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Things I’ve learnt being an IT Services Contractor

December 7, 2011 By Chris Mundy Leave a Comment

Image of a body boarder in the waves

Courtesy freesurfpx.com

I’ve been providing Professional IT Services for some time and I’ve listed some observations about contracting.

Here are several things I’ve discovered over the last 22 years in working in IT industry.

  1.  You get unique opportunities presented to you that have to be solved
  2.  You get to reorganise Chaos
  3. Where there is chaos there is money to be made
  4. People call you because you are considered the expert
  5. You get to surf the waves of change and navigate a way through to the next wave
  6. You can rise above the politics to see the bigger and better picture
  7. You offer services that others can’t offer
  8. You get to take greater risks for greater gains
  9. You rise above the uncertainty of others to give stability
  10. When your contract finishes you get to an opportunity to be either re-instated, re-deployed, or find another opportunity

Each time a job has come to end I’ve pulled out this list and reminded myself of these 10 points. It makes it better when moving on.

What are your take aways from your job or role? I’d love to hear your comments.

 

Chris

Wordcamp Goldcoast 2011 – Chris’ Takeways

November 7, 2011 By Chris Mundy 2 Comments

WordCamp Gold Coast 2011(#wcgold) was a blast. I’ve listed my takeaways below on this page. After dropping off Phil Hall from halfofmylife.com, I managed to enjoy a meal at my aunt and uncle’s place at Tweed Heads. A quick hi and bye then off to the airport.

Image of the WordCamp Gold Coast 2011I arrived at the airport to what seems, the scene of the Australian Federal Police dealing with a guy who had one to many drinks. Obviously he didn’t get the memo,drinking before a flight will get you another nights accommodation you didn’t want! The Feds were really great, the guy seemed to take it pretty well.

The flight was packed, the plane arrived 20 minutes early in Canberra.  When I went to pick up the car at Airport car park, I had fight with the parking meter, $58 for a couple of days, looks good, then it wouldn’t accept my Debit Card, bummer. Across to the next machine, put the parking voucher in, cha-ching $69 dollars; that really sucks, no one to argue with at 11.50pm about the upsizing of $11 in 10 seconds. It accepted my payment, not happy.

Home in time to watch Casey Stoner win the Valencia Grand Prix, a good night’s sleep and the opportunity to think about the weekend.

Chris’ takeaways from WordCamp Gold Coast 2011:

  • Evernoteis a fantastic tool for documenting conferences
  • Kate Swaffer, dementia sufferer set the scene for conference with commitment to blogging using WordPress
  • Kate’s motto’s, “live with urgency before the emergency”, use your blog to share your life experience, use social to share.
  • Meeting Des Walsh (@deswalsh) and learning a few tips using Twitter, thanks Des, the world needs more young blokes like you.
  • Alan Harris from Network Dynamics’ and his insight into hosting WordPress in Australia with wphosting.com.au
  • John Ford’s talk about Automattic, the supporters of WordPress and working for such a great company
  • Learning the correct way to spell WordPress (with a capital “P”) thanks John Ford
  • Learning from Dan Milward, the term “Social Apponomics” and Googling it as suggested.
  • Stew Heckenbergs‘ quote on freelancing, “My timetable controls my work, my work doesn’t control my timetable”
  • Affirming my use of StudioPress Themes for WordPress design by Dee Teal
  • “If your users don’t feel ANYTHING, They wont even remember you.” Be exceptional or bad! John O’Nolan’s talk.
  • “Qualifying potential clients”, Troy Dean’s talk on running a small web development business. Thanks Troy, the talk affirmed a lot of what we’re doing.  Check out  Video User Manuals plugin here!
  • Running an on-line book club, good stuff and great work  – Timothy Ferguson
  • WordPress and Government – Stephen Cronin’s talk; mate, right on the money, I know the space too well
  • BuddyPress – Bronson Quick;  another great talk, I’ve done one site and it was valuable seeing all the new stuff
  • All the other fantastic people I met there, thanks for the opportunity of meeting.
Thanks to organisers,
 @LachlanJ, @bronsonquick, @thenbrent, and @dd32
Now, when’s the next WordCamp?

 

 

 

 

WordCamp Goldcoast 2011 – Mixing with the greats

November 5, 2011 By Chris Mundy Leave a Comment

Image of the WordPress Logo

I’m at WordCamp Goldcoast 2011. WordCamp is where people interested in WordPress get together for a couple of days, listen to top speakers, learn a thing or two and meet a bunch of new people. So you ask, what’s WordPress? It’s the platform for building great websites.

Our introduction to WordPress was in 2006 and from there it’s been the tool of choice for developing websites, here’s a few reasons:

  • Easy to use
  • Well designed
  • You get a result quickly
  • It’s free
  • It has a great community supporting it.
Check out some of the sites we’ve developed over on our portfolio page

The last point is most probably one of the most outstanding things about WordPress, the great community!

Today’s first talk was from Kate Swaffer, well-educated, a loving woman sharing her experience as a Dementia sufferer . WordPress is vital as a tool to help her stay connected with life, family and friends. She can reflect every couple days on what she did and it allows “her to retrace her steps.”

She sums up life based on this quote . ‘live with urgency, before the emergency’ (Robyn Moore, 2011)

Throughout the day, there have been lots of great talks and information to help in using WordPress.

The last guy was John O’Nolan an Interactive designer  John can be found here at his site.

John talked about the  impact of emotions in design.

A couple of key thoughts from John were….

  • “Design = The soil we are growing things on”
  • “Everything is an experience”
  • “Take Care of People”
  • “There is only one boss. The customer!”
That’s day one.
Chris

 

Online Surveys and Competitions – Four things to check before you sign-up

January 3, 2011 By Chris Mundy Leave a Comment

Online Surveys and Competitions – are they protecting your information?

My Motorcycle Insurance Company does business online only. Fantastic, I think its great. To maximise their readership and keep their current readers engaged, they have regular competitions/surveys, eg. Win a helmet, win a gift voucher, etc.

Recently, there was a competition I was about to enter and I did my customary check and noticed that they wanted all my personal data; Date of Birth, Phone Number, Mobile Number, etc. I asked the question, why do they need it, and thought they may be updating their customer relationship management system, mentally I was happy with that.

However what really alarmed me when I looked at the  address (URL) and it said, http://fredsmotorcycleinsurance.com/competition.

Immediately the red lights came on. It should have said,

https://fredsmotorcycleinsurance.com/competition

and if you didn’t notice it

httpS://fredsmotorcycleinsurance.com/competition

What this means was my information was about to be sent over the internet, “in the clear”, a term meaning anybody who had the tools, could capture and read my personal information.

Funnily enough, some people are happy with sending their information in the clear, then there are other people who wouldn’t be aware what’s happening. So I thought I would bring it to the attention of any readers.

If you want to make sure that your information sent across the internet securely, then there are some easy ways to check that you have a secure connection between your computer web browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera) and the website.

Image of a Secure ConnectionMake sure there is a “S”in https?

The S indicates that the connection between your computer and the website is secure. That means that any information passed between your computer and website is secured, what they do is scramble the information being passed across the Internet so people can’t understand it.

How much is it scrambled? Usually they scramble it so much you need a super computer with a couple of years to de-encrypt the password.

Okay, how do they make the secure encryption between your computer and the website?

Basically, what the secure site does is ask you to accept  a security certificate on your computer. The first time you visit the website, it presents you with their security certificate, you have to accept the certificate. By accepting the certificate, it then enables you to connect securely each time with that site.

Image of a security certificateThe sign that this has been successful is that it will give you a httpS and show a padlock somewhere on the screen stating that the connection is secure.

Without the “s” it indicates that they are going to send your information in the clear, unencrypted across the internet.

So, next time you enter that online competition or survey, do these four checks:

The Four things to check before you sign-up

1. See that the URL has security by it having https://your_competition.com by having the “s” after the http://

2. See there is a padlock image in the security area for the browser. This is in different places on each browser, sometimes in the lower right hand corner of the screen, sometimes in the address bar (URL).

Image of a Privacy Policy3. See they issue a statement on how they manage your privacy. If they do then it’s something you can possibly hang your hat on if there is information leakage.

4. See where your information will be used, who will use and who will it be passed on to and when will they be destroying it.

I have a personal policy of not undertaking any online surveys or competition unless it meets this criteria, before you enter a competition, make sure you check if it is a secure connection.

Other places on the internet where you need to check that you have secure connection

  • Banking, Credit Card and Payment Sites
  • Accommodation booking sites
  • Membership sites
  • Insurance Sits
  • Airline Sites

Paypal, probably the biggest payment online payment system has a way that you can only connect to them using secure connection, wouldn’t it be great if every business did this kind of thing!

Chris

Hey Aussie, can you read, do you know what you are signing up to?

December 31, 2010 By Chris Mundy Leave a Comment

Image of Computer Users

"Darling, do you know what you're signing us up to?"

Almost half Australians can’t read. This was the title of an article written by ABC news in 2008 on the status of Australians and their ability to read well.

One of the things about this article, regardless of past and current governments, education policies and programs, the fundamentals of teaching english and reading, is that many Australians still can’t read.

So if people have difficulties reading a street sign, a billboard, a flyer, or a newspaper, how do we expect people to read an online web page in a browser?

What about those little buttons called “Privacy Policy” that open up to a full 5 page spread of what they do with your privacy, does the user really understand it or will they even read it?

What about the button that says “accept” the terms and conditions.

As governments and business move to provide services on-line, there is a question that needs to be asked, “Will the users understand what they are being asked to do on-line”?

In 2006 I attended a presentation by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), Web Accessibility and Writing for the Web: Overview for Government. One of the guest speakers at the presentation was Dee Alexander, who at the time was a researcher and lecturer from Monash University on User Centred Design and Usability on Web.

Dee’s topic was titled, “Creating Quality Content: A goal-driven approach for the Web.” The talk focused on the importance of Web Content, and how writing for the Web is different from print media, how people interact with content online and how to write content that communicates clearly, is useful, usable and accessible.

Three points stuck out that raise concerns and potential challenges down the track for any online services being provided by organisations.

1. The Literacy Level of Users (How well can someone read)

The statement was made by Dee that 46% of Australians are below the line for literacy to cope with on-line content.

The ABS has a paper released in 1997 4228/0 Aspects of Literacy: Assessed Literacy Skills  that supports this comment, more so into General Literacy levels.http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4228.0Main+Features11996?OpenDocument

How many online users fit into this group?

2. Lower Literacy Users exhibit very different reading behaviours than Higher-Literacy Users

“Lower Literacy users plough the text rather than scan it, and they miss page elements due to a narrower field of view.”

This research comes from Jakob Nielson the leading authority in Usability Design. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050314.html

Nielson states in the same article…

  • Higher-literacy users scan text, lower literacy users don’t scan text
  • Lower-literacy users cant glance at lists they have to read each word carefully
  • This means that they skip over large amounts of information, obviously it becomes all too complicated for the lower-literacy users.
  • This means their visual concentration is lower

3. Scrolling can Cause Accessibility Problems

Jakob Nielson also stated in his Alertbox, March 14 2005 on Scrolling and Scrollbars:

  • People with Motor skill impairments find scrolling difficult
  • Low-literacy users can’t easily reacquire their position in the text after it moves.
  • Elderly people have trouble getting to the right spot in scrolling menus and other small scrollable items.

So what’s the big problem?

Here are the three issues:

  1. The Literacy Level of Users,
  2. Lower Literacy Users exhibit very different reading behaviours than Higher-Literacy Users,
  3. Scrolling can cause accessibility problems,

Well, if people have problems reading, then they will have difficulties using and reading online content on web sites. Putting these three items together, becomes a recipe for disaster.

Picture a possible scenarios that could occur;

  • A customer goes on-line to either join-up or change some details related to an online service
  • On the web page, it is expected that the Customer reviews the legalities if they do not comply with this point, if they do not comply it states a penalty will be imposed for their non-compliance.
  • The customer agrees by selecting the “I Accept” button, however due to the three points above does, the customer really doesn’t understand what they are accepting.
  • Later on, the customer does not comply with points stated on Web page and comes in breach of the on-line agreement.
  • After several letters of correspondence, several phone calls, a visit to the organisation, the customer attempts to clear up the matter. The Customer services officer explains why they were in breach of the agreement.
  • The customer states, “I didn’t understand what was written on the Web page, it was too hard and long for me to understand, so I just clicked the ”I Accept” Button.

Image of the Legal StuffThe question is, if they were a low-literacy user, did the customer really know what their obligations were when they signed up?

If the customer had submitted the form at a shopfront or a service centre environment, in most cases the Customer Services Officer would have spelt out clearly to the customer their obligations.

I’m not a legal person, however I wonder how the courts would respond to this situation?

I would suggest that this type of scenario be run across the legal team for advice, e.g., where does Organisation x stand if this type situation were to occur and it came to a legal challenge, and the customer didn’t know what they were signing up to?

No doubt the case can be made that the same thing could occur in a non-on-line environment with a person reading a form and filling it in at home and sending it through the mail.

Conclusion

I support organisational initiatives that provides customers with an environment to access services on-line, however they need to be sure that they get it right. How do they manage low-literacy users, are they considered when the screens are put together.

Usability is vital in the design and User Testing is vitally important for all on-line activities.

However the questions remains, do customers really understand all the on-line content they are reading and signing up to?

Chris

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