User 40.0

Its been an extremely interesting few months since leaving my last job.  Changes abounded in every aspect of my life, some good...some not so great. 

At my last organization I was almost completely focused on CMS implementations, ignoring most of the other aspects of website development.  CMS work is nice, its the backbone of the internet, but I was missing the application engagements that precipitates true user interaction.  After leaving there one of my first adventures was attending the New New Internet conference in my hometown of Reston, VA.  I was introduced to (or should I say immersed in) social media and the reality of Web 2.0. My next few months entailed my engagement in the Facebooks and Twitters of the web, more usage of my LinkedIn account, and a presence at multiple local tech activities. I've met and interacted both in person and over the internet with many great people, too many to list here.

My challenge became finding a position that leveraged the two.  Most social media positions today are in the marketing and PR domain.  Unless I wanted to start my career over from the ground up I did not see those domains as options.  Weeks became months which became quarters while I looked for that job. I then stumbled across a local startup named WorthPoint.

WorthPoint is a social media site that catalogues and tracks the sales history and current value of antiques and collectibles from around the world, and makes this information available to everyone.  Anne Zeiger stated "The company is gaining significant visitor traction and is well poised to capture the lion's share of this untapped market."

Thats the company's story.  For me it's the perfect match I was looking for. 

We utilize Drupal as our CMS.  Well utilize is the wrong word, we actually push Drupal up to and beyond its intended limits.  We provide a plethora of tools and features for collectors of every domain.  Communities that include user abilities to list items in their collections, videos of them, mixing of professional knowledge along with wisdom of crowd knowledge, blogging, buying and selling, along with a deep database of historic data on auction items called the Worthopedia.  Thats just the short list of features, there's more in the works (whoops, I almost said worx. old habits huh?).

Whats my role in this you may ask?  They've asked me to manage the product development and implement an Agile process using the tool Rally Dev.  Our first sprint started today.  I'm happy with the team so far as they've taken to the change in the way they work and the new tool.  Rally Dev is an interesting application that I plan to cover in another post but I will say now that they have a great sales and support staff.

So for now I'm deep in the midst of a CMS driven social community application utilizing an Agile process with distributed teams all over the world.  To quote some of my older relations back in Arkansas....I'm like a pig in shit!

Have you changed jobs recently?

The guys over at Pure West Media released their trailer for the upcoming documentary Second Skin today.  This film documents the story of seven gamers and their experiences in a less than real world environment.  75 gamers were interviewed during the 2 year production.  Topics such as addiction, online relationships, guild mechanics and virtual currencies are covered.

Pure West is hoping to hold the premiere viewing movie at SXSW.

I'm curious to see the results of their research in a couple of areas.  Addiction to MMORPGs is a real problem, one that I feel is being ignored.  In the trailer we are introduced to a gamer named Dan.  Dan was a successful businessman who threw it all away for virtual world.  In the trailer he states his whole life just fell apart and wanted to kill himself.  Dan's not alone, there are many others in his situation or well on their way.  While I am not aware of any US efforts to combat this problem, in 2007 China imposed mandatory controls on gaming providers to encourage time limits for teenage players.  Chinese internet policies of blocking or restricting access to certain sites or services has received bad press here but this is one example of a policy I could live with.

For those gamers that take the "job" seriously and can balance the real and the virtual world I do think there is abright future.  Business is slowly moving toward the virtual office where coworkers may never meet face to face.  One of the largest challenges for success in this venture will be to find managers that can lead a team solely through pixels.  In MMORPGs, guild memberships can reach into the hundreds with multiple layers of leadership.  Games like World of Warcraft provide dungeons that 25 to 40 players can enter as a raid.  The guild or raid leader has the challenge of coordinating the efforts of his raid to reach a goal, usually the killing of a boss monster.  In the latest patches of WoW, the encounters in these dungeons require all raiders to do their job flawlessly, one mistake can mean a complete wipe of the raid and a waste 30 minutes to an hour before their next attempt.  The raid leader not only has to perform his individual part but also monitor everyone else's performance.  While this may sound like child's play it is setting the foundation of skills required to lead a group of professionals toward a common goal without the classic human interface we find in our offices and cubicles today.

What do you think?

Last month at Le Web 3 in Paris, Six Apart released the first version of Movable Type Open Source (MTOS).  After a number of weeks in beta they released the first stable version yesterday.   MTOS 4.1 can be downloaded at MovableType.org.

MTOS is a separate, open source version of Movable Type. It’s licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. Importantly, in a recent statement, the company asserts that “MTOS has every feature in Movable Type 4.0 along with several new minor improvements and bug fixes.”

I sat in on a Six Apart ProNet conference call in December hosted by Byrne Reese, MT Product Manager.  When asked about performance of the MT 4.1 releases his response was as follows:

"All aspects of performance are a priority to every member of the MT team.  By company directive every release will have performance enhancements in it.  No release will ever be slower than any previous."

In todays "hurry up and ship" mode of software development this kind of direction is welcome news.  Lets hope they live up to it.

You may notice this blog is powered by MT 4.0.  So far it fits my purpose and have no plans to upgrade anytime in the near future.  I have recently investigated Drupal, Joomla and WordPress as options to move to.  The support for templates is extremely limited in MT as compared to others I listed.  I will hold out for a few months and see how popular MTOS becomes.  Hopefully we'll see the creation of  communities for MT like the Joomla template site, Joomlart.com.

On a side note today marks the release of this sites new branding and design.  There are still some small items I need to take care of like adding a blog roll and minor design tweeks.  Let me know what you think of it so far.

JobMatchBox.com is hosting Social Matchbox DC on Monday, January 28th from 6-8:30.  Organized by Robert Neelbauer, the event is designed to facilitate connections between local startups and professionals in the job hunt (like myself).  From Bob's email announcement:

"This event is not for companies to sell products or consulting services to area startup companies.  This is an event for startup companies to attend so that they may find people who they are interested in hiring, find people to join them in launching their own startup, or to get hired."

The implementation of JobMatchbox is a refreshing alternative to traditional job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder.  While it provides conventional listings, the strength of the service is what Bob provides in the background.  All reqs are vetted by him prior to posting to ensure the positions are solid opportunities and marked in the correct categories.  There is virtually no spam on his boards.  He also provides a blog on the site which has recently covered such topics as video based resumes, scouting at Carnegie Mellon, and extraordinary recruiting practices.

Bob is also a master social networker and works hard as a proponent for both the recruiter and the job hunter.  He can be found at most DC tech events and always in conversation.  He knows the market and can quickly introduce people with like minded interests together.  This I feel is the real strength behind JobMatchBox.  And best of all...its free!