Missing Pieces

I was assembling the new baby bouncer seat that we received as a shower gift. I know that a lot of parents dread this aspect of receiving gifts for their children (or even for themselves), but my puzzle-solving nature just loves to see an assembly instruction sheet. Lots of fun!

Unless you can't find a part.

I had unpacked all of the pieces and spread them out on the floor. I checked each off on the parts list to make sure that I had everything before I started working. Much to my chagrin, I couldn't find the screws that I needed to hold the whole thing together. I looked through the packaging and shook out every piece of plastic and cardboard I could find. Nothing.

I was about to start looking for the customer service number when the glint of metal caught my eye. There they were -- taped to the end of one of the larger parts. I guess sometimes you just have to look a little closer. It may take a little more time, but you tend to be faster in the long run because you've laid out everything before you and you don't waste any time going down wrong trails.

I wish I had remembered this lesson when I was working on my project with Community Housing Network. We're in the middle of a complete overhaul of their site, including a new look and feel and an update on the structure and content of the site. As I mentioned in a previous post, we've pretty much got the appearance under control. Now I'm working on the content.

Kirsten Elliott, my contact at CHN, sent me a bunch of files containing the new copy that I was supposed to add to the site structure I had already built. I started working on it right away, but quickly ran into a problem. The second file I was trying to process wasn't fitting into the site structure that they had originally told me that they wanted. In fact, it appeared to have partial data which belonged on three or four different pages. I finally had to call Kirsten to find out what was happening.

It turns out that the file with which I was working didn't belong where I thought it did. If I had actually taken a quick look at all of the files she had sent me, I would have understood what they had been trying to do.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that skipping steps in the process is a good way to waste my time.

So, when was the last time you took a "long shortcut"?

No Good Deed...

One of my earliest projects was the Community Assistance Directory that I did for the State Outreach department at the University of Michigan. The system went live eleven years ago and is still running as of this writing.

Looking at it now, you wouldn't know it, but back in the day, it was actually a pretty good example of web programming. It largely did what it was supposed to without too much muss or fuss.

Recently, the current administrator of the site contacted me because some of the data had become corrupted. I was able to go in and fix it fairly easily. The only bad thing was that I was brought face-to-face with an occupational hazard.

I had to look at work which I had done more than a decade ago.

I'm sure people in all industries face this problem. As you work in your chosen field, you, of necessity, develop and improve your skills. If you have any sort of early success, you must eventually face that earlier work and wince at its complete lack of elegance. You'd almost be willing to work for free, if only you could erase the evidence of your former lack of competence.

Of course, the real challenge is to recognize that the very fact that your work is still around after ten years must indicate at least some minimal value that you have created.

And that in ten years, the elegant system that you build today will appear as crude as bearskins and flint knives.

So, when was the last time you looked at work that you did ten years or more ago? How well did it hold up?

Passionate Creativity

Tonua Brown of
Frog Island Creative Services

I had the opportunity to deliver another welcome bag for the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce today. This time I got to meet with Tonua Brown of Frog Island Creative Services.

Tonua (pronounced Tonya) and her partner Paul Stacy bill themselves as the "marketing department for small businesses". Their goal is nothing less than to make the little guys look like big guys. They apparently have the skills and resources necessary to do just that. In our conversation we talked about everything from the smallest "brochure" website, to presentations for trade shows, to making corporate videos. They can do it all.

And for them, it's not only all business. The Frog Island name also has an entertainment division, Frog Island Films. Over the past few years, Tonua and Paul have worked to produce (as well as write, film, edit, direct, cast, etc) a film with the intriguing name "The Friends Guide to Beer & Sex." According to the film's site, it's currently in post-production and they are in the process of finding venues in which they can screen their epic.

In chatting with Tonua, I was immediately struck by the enthusiasm and passion she has for whatever she's doing. Her response to me just telling her about the opportunities provided by the Chamber got me excited about being a member!

If she can do that to me in our brief conversation, I can only imagine the amazing marketing solutions she has for small businesses in our area.

So, who was the last person with whom you spoke who figuratively shone with enthusiasm?

The Evolving Networker

Back some years ago, I took the Certified Networker training course. It had a lot of great ideas and systems to help make business/social networking more effective. One of the concepts it tried to drill home was that when you join a group, whether it's the local Chamber of Commerce, BNI, or the Royal Fraternity of Weasel Trainers, it takes time and effort to make that association pay off -- usually on the order of six months to two years.

Good thing I have patience.

Those who've been following my exploits for a while know that I've been participating in the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce for about a year and a half now. Today I was acting as an Ambassador (read greeter and volunteer host) at the Morning Edition networking breakfast. I'd done this many times before, but today seemed different. In the past I could act confident. I would do my best to point people in the right direction and occasionally be able to connect two people.

Today, for some reason, I was confident.

It was like every time I spoke with someone, a little voice inside my head would tell me "Introduce them to Bob", "They need to talk with Carol", or "It sounds like they would really benefit from Leadership Ann Arbor." I actually felt like I had something that I could give to my fellow attendees beyond directions to the buffet table.

Why, I might even be a Networker!

So, in what groups are you a Networker?

Accomplishing the Task

I spent a good portion of this afternoon and evening doing a conversion of a graphical treatment for the Community Housing Network project. What this means is that they are doing an overhaul of the look and feel of their site. My graphical designer drew up some beautiful pictures of what the site would look like and, after getting CHN's approval, I got busy turning those pictures into an actual website.

I've still got a few tweaks to go on the look (I'm missing some pictures of people for the front page), but I finally got things looking just about right.

This project was complicated by the fact that the CHN site uses a content management system called Drupal. Drupal is a wonderfully powerful system for controlling the content of a site and gives the site administrator a lot of options for what they would like to display. The one disadvantage is that sometimes the look and feel that it wants to generate isn't easily converted into just any graphical layout.

As with most of these things, though, as with most puzzles (which I love), it's just a matter of perseverance. If you try enough combinations of things and don't get too discouraged when you have the occasional "one step forward, two steps back" moments, you will likely accomplish your task in the end.

So, what was the last task you performed which required perseverance?