Webslinger: Glen Farrelly

Showing posts with label Glen Farrelly. Show all posts

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Friday, December 30, 2011

My Favourite Webslinger Posts of 2011

As the old year is almost over, I have a tradition of recalling my favourite blog posts from the preceding year.

Here are my favourite posts from the past year. The provide a snapshot of my evolving interests in online topics and my personal past-times.

January
Chicago Is My Kind of Town
To celebrate a milestone birthday of mine, my wife took me on a trip to Chicago. I was greatly impressed by the city's cool use of digital media.

February
Pondering Effects of Foursquare
After eagerly adopting (and blogging about) the geosocial location-based mobile service, Foursquare I cooled off to its use. I've resumed using it in late 2011 as it is has become the prime LBS and perhaps only one to hit critical mass. This post recounts how I uses it and my hopes for it to offer richer experiences.

March
IPTV - TV over the Internet with Bell Fibe
After years of using rabbit ears, I got my family cable TV for Christmas last year. I got Bell's new Fibe service, which is delivered over the Internet. The blog post details some of its pros and cons. But recently Bell Fibe launched some great new apps, including Facebook and Twitter - so I'm liking it even more now.

April
Types of Geotargetted Information
My doctoral research this year has been laying down ground work on on central concepts for location-based services. This posts looks into the nature of various forms of geotargetted information.

May
Elegy for Yahoo
When I first started using the Internet - first email, calendars and web searching, then photo sharing, blogging, and folksonomies it was all via Yahoo. But when Yahoo "updated" their services and didn't support syncing with my BlackBerry I sadly had to quit using them. I believe my experience is indicative of Yahoo's overall fate.

June
TEDx LibrariansTO - An Idea Worth Spreading
I'm not a fan of the elitism of TED conferences, but I think their format for presentations is highly effective. This posts recaps what I found particularly effective about the TED format, as I experienced at a TEDx event.

July
A good month so I have two favourites:

McLuhan Centenary
2011 was the hundredth anniversary of Toronto's media visionary Marshall McLuhan. His program is now housed at the Faculty of Information (iSchool) at the University of Toronto (where I'm studying). There were lots of events to mark his centennary and this posts highlights some of McLuhan's bon mots on media.

Good Things Grow in Ontario
Foodland Ontario ran one of the most fun and effective social media campaigns that I've heard of (and I don't just say that as my kid entered).

August and September
- No posts; on vacation to Alaska and Whistler and then back to iSchool.

October
Locative Media Innovation Day
Location based services and locative media are the subject of my doctoral research, so I was really excited to attend a local conference on the subject on Toronto's new premier conference venue, TIFF.

November
Blogging is History
iSchool often has great speakers. This blog post captured a public lecture on archiving considerations for bloggers. I was surprised by how many important considerations I - and I'm sure many other bloggers - was missing.

December
The Top 15 Canadians in Digital Media
I particularly like this post on an article I wrote for Backbone Magazine for a few reasons. For one, I I think it is important to honour Canadians making significant contributions to the digital media sphere, and I think this article highlights 15 incredible Canadians. But also, this article began as a blog post I wrote for Canada Day in 2008. It's great to see something that started here evolve into something more prominent.

2011 also saw the loss of my mentor and digital pioneer, Liz Metcalfe. Canada's online scene is not the same without her and we greatly miss her.

I blogged more in 2011 than I have in years. But I missed a post for September 29th of 2011 which was the five year anniversary of Webslinger. What began as an experiment in blogging - and despite occasional neglect and even considerations of abandonment - has become a vital part of my academic and personal life.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Update on My Research Plans

Yesterday, I presented for my faculty an update on my research status. It includes my intended research topic and plans.

I got some great feedback and even more things to read and even more angles to consider. I was originally very keen to examine how a given mobile application/site's interface and interactions affects usage and could possibly be improved. I've been encouraged to focus on advancing theory more so than any possible applied findings. But two of my panelists, both professors at iSchool encouraged me to continue with an applied focus too.

The presentation here as a stronger focus on the background theory and possible contributions therein.

To see the speaker notes, click through to the actual full presentation on Google and click to open the speaker notes pop-up.

Any suggestions thoughts would be great.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Thinking of Studying Mobile Social Media for Libraries

Okay, I'm in my second year of PhD studies and I still haven't settled on my exact research area let alone the research question.

So I need your - anybody's really - help in finding a good research area. So I'm wondering if anyone can provide me an example of mobile social media apps/sites. I'll get into the specifics...

Part of my problem is I have a lot of research interests, many of which fit well within the auspices of an Information program. The overall themes of my interests are user experience (including usability and accessibility), user participation (i.e. social media), and mobile media (specifically either a mobile website or mobile app.).

Within these areas I'm starting to look for a research problem. One domain that I think needs research is the user experience of mobile social media for libraries.

At this point, I'm defining my terms fairly broadly.

Mobile - I'm using it to indicate a device with Internet connection and input functionality. This includes smartphones (BlackBerry, iPhones, Androids, Nokia, etc.) and tablets (iPad, Blackberry's tablet.) I do not include e-Readers (eg.Kindle) as they have limited input functionality. I am not planning to include netbooks or laptops as although they can be quite small and portable they do not yet have the easy and quick access that mobile devices allow.

Social media - I'm defining this problem as any online content that allows users to add, edit, or share collectively. I'm not including tools that allow for individual customization.

Library - due to the newness of this area, I'm opening up my initial exploration from the now-common digital library to any bounded body of information on resources. Resources can be books, movies, journals, magazines, tv shows, bookmarks, etc.

So I would love to hear of any examples - and your opinions and experiences - with any mobile social media apps/sites for "libraries". (BTW, I'm not looking for libraries that have mobile apps/sites unless they have a social media component.)

I'm aware of (and love) some web library examples - such as LibraryThing, Zotero, Delicious, IMDB, Google Books, etc. But haven't encountered great examples in the mobile space. Any help in hastening my PhD studies would be greatly appreciated!

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Another Thing to Blog Home About

On the day of the fourth anniversary of this blog, I was consulting with some continuing education providers and determined that a blog was an excellent way to share information and interaction. We decided to start a new (private) blog. So on the anniversary the beginning of my blogging, the usefulness of this medium and its central role in my life was reaffirmed.

I began my blog worrying that I'd have nothing to blog home about. At that time, I was in a dead-end but lucrative website management job. The job provided security but sapped my passion for the Internet. Blogging proved to be a vital outlet and motivator for me to make profound changes in my life and to reaffirm my love of the Internet. The blog encouraged me to seek out news and developments on and about the Web that I could add my thoughts and experiences to.

These changes are reflected in my first anniversary post where I discovered I did have something to blog home about. Finding this outlet and passion, it helped convince me to leave my job and get a master's and doctorate degree where I could study the Internet.

My blog was also picked up by Backbone Magazine, giving me additional reach. The blog also helped with my admission to both my graduate programs and has helped me cover several tech conferences.

All these changes had started to bear fruition and by my second anniversary I declared that I had no time to blog home. I haven't gained any extra time since then, in fact it's probably worse.

I am studying online topics (moving more to the mobile Web and networked mobile apps) at PhD program at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information. I have completed my coursework and now have to get ready for the various steps of actual dissertation work. The life of an academic does offer lots of opportunities to attend and discuss interesting (Internet and mobile) seminars, lectures, and conferences. I've also started work as a teaching assistant for a research methods class. In addition, I recently started a couple consulting jobs helping organizations with e-Learning and with mobile apps. I also manage to spend a lot of time with my family. We enjoy the cultural and recreational life of Toronto, as well as the value of a board game, DVD, or old-fashioned pretending.

I have to admit that the busyness of my current life has encouraged me to neglect this blog, such that for my last blog anniversary I didn't really feel it was important to acknowledge the milestone. I still loved my blog as it really had opened a lot of doors and helped change my life for the better. I just felt it wasn't as central in my life.

But when I was at the meeting last week and I started talking about the various topics I could share with the group via a blog and how it enabled group participation and communication, I got really excited again. Earlier today, I just finished setting up my second ever blog. Finding out that blogging was still relevant, timely, and pivotal in my life was a reaffirming for me of the medium's power.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Delicious Numbers

I'm working on a mini-paper that examines my usage of the social bookmarking tool, Delicious. I've blogged before (Quality Ingredients Make Bookmarks Delicious) on my great love and admiration for Delicious. Beyond that, I haven't really put the microscope - or calculator - to my usage.

I assembled a few of my usage stats which I think reveals patterns to my behaviour. They may be of interest only to me, but I do think they qualify me as a power user.

My Delicious Stats:

Months of membership: 47
Bookmarks: 3475
Average bookmarks per month: 74
Tags: 698
Tags used only once: 95 (I like highly-specific tags, but clearly I need to prune)
Untagged bookmarks: 14 (some how I missed these as I always try to find some tag)
Tag Bundles: 16
Unbundled tags: 20 (haven't rounded up the scragglers for awhile)
Average number of tags in a bundle: 59 (range is from 7 to 281)
Users in my network: 20 (I don't network very much)
My fans: 8 (no one appreciates my genius)
#1 tag: "net news" with 637 bookmarks (I use it for my news feed here on the right)
#2 tag: "web accessibility", 208 (a research interest and subject of my MA thesis)
#3 tag: "Toronto", 204 (I love my city)
#4 tag: "web 2.0", 177 (even I'm sick of this term)
#5 tag: "Internet" 140

In the past six months:

Bookmarks: 421
Average bookmarks per month: 70
Range: 43 (February) to 121 (June - all the Foursquare research)
Average number of days I bookmarked per month: 13
Average number of bookmarks per month based on days I bookmarked: 5.2
Average number of bookmarks per month overall: 2.3

I did a historical cross-section of the past four Mays (no special reason for selecting May) that I've been a member:

Bookmarks for Mays: 219
Average bookmarks per May: 55
Range: 4 (2007) to 126 (2008)
Average number of days I bookmarked per May: 10
Average number of bookmarks per month based on days I bookmarked: 4.3
Average number of bookmarks per May day overall: 1.8

I wanted to figure out my use of tags per bookmark and how many other people were bookmarking resources I bookmarked. This was time-consuming to determine, so I selected one month, April 2010, that seemed to be average in that I had no special activities or projects that month:

Average number of tags used per resource: 2.09
Range of number of tags used: 1 to 5
Average number of people that bookmarked a resource I did: 83
Range of number of people bookmarking: 0 to 1990 (the latter for Shape Collage)
Number of times I was the only person ever to bookmark a resource: 26 (out of 70 for the month)

I also tried to examine my bookmarking for personal versus professional usage but it was too difficult to neatly classify many of them.

It appears that my usage really fluctuates depending on current projects I have or events. It does appear that I bookmark approximately once every three days and that when I do I tend to bookmark 5 items using 2 tags each. Apparently, I also bookmark a fair number of resources that no one else has found (or cares about).

And finally...

My bookmarks using "Delicious": 24
My bookmarks using "glenfarrelly": 68

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Need Help Coming up with a Suitable Research Area

Just two weeks into my PhD studies and already I will soon have to submit a research proposal. It's a class requirements to help us submit for grants, so we're not tied to it.

Still, I've been frantically trying to narrow down my areas of research interest to prepare for my grant submissions. Although a useful process, it comes ages before I planned. I had hoped taking classes and pursuing an independent study plan would lead to suitable research questions.

The overall area I wanted to focus on was online participatory democracy and civic engagement. All research I have found on this has been rather nihilistic - almost convincing me that it is the wrong track.

So I need your help to devise a feasible, interesting, and original (multiyear) study.

Here are my top ideas so far (in order of my greatest interest in first):
1) Will introducing new mechanisms to filter noise in a political website increase users' [both citizens and civic leaders] sense of engagement (or satisfaction)?
2) How can noise filtration and serendipity (to avoid "inbreeding homophily") co-exist in an online interface in a manner users find useful?
3) How to overcome usability limitations of the use of QR codes and the mobile web?
4) Are genre specific usability guidelines more useful to web practitioners than generic ones?
5) Will Google's Rich Snippets provide the impetus for the use of microformats to hit critical mass?

Two topics I've discounted already are:
a) Can features be added to Facebook to resegment and recontextualize our domestic, work, and familial identies?
b) How can web accessibility support be more transparent in authoring tools, particularly Dreamweaver?

Any help in any regard is greatly appreciated!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

10 Years Working in the e-Biz

In honour of this month marking my tenth anniversary of my Internet career, I’m blogging about my experience working in the Internet in Canada for the past ten years. The preceding blog post covered my Internet-related education, which began my Internet career ten years ago when I began the Internet Management at Humber College.

Technically, my Internet career began the preceding December as I was hired by a temp agency for a week to help Macromedia with their Dreamweaver 2 Toronto launch. Back then the name Dream Weaver only conjured up a scene from "Wayne’s World" – now I can't imagine life without it.

While most of the Internet education programs I took have completely ceased to exist, about half of the companies I worked still exist. One company promised me “deferred pay” and years later I still haven’t got it. But considering the ups and downs of the industry, I’m not holding a grudge.

The first company I worked for is still doing well. In March 1999,I started writing online travelogues on Ontario for Bootsnall.com. It was my first attempt at regular web writing. The Internet has opened up possibilities for writing to move beyond stifling rules or stuffy conventions of old media. With a clean slate, I was able to have a lot of fun and find an effective web style. The website has grown to be a main destination for off-the-beaten path and independent travelers.

I also wrote travelogues for Canadian Geographic Online. I started with Canadian Geographic for my internship at the end of 1999 to maintain and write for their site. The site hasn’t grown much since I worked there, which is a shame as there is so much potential. Canada is such a small market that I guess it's not viable to expand online properties like they do in the U.S. (e.g National Geographic is an amazing website with a wealth of information).

Internet years are like dog years, so I feel like an old-timer when I recall the good ol’ days of the dot.com boom. My first full-time Internet job was as a website developer with a dot.com start-up, Infopreneur. All the stereotypes were true – obligatory fussball table, staff meetings at Playdium, free food, parties, very casual hours and dress. This is where I began my habit at starting my day at 11am – a habit that I was only ever able to reduce to 10-10:30am). My supervisor was a wiz kid programmer who dropped out of highschool. I am proud of my work with BonnieStern.com, one of Canada’s first cooking websites. I introduced a classification and retrieval method for a recipe database that at the time was very innovative. It was through this project that I learned that enabling users to find information was as important as the information itself. This realization has resulted in my continued interest in the field of usability. Infopreneur did not survive but the animated web series they produced became as a successful enterprise; the show, Chilly Beach even made the move from web to TV as it is on CBC.

I spent the remainder of the dot comb irrational exuberance period and the resulting dot bomb crash at Rogers. I was only there two years but the names changes of the division (New Media, iMedia, Media) and website (Quicken.ca, MoneySense.ca) are indicative of the turbulence of this period. I was in charge of developing the personal finance channels and particularly enjoyed taking stuffy content and making it interactive (think I managed with my tools RRIF vs. Annuity, University Costs Planner, etc.). After my departure from Rogers, MoneySense.ca was folded into Canadian Business’ website – and essentially all vestiges were pretty much completely eradicated. It's sad to see that all the cost and effort to develop a lot of good evergreen tools and content was abandoned. But the most lasting memory of working there was the weekly occasions to celebrate, at one of the downstairs bars naturally.

When the regular layoffs at Rogers were too much, I moved to the security of the pension world to manage a website. This was the first job where I was acted pretty much solo in running a website. I’ve blogged about the pros and cons of running a website for small companies. It's great to be the master of a site's fate, but I missed the camaraderie of the incredible team I worked with at Rogers. The website launched some cool stuff while I was there, including being one of the first (if not the first) company to publish its annual report online only. I also managed to oversee a relaunch that completely changed almost everything (design, code, content, architecture) about the website to make it as user-centered and accessible as possible. I left the week we delivered a fully-transactional website for clients – the last great applicable online offering for the company.

Other Internet jobs include volunteer work for maintaining Heritage Toronto’s website, blogging for Backbone and my current project of trying to start an Ontario chapter of the Internet Society.

I really enjoyed being a part of the Web in its rather early days. It’s cool to actually have had a tiny role in helping create the conventions and properties of the medium – these opportunities so rarely happen (I think the only recent comparisons would be the birth of film and tv). One of the reasons why I decided to pursue grad studies was so that I could move away from doing the grunt work of developing and maintaining a website, email newsletters, etc. But while it’s rewarding to research developments in the industry that I would not feasibly be able to implement in my professional career, I will miss those glory days.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

My Ten Year Internet Anniversary

This month marks my tenth anniversary of my career in the Internet. It was ten Januarys ago that I went back to school for Humber’s Internet Management program. Shortly, thereafter I began writing monthly travelogues for Bootsnall.com. The rest is mystory. After ten years’ of working and studying in the Internet almost few of the companies or programs remain. I don’t think this is attributable to my kiss-of-death presence, but the still rapidly evolving nature of the Internet.

In this blog posting I’ll look at my educational experience for the Internet. Subsequent posts will talk about Internet companies and organizations.

It is a shame that Humber’s Internet Management program shut down. It was rolled into the multimedia program, but seems to have lost the management component. The program, as far as I can tell, is unique in Ontario for teaching how to manage all aspects of managing a company’s Internet business and communications efforts. Too many programs teach web design or programming distinct and isolated from the overarching business requirements or overall environment. For example, web design has to work well with web writing, but I don’t see too many programs teaching both. Humber’s postgraduate (open only to university or college graduates) program was ideal for laying the groundwork for Internet management career by teaching programming, server management, graphic and site design, web writing, online marketing and promotion, and multimedia and interactive content production. One didn’t become an expert in all these areas, but they are crucial aspects to know if one is running Internet efforts. Still, to this day I met a lot of Internet professional that lack sufficient knowledge in these areas. The only reason why this program shut down is that I presume that management positions are developed through people’s work experience now. Back in 1999, there weren’t a lot of people with years of experience, so the program was particularly valuable and certainly helped me get my first producer position within a few months of graduating.

Another good Internet program that I took that has shut down and has not been replaced or merged is University of Toronto’s Strategic e-Business program. The program required students to learn some business fundamentals (marketing and accounting) and e-Business foundational concepts such as Internet business models and underlying technologies. There were also courses on moving business processes online and issues in cyberlaw. It was a useful program for those managing or implementing e-Business. It definitely helped me when I was a business lead for implementing a client-direct online transactional site.

Again, I'm not sure why this program shut down. I've heard that we are now at the point where the "e" no longer applies to fields as online components are so mainstream now – so e-Health is just Health, e-Learning is just Learning, and e-Business is just Business. The problem with this is that there Internet technologies, models and user behaviour is not so standardized as to not merit special attention. Again, I have met people working in these areas lacking sufficient exposure to key areas, so I do think there is still a need for these types of programs.

When I decided to do my master's there wasn't any options to study the Internet directly and few to study it indirectly. In the end, I decided on Royal Roads University's Communication program as not only was the field broad enough to encompasses a lot of what's happening on the Net, but also it was delivered in part through e-Learning and I thought it would be a good opportunity to be learn first hand about this huge aspect of the Net. There was one class at Royal Roads on human computer interaction that encompassed a lot of Internet issues. However, in all my classes professors were open to allowing me to tailor almost all my coursework to Internet topics (most of which were posted here). I did some research on folksonomies, social media, usability, website accessibility, intranets, and online music legal issues.

As for doing a doctorate, there really isn't anywhere in Canada that specializes in the Internet, the closest would be Simon Fraser’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology or various communication or information studies programs. In general, I find Canada is not keeping developing adequate programs in this area at a graduate or undergraduate level.

I'd love to hear any feedback on the state or needs of education for Internet professionals and scholars.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Favourite Posts for 2008

In 2008 I didn't blog as much as I would have liked, but I still love blogging and will keep at it in the new year. Thankfully, my Royal Roads coursework provided some useful blog fodder. But of original blog posts, here are my favourite Glen' Farrelly Webslinger postings.

January

Academic Research Online Is a Walled Garden - my dismay at finding out the amount of useful research and information useful to the Internet community that never makes it beyond the confines of academia and expensive academic journals

February

Del.icio.us questions I can sink my teeth into - Delicious' remake made me love it all the more, in February I answered classmates concerns in an attempt to pass on one of my favourite cyber addictions

March

Are Web Publishers Obsolete? - more and more of web production becomes routine and mundane I noted, so are website professionals as important?

April

I'm Divided on the War for Net Neutrality - will Internet offerings end up packaged and limited like cable, this is an issue that will only grow in importance

May

Oh CanCon! Should it stand on guard for Canadian Internet content? - Canadian Internet content is not all it should be, CRTC will examine the issue, do we need regulation or encouragement?

June

Fun With Internet Memes - Weezer's video for "Pork and Beans" was an homage to famous Internet memes and helped us recall the great fun of such things as dramatic hamster and "Leave Britney alone!"

July

Canada's Cyber Celebs - in honour of Canada Day, I compiled a list of those Canadians that have made an impact to the Internet, a project that appears is direly needed but has been done by no one else
Pros & Cons of Managing a Website for a Small Company - as I leave my job of six years of managing a website, I wax philosophical. Good post for those considering a similar job.

August

Six Random-ish Things - a trivial chain email afforded me the opportunity to list six facets of my Internet life
Interview Questions for Prospective Website Managers - I prepare a list of questions to ask when finding my replacement, a useful list for those hiring who may not understand the requirements of this type of work

September

Trumpeting Toronto Tech - blogging has opened doors for me and got me some great free tickets to events, including Toronto Tech Week. Yet despite the hype, Toronto's technology sector is lacking

October

Why Internet communication is better than face-to-face - real life is over-rated, here's why

November

Online TV Saves My Life - due to the inability to watch TV while at Royal Roads, I finally discovered the wealth of TV shows available online (and ashamedly, I didn't always use this new found power for good, ie. Gossip Girl)

December

Practical Considerations for Online Accessibility - I was sponsored by the Internet Society to attend the Internet Governance Conference in India, where I learned a lot about website accessibility for the disabled

Some of my favourite essays that I posted online are:

The next seven months will be devoted to my thesis on website accessibility. I'll definitely blog about my progress and insights along the way and hopefully anything else that crosses my virtual path in 2009...

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Impressions of India

It's probably due to the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai that I'm getting lots of people asking me how I'm doing. Never had so much Facebook activity before. I've been getting back to people individually or via Facebook Wall posts, but even though this doesn't have anything to do with the Internet per se (other than I am here for an Internet conference) I figured it was easier to give some of my impressions of India via a blog post. I'll be blogging about conference specifics later today (if jet lag doesn't get the best of me).

The 35 hour door-to-door journey to get here was rather hellish. I couldn't sleep on the plane and I had 3 transfers (Amsterdam, Kuwait, and Muscat in Oman). This was probably the best available flight too as any other flights to Hyderabad involve hellish transfers into either Delhi or Mumbai (hellish in that they all seem to arrive in the middle of the night; involve getting on a local bus - and all that means - to transfer from international to domestic airports; and about 6-8 hour wait). At least Amsterdam's Schipol airport has comfy chairs, delicious European pastries and a miniture Riksmuseum on site - so I managed to gaze at Rembrandt paintings during my layover. Oman airport was so shabby it dispelled the notion I had that all Middle East countries are oil-rich. Hyderabad airport is modern and incredible - the second best airport I have been to anywhere in the world (Hong Kong is the best definitely).

The hotel we are staying at, Ista Hyderabad, is nice. It's down the street from Microsoft's Indian campus. My biggest complaint about the hotel is that it is trying to hard to be an international 5 star hotel and as a result it is generic (too much blond wood, chocolate-brown leather chairs, and marble floors) - it also has the price of these hotels, so much so that the prices seem more fitting of Switzerland or London rather than India (eg. $3 for a Coke).

What I love about the hotel (other than their incredible infinity style and toasty warm swimming pool) is the incredible food. Breakfast is included here and it combines traditional Western breakfast foods with much more delicious Indian food. Yesterday the waiter asked me if I wanted a traditional Indian breakfast. It was potato curry dish and a sweet stewed spiced pumpkin dish. The pumpkin dish was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. In general, the food here is AMAZING. The western food is mediocre, but the Indian food is way better than the best Indian food I've ever had in Toronto - plus there is such an incredible variety of dishes.

Unfortunately, the hotel and conference centre are about a 40 minute drive apart and the free shuttles only go once in the morning and once in the evening. Taxis are expensive here (at least the ones for westerners) about the same rate as home. Both the hotel and conference centre are in the midst of tech building sprawl and far away from the city proper, so there's nowhere to walk either. Not that walking is safe here as there are no sidewalks or traffic rules it seems. Plus one would have to pass by the cattle in the street and the poor living in tents by the roadside everywhere. So we all feel trapped either in the hotel or in the conference centre, which is a shame as I do like to explore cities when I travel.

I did get four free hours where I hired a driver to drive me around the sites of Hyderabad. The main sites were incredible; the temples, palaces, government building and fortresses are so different architectually from anything I'd ever seen before and centuries old. But I think I enjoyed seeing the slices of normal Indian life while driving about town. The open-air markets with stunningly beautiful textiles, the chaos in the streets, the vibrant street life, and the unbelievable poverty intermixed with it all. I was also struck at how there seemed to be a much greater committment to architectually beauty - even more modest buildings all have unique details or arrangements.

Jet lag is fairly bad. I was dead tired at 6pm last night. Many of the other ambassadors went shopping at a mall last night but I went for a swim and was asleep for the second night in a row by 7pm. Skipped supper even. I woke up at midnight but watched a Bollywood film. There are about 30 channels that show nothing but Bollywood so I'm enjoying discovering the many permutations of this genre.

The weather today is hot, sunny and humid. Other days it was just perfect. There is a lot of pollution here - particularly in the city proper. My photos are hazy because of the pollution. I'm not kidding - it's not poor focus it's layers of smog!

Security is tight both at the hotel and at the conference centre. So tight I couldn't go out to get my morning coffee, without having to go through the thorough security check and frisking (okay maybe I don't mind the frisking). I am impressed
with the degree of security at the conference centre and at the hotel, so that goes a long way to making me feel more at ease. Although last night there was a huge noise in the middle of the night and on another occasion the power went out at the hotel for about 3 minutes - both times my mind instantly wen to the worst.

So I'm staying safe and eating very well. Everyone at the Internet Society is super friendly and the even though I've only had a half day of conference sessions, I've already learned a lot (definitely some thesis fodder). So no regrets for coming here, but I'm definitely dreading that 30+ hour return trip.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Press Release about me

Here's the press release that Royal Roads recently submitted for my scholarship. Can't resist posting it.

*****

Toronto grad student from Royal Roads University earns scholarship

For immediate release – August 28, 2008

Victoria, B.C. – Glen Farrelly of Toronto is one of thirteen graduate students from Royal Roads University to be awarded a scholarship worth $17,500 for applied research required to complete his MA degree.

“We are proud of the high calibre of learners such as Glen that we draw to Royal Roads University and, considering the size of our university compared to peer institutions, our learners do very well in submitting successful grant applications,” says Mary Bernard, associate vice president of research at RRU.

Farrelly is completing an MA in professional communication and his research project is looking at how Canadian websites can be made more accessible for the visually impaired.

“The World Wide Web Consortium published accessibility standards as far back as 1999 but the visually impaired still face barriers when it comes to accessing many websites in Canada”, says Farrelly. “I will interview website managers to identify their levels of awareness of accessibility issues and then develop practical recommendations for government, industry and advocacy groups to help them enact technological and social change”.

The J. Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships, awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, seek to develop research skills and assist in the training of highly-qualified personnel by supporting students in the social sciences and humanities who demonstrate a high standard of achievement in undergraduate and early graduate studies.

Also earning J. Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships are Royal Roads University students Adrian Bergles of Radium Hot Springs, B.C.; Rebecca Henn of Vancouver, B.C.; Alison James of Victoria, B.C.; Gordana Jelinic of Williams Lake, B.C.; Johann Jenson of Salt Spring Island, B.C.; Dorothy Kelker of Edmonton, Alberta; Michelle Mungall of Nelson, B.C.; Shane Rooney of Abbotsford, B.C.; and, from Calgary, Alberta, Conny Betuzzi, Kathleen Frit and Eloise Pulos. Adrian Leslie receives a $17,500 Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Pros & Cons of Managing a Website for a Small Company

I've now officially left my job as a website producer for a pension plan after six years doing the job. I recently won a SSHRC scholarship, so I'm now more able to focus on my studies and raising my family.

In looking back at my time managing the website for a small company, I realized that while such jobs are not right for everyone, there are many benefits.

1) Jack of All Trades
As not uncommon with working for a small company, I was pretty much a department of one. This means that I got the opportunity to dabble and learn about a lot of cool stuff (search engines, web analytics, AJAX, Flash, accessibility, etc) and refine skills (web writing and editing, information architecture, web design, etc.). I have friends who specialize in only one of these aspects. This might be fine to really hone one's craft, but I would have found it insufferably boring. There are a lot of fascinating aspects to websites and it's great to get to explore lots of them. However, it is frustrating sometimes as there is not ever enough resources to draw upon, projects can take a long time or never get done, and, there's no delegating. Even after six years and feeling like I was an expert, I still had to do basic chores to keep the site running and updated.

2) No Bells & Whistles
Small companies tend to not be able to afford the latest bleeding edge technology or design. For the most part, I'd say that's fine. With rare exception the latest hot stuff doesn't tend to add much value to a site, and can even be problematic for users. However, as an Internet professional , it's in our bones to want to try out cool stuff that's been proven to work. It quite frankly sucks sometimes to sit on the sidelines and watch the parade go by.

3) Be Your Own Boss
Small companies where their website is not a vital component of their businesses tend to not have much in-house expertise on running a website. In my case, this meant a great deal of autonomy to do projects I felt were worthy (and justified via business cases). It also meant that my expertise was valued, I didn't have to argue for every decision or priority (as can happen with team structures), and I didn't have someone looking over my shoulder. These environments can also mean that your work, however, is never an organizational priority, and one can be marginalized at times. Also, for someone wanting technical guidance or camaraderie, these places can be lonely - so it's best to recruit colleagues and mentors outside of the company to get advice and help from.

4) Sense of Individual Accomplishment
I readily acknowledge the contributions of programmers, writers, translators, designers and software vendors, all of whom invaluably contributed to the site. But for the day-to-day work of running of the site and of planning, there was really only me. I formerly worked with a company where everything was very much a team effort. While collaboration like this has advantages, it was sometimes hard to see one's individual accomplishment. Over the last few years, I had the opportunity to guide, direct and implement the website along the lines I felt were important. A lot of jobs, don't give one this degree of responsibility, pride and sense of accomplishment.

A few days before I left my job, I found out that the website relaunch I spearheaded was successful in winning an award recognizing the achievement (plus we also one an award for online annual report). So between this and the company launching its transactional website last week, I now feel that my swan song is complete. I can retire from the stage of financial services websites and see what new acts will come my way.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Second Dot Bomb To Hit Any Time Now

I’m reading a good book, dot.con by John Cassidy - see below to give it a read, on the heyday of dot coms and the Internet bubble of the late 1990s. The events described in the book seem to be happening again, with surreal valuations of Internet companies and hair brain online schemes coming out of the woodwork.

But the book has made me nostalgic for those glory days – the obligatory Fussball table, open and flowing bars, business meetings at Playdium, extravagant launch parties, expensive marketing campaigns, new technologies to learn every month, long hours and fat expense accounts.

While I’d like to think I was more level-headed than the others that got swept into the Internet insanity avalanche, I suppose my decision to go into the Internet field was influenced by rampant hyperbole in the media and business world.

At least I had good reason to go into the Net field. A friend at the time, however, quit her accountant career and took an Internet course to get into the then red-hot field (like many others she was back to her old career soon thereafter). For me though, I was working in dead-end jobs and had little luck putting my Film & Video degree to use. Still going into the Internet was rather crazy, as I didn’t have a computer, no email address, and had only been on the Net about 2 or 3 times before I decided to pursue a career in the field (I did work briefly for an Internet company earlier, by temping for Macromedia in their big launch of Dreamweaver). I almost went into eco-tourism instead as I loved travel so much. But I thought my media education and interest would be more suitable to the Internet. I also thought that television would be on the Net soon and my Film & Video degree would finally pay off!

After the dot bomb things kept chugging along and I thought there was much more sanity in the field. But the excitement over web 2.0 seemed to have history repeating itself again which is bad enough except that it’s happening again so soon!

Yes lately there’s been great reason for excitement (eg. social networking, participatory media, RSS, tagging, the semantic web, etc.).

But a news item today sums up the return to insanity. (As if the purchase price of Club Penguin wasn’t loopy enough, see my prior post on this.)

In MediaPost’s Just an Online Minute Wendy Davis describes the situation of Internet startup Eons. I hadn’t heard of it before, probably as it’s geared to baby boomers, but it was yet another social networking website. There are a gazillion already and really Facebook (& possibly MySpace) and LinkedIn, plus a handful of others are all that will ever be useful.

Eons, as recently as last March, received $22 million dollars plus another $10 million last year. Unsurprisingly, they have not delivered and the company is laying off one third of its staff.

Perhaps dot.con should be mandatory reading for anyone working or investing in the Net.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Post-Mortem

I love the title of this blog posting as it refers not only to the standard post-project review, but more appropriately it describes my mental and physical state lately.

I really do feel like I'm back from the dead. My health is back to normal and I'm eating and drinking much healthier. I was feeling overwhelmed and under-appreciated and incredibly exhausted! I never did get my relaunch party (moments like this were made for Lesley Gore songs) but since that was cancelled I used the time to go to Toronto Island with my family and we had an incredible day.

So here comes the lessons I am passing on to Webslinger readers that may be undertaking a big web project.

Lessons learned
1) If I were to do a project of this magnitude again, I'd have the entire core team working in the same space and preferably cloistered from regular business operations - too much got in the way, distance or otherwise
2) Get a caller ID telephone - I screen and filter my emails, why can't I do that with my phone? The equipment is relatively cheap and the time they would have saved would have been invaluable.
3) Hire one extra person to do the HTML. I'm sure that that everyone who has ever done a project like this feels they need more people, but one extra person - even a temp - would have saved me some time I really could have used for more complex decisions and deliverables
4) Insist on professional testers - we recruited volunteer testers and some found some problems, but over all they missed a lot - this meant the programmers and I were testing and finding things and this wasn't the best use of time. Testing is a valuable skill and it's worth the cost to hire professionals
5) Deadlines met or else! I had difficulties getting people to hit deliverable deadlines despite knowing about things well in advance. This ended up meaning I had to work insane overtime to do the work or things got dropped. An electric cattle prod and pillory would have definitely helped.

Pats on the back
1) We hired excellent partners that offered really useful suggestions and expertise
2) I booked people's time for this project months in advance
3) We resisted the evil powers of scope attack, like Superman valiantly resisting kryptonite
4) I held focus groups which raised some good points and confirmed things I suspected
5) User testing found things that needed to be addressed but that I had not considered - it was relatively easy to do and garnered great feedback
6) I reviewed other websites - I looked at a lot of other industry and general websites and got lots of best practices and inspiration - it took some time but ended up with some great ideas, living examples to prove my points, and saved re-inventing the wheel
7) I did tons of research including reading Jakob Nielsen's book and columns, Jennifer Kyrnin's newsletter, other newsletters, attended lectures - this was also a lot of time but really meant that we knew what we were doing beforehand
8) I put our user first in devising the new website - we solicited their feedback and really listened to them. Usability was paramount as was the KISS method.
9) Great team - committed, intelligent and diligent
10) ME - I was amazing!
I programmed, designed, tested, researched, planned, wrote, edited, troubleshot, presented, trained, project managed, consulted and compromised. Yes, with much stress but also with unparalleled skill!! I have yet to meet someone who can do all these things - so the biggest pat on the back goes to me!

Monday, June 18, 2007

It's Alive - But I'm Not

The Relaunch is launched! My burden has been released. I'm free at last!

The new website is now live, but I'm anything but.

This project almost killed me. I guess I'm too damn old for the endless overtime and stress. In many ways, this relaunch is not much worst than others I've been through or heard about - just hell while you're living it.

I'm so incredibly exhausted, overly grumpy, I've had insomnia and I feel nauseous frequently. My blood pressure was at the highest ever and I'm sure I gained weight as I have barely left my chair for weeks. So this website relaunch has almost literally killed me.

I was so glad to see my daughter again I had to go many days without seeing her at all - recently I went three entire days without seeing her (during that time she was playing with her Fisher-Price Little People and the mother and child were playing in the house but the daddy was always by himself at the computer "at work").

I feel so much relief that it is done.

Today, was the big day and I knew there would be lots of issues. And there were - the two biggest, not surprisingly, were with Flash. But my coworkers and I solved a lot of things on the spot, so at the end of the day almost everything is going quite well.

Didn't get to do all the Help stuff I wanted to - that always gets left to the last and with scope attack there just wasn't time. But I still want to use DemoFuse so hopefully later this week... (the relaunch never dies!)

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Naming dropping online works

I was doing a vanity google today, as I am wont to do. Not much new on the Glen Farrelly front. There is that other Glen Farrelly (well, there are several) that is doing a charity trek soon for testicular cancer called "Say Balls to Cancer".

Not seeing much action with any of my entries coming up in normal search or Technorati and no one is linking to me (I'd have to have someone reading this first, eh).

I did learn that I don't need to embed the special Technorati tags for them to work in Technorati's tag search. Technorati can now read Blogger's "Labels". This has the added benefit of having a search and archive method available on the right-hand side here.

So back to the my online presence or lack thereof - that is until my post two days ago. The post about the search queries of Americans vs. Canadians.

Even though I was reprinting Yahoo's results all the name dropping worked!

Just the mention of Beyonce got me posted on an all Beyonce news site. Jessica Simpson did likewise. But it was my beloved Shakira that really got results. There was serious pick-up of my blog entry from various Shakira sites.

So thank you Shakira, wherever, whenever you may be.

All my months of diligently and, if I do say so myself, insightful blogging have not paid off. But one entry mentioning hot celebs and Bob's my uncle or rather Paris Hilton's my aunt.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

It's all about me!

It's my birthday today, so this blog is all about me! (Even more so than usual.)

Master of my domain
First, as my birthday gift to myself, I registered my own domain, www.glenfarrelly.com
It redirects here for the time being.

Despite being in the Internet field for about eight years now, I never registered a domain. GoDaddy.com quickly turned up as the favoured domain registrar. I wanted a Canadian company but they (eg. 10Dollar.ca) are not as cheap ($7 per year) or offered as much extras. So far, so good with Go Daddy.

glenfarrelly.com will soon be the destination - for me, my mother, and possibly my wife.

For your viewing pleasure?
In honour of my birthday, I tried out Levi's personalized ad campaign. It's creepy, but unique. But you haven't seen anything like this before and after viewing this, you won't want to.

Glen stars in Levi ad - Rated "R" (terrifying)

Even more Glen
I've been cooking up a lot of stuff lately and over the years.

My LinkedIn Profile

My wiki project - Famous Torontonians

My Movies Ratings on IMDB

MySpace page

My del.icio.us bookmarks

My Diggs

My volunteer work - maintaining Heritage Toronto

My lens on Toronto history & culture

My Amazon List of best Toronto non-fiction

My favourite trip photos on Yahoo Photos

My Wikipedia contributions - not many, yet

My Quicken.ca/MoneySense.ca years - not much to show since the site was merged/purged with Canadian Business - but here's my RESP Calculator

My first website, BonnieStern.com that I worked on professionally - I coded it (in ColdFusion), structured the site architecture & navigation, aided design and overall direction (surprisingly, while updated, it is still much like I left it in 2000)

My online travelogues at Bootsnall (from 1999)

My Wedsite

My first online portfolio - embarrassing now

My first job in the Internet - interning at Canadian Geographic, maintaining their website and writing online articles

My school years at Classmates.com

Wow: this is way more than even I want to know about me.!

The Internet really does enable - even encourage - narcissism.