Friday December 17, 2004

Last posting until after Christmas

You won't see any activity on this blog until after Christmas. My oldest daughter, Allison and I are off to France to visit my youngest daughter, Shannon. We will spend about half the time in Aix en Provence and the rest in Paris. Shannon has been studying in Paris this semester.

My husband is taking his girls on a road trip which includes looking at colleges. They left last night but only got a couple of miles down the road when the van broke down. They are hoping to get it repaired today. Then they can try again to leave.

I wrote a “Dear Friends and Family” Christmas letter for the first time ever this year. I mentioned my blog so some of my friends and family may be reading this. Hi everyone! I'm hoping that blogging will help me keep in touch this year

I find Bloglines really great to keep a list of blogs I read. It allows me to see when the blogs I am reading have been updated. Here is the current list of blogs I read.

And last but not least, Have a wonderful Christmas!

Wednesday December 15, 2004

Sun CAP Virtual Workshop

Tomorrow (December 16) I am doing a couple of internal conference calls to talk about our experiences using the Sun Change Acceptance methodology for JDS so far. I'm looking forward to talking about some of the lessons learned that I talked about in this blog back in October .

Since then I've added three more lessons learned to the list. They include:
Resistance is the wrong word to use. It is not so much engaging resistance as it is finding out why people believe they can't make the change.
Change is a long term process. We have only just begun.
Change acceptance work is internal Public relations in the best sense.
I might talk about these more in future blogs.

If you are a Sun employee reading this and would like to join the conference call just look at my calendar in Namefinder for the call in number.

I'm a Beta tester

I just signed up to be an internal Beta tester for Sun Java Desktop System. I expect it to be a real learning experience for me. I am relatively familiar with JDS but I haven't installed it before or ever done any Linux system administration kind of stuff. It should be fun. (2004-12-15 17:34:28.0) Permalink

Friday December 10, 2004

Blogging questions

It goes with out saying that a lot of people don't read blogs. If they do they probably read only one or two. When I email a link to a blog to friends or to my group I often get asked how I find the time to read blogs. I found a very good introduction about How to get into blogs at a blog called tecosystems. The whole idea is rather daunting to a lot of people. Even when you have figured out the basics there are still a lot of thing that are confusing. Here are some of the questions I am still noodling over.

What is Technorati? What do people use it for? I've created an acount and even have a link to it on my blog but I still haven't really figured it out. Oh and what are the little dialog baloons that I see on blogs like Tim Bray's?

Another question I have is - How do I publish blog entries from outside the Sun Network? I think I've found what I need in some of the Sun blogging documentation. I think I need to set up some blogging software that uses the blogger API, but I still need to figure out exactly how to do it.

A third question is - What is the best way is to keep track of specific blog entries that I might want to look at in the future? I'm thinking of putting links to some of them in my blog. For instance I might start a category called iWork tips and then just blog every time I find a link that is a good tip about how to do mobile work. I could do the same thing with SunRay at home comments. But there have to be other ways besides just bookmarking them all.

The last question for now is what is the best way to reply to comments? If I do it in line I'm never sure the person ever saw my reply. If I email a response everyone doesn't see it. Maybe the best thing to do is to do both. And when I comment how do I remember to go back and check for a reply? I commented on a Richard Edelman blog the other day and his reply is both in the blog and I got it in email. I wonder if that was automatic? By the way, how cool is that that I actually got an email from Richard Edelman!! (2004-12-10 17:59:45.0) Permalink Comments [5]

Wednesday December 08, 2004

Group Morale and Blogging

This is the only the second Edelman blog I've read. But again I read it and it got me thinking.... He said among other things that “Blogs are just one aspect of social networking, along with news groups and mailing lists. The biggest challenge for companies is not the technology, it is understanding the culture.” He was talking about a companies external interactions but I have been thinking about how this also applies within a company.

I bet you could draw a correlation between how many bloggers there are in an organization and the culture / morale of that organization. I am talking here about departments with in the organization. If people are talking about what they are doing and in fact are engaged enough to blog about it I think it is likely that the organization has an open culture and pretty good morale. If your department has no bloggers what does that say?

I've been thinking a lot about what happens to companies as they get bigger. When you are small it is easy to talk to anyone and ask them what is going on. Everyone can feel like they are a part of the success of the company. As you get bigger it is easy to get cut off. It isn't as easy to ask someone what is going on. Of course the beauty of the network is that you can still email someone but it gets harder when you have a hierarchy and you don't know who to ask. I never hesitate to email a question to almost anyone. An awful lot of people are intimidated about asking questions. Then htere is the fact that even if you ask you don't always get answers.If you are not careful the company becomes not a group of connected people making something happen but a bunch of individuals to whom the company is just a job.

For me blogging has really helped me get back to being connected. I've made contacts with people with whom I wouldn't have had conversations otherwise. The JDS change acceptance work has helped too. I've talked to lots of people all over Sun. There is still the challenge though of how to get a question answered. Suppose hypothetically that I want to make sure that the JDS vision we have developed as a part of our change acceleration effort is aligned with Sun's bigger vision for JDS. How do I start that conversation? Who do I talk to? For us to be highly aligned there need to be lots and lots of these kinds of conversations, lots of questions and answers, lots of blogging. (2004-12-08 17:41:26.0) Permalink

Monday December 06, 2004

Decisions

Two and a half years ago Sun was in the middle of lay offs. It was a really crumby environment to be in. Although I was pretty sure I wouldn't get laid off I wanted to be prepared in case the worst happened. Ever since I graduated from college I have never had difficulty finding a new job when I wanted one. But the more I thought about what I would do if all of a sudden I didn't have a job the more I realized that if push came to shove I wanted to do something different. And in any case I like to feel in control of my own destiny and being at the mercy of someone else as far as my job situation is concerned is something I hate.

So I decided to create some options for myself. I started taking classes at UC Santa Cruz extension to become a Personal Financial Planner. Over the past 2 years I have taken one class a semester. I just finished the last class in the certificate series.

But now I have to decide whether to take the certification exam. It seems like the natural thing to do after all the work over the last two years. But the exam is a grueling 2 day test on everything from taxes to estate planning to insurance. And there is only about a 60% pass rate. So I couldn't decide what to do. Even after passing the exam I would still need to get two years of practical experience before I could become a Certified Financial Planner (CFP).

Things are very different at Sun now than they were when I started these classes. The atmosphere is very optimistic and there is an energy that I don't remember feeling in a long time. I really like my job and I have no desire to quit and become a financial planner.

To make a long story short I decided to finish what I started and take the exam. I am planning to take it in March. But what that means is that I have to do a lot of studying between now and then. (2004-12-06 18:18:20.0) Permalink

Thursday December 02, 2004

Updates - JDS - Christmas

My fingers have been flying all week replying to comments on the JDS Preview Feedback alias. As I said Tuesday we got a lot of feedback based on an all Sun email that Jonathan sent out.

I also mentioned that we were planning to make JDS Preview the default desktop next week. I've got an update on that too. We decided to postpone the change to late January. We want to spend a little more time studying the bandwidth implications of Gnome and the tools on the JDS Preview desktop. Sun's quarter end quiet period is coming up and it just makes sense to wait until after the quiet period to make the change.

And of course I'm getting ready for Christmas. I mentioned a few weeks ago that my youngest daughter is studying in Paris right now. My other daughter and I are going to spend Christmas with her in France. We are going to spend 4 days in Aix en Provence and 4 days in Paris. My older daughter studied in Aix 3 years ago so we are looking forward to meeting the family that she stayed with. It is all VERY exciting but I have a lot to do between now and then :-) (2004-12-02 17:59:57.0) Permalink