traffic was legit:

... StumbleUpon may be unfairly represented by Awstats as sending a lot more referrals to your page than you realize.

Each stumbleupon referral will be seen as 5x or so hits in quick succession, rather than just one ...

I’m wondering if this is part of the technology or if it’s actually spam to try and increase stumbleupon’s profile.

And in on another site, I found the answer I was looking for:

Note that there's a default setting that likely throws analytics off a bit as folks are using the Stumble! button. In the toolbar configuration, there's a setting to "Prefetch Stumbles". In my testing, the browser would actually prefetch a few sites at a time. Sites that I may not end up visiting. However, if I do visit them, they are downloaded again (except for objects that are cached), and a second view is recorded to the site.

The StumbleUpon toolbar PREFETCHES sites, which would explain why people are getting a lot of "low quality" traffic referred in -- that traffic might not ever even see the site!

I needed proof and wanted to see to what extent the toolbar was prefetching, so I fired up good 'ol netstat to see what was going on behind the scenes.

I clicked the Stumble button in the toolbar and it brought up htmlplayground.com and netstat showed that I had also connected to linuxkungfu.com, but I didn't see that site -- that is until I clicked the Stumble button again and it came up in my browser.

Now don't get me wrong, I am very grateful for the exposure my listing on StumbleUpon has gotten me, but I wonder if there is a good reason that StumbleUpon needs to prefetch sites in this manner, or if they could at least have that checkbox off by default?

I also wonder why some "SEO" sites would jump to the conclusion that this is all real traffic without doing a bit of due diligence first?

Hopefully this post will help people understand that they need to take their StumbleUpon referrer stats with a grain of salt. This is a good example why just looking at visitors, hits, and referrers isn't as beneficial as setting up Goals and defining other specific metrics for evaluating traffic to your website.

Yet another fix for ASP.NET 2.0 error: "The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted."

SuperUser Account — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:05:00 GMT

Tonight I had a client's DNN site that got the error "The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted." any time we tried to add a new Text/HTML module to a page.

Googling around I found many possible causes and a number of solutions. Apparantly this error message isn't as descriptive as it could be and covers a broad range of situations.

Finally I determined that my error was caused by having two viewstate variables on the page -- the normal one, and another one that had been unknowingly copied and pasted into another Text/HTML module on the page.

Once I removed the offending one from the Text/HTML module, things returned to normal.

During the course of this I also discovered a Viewstate Decoder utility. While that didn't help me specifically, it was interesting to see the output from it.

[This post originally appeared on 5/22/2008 when I was using a differnet blog module for this site]

Video of my Google Analytics discussion at SocialDevCamp East

SuperUser Account — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:43:00 GMT

Here is the video of the Google Analytics session I facilitated at SocialDevCamp East. It is in two parts because the connection dropped. The bulk of the presentation is in part 2. Enjoy!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Here's some of the links mentioned in the video as well:

Lastly, all the sessions I was able to stream & record are available here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/socialdevcamp-east-fall-2008

I plan to do a follow up "Lessons learned while trying to stream video from a conferece" post later.

Thanks to all who attended and participated!

Four upcoming speaking engagements: REST, DotNetNuke (+forms), SocialDevCamp East

SuperUser Account — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:36:00 GMT

My Feb. talk got rescheduled to Nov 19, so here's an updated list of my upcoming speaking engagements:

Oct 30, 2008: Richmond Meet & Code: GET some REST: Working with 3rd-party web service APIs (presenting)

Nov 1, 2008: SocialDevCamp East: Attending, hopefully presenting (BarCamp/unconference format)

Nov 19, 2008: Innsbrook .NET User Group: DotNetNuke: An Open Source .NET CMS and Application Framework (presenting)

Dec 17, 2008: Capital DotNetNuke User Group: The right form for the job: A comparison of DotNetNuke form modules (presenting)

Schedule permitting, I'd love to talk to your group or organization about any of the topics I'm passionate about: DotNetNuke, .Net development, Social Media, development/fundraising packages such as Raiser's Edge, association management systems such as iMIS, other technology for nonprofits in general, etc. More details here.

Goal Tracking and Analysis: an Important Part of Social Media Strategy

SuperUser Account — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:19:00 GMT

I'm playing a bit of "devil's advocate" in this video suggesting that Twitter or Facebook might not be right for some organizations, but my main point is that you need to be tracking stats on the back end to know where your social media energies are best spent.

I'm going to go update the SocialDevCampEast wiki page now to suggest this as a topic...

Two fundraising event promotion scenarios for discussion at SocialDevCamp East

SuperUser Account — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:05:00 GMT

I have two upcoming event promotion scenarios for separate nonprofits that I plan to suggest as topics for discussion at the SocialDevCamp East (Nov 1) unconference:

1. The individual participant scenario: Coming up on November 15th I'm participating in the Meals on Wheels Serving Central Virginia 12th Annual Hunger Strike Bowl-A-Thon. As an individual, I need to put together a team of 3-4 others, which ideally should raise $100-$150 each. (anyone interested?)

2. The event organizer scenario: On January 16, 2009 the Henrico CASA will be holding their 3rd Annual Crossroads Art Auction. I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to volunteer on the board of the Henrico CASA, and am working as a member of the planning committee to put together the event.

For the Meals on Wheels event, I'm planning to broadcast to my Facebook, Twitter, and personal email contacts, inviting them to my Bowler Page on the MOW website to learn more and consider supporting my team.

For the second event, I'm planning on setting up a Facebook page well in advance of the event, and inviting my contacts to not only sign up, but to spread the word as well. As the planning progresses and we have more auction items, confirmed sponsors, etc., I'll be posting regular updates to the page. I'm also going to try to get local bloggers and Twitter users to cover the event.

For both events though, I'm sure there are more things that can be done to bring them to the attention of people via social media / networking methods (take live bids on an auction item via Ustream is one thing that has been suggested).

I'd like to propose a roundtable discussion at SocialDevCamp East to discuss how organizations can get the word out about their events and work to make them as successful as possible and reach their full capacity.

Thoughts on this? Comment below...

"Xyzzy" badge on StackOverflow

SuperUser Account — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:46:00 GMT

Screenshot from Stackoverflow.com showing the elusive Xyzzy badge...

Click to Enlarge

Anyway, IMHO, stackoverflow is one of the best resources for developers to come around in a long time.