Preview: enterprise 2.0 the bdg way
enterprise 2.0 : the bdg wayUpdated: 2011-09-28T10:59:06.841-04:00
Why the New Gap Logo was Awesome 2010-11-07T10:54:13.200-05:00 (image) Ok, so not the logo itself. I'm not an idiot who thinks it was a good logo or that crowdsourcing is healthy for the design community. What I'm saying is that YOU'RE an idiot for getting all enraged about Gap's new logo and how much it sucked. Why? Because that's exactly what they wanted you to do.Any press is good press, right? Well, in this social-media-ridden world where every two-bit wonk has his own soapbox, that phrase should now read: "any trending topic is a good trending topic." The logo not only had Gap trending for weeks, but it inspired so much passionate vitriol that some one even built a web application to allow you to "crap" your own logo. These logos spread to people's Facebook and Twitter avatars, blogs, web sites. I'm just waiting for "Gap Logo Sucks Freeze-Dried Donkey Bollucks," the song. The t-shirt. The TV mini-series. Jeezus, enough already. How many web applications were built in honor of the original Gap logo? Exactly. I can't prove that Gap (and Laird & Partners) intentionally duped the social media community into talking about (almost nothing but) their astoundingly shitty logo for weeks. Perhaps it was a happy accident for Gap. Perhaps it was a bit more Machiavellian than that. We may never know. But one thing is indisputable: it worked. And you were duped. And that was awesome. (image)
Oracle Announces Roadmap for Plumtree / AquaLogic / WebCenter 2010-11-05T00:55:51.609-04:00 UPDATE 2: I've incorporated all the great feedback and comments from ex-Plumtreevians, ex-BEA and ex- and current Oracle folks.UPDATE: A bunch of Plumtreevians are contributing really good comments on this post over on Facebook.I worked at Plumtree Software, Inc. from June 1998 to December, 9th 2002. In four-and-a-half years, the company grew from 25 employees to over 400 and it had thousands of happy customers before it was purchased by BEA Systems in 2005 for $220M. Here at bdg, we've been supporting dozens of Plumtree/AquaLogic Interaction (ALI)/WebCenter Interaction (WCI) customers since we opened our doors in December of 2002.Back around 2005, BEA's BID (Business Interaction Division) still had a lot of really smart engineers from Plumtree working on a lot of really interesting things, including Pages (think CMS 2.0), Pathways (kind of an enterprise version of del.icio.us) and Ensemble (the portlet engine/gateway, minus the overhead and UI of the portal itself). They were also working on an enterprise social network, kind of a Facebook for business if you will.However, there was a lot of wrangling at BEA, primarily between BID/AquaLogic and BEA's flagship product, WebLogic (the world-class application server). Most of the strife came in the form of WebLogic Portal vs. AquaLogic/Plumtree Portal nonsense. Senior management at BEA, in their infinite wisdom, had taken a "let's try not to alienate any customers" policy and in the process they confused all their customers and alienated/frustrated quite a few of them as well. They renamed Plumtree to AquaLogic User Interaction (ALUI), put in place a "separate but equal" policy with WebLogic Portal (WLP) and spewed some nonsense about how WLP was for "transactional portal deployments" vs. ALI for .NET and non-transactional portals, but no one, including BEA management, had any idea WTF that meant. To further confuse the issue, the WLP team, which also had a lot of really smart engineers, built products like "Adrenaline" (which was basically a less-functional and more buggy version of Ensemble) rather than do the unthinkable and integrate Ensemble into WLP so that WLP could finally host non-Java/JSR-168 portlets.I was really pissed about BEA's spineless portal strategy, their "separate but equal" policy between WLP and BID/ALUI and their waste of precious engineering resources in an arms race between WLP and ALUI rather than just stepping back, growing a spine, and coming up with a portal strategy. Because I can't keep my pie hole shut, I started several loud, messy and public fights with BEA management. Why? Because the real loser here is the customer. And BEA, because management got mired in politics and chose to waste engineers' time on in-fighting and competition instead of building enterprise Facebook, which Steve Hamrick and I arguably already wrote in our spare time. All they needed to do was productize that and they would have owned that market.In 2008, Oracle inherited this clusterfuck of a portal strategy when they bought BEA for $7B+, giving me new hope that cooler heads would prevail and fix this mess. The first thing they did was fire all the impotent BEA managers who were afraid to make any decisions. (I won't name any names, but you know who you are. I just hope that you learned, for the sake of your new employers, that it's worse to make no decision than a bad decision.) It took Oracle a while, but alas, they have finally arrived at a portal strategy that makes sense. I first learned about this strategy when I crashed the WebCenter Customer Advisory Board last Thursday.First of all, let me say this: under the leadership of Vince Casarez, current (and future) customers are in good hands. I realized when he said "everyone still calls it Plumtree" that this was going to be a bullshit-free presentation. He also said something regarding the "portal stew" at Oracle that puts all of my ranting and raving in perspective: "Oracle did not buy BEA for Plumtree or WLP, just like it didn't buy SUN for SUN's portal product." To rephrase that, Or[...]
On Open Letter to the Java Community 2010-09-23T17:22:04.431-04:00 In the wake of the Sun acquisition by Oracle, the much-lambasted Oracle vs. Google lawsuit over Google's alleged JavaME patent infringement, and the rumblings I've been hearing at Oracle Open World / JavaOne / Oracle Develop 2010, I have a message to the Java community:Quit your bitching and moaning and start doing something productive!Now that I've offended all the Java fanboys/girls out there, let me explain:why I'm qualified to give you all one big collective kick in the ass, andwhy this collective ass-kicking is coming from a place of love, not hate.My first experience with Java was in 1994/95, when Stanford started switching its Computer Science curricula from C/C++ to Java. After struggling with memory management, segmentation faults, horrific concurrency problems and the other ways I kept shooting myself in the foot, Java was a breath of fresh air. My first corporate experience with Java was working as a summer intern for JavaSoft (a former subsidiary of Sun) in 1997 porting Patrick Chan's Java 1.0 sample applications (remember Hangman?) from JDK 1.0 to JDK 1.1.I went on to join Plumtree. Originally, they were a Microsoft darling. I helped lead the charge to switch them from COM/DCOM, ASP 1.0 and SQL Server to Java and Oracle.In 2002, I started a Plumtree-focused consulting firm, helping 50+ customers install, maintain and grow their Plumtree deployments. In all but a precious few of those accounts, I wrote all of the code in Java/JSP.Since about 2008, we've been using Ruby on Rails for most of our software. When Rails hit the scene, I had a similar "breath of fresh air" moment similar to when I first encountered Java.But this letter is not about Ruby or about Rails; it's about Java. A language I've used since it's very first iteration in 1994/95 and up to the present day. A language where I've written at least half a million lines of code, most of which still run in production today inside Plumtree/AquaLogic User Interaction/WebCenter Interaction, at major customer sites in the corporate world and in the federal government.So, fast-forward to today, this is what I'm hearing about Java, in a nutshell:Oracle's going to kill/close-source/fuck up JavaLife's not fair!Blah blah blahAll of this bitching and moaning starts right at the top with Java grandfather and CEW (Chief Executive Whiner) James Gosling, who is showing incredibly poor leadership, lousy judgment and massive immaturity with his totally irrelevant, outdated and hateful anti-Oracle bitch-fest.I've heard people whining about everything around them that's not running on Java: mobile applications, web sites, conference tools, Twitter, Facebook, etc.I even saw someone complain on Twitter that the Black Eyed Peas, who Oracle paid an undoubtedly handsome sum of money to entertain your sorry asses last night, gave a shoutout to Oracle and not "The Java Community." Seriously?Give it a rest, folks! There are lots of choices of development stacks and people are free to choose the one that works best for them. Embrace that freedom; don't fight it. And the word Oracle doesn't mean "database" anymore. It is an umbrella term that could refer to thousands of different products.Let's take a look at some of the advantages of Oracle owning Java.With respect to OpenWorld, the Java Community got:Your own conference with around 400 sessionsYour own tentYour own street closure (Mason Street)Invited to OTN Night, one of the best parties at OpenWorldMore importantly, with Oracle Corporation, the Java community gets:Cemented into the infrastructure of nearly all of Oracle's products, meaning that nearly all of their customers -- most of the Fortune 1000 -- are now Java shops (if they weren't already)Stability, stewardship, thousands of really bright engineers and nearly unlimited resourcesOne of Corporate America's most powerful legal teams backing you upA secure and promising future, including a just-announced roadmap for JDK 7 and 8And, with all that being said, guess what? Java is still open source. Do you know what that [...]
Google Blog Search Doesn't 2010-08-03T14:39:38.367-04:00 Google is a search company, right?Then why is it when I tried to use the blog search box, I never get any results? Click the image to try the search for yourself. (image) Yet when I do a site-specific search on Google.com for the very same blog, I get 28 results for the same search terms. (image) I just thought of a really easy way for Google to fix this problem. Oh, for gosh-dang-darn, I forgot it! Wait, it'll come to me. Ick, still drawing a blank. Well, they're smart; I'm sure they can figure it out. I would call Google support, but they don't deign to provide any such thing. So, what gives?
Sound Business Advice from Jerry Garcia 2010-08-01T16:35:31.884-04:00 Photo credit: Wikipedia CommonsToday would have been Jerry Garcia's 68th birthday. Musically, politically, emotionally and spiritually, he has probably had more of an impact on me than any other human being whom I never knew personally.As I was perusing YouTube today looking for some footage of him that I hadn't seen already, I found that he was a pretty sage businessman as well. In his 1982 appearance (with Bob Weir) on The Letterman Show (full video embedded below), David asked him why he allows taping of his live shows when it obviously leads to fewer commercial sales of their official recordings. His response?"The shows are never the same. Ever. And when we're done with it, they can have it."Jerry was the not the creative force behind the lyrics of most of the music he played. Of their 420 original songs, only maybe 75 or 80% were truly originals; many others were adaptations of traditional bluegrass, folk or blues songs (in much the same fashion as Led Zeppelin, at least as it pertains to the blues). On the remaining originals, poet/lyricist Robert Hunter wrote the words and Jerry composed the music.However, Jerry really did have an uncanny efficiency with his words, packing in multiple meanings into short, pithy phrases. In his response to Letterman, he's really saying (at least) all of the following:No, it's not impacting our record sales negativelyThe experience of seeing The Dead live is dramatically different each timeI don't own the music once I have released it from being; rather, by playing it live, I set it free to be enjoyed by whomever is listeningIn many ways, this philosophy actually results in more record salesNo price tag can be assigned to the value of the community of fans that has grown organically around our music and our cultureThese lessons are raft with really important business advice, especially since we're living in the age of social media. In many ways, Facebook, Twitter, et. al. have created communities that are just like the traveling circus of hippies that followed The Dead (and, later, other jam bands like Phish) on their tours, perhaps without as many drugs nor as much free love nor rock'n'roll and certainly a bit more personal hygiene. Okay, so maybe they're not really that much alike. But the sense of belonging to something larger than oneself is the same. How else can account for the explosive growth of Deadheads, the community around Burning Man and social sites like Facebook?So, in this age of social media and utter disregard for things like "copyright" and End User License Agreements, how can musicians/bands, restaurant owners and other small businesses still manage to make "good bread" (as they called it in the 60s and 70s) in this age of the internet where everyone feels entitled to get nearly everything -- music, software, etc. -- for free?The answer lies in Jerry's response to Letterman. Give away as much as you can. Think of the community around your business as a empty field. It needs to be tilled, seeded, watered and fertilized before you can reap the benefits of the harvest. Giving your products away for free is akin to planting your seeds. Engaging with your online community is akin tending to your crops. Selling your products and services is akin to harvesting your fields and selling the goods at the farmer's market. But you can get to the farmer's market if you're not taking good care of your farm.I've heard this argument before. Someone told me once that consultants should take a page out of the professional chef's playbook (pardon the mixed metaphor). Take for instance, Hawaiian master chef Roy Yamaguchi, the creative force behind Roy's restaurants. If you buy his cookbook, you will have nearly all of Roy's recipes, free for you to make at home any time you want. But will you still eat at his restaurant? You betcha!So what do you think? How does this apply to your business? Can you think of ways that you could give away the goods and still make money? I'd lov[...]
Upcoming Oracle Web Center Interaction Training 2010-05-03T04:08:50.659-04:00 Just wanted to let you know that I (formerly Plumtree's Lead Engineer, worked with hundreds of different Plumtree, BEA and Oracle customers and now an Oracle ACE Director) am leading a public training course over the next two weeks and if you're interested, there are few available slots left. We're partnering with training provider Peak Solutions and you can find the full details on their web site. Here's the critical information: THIS Monday, May 3rd and Tuesday, May 4th in Harrisburg, PA NEXT Monday, May 10th, 11th and 12th in Harrisburg, PA Please drop us a note if you'd like to attend. There are only 4-5 slots left, so please act now to reserve your space!
My Oracle OpenWorld Sessions 2009-10-07T13:22:36.397-04:00 I'm going to be speaking in two different Oracle OpenWorld sessions on Sunday. They are OOW-S312303 -- Enterprise-Enable Dynamic PHP, Ruby, Python Apps: Oracle WebCenter Interaction and OOW-S312304 -- Enterprise Ruby on Rails: Rolling with JRuby on Oracle WebLogic Suite.
Here We Go Again: SXSW 2010 2009-08-26T13:24:09.361-04:00 (image) I know it feels like we just put the wraps on SXSW 2009, but Panel Picker Voting is already live for 2010! This year they're using the Panel Picker to crowdsource session proposals for all three conferences: Music, Film and Interactive (whereas in the past it has only been used for Interactive).As you well know, Social Collective, Inc., a company I started to serve the conference industry with better and more social software tools, provided the official social network and schedule builder for SXSW 2009. We're on tap to provide that service again this year -- in fact, the site is already live at my.sxsw.com. We have some exciting new features planned for this year, so stay tuned for announcements on that front as we get closer to the event. So, even though we're intimately involved with SXSW, I still have to EARN the privilege of speaking there. 30% of that is decided by YOU, the voters. So, in the name of shameless self-promotion, I must ask you to vote for my proposed talks (if you think they're worthy): SXSW Interactive: Developer from Mars Takes on Designer from Venus Every great project needs a designer and a developer. Yet sometimes working side-by-side can be about as fun as pulling teeth. A veteran developer and a veteran designer use real-world anecdotes to spar on the dynamics that make it challenging for people in these two disciplines to collaborate effectively. Neo-patronage: Can It Save the Music Industry? Starting with the idea that all recorded music should be free (as in beer), I will explore the idea that a system of "neo-patronage" -- think of the way European artists were commissioned during the Renaissance -- can help reinvent the beleaguered music industry to ensure that artists can get fairly compensated in a world where music is free for consumers. You have until Friday, September 4th at 11:59PM CST to cast your vote. Thanks for your support and see you at SXSW!
ODTUG S672: ACED Sundown Session -- Middleware and SOA 2009-06-26T14:46:17.650-04:00 (object) (embed)ODTUG S672: ACED Sundown Session -- Middleware and SOA from Chris Bucchere on Vimeo.
ODTUG S680: Top Ten Tips for Java Developers on Oracle WebLogic Server 2009-06-26T10:38:16.977-04:00 I just returned from the fabulous ODTUG (Oracle Developer Tools User Group) Kaleidoscope conference in Monterey, CA. I had the pleasure of giving two solo presentations and sitting on one panel.I recorded both presentations and the panel. Here is the first full recording for your edutainment pleasure. (object) (embed) ODTUG S680: Top Ten Tips for Java Developers on Oracle WebLogic Server from Chris Bucchere on Vimeo. Stay tuned for two more new videos which will be posted very soon.
Chris Bucchere Can Haz Professional Speakerness 2009-04-07T01:32:54.277-04:00 So, rumor has it that I'm now a professional public speaker. Sch-weet! How did that happen, you might ask? Or maybe you're thinking, if Bucchere can haz professional public speaker-a-bility, how can I haz professional speaker-hood too?Well, it's actually easier than you think. Here is a simple, five-step guide so that you too can haz professional public speakerness:1) Speak (a lot) -- this is really crucial. You need to have a good track record of presentations, lectures, etc. Hopefully you have a nice collection of audio and video clips too. If not, well, then start volunteering to speak at different events in your area of expertise to help build your speaker cred. And bring a friend with a handy-cam.2) Find a photo you like of yourself. This is not 100% necessary, but it might be nice if your "speaker page" (look ahead at Step 3) has a photo of you on it. If you can't speak well, at least maybe you can haz good looks. Purrrrrrrr.3) Hire a great designer (like Paula Bee) to give you good looks, even if you don't have them naturally or via surgical enhancement. Your speaker page should be your home on the web for all your past and upcoming public speaking engagements along with links to your other achievements, e.g. books you've published, companies you've started, podcasts, blog posts, web sites, awards, testimonials, etc. Let your ego guide you to the highest form of self-aggrandizing and narcissistic speaker web page Valhalla. w00t! (Oh, BTW, if you haven't done any of those things, maybe you're not actually cut out for professional public speaker-dom just yet.)4) Ask for money. No one is going to pay you to speak unless you ask them. How much? Well, that depends on who's asking, how much of your career you want this to be (e.g. are you a full time professional speaker or a full time software developer with a speaking habit/hobby), and how much you think your words of wisdom are actually worth. Start small and grow your rates as you continue to build your speaker cred. Oh, and negotiate a bit, please. A certain person recently asked for $40,000 + two first-class airline tickets, hotel and meals. He ended up getting $20,000 and flying SLF-style, by his damn self. (For you those of you who haven't heard of that great TLA, SLF stands for "Self Loading Freight," which is the most succinct and accurate description of coach-class airline travel that I've ever heard.) 5) Ask for feedback. Just so that you don't think my ego has inflated itself beyond all sense of reason and responsibility, I do want to let you know that I take feedback very seriously. Nearly every event at which I've spoken has had some formal or informal feedback process. And if not, there's always Twitter. Why bother telling me you didn't like my talk when you can tell the whole fucking world, right? Seriously, carefully consider and respond to each bit of feedback -- positive, negative and all points in between -- and consistently use feedback to make each talk better than the last. Brad King had a great tip on responding to feedback: use humor. If someone calls you a douchebag, respond by saying, "Thanks for your feedback! Since we don't know one another well, can I ask that you please refer to me as Mr. Douchebag from now on?" You might get surprisingly good results -- often a line like this can convert a hater to a fan.If you keep that up, before you know it, you'll be a coveted and highly compensated professional public speaker. However, it's not all fun and games. Please be prepared to really "Bring It/Kill It" when you speak. Repeat business is super important and no one's gonna pay for your speaking services again or recommend you to anyone if you give a dull and lackluster performance. As Dubya so eloquently put it: "Can haz fooled me once? Shame on you. Can haz fooled me twice?[...]
My SXSW Panel: Social Networks for the Anti-Social 2009-06-26T10:31:01.604-04:00 (image) UPDATE: SXSW released a complete audio recording of this panel!I'm at SXSW again this year. I attended SXSWi last year and, if my memory serves me correctly, I also attended SXSW Music in 1995, though I might be confusing it with H.O.R.D.E., Austin City Limits or one of the other great music festivals in this fine city which is known internationally for its eclectic music scene. Anyway, because The Social Collective is powering my.SXSW, I actually have the pleasure of spending 10 full days in Austin and attending all three festivals this year: Film, Music and Interactive. I'm also speaking, oddly enough, in a Music Panel called Social Networks for the Anti-Social. I have to warn you, most panels (at any conference, not just SXSW) totally suck and this may not be an exception. But who knows, it might be a completely magical and transcendental experience, but you won't know unless you check it out.
You Are What You Eat 2009-02-10T15:33:18.153-05:00 (image) I've never really understood the phrase, "You are what you eat." If it were true, I'd probably be an In-N-Out burger (double double animal style) or something far worse for you and/or better tasting.Recently, I overheard someone on Twitter saying something to the effect of: "You are the sum of the five people you hang out with the most." My immediate reaction was to disagree vehemently. I'm totally not like that! I'm exactly who I want to be! I don't subject myself to the influence of others like that! Etc. Not only am I completely wrong about this, but it may be that -- in some strange cosmic way -- I'm actually the sum of ALL the people around me, good, bad and everything else under the sun. Today I discovered TwitterSheep. (No, this has nothing to do with sheep, fraternity rituals or anything else of a sexual nature, I assure you.) TwitterSheep simply looks at your followers and constructs a tag cloud based on keywords in their bios. That's not really remarkable, but what is remarkable is that when I ran my Twitter account through the application, the resulting tag cloud literally read like my own bio. Seriously. It's a visual representation of terms that -- when you sum them all together -- equal me. The largest words are what I do and care about most. Am I right about this? Are you the sum of your followers? Try TwitterSheep and let me know how it worked for you!
my.SXSW Launches on The Social Collective 2009-02-04T16:29:27.643-05:00 (image) We're rolling out a huge conference site today called my.SXSW for the legendary film, music and interactive festival SXSW!We certainly haven't done a scientific study about this, but using "thumb in the air" math, I would venture to guess that this is the largest conference ever to roll out a white-label social networking platform. We're very pleased they they chose The Social Collective. You can read the full story on Collectively Speaking, The Social Collective blog.
There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch 2009-01-25T22:48:48.724-05:00 Today Robert Scoble wrote a really interesting and thought-provoking article on his blog about the alleged suspension/removal of Joel Comm's Facebook account. He draws a parallel to the revocation of Robert's own Facebook account and makes a good case for Facebook being outta line. Here's my response to Robert:In defense of you, Joel and countless others who have been suspended or removed from Facebook, it certainly doesn’t seem like you’re being treated fairly. It’s hard to imagine that someone with 5,000 confirmed Facebook friends and ten times as many followers on Twitter could be considered a spambot. Generally speaking, online communities, wikis, social networks, etc. have a way of policing themselves; content that other people enjoy gets shared and promoted while spam and other “noise” gets blocked or ignored. Facebook and other social sites would all be best-served by this sort of grassroots self-policing, rather than a top-down approach.However, there’s a subtle point to which some other readers have alluded in the comments. You wrote, “I don’t support companies that ‘erase’ MY data without my permission.” What you may not realize is that based on Facebook’s TOS, what you think are “your data” actually are not “your data,” not by a long shot, not once you’ve posted them on Facebook.If you think there are safer or better places than Facebook to put “your data” on the internet, you’re also mistaken. Take a peek at Google’s TOS. In particular, read section 11, where you hand over all rights to “your” content to them (except basic copyright, which you automatically have any time you produce an original work and put your name on it). You’re basically giving Google a free license to use your content — even for their own commercial gain!Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In return for providing “free” distribution of “your” content, companies like Facebook, Google and the likes are creating massive databases of incredibly valuable “information capital.” This in turn allows them to offer you a “free” service while they sell this information capital — the stuff you gave them, remember? — to advertisers. That pays their bills, which in turn allows them to continue to give you “free” content distribution.Average people (who upload videos of dogs on skateboards, etc. to Facebook) don’t care about data ownership and are perfectly happy to hand the rights to their content over to Facebook or Google it order to share it more easily with their friends. Average people — however — aren’t one man media outlets, either, but YOU are. So, being an internet/social media mogul, I’m sure you understand that content distribution isn’t free.The solution? Host your content yourself! People like you and Joel have the resources to pay for your own hosting AND you have loyal audiences that will follow you wherever you go. You can leverage social media to help the viral spread of your content, but the obvious goal of your participation in social media and social networking should be to drive eyeballs/click-throughs back to YOUR site so people can view YOUR content, ensuring that YOUR advertisers get bang for their buck.It really all boils down to two old sayings: there’s no such thing as a free lunch and you get what you pay for. Want to pay for your own hosting and distribution? Then you can own your own content. Want to get free distribution from Facebook or Google? Then be prepared to give them something in return.[...]
How to Convince Your Company to Pay for a SXSWi Pass 2009-01-14T11:45:15.660-05:00 Times are tough, right? Everyone is slashing spending, especially around travel and conference budgets. But you need (read: want) to be at SXSWi. So it's time to convince your boss that your attendance at SXSWi is something that the business needs to be successful.Fortunately, if your company does or wants to do anything with the interwebs (and seriously, who doesn't these days?), this is easier than you thought. Just follow these five easy steps.1. Look at the SXSWi speaker/panel lineup and pick ten panels that are relevant to your line of work. I'm a web 2.0 developer with more than a passing interest in social media, so this is easy. But the panels run the gamut of topics, so you should be able to find something that works for your business/industry. Here's an example: Building Personal and Company Brands with Web 2.0 Tools. Every company wants a stronger brand, right?2. Copy the titles and abstracts into an e-mail to your boss and elaborate on how you'll benefit from them. More importantly, give specific reasons why what you learn will help you and your team, peers, etc. achieve 2009's business goals. To continue with our example, my company needs to grow our social media cred. The panel consists of Saul Colt, C.C. Chapman and Gary Vaynerchuk. According to their bios (on their web sites), Saul is "an accomplished marketing professional, with more than a decade of diverse high-level experience and a respected publisher" and C.C.'s company, The Advance Guard, "focuses on helping brands of all sizes smartly and strategically leverage emerging technologies for radical marketing programs." Gary doesn't really require an explanation, but if your boss has been living in a cave, then you might want to drop a few adjectives like "inspirational" and "passionate." Example: This panel will help me form an action plan on how to grow my company's social media cred, following the examples set by these three extraordinary social media mavens.3. Outline the maximum line item costs for the event. The pass, the travel, the hotel and the food. If you really want to go, make your food budget less than $50/day, your hotel budget less than $100/day and cover the rest (if necessary) with your own cash. Don't provide a total, as it might overwhelm your boss at first brush. Besides, I'm sure he or she can add.4. Plan a post-conference re-cap meeting. This is crucial! Set a date and make a list of team members who you will invite, including your boss. During this meeting, promise to share the highlights of what you learned at SXSWi and what you recommend that the business do differently. Explain how these revolutionary ideas will boldly move the company forward in ways they never could have imagined.5. Split the difference. Remind your boss that the conference takes place Friday-Tuesday (March 13th to 17th). If you travel after work on Thursday or on Friday morning and return to work the following Wednesday, you're only missing three days of work AND you're donating your time to the company you love so much over the weekend.There you have it, your "free" pass to SXSWi. Well, it's not exactly free. You have to deliver on all the promises you're making to your boss, especially if you want to go next year! Now if only it was this easy to justify the music festival. . . .(Thanks to allisonb00, the inspiration for many things in my life, including this blog post.)[...]
BIL Conference 2009 Selects The Social Collective to Provide Conference Social Network 2009-01-13T15:18:30.512-05:00 (image)(I-Newswire) - Long Beach, CA The second annual BIL Conference, scheduled to take place on February 7th and 8th, 2009, announced today that they have selected Herndon, VA-based BDG's white-label conference social networking platform, The Social Collective, as their provider for conference registration and social networking services. BIL is an ad-hoc conference for people changing the world in big ways. It’s a place for passionate people to come together to energize, brainstorm, and take action. Last year's BIL had over 300 attendees. This year, almost twice that have already signed up on the social network. Confirmed speakers include TED Prize winners Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity and Eric Rasmussen of InSTEDD. Other proposed talks include Silona Bonewald's (founder of The League of Technical Voters) "Transparent Government Starting With The Federal Budget" and Ben Huh's (of I Can Has Cheezburger) "What's Funny About The Interwebs." BIL's "unconference" format permits anyone to speak, so interested parties may sign up to give a talk. The talks are then "favorited" to the main stage by peers, or remain in a breakout room if they don't receive enough favorites. "We chose The Social Collective because it's a great way to herd smart people," said BIL Conference co-chair Todd Huffman. "In addition to posting new talks and adding talks to their favorites, people can create and join groups, engage in discussions, make a new network of friends and keep their new relationships alive post-conference. The format was a great fit for BIL, but I can see it working well at more structured events, too." "We're really enjoying the experience of watching and participating in the growth of the online BIL community, powered by The Social Collective," said BDG chief and one of the The Social Collective developers, Chris Bucchere. "The BIL team has been a pleasure to work with and the community has been very supportive of our efforts. The outstanding content and people involved should make BIL one of the must-attend events of 2009." For additional information or to register for free, visit the BIL Conference web site.
Top Ten Tips for Writing Plumtree Crawlers that Actually Work 2008-10-26T23:02:44.776-04:00 Just in time for Halloween, I've decided to publish my Top Ten Tips for Writing Plumtree Crawlers that Actually Work. This post may scare you a little bit, but hey, that's the spirit of Halloween, right?[Editor's note: yes, we're still calling it Plumtree. Why? I did a Google search today and 771,000 hits came up for "plumtree" as opposed to around 300,000 for "aqualogic" and just over 400,000 for "webcenter." Ignoring the obvious -- that a short, simple name always wins over a technically convoluted one -- it just helps clarify what we're talking about. For example, if we say "WebCenter," no one knows whether we're talking about Oracle's drag-n-drop environment for creating JSR-168 portlets (WebCenter Suite) or Plumtree's Foundation/Portal (WebCenter Interaction). So, frankly, you can call it whatever you want, but we're still gonna call it Plumtree so that people will know WTF we're talking about.]So, you want to write a Plumtree Crawler Web Service (CWS), eh? Here are ten tips that I learned the hard way (i.e. by NOT doing them):1. Don't actually build a crawler2. If you must, at least RTFM3. Hierarchyze your content4. Test first5. When testing, use the Service Station 2.0 (if you can get it)6. Code for thread safety7. Write DRY code (or else)8. Don't confuse ChildDocument with Document9. Use the named methods on DocumentMetaData10. RTFM (again)Before I get into the gory details, let me give you some background. First off, what's a CWS anyway? It's the code behind what Oracle now calls Content Services, which spider through various types of content (for lack of a better term) and import pointers to those bits of content into the Knowledge Directory. This ability to spider content and normalize its metadata is one of the most underrated features in Plumtree. (FYI, it was also the first feature we built and arguably, the best.) Each bit of spidered content is called a Document or a Card or a Link depending on whether you're looking at the product, the API or the documentation, respectively. It's important to realize that CWSs don't actually move content into Plumtree; rather, they store only pointers/links and metadata and they help the Plumtree search engine (known under the covers as Ripfire Ignite) build its index of searchable fulltext and properties.Today, Plumtree ships with one OOTB CWS that knows how to crawl/spider web pages. Not surprisingly, it's known as the Web Crawler. Don't let the name mislead you: the web crawler can actually crawl almost anything, as I explain in my first tip, which is "Don't actually build a crawler." But I'm getting ahead of myself.So, back to the background on crawlers. Oracle ships five of 'em, AFAIK: one for Windows files, one for Lotus Notes databases, one for Exchange Public Folders, one for Documentum and one for Sharepoint. Their names give you blatantly obvious hints at what they do, so I won't get into it. Along with the OOTB crawlers, Oracle also exposes a nice, clean API for writing crawlers in Java or .NET. (If you really want to push the envelope, you can try writing a crawler in PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, C++ or whatever, but it's hard enough to write one in Java or .NET, so I wouldn't go there. If you do, though, make sure that your language has a really good SOAP stack.)So, after reading this, you still want to write a crawler, yes? Let's get into my Top Ten Tips:1. Don't actually build a crawlerYes, you really don't want to go here. Building crawlers is not that hard, as there's a clean, well documented API. However, getting them work is a whole other story.Most applications these days have a web UI. So, take adv[...]
bdg welcomes Michael Buckbee! 2008-09-30T00:26:55.057-04:00 (image) We're very pleased to announce that industry veteran, entrepreneur and Rails developer Michael Buckbee joined the bdg team today as CTO and Lead Developer on The Social Collective!Mike's career path is surprisingly similar to my own -- in multiple ways. Fresh out of college, he joined a health industry startup called Aristar in 1999. They were acquired by SoftMed, which was then acquired by 3M HIS. (Recall that I worked at Plumtree, which was bought by BEA, which was bought by Oracle.) Unlike yours truly, who left Plumtree in 2002, Mike stayed on at 3M. As someone who just doesn't know what it means to get bored, he also started several side projects. The most successful of these was Fabjectory, which could best be described as a 3D printshop that allows people to take their avatars (or other objects from the virtual world) offline and reincarnate them as real life figurines. Again, our paths resemble one another, in an almost uncanny way. As I was toiling away on Feedhaus, Mike was building FeedMail, which essentially tried to allow people to read and respond to email from inside a feed reader. Like Feedhaus, the idea never really took off. However, some of Mike's other projects -- like Fabjectory -- generated an amazing amount of buzz, including articles in the New York Times and WIRED. Prior to starting Fabjectory, Mike had yet another side project called Second411 which allowed people to search for virtual items both in-world and on the web. Second411 was purchased by ESC in October of 2006. Never one to settle for just a few side-projects, Mike also worked on FoxyMelody, Watchlister, OneToFive, FeedSpeaker and an open source HTTP queue that runs on Google's Application Engine. Here at bdg, we've long been in the business of throwing lots of spaghetti at the fridge and seeing what sticks, so obviously Mike will fit right in. Visit Mike's blog and project page for more about his amazing career. As Lead Developer on The Social Collective, Mike is already busy getting the site prepped for SXSW 2009, which will launch early in Q1. Please join me and the rest of the bdg team in extending a warm welcome to Mike!
I Don't Even Like Radiohead, But. . . . 2008-09-26T18:13:16.234-04:00 (image) I wouldn't consider myself a Radiohead fan. But what they just did is about to turn the music industry on its head . . . again. Check out this snippet from an e-mail they just sent me:Whatever you want to call this (user-generated production?), it's downright brilliant. The idea that I -- a mere mortal -- get to mix and produce the next Radiohead song and that my version (if the general public likes it) could be the next big Radiohead hit is simply a mind-blowing and totally game-changing idea. Starting with Napster, then Kazaa and other P2P networks, then the idea that a major-label artist like Radiohead would put up an album (In Rainbows) and ask people to name a price for it -- including $0 -- the music industry has changed dramatically over the past ten years. And Radiohead is, as usual, leading the charge.
Chris Bucchere's Oracle Open World Schedule 2009-01-31T01:11:15.658-05:00 (image) I'm headed to Oracle Open World on Saturday, 9/20. Here's my proposed schedule. Like I said earlier, I'm probably going to spend most of my time in the unconference anyway, but here's what looked interesting to me.[Editor's note: I've removed the gCal from here because it defaults to the current date, so it's not really usable anymore, now that Oracle Open World 2008 is a thing of the past.] If you'd prefer, you can also access this schedule in XML or ICAL format.
SXSW to Use The Social Collective for SXSW 2009! 2009-01-31T01:29:39.362-05:00 (image) (image) I am very pleased to announce that today bdg and SXSW have decided to partner to use The Social Collective to create a new registrant community for SXSW 2009.More details will follow soon. But for now, please join me in a collective w00t for the entire bdg team while we celebrate this amazing milestone for us. We all look forward to seeing The Social Collective in action at SXSW 2009!
Sneak Preview of Chris Bucchere's SXSW RSS Preso at the Oracle Open World Unconference 2008-09-03T09:24:29.797-04:00 (image) For anyone attending Oracle Open World, I'm planning to give a preview of my SXSW 2009 talk entitled "Not So Simple Any More: RSS's Bleeding Edge" in the unconference track at OOW. (This will happen regardless of whether or not SXSW selects my talk for inclusion in the 2009 agenda.)The talk is scheduled for Monday, 22 September 2008 at 2 PM Pacific in Moscone Overlook II. BTW, I'll probably be spending most of my time in the unconference track at OOW, because I'm just that kind of guy.
Conference Social Networking Made Simple 2008-08-31T20:09:40.459-04:00 (image) Three and a half months have transpired since our stellar debut at BEA Participate. (In internet time, that's a lifetime.) But better late than never, I'm very pleased to announce the launch of our marketing home on the web: www.thesocialcollective.com!Please have a look and let us know what you think.
Friday Fun: Rails, Django and Caprese Salad 2008-08-29T19:42:24.631-04:00 I had this Twitter argument today with former coworker, fellow web developer and friend Bryan Hughes:bucchere: The Spring Framework is driving me crazy. If this were Rails, I'd be done already. huuuze: @bucchere If it was Django, it'd be faster and ready to scale.bucchere: @huuuze I'm not interested in a religious war right now. Please don't provoke me. ;-)huuuze: @bucchere No war -- even the Rails guys agree: http://is.gd/1ZZubucchere: @huuuze Apparently Gluon is even faster than Django. But is anyone using it? You have to consider factors other than performance.huuuze: @bucchere Um, Django's used by thousands. It's not some fringe framework. Guaranteed anyone that's used RoR and Django will prefer Django.bucchere: @huuuze How could you make that "guarantee" when you've never used Rails? I said I didn't want a religious war, you damn Python Nazi. ;-)huuuze: @bucchere I've built a couple site using Rails. How many sites have you built using Django?bucchere: @huuuze bdg's svn server just crashed. I have more important things to do than continue this pointless argument.huuuze: @bucchere Then quit wasting time on Twitter. I'm not trying to start anything with you. Just be aware that RoR isn't the only game in town.bucchere: @huuuze There are lots of religions too. And if I want to pick one and say the others are "wrong" then that's my prerogative.huuuze: @bucchere Whatever dude. Not sure why you'd say Django is "wrong."bucchere: @huuuze All I'm saying is that language/framework wars are like religious wars. I have mine, you have yours. Leave it at that.bucchere: Enjoying a homemade caprese -- my favorite salad. (Now watch while @huuuze tells me his favorite salad is better than mine.)huuuze: @bucchere Having never tried caprese, I have no opinion on the matter.bucchere: @huuuze LOL. I'm glad we can still be friends. :-)huuuze: @bucchere Get real. I'm only friends with Christians and Django users. ;)* * * So the time it took me to compile this discussion made me wonder why Twitter doesn't have threaded discussions. Summize (now search.twitter.com) has "conversations" but, like Facebook's wall-to-wall feature, just because the posts occur consecutively, it doesn't mean that they're actually "in" the same thread. If I were re-writing Twitter, adding threaded discussions -- and with it, the ability to reply to a specific Tweet -- would be near the top of my list.Happy Friday everyone (and happy 3-day weekend for hard-working and hard-twittering Americans)![...] |
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