Jeff Perreault

You may need to change some processes to get user buy-in.  The technology part is the easy part, the hard part is the cooperation from your people ( process flows and detailed requirements ).

Configuring @Task before all the details are set up will configure you into a corner.

Top things a PM should not do:

Develop project plan on a napkin
Setup Project Structure as “Ready 1 2 3 go get em”
Status reports “Sooooo how’s it going”

Real success criteria:

Use @Task methodology
PM structure : team meetings, issue management, change controls and documentation
effective communication
thorough test plan
execute recommended education plan
knowledge transfer from consulting to customer core team : find users and deeply understand the requirements
partnership between customer and Customer Core team
Partnership between Customer and AtTask services
Executive sponsorship

Avoid designing into a corner.  Spending a week up front will save time and resources later.

Secret Sauce = realistic scope, right resources, acheivable timeline
plan in 30 to 60 day increments
design for the future

 time – money – value

I am currently at the AtTask user conference in Salt Lake City.

I am listening to the opening remarks, and AtTask has created a new product called “AtTask Stream” which adds a social media component to project management.  It has added some common social media features such as status updates, thumbs-up ( high-five ) in order to get buy in from the users.

There is a new cleaner look and feel to the product.  They have created a project summary dashboard with a few new features:

Ping – project manager initiates a request for a status update.  The developer can add a comment to the project and can update how they feel about the progress [ “going smoothly”, “some concerns”, etc ].  This allows the project manager to see when the last update was.

How this ’empowers the front line’.  Can assign tasks to functional teams- ie you don’t know who is going to work on it but you know which team.  It is then up to the people on the team to “accept” the work.  You are also able to propose a new date for completion.

This is in beta testing now scheduled for release in later in the summer

This is a test of a live stream:

When you copy a section of text from Microsoft Word, there are all sorts of formatting tags hidden in the background.  When you paste that text into a web-based WYSIWYG editor, like the one in WordPress, you may get unexpected results.

There are two ways to get around this.

1.  You could paste the text into a text-editor  ( such as Notepad ).  You will lose all the formatting, any links, fonts and styles.  But you can add them back using the WYSIWYG editor.

2.  Wordpress has a method to clean up text copied from Microsoft Word.  Here’s how to do it:

In the WYSIWYG editor, click the Show/Hide Kitchen Sink icon.

Once you click it, some hidden icons will be revealed on the line below.  Now find and click the “Paste from Word” icon.

A window will popup with a space to paste your text.

Paste your text in the box.

Press the insert button, and your text will be inserted into the WYSIWYG editor, cleaned of all the extra hidden formatting.

I love Google Chrome

Came across a problem today where non-administrators ( editors and authors ) were not allowed to upload flv files using the media uploader in WordPress MU

I found a reference to this problem here:
https://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic/9818

It turns out to allow this, I needed to add the mime type to wp-includes/functions.php

First create a text or HTML file with what you would like in your sig file and save it somewhere on your computer.

Next in Thunderbird, choose Tools->Account Settings

In the top tab, you will find a checkbox labelled “Attach this signature” and a file selector.

Select “Choose” and locate the sig file that you just created.

Here are the latest logos:

Here is a video running on the dev FMS server. However, the video cannot be played from this page because it is protected by FMS controls.

streamVideo(“barb-part3b.flv”, “jeff”)

The same video is located here, protected by ezproxy
https://coho.langara.bc.ca.ezproxy.langara.bc.ca:2048/jp/ezproxy/video.html

The same video is also located here, protected by htaccess, and therefore is not visible
https://coho.langara.bc.ca/jp/ezproxy/video.html

Here’s how to include a video in an HTML page using 2 lines of code ( specific to the Langara Fash Media Server )

//

     streamVideo("barb-part3b.flv")