TomDoepker.com

Dublin Core Metadata File

Tom — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:00:27 +0000

What is it?

The “Dublin.rdf” file gives you an opportunity to define your site’s metadata using prescribed specifications managed by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. (http://dublincore.org/)

Why is it useful?

Search engine optimization (SEO) and clean, well-defined mark up have long been important and will continue to be so. This file is an easy addition to your site that provides the great benefit of allowing you to help shape how the search engines define the content.

How to create one

The W3 School specifications are here.

Example

Six Revisions has the example (and a great write up) that I refer to:

Your Name
2008-07-26
This is my website.
EN
Company
http://www.yoursite.com/

Project Management, Sand Piles and Space Shuttles

Tom — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:00:06 +0000

I am about a third of the way through a fascinating book called The Age of the Unthinkable, by Joshua Cooper Ramo. The thesis of the book is that people looking for straightforward, linear ways to define and solve problems are not going to find them in an increasingly complex world.

While an A + B = C approach may have worked in the past, it is no longer effective. Things have become an order of magnitude more complicated in recent years and we need a new, creative mind-set to adapt and survive. This mindset must be radical, revolutionary and ready to toss out any assumptions.

This mindset is also ideally suited to manage large scale web projects, or any other type for that matter.

To illustrate his point, Ramo brings up the sand pile experiment of Danish biologist and physicist Per Bak.

“The problem that fascinated Bak also appeared, on the surface, simple enough: if you piled sand, grain by grain, until it made a cone about the size of your fist, how would you know when that tiny pyramid would have a little avalanche? After all, as the pile got taller, and the sides became steeper, it was inevitable that some sand would slide off. Could you predict when? Could you predict how much? Simple question, terribly hard to answer.”

Each grain of sand of connected to every other grain of sand in some way. Dozens of them could slide into an avalanche without affecting the majority, or one grain could affect them all.

I also happen to be reading Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw and he weighs in on this idea as well. (Not the first time on this site Mr. Gladwell’s ideas have overlapped for me.) Gladwell suggests that large events – good or bad – are not usually caused by one action, but a series of actions.

What the Dog Saw is a collection of Gladwell’s writing for the New Yorker. One piece, Blow Up talks about the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster. Essentially, a faulty seal leaked flames which ignited fuel. What he goes on to contend is that the disaster was the culmination of a series of oversights, poor information and missed opportunities. There was no one simple answer, but instead a lot of little things that culminated in disaster.

At least initially, this seems to be what happened with the current oil spill in the Gulf.

In other words, Bak’s sand pile experiment. Countless moving parts that all have some effect on each other.

What both authors work to point out is that large problems do not have simple answers and that they will never really be solved. Not in a neat and tidy sense, anyway. Professionally, I can easily liken this to a web project because they never really seem to be done. Instead, successful sites are really more a “completed phase” than a “final product”.

What they suggest is that we come to terms with the possibility of failure and we focus our efforts on instead is risk management. From Gladwell:

“At some point in the future-for the most mundane of reasons, and with the very best of intentions-a NASA spacecraft will again go down in flames. We should at least admit this to ourselves now.”

Any project has a collection of variables and there is always a chance that the project will fail. Admitting the possibility of failure is liberating though since it often makes the job look less imposing. It is also a necessary exercise because it can help us to identify pitfalls. It can be done, as Ramo points out:

“Complex systems are not incomprehensible. If complexity were unmanageable and simply reduced to chaos in the end, we would have no Internet, no organized healthy ecosystems, no functioning immune systems or financial markets.”

Managing a project is managing a collection of ever-shifting risks and demands. The final product is often different than what was initially envisioned. But isn’t that just because something changed along the way? Something we never anticipated? Whether we discover a better method of solving the problem, have to stop “perfecting” one piece because we are simply out of time or funding or any other number of reasons, things change. Without becoming lazy in monitoring the mundane aspects of a project, we must continue to reassess priorities during the course of a project and remain flexible enough to adapt to new realities.

Three Lessons from Theodore Rex, by Edmund Morris

Tom — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 12:00:42 +0000

Theodore Roosevelt (right) with legendary law man Seth Bullock

Don’t ask for permission, do what is right.

A coal miner strike during his first fall season in office threatened the nation:

“Northeastern hospitals, alarmed by a rise in the pneumonia rate, competed for reserve anthracite at three or four times last winter’s cost. Poor families burned coconut shells, available at fifteen cents a sack from candy companies, to keep warm.”

Initially, Roosevelt was stymied. The consensus was that it was a state problem, not a federal one. His advisors and the coal interests repeatedly reminded him that he had no legal grounds to intervene. However, he knew no one else was going to fix it and that he could. He had the power and influence to fix the problem, so he did it.

He gathered the warring parties in a carefully arranged meeting. He sat comfortably in the shadows between two large windows while they surrounded him in a semi-circle bathed in light as he led a discussion that took them to the root of their dispute, a combination of money and ego. With the problem defined, Roosevelt attacked it.

He got them to agree to form a non-partisan commission which was able to quell violent miner uprisings and deliver the much-needed heating coal before the winter.

Don’t just sit there, do something.

It was a warm summer day and Roosevelt sat in the Oval Office working with the windows open. His son Kermit was outside playing war with some of the other officials’ children. When William Howard Taft’s son attacked his team with a water hose, Kermit quickly grabbed an axe and chopped the hose.

Furious, Roosevelt bounded out of the White House and confronted the children, asking them why they had done it. When Kermit explained, Roosevelt’s mood changed entirely.

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” He told the children, before walking back inside.

Keep learning, keep growing.

Midway through his first term, a reporter sent a request asking what the he had been reading during his Presidency. He sent back a list of over 170 books, which he noted were all he could remember off the top of his head. Of course, there were also daily newspapers and the massive amounts of reports a President receives…

As a surprise, his wife Edith had a tennis court installed for him before they moved in to the White House and tennis lessons were suddenly in great demand in the Washington area. Roosevelt could easily be found out on the court wearing out opponents rain or shine. While he wasn’t the greatest player, few could keep up with him in terms of energy.

One ambassador complained to him that working with him was ruining his wardrobe. If the mood struck him, Roosevelt would abruptly change the venue of a meeting to a hike along the muddy banks of the Potomac which was invariably followed by some skinny dipping to cool off.

Conclusion

This series of books are definitely favorites of mine. Theodore Rex (covering his presidency) – like its predecessor The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (his formative years) – is an incredibly well-written inspirational story of a man who greatly expanded the notion of being a president. As he said, “Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.”

New Marketing, New Look

Tom — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:00:15 +0000

In conjunction with an upcoming marketing campaign, we have redesigned ClermontForKids.org. I worked with the team to design a look that worked within the new brand image.

In the News

Tom — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:00:54 +0000

Social media is a lot of fun because it’s so new and no one seems to have a real process worked out for it just yet. The focus I am pushing with our Facebook page is interaction with the public, instead of the simple pushing out of news we have been doing with our websites.

Of course, we’ll need a user base to interact with so we’re working on getting the word out about the page and have targeted local media, as our main target audience is the county population. The Cincinnati Enquirer gave us a very helpful write up:

Clermont County government is now reaching out to citizens by utilizing Facebook, a social networking Web site that has over 350 million active users worldwide. Citizens can go to the Web site www.facebook.com/ClermontCounty for current information on a variety of events and issues that impact those living and working in the county and the region. “Visitors to the Facebook site can check out the latest local news releases, event calendars, videos, and pictures,” said Clermont County Communications Director Kathy Lehr, who updates the site, along with Clermont Web Master Tom Doepker. “We encourage the community to become fans of the site to keep posted on all the exciting things going on locally,” she said. “Social media is another great way to communicate with the citizens of Clermont County,” added Doepker.

Read the full article here and – more importantly – become our fan on Facebook!