AddingUnderstanding

I wrote recently about the terrible G-Technology customer service experience with my G-Drive Mini Triple. After getting it off my mind I figured it would be the last I'd write on the subject. However tonight I'm convinced that there must be a time-sync or time-warp on the thing to go along with the impressive heat sync.

Picking up where the story left off I'd since sent two separate email inquiries about the status of the case. One, two and then three days passed with nary a response. In fact I still haven't gotten a response. I did, however, get a new drive so consider the issue resolved. And then tonight the event leading me to believe there is a hole in the fabric of time around this drive. I received an email from the store that sold the drive telling me my drive shipped today. At least the FedEx number was correct and correctly showed the drive arrived over a month ago.

So I'm cautiously loading the drive with some data. Hopefully it's not gone for good this time.

Went to my first meeting with Kickstand tonight. A great Boise area group of business owners and innovators. I only managed to meet a handful of the folks in the room but every one of them was quite interesting. The depth and breadth of work going on in Boise is simply fantastic.

Here are the websites of some of the folks I met:

• http://www.sattlerclothing.com/
• http://www.neoreef.com
• http://booklamp.org
• http://www.intercarve.net

It was a great time to talk to several folks about the power and elegance of Drupal as a tool for building websites. I know it's hard to believe that I would spend the evening talking about Drupal. Thanks to Tech Boise for the Kickstand suggestion.

A brief note about how companies should do business. While on a call this afternoon my UPS shipment arrived. A couple of cable/remote releases for the Nikon were to be inside. Unfortunately when I opened the box only one of the two items were inside. Checking the manifest it showed both should have been there. "Oh great," I said dreading the afternoon of phone calls that was about to come. Would they send an inspector to the house for this ten-dollar item, I wondered? How many hours would it take. I punched the numbers in and dreaded what would become of my day. Here's what happened then:

Amazon call center: Can I get your email or order ID?
Me: Sure... and gave her my email address.
Amazon call center: How may I help you today?
Me: Well I just got my box that was to have two items but it has just one was in the box.
Amazon call center: I'm sorry about that which item was missing?
Me: It was the wireless remote the ML-L3. I even took the box apart to make sure.
Amazon call center: OK. I can do two things I can either refund the item or send you a replacement.
Me: I'd like a replacement.

Now at this point I'm pretty happy but still a little sad. I'd ordered the remote in time to have it for the fireworks this Friday and now knew that wasn't going to happen. Would I have to wait for a new one to be manufactured and then shipped via snail?

Round Table Pizza still has jobs listed in Boise. However for employees of the west-coast pizza chain the unemployment notice came in the form of a note posted on locked doors.

While I can understand businesses choosing to change directions and models this way of doing business deserves to have major repercussions for Round Table Pizza. Imagine for a moment if it were your rent check that was due on Monday and you found out on Thursday that you're out of a job. A couple of times a year we would frequent Round Table but not any longer. The unethical business practice of giving employees no notice that they are out of a job is just inexcusable. There are at times unfortunate situations where companies go dark overnight but those are associated with really and truly going out of business. This was apparently not related to a bankruptcy or dire situations. Rather it was a calculated well-planned move that was intentionally designed to catch employees off guard. How do I know this? Well things like this don't happen overnight. Sometime back, probably months back, they started looking at how to save some dough. They produced charts and looked at markets. Had meetings and analyzed the numbers. Between the time they closed stores on Wednesday night and the time employees came to work on Thursday they closed up shop.

Small firms face particular challenges when it comes to deciding what business to take or leave. For example I recently received and offer to do some work for an amount that was much lower than prevailing rates. Of course a chunk of money can be enticing but doing the right thing is also important for small businesses.

In another instance a solo attorney I'm familiar with was faced with a similar conundrum. A large company with lots of cash came to this firm to clean up the web and remove references to the questionable activities of one of the company's beneficiaries. The character who they wanted to help had a record a yard long with endeavors including felony convictions for armed robbery and twisted tails of conning hard-earned money from honest people. On one hand if the proprietor of a small firm took a step back and looked at the situation as a third party that taking a to clean up the reputation of some one who has repeatedly abused the public trust is unethical. Worse yet doing so for a pile of money, no matter the size, means that one's ethics are for sale. However tempting some extra cash might be firms, especially small firms that depend on their reputations, are wise to steer clear of such compromises.

Dave Winer has been blogging about vendor lock-in for quite a while now. It occurred to me earlier as I was reading about a really cool project and realizing that this project would never be possible with commercial applications. Would it be possible to put Microsoft Content Management on a flash drive even if the license permitted it? How else could one have a flash-drive based cross-platform web-enabled application?

When companies and organizations take the stand that open-source is not for them it is often a short-sighted view. Certainly there are organizations that can't deal with open source themselves but there is no upside from skipping the numerous vendors working with open-source and there is almost certainly long term risk. What does a business do when their system is no longer supported and their data is locked-in to a particular vendor's system? Just ask some organizations that are just now trying to migrate from mainframe systems to database systems and the years of work and millions of dollars it takes to make the move.

As a hiring manager I'm always skeptical when I get a resume filled with "technical" classes from one of the myriad of technical schools around the country. When I've worked with graduates of these programs it seems they have a marginal, but usually satisfactory, understanding of how technology is supposed to work. The problem is I rarely need people who can work with technology that is working. If technology is working and things are simple there is little that end-users need. Even relatively simple tasks like deploying computers depends upon a specific understanding of the complex situation that is most business networks. Few organizations do a "out of the box" installation of a Microsoft Active Directory and run 100% machines that work in that environment. These complexities mean a technical manager is quickly looking for skills that don't come from these technical schools. Ironically because they do tend to come in people who are self-motivated to learn the technology any way they can often the requisite skills are stronger in those who haven't been through this sort of program.

So what does this have to do with Dreamweaver? A friend recently commented that when they look at resumes they similarly discount the web credentials of anyone who lists Dreamweaver, Front Page or other similar programs on their resume for much the same reasons. Usually they've gone to a class or two on web design and don't really understand the web my friend explained. It is far more important that a person who is going to be using the web heavily and designing for the web understand how the web works, what a are key factors in search engine optimization, organic marketing, usability, content management systems and customer service than an understanding of how to use a particular piece of software. In other words the conceptual body of knowledge is far more important than how to push buttons in a software package.

Extrapolating into the mechanical world the Dreamweaver and Front Page slingers of the world are shade tree mechanics. Many of them very good and able to put together quite pretty things and make things look good. Just as many a shade-tree mechanic can do wonders on that '67 Mustang the Front Pager can put the shine on a '97 vintage website. If '97 works then you're done. When it comes to working on the '06 Prius the shade tree mechanic is at a distinct disadvantage. Though at it's heart there is a gas engine, the HTML of the automotive world, there is a much more complex system in play that takes more tools and understanding than the average shade tree mechanic possesses. If you want a '07 website that can keep and build audience and become the business tool you need then you'll do what those in the know do and use a content management system. Best of all when you want an '08 website your job will be much easier.

Of course I am far from the first to raise this point. And it would be wrong to take away the idea that Dreamweaver doesn't have a place. It is a great tool for designing a site even if it is a poor tool for maintaining the content on the site once it is designed.