Being concerned about big ISP monopolies who had lobbied for per-user data caps and an “anti-Internet set of “Lawful Access” policies that would have Internet providers collect personal information without court oversight” The Portable Consultant  “signed” this petition by OpenMedia.ca and they sent an email on my behalf to my local Member of Parliament.

Minutes later I get the following auto-response from my MP’s parliamentary email address:
—
“Response sent April 12, 2011

“Thank you for your e-mail.

“Due to the election please contact mike@mikewallace.ca .

“The Campaign Office is located at 4460 Fairview Street, Unit B-101, in the plaza at the corner of Fairview and Appleby Line. -www.mikewallace.ca
—

…and I have to laugh at the automated email responder that tells me the email address to forward mail to but is not set up to forward the email automatically!

Once again politicians, government in general, prove that they do NOT “get” the Internet. It seems they still don’t even understand how to handle email.

Since his office is just around the corner I will PRINT the email for my Honourable Member of Parliament and deliver it in person – with a huge grin on my face.

Thanks for the chuckles, Government of Canada (aka “The Harper Government” ™)

Cheers,
-pmh

It was not as easy as it could have been.

Had I been running Windows at the time it would have been semi-automatic, of course. But, no, I was running Kubuntu – the KDE version of the popular Ubuntu Linux – and I had never reached out to my old HP ScanJet in that environment before.

Naturally, I googled official Kubuntu documentation. The documentation said “Software wise Kubuntu comes with the application Kooka, the KDE scanning and OCR installed”… and then told me exactly where in the menu system to find Kooka.

No such luck.

Google’s top hit was out of date documentation. There is no Kooka in the LTS 10.4 Kubuntu version.

Next I turned to Ubuntu.org’s documentation where there were pointers to the Kubuntu distribution. (Generally, Ubuntu assumes you are running Gnome rather than KDE so Kubuntu stuff can be off in the corner somewhere and the big Search field at the top of the page will not be of much help.)

Anyway, here I found reference to SANE (‘Scanner Access Now Easy’) the full-featured Linux package. This is so full-featured, however, that it comes with a huge list of dependencies – related packages that are required for SANE to install. There were so many of these that it looked as if much of Gnome had to be installed before SANE would work.

So I continued my research.

Finally, I came across a discussion group posting that pointed out Open Office had built-in scanning functionality under the ‘Insert-Picture-Scan’ menu sequence… so this is what I used.

I could also have installed ‘Simple Scan’ from the Kubuntu software package list but I already had Open Office on my system so I avoided adding more software by using that.

What is the moral of this story? With desktop Linux, even the most simple tasks require some research.

I should mention that I went through a similar exercise to get Kubuntu to ‘see’ my printer. I did not have that issue with mainstream Ubuntu.

Cheers,
-pmh

So this is the first time since picking up Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital that the Portable Consultant watched what he was really doing as he searched for interesting content on the Net. He now has a greater appreciation for what’s happening here:

Join the dots…
A friend tells me, via email, about a song their kids like and includes a this link to the Hide and Seek video by Imogen Heap.

Yes, I like the song (actually, I’m struck by similarities to Kate Bush) and check Heap’s Wikipedia entry where…

…I find out that, yes, others have made comparisons to Kate Bush’s style and…

…I go(ogle) to Imogen Heap’s web site where I spot a link to…

…her Twitter page where I see she’s got an online concert tonight!, so I…

…loop back an email with that last link to my friend suggesting that they might want to catch the concert too.

But then, since I’m liking the music and I now know she’s got a new album out…

…I check out First Train Home, one of Imogen’s other videos on YouTube and,…

…in the YouTube page’s Video Responses list, I spot an acoustic cover by Anne Legras, who, yes, blows me away so I check out Anne’s YouTube channel, too and…

…loop back again to my friend with a link to another Legras’ YouTube video of L’encre de tes Yeux, a song that almost immediately became one of my favourite songs of all time!

Alright. This, of course, is exactly what everyone under 30 (and many under 40′s) are doing with music. No surprise.

Shining the spotlight…
I have to smile when I hear Roger Faxon, head of EMI, interviewed on a podcast by The Economist. Mr. Faxon takes pains to justify his business’ role in the modern music scene – describing the need for “shining the spotlight” on new performers that deserve to stand out. Explaining why it is necessary for his business to choose the hits Faxon says: “There’s this sort of view of the world that the Internet is this huge democracy and everybody gets to vote. Most people don’t want to vote.”

Nothing new there either, right? There are whole political parties that base their campaigns on that premise. Why shouldn’t those of us who enjoy popular music just follow along as well.

Who makes the choices now?
Still, I can’t help feeling that unless Big Music adapts itself to the world of social networking their business model is doomed. We are now in an environment where a personal search for the music of Imogen Heap (who is, by the way, an indie artist) can uncover a Parisian metro busker with “undiscovered” talent. Now that such undiscovered performers have the capability to make and sell their CD or mp3 directly to me, why in this world wouldn’t I vote for what I want to hear? It’s all about who makes the choices, now.

All the best for your future success, Anne. I’ll be pointing my friends in your direction.

Cheers!

-pmh

Secondly, the heart of the issue as clearly stated by Joseph Bonneau “It’s imperative to view privacy as a design constraint, not a legal add-on”, should be framed and hung on the walls of web designers and managers, not only at social networking sites but also those in the public service, in the private sector, and even corporate intranets.

Cheers,
-pmh

The Portable Consultant is feeling understandably low, therefore, when against this bleak backdrop he is exposed to an ECM project that seems to model much that can go wrong with an ECM initiative.

While the following is not intended as a comprehensive list, these are some of the Do’s and Don’ts that the principal consultants on the project failed to be aware of. In no particular order they were:

• Do have a Project Charter… an SOW is nowhere near good enough for the implementation of a critical enterprise infrastructure such as an ECM.
• Don’t undertake ECM as an IT Department driven technology project… ECM is more dependent on business requirements and business processes than, say, a new firewall. These days the IT guys should be tightly integrated with the business; e.g., the head of IT should be a CIO who ensures C-level priorities, not technology, drives IT.
• Do establish an ECM Steering Committee that is representative of the whole enterprise and leverage them to provide guidance, impetus, and a high-level sign-off for company-wide issues such as the corporate taxonomy, key metadata, and security models as well as critical SLA and Disaster Recovery (DR) requirements. Specifically…
  • Don’t confuse backup/restore requirements with DR. DR is about business continuance after the entire office and/or data centre has ceased to function while backup/restore is about a broken server, corrupted database, or some such.
  • Don’t just sit down some afternoon and enter new metadata fields into the production system on the fly without first gathering, documenting, and having affected parties sign-off on the relevent requirements.
• Do not rely on business units to gather and present their own requirements without extensive guidance from knowledgeable ECM consultants who can speak to the business in their language, the language of business processes not software configuration.
• Do not expect one of the Big 4 consultancies to necessarily know all this and manage the project according to ECM Best Practices… sometimes just one experienced independent consultant can be enough to help even a large global enterprise to navigate the treacherous waters of ECM deployment… without all that excess overhead. <grin>

Sigh. Time to crawl back into my burrow, I suppose. Wake me up in another six weeks.

Cheers,
-pmh

It’s amazing how similar most WP themes are. This one was a Little different (pun intended) and the only one I liked that had solid borders around postings and other page elements.

more later…
-pmh

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win” -Ghandi

“You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.” -Arlo Guthrie

The Portable Consultant has been silent on recent developments involving Microsoft and Linux. This is not because of lack of interest – I’ve been busy working out my own open source issues primarily upgrades to this blog site and my company site – but because it is being so fully covered elsewhere (and especially here, and here).

It seem that Microsoft has finally realized that open source is more than Linux or OpenOffice… it is, in the immortal lyrics of Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant, a movement (“…and all you’ve got to do is sing it next time it comes ’round on the guitar.”)

If there is anything that Microsoft doesn’t want to miss out on, it’s a movement. I mean, that Internet thing really did catch on after all, didn’t it?

Ok, so in Microsoft terms “joining them” means threatening the Linux community and their business clients with FUD in the form of 200+ patents while forging some relationships where they may figure they will have the upper hand. Novell, Xandros, and Linspire are not likely to bring down the house that Bill built, right? Ah, but will MS enter into an similar open source agreements with IBM? Hmmm… In any case, a few Linux “partners” may prove useful some day (probably in court).

It’s very early days yet, but I have the feeling that Microsoft may have jumped the shark with respect to Linux. In their own way they are now treating Linux, and all open source, as the popular movement it really is.

All together now… “You can get anything you want…”

Cheers,
-pmh

ps: Apologies to those sensitive readers who abhor boomer references.

Now, the first response to the Lottery Question should always be “How much?” …because it makes a difference to one’s daydream whether you’re thinking “enough to get something nice”, “enough to pay off the mortgage”, or “enough to live the life of an independently wealthy person (after setting up the charitable foundation, of course).”

Perhaps I had only recently finished university and was remembering the exhilaration you get from having your brain challenged, because my answer came out something like “If I found myself independently wealthy I would like to travel the world, seeking out the most interesting professors, and taking their courses.” Being independently wealthy would also mean I wouldn’t worry about credits, of course. When not auditing courses I would attend conferences on a wide variety of topics. I suppose that put me pretty high up on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at that time.

Years later I found myself driving in a rented car to a conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was far from being independently wealthy. The Internet bubble had burst and I was just starting out as an independent, not wealthy, consultant – which is what you do when your corner of the economy is in depression. In any case, I couldn’t see the point of being unbillable at home when a relatively inexpensive conference on open source content management systems is only a day’s drive away.

That OSCOM conference proved to be a good conversation point for several subsequent interviews. But the greatest benefit was a better understanding of the implications of open source software for enterprise content management. I had managed to merge my lottery daydream with my work to some extent.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Fast forward to the present where for the past year and a half I’ve been a regular listener to the new medium of podcasts. Early on I found the BBC’s In Our Time series and later came across Doug Kaye’s Conversations Network. So, on my GO Train commutes I not only have Adam Curry’s quintessential Daily Source Code and Dave Slusher’s joyful Evil Genius Chronicles to listen to. I also have…

…Melvyn Bragg speaking with John Edwards, Research Fellow in Spanish at the University of Oxford; Alexander Murray, Emeritus Fellow in History at University College, Oxford; and Michael Alpert, Emeritus Professor in Modern and Contemporary History of Spain at the University of Westminster on the subject of The Spanish Inquisition…

[JARRING CHORD... The cardinals burst in... Ximinez: “NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!”].

Over on The Conversations Network I can listen to an impressive list of podcast interviews and presentations made at a growing number of conference events. Some of my recent favourites have been some Apple nostalgia on Larry Magid’s Larry’s World interview with Lee Felsenstein, who moderated the Homebrew Computer Club where Steve Wozniak unveiled the first Apple, and Dr. Moira Gunn’s Tech Nation interview with Daniel Dennett, who views religion as a natural phenomenon.

…and the Winning Number is 192.168.555.102!
So I now realize that I now have access to the kind of interesting discussions, lectures, and presentations that I had been putting off until I win the lottery. As it turned out, my lucky number is an IP address.

Cheers,
-pmh

ps: yes, that IP address is bogus. Do you know where the ’555′ comes from? Ok, so you weren’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition. [Answer]

method #1
1) Stage a special reviewers’ preview a day or two before the event

2) Let the reviewers travel home to NY, London, or wherever (where they left their typewriters, I suppose)

3) Stage the premiere

4) “wait” for the first night reviews to “hit the streets”

This is so 20th. Century, right?

Most of the current generation’s performances would go something like this:

method #2:
1) Wrap the venue in wi-fi or at least ensure that cellphone reception in the lobby is good

2) Make sure the intermission is long enough for bio-break, beer, and blogging

3) (shh… have a few of the producers’ bloggers prime the pump before the curtain goes up)

Ok, so it’s a long walk from the Princess of Wales Theatre to Union Station where the Cluetrain just pulled out, but a quick search of Technorati did not find a single valid opening night review on the first page (some splogs -spam blogs- but no bone fide reviews).

Well, perhaps method #1 is appropriate for LOTR. It’s quaint and harks back to the days of manual typewriters (reporters would never be caught dead with an electric typewriter) and guys throwing bundles of newspapers off the back of trucks as they rumble through rain soaked city streets at night… anxious theatre folk waiting for the first reviews to hit the streets.

Perhaps method #2 would be appropriate for The Matrix – The Musical.

Hmm?

-pmh

For a $2 fee, however, they will send the cheque images, unless you have premium service in which case there is no fee.

This is clearly spelled out on the statement. You can phone their call centre to ask for this service or select the cheque image service in your online profile.

However, if you go to set the online profile you’re told there is a $2 fee. The page where you select the option is not personalized and there is no mention that with the premium plan there would be no charge.

Although any consultant would know that the bank would eventually straighten out any billing errors, this Portable Consultant chose to use the call centre instead. This is a cost that the bank could have avoided if they had simply personalized the option selection page OR if they had reiterated on the page that premium plans would not be charged the fee.

Thousands of other customers must have seen that charge and phoned the call centre for an explanation. Since this consultant was told the call was being recorded it’s possible, though not probable I suppose, that the issue will be noted.

This is particularly ironic because the Portable Consultant in question had once applied for a position managing this particular bank’s online services’ CMS team.

-pmh at ThePortableConsultant.com