Trenchcoat required

There aren't many people on the team who have nicknames, or at least publicly known nicknames. Well we think Christian has coined one.

From now on Rishi shall be known as Columbo. He doesn't wear a raincoat but he does have a habit, just as a meeting is closing, of saying "Just one more thing."

In the thick of it

OK, New Year, new boss. What's changed?

Well not much actually, but give Dave a chance, he barely has his toes under the table.

Last week I sat in on some Fatwire training. Fatwire is the engine behind ENGInE if that isn't too complicated. It's the platform/software/language upon which ENGInE is being built.

Dee, who took the course, probably got a bit fed up with me. I kept asking questions. I know it's quite difficult to shut me up at the best of times but we kept going off at tangents because I wanted to know about this, that and the other.

The good news is that I wasn't bluffing when I told all of you that the new Content Management Tool would be more user friendly and more efficient.

You see when I told you all that I was relying on information given to me. I hadn't seen the tool, except for a brief presentation from a Fatwire salesman, and we all know how reliable sales people are.

It is far more flexible than Firefly.

Test

Brendan is off to South Africa to be Mazda's General Manager out there.

He says he'll still be logging in to check how the project's progress. I joked that he wouldn't remember this URL. We'll see.

So Brendan - if you are reading this then leave a comment and we'll know you still care.

And to everyone else - Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I'm feeling a difference

I saw three presentations yesterday, all about content.

This was a blessed relief.

I have read the ENGInE spec and it was dull. This is not a criticism. It's a document that wasn't created for entertainment. But I'm sure you can imagine that much of my work revolves around detail and the nitty gritty.

Content, however, is a completely different kettle of fish or at least it should be.

That's why the prospect of a day of reviewing content would seem to be better than the day job.

For six hours we looked at content, and I can't give you my reaction to it yet because Juergen hasn't seen it yet. But I will share some adjectives that I think can be used to describe the content of one of the presentations.

• Interesting
• Challenging
• Different
• Innovative
• Unique
• Un-Ford
• Colourful
• Difficult
• Extensive
• Pervasive
• Noninvasive

And while we're on the subject of words, I'd like to state, for the record, that tangibilize is not a word. Unless of course you believe that words entered by the surfing public on www.urbandictionary.com should be counted as real words. If Urban Dictionary words could be included in Scrabulous then I'd win every time.

Dilbert to the rescue

Thanks Reiner. This doesn't quite sum up where we are, but it's close enough to make me laugh out loud, and then need a drink.

Blonde moment

Recently I've been put under pressure to produce a Business Owner View.

The example that ran to 165 pages was a little intimidating for someone that hadn't produced one before but, being the consummate professional, I started doing my research.

I figured I'd need help.

I wasn't too sure what a Contextual Motivation Model was, let alone a Motivation and Function Association Matrix or a Conceptual Network Model and these were just some of the components for the document that had my name against it.

I carried on reading and, to my relief, discovered that it isn't a Business produced document but one produced by IT.

I raised this and the task was placed with someone who already has enough to occupy more than his working week.

So although I've saved myself a horrendous task, someone else is now overloaded to the point where something's got to give.

The irony of this situation is that I can't find anyone who sees any merit in the production of this document.

No flying cars

Mean Automakers Dash Nation's Hope For Flying Cars