Tracking the good stuff..

Bit of a diversion from programming but worth it.

Thanks to a bizarre combination of watching a programme on Caledonian Road (N9 London) on the BBC (excellent viewings for me), Tweeting that I had lived there for a few years then Eleonora http://eleonoraschinella.wordpress.com  replying with a Tweet about a way of tracking and storing them as a story - I discovered an excellent new online tool for corralling all this fleeting internet information.


Its called Storify http://storify.com/ absolutely worth checking out! So I'm using it to pull together the threads of 'knowledge' that I pick up from various sources such as Twitter, Google reader etc. So far I have gone mad and have 4 'stories running - 2 can be found on http://storify.com/grandwizz - one is an Alan Turing tribute and the other relates to collation of Innovation ideas! The other 2 stories are in draft and are just 'knowledge' dumps - probably post them anyway this week sometime.

So the online tools are shaping up like this for me;

1. Twitter - full of junk until you can filter what you want through a trusted network then excellent access to current thinking!
2. LinkedIn - interfacing with Twitter to share knowledge and for deeper discussions - negative is its a bit glacial in response time - positive is that the feedback you get from a network is fantastic, a living encyclopaedia.
3. Github - repo for all coding - best bar none for this type of thing!
4. Blogger - this - effectively my diary.
5. Storify - repository for pulling things together and building themes.
6. My website (yes I am calling it that much to the disdain of my lads)  https://sites.google.com/site/oldbam/  for keeping track of where all this is located!

Now just need a good Fortran compiler - the one I have (must be free you see) is a bit too retro even for me;)

Social media side show or main event .....

Things are starting to ramp up regarding the use of Twitter and LinkedIn within the company. I think the trick for me will be to make sure that the content is kept appropriate and useful to the community. There are probably a thousand reasons why we shouldn't be using these media for company 'knowledge' sharing - privacy, IPR etc. In fact I think there will be some corporate guidelines issued 'advising' staff on how to 'use' this material - kind of defeats the object of it all but lets see where we get to.

One of the issues I am feeling my way around is how do I generate sharing of best practice related to software development - yes in spreadsheets too! I had a discussion only yesterday with someone who should know better on the liabilities of just bashing out 'calculations' on projects because quote "that's what we do" - "it will only take you a couple of days" - holy smoke - read earlier entries on this one!

There is going to have to be a major culture change to make sure we get on top of this. Fortunately senior management appreciate the risk - would you just go out grab a few bricks and build a bridge. You know what a bridge looks like and you can lift bricks but does that mean you are qualified to design a bridge?

The journey takes a few twists and turns....