January 17, 2010
To be good on the web, we’ve got to do everything from php scripts to Facebook posts.
It takes a systems administrator to think all about security and stability, a writer to think about stringing together great combinations of words and a graphic designer to give a site the perfect look and feel. A developer and programmer make the site smart and functional. You need communicators to decide if social media like Twitter or Facebook can be integrated. So a successful effort requires more than success in a single area.
Web professionals don’t just write and design the pages. We also code the site, write custom applications, test the pages, move them into production, and then, if we’re smart, we even do our best to see what, when, and how people are reading our pages and who they are.
So in newspaper terms, we’re the ones who lubricate a squeaky press and dive in when it breaks, meanwhile we’re reporting, writing, editing, laying out, sending to pre-press, press, collating, rubber-banding our papers and taking them to your porch – preferably a porch that uses Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox. In a very figurative sense, we might even use web analytics to peer over your shoulder just to see what captures your interest.
Our tiny team has a designer, a programmer, a developer and me. When we sit down for our weekly coffee-house get together, the programmer might talk about exploring the best ways to migrate a WordPress site or WP plug-ins he’s written. The developer will chat about his ever-flattening learning curve in Drupal, and his progress testing modules and applying security patches. Meanwhile, the designer might talk about custom headers he’s designing, the intricate styling of a site or usability issues he’s tackling.
I’m the non-technical one. I’m the communications guy, the one who wears golf shirts and tries to explain the web to non-web folks. I’m the one who dabbles in Twitter, calls Facebook work, writes stories and edits homegrown video. And I’m here to tell you, a good web effort takes a great team with a wide variety of skills and abilities.
3 Comments | 
Uncategorized | Tagged: social media, video, web communications, team, hosting, marketing, drupal, firebug, developers, Wordpress, Wordpress Multi-user, WPMU | 
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Posted by zackbarnett
May 3, 2009
My friend Grady walked into the office giggling the other day. “I have to tell you,” he said, “I tried cleaning my gas grill like you said. And it burned up.”
See, I’d read in a recent Cooks Illustrated that a good way to burn up the excess grease in the grill, to clean the grate and prep it for salmon, was to put a layer of tinfoil over the grate, crank up the heat and wait 10 to 15 minutes. Worked for me. So I bragged to Grady about it. Then he tried it. “Flames were shooting out the front of it. Melted my knobs,” he said. Just as I prepared to offer my deepest condolences, to even offer to help replace it, Grady giggled again. “It wasn’t your fault. The whole pipe was rotted. So I went to Sears online, ordered all the parts, new burners, new knobs, everything, put it all together, cost less than $40.”
So two lessons. Yes, it’s OK to clean some gas grills by superheating them. And two? Anybody can order replacement parts for Kenmore and Craftsman stuff. Which is awesome, Rather than replace the entire grill — as Grady might have had to do with an off-brand — he simply replaced a few parts that were easily ordered. That’s awesome.
Just don’t try going to your neighborhood Sears store and expecting to get even close to the knowledge or service a simple google search would net. Thinking I’d support my local retailer and try to keep a few jobs local — unemployment in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon is pushing 15 percent — I tooled on down to the nearest Sears in search of a garage door opener remote control. “If I buy the wrong one,” I thought, “I can just bring it back.” Remembering Grady’s words, I scribbled down my model number and even took my user manual into the store with me.
I found a display of replacement remotes and a bevy of hungover-lookin’ sales dudes, with little more than bad goatees and worse stories about the night before. They huddled around the sales desk so caught up in bragging about rolling in late unnoticed, they hardly noticed me. All the replacement remotes were $39.99, all had different specs, some for openers with green buttons, some for black buttons, some for blue… Mine? It has a red button. No worries. I’ve got the model number, I thought. Finally one of the badly bearded sales dudes wandered over. After briefly glancing at the cover of the manual that remained in my hand, he pointed at one. “If I had to guess, I’d say that one would work.”
“I can guess on the Internet. Can we look up my model number, maybe order a part?” I asked.
He shook his head. “That department doesn’t open for a couple more hours,” he said.
I grumbled something about how he needed to know his product and headed for the door. On my way out, I noticed an 800-number on the back of my manual. I dialed it while still in the parking lot. Before reaching my car, I’d given the Sears phone rep my part number, he identified the replacement, promised it would work, and finalized my shipping address — all in less time than it took to talk with the hungover doofus inside. Intelligent conversation aside, the remote I ordered also cost $26 with shipping, more than 30 percent less than any comparable in-store product. There are plenty of smart people around town who’d love a job. Too bad hungover sales reps aren’t as easy to replace as grill parts.
5 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Cooks illsutrated, Craftsman, death, dying, Eugene, fix, garage door openers, gas grills, Gateway Mall, grill fires, Kenmore, Lane County, Oregon, repair, replace, retailers, Sears, Sears Parts Direct, Springfield, unemployment | Permalink
Posted by zackbarnett
April 25, 2009
Detroit built cars, Seattle made planes — for the glory decades of the 20th century that was true, anyway. Now, however, the cities are following very different paths. Hindsight might be obnoxious, but its irony can be painfully insightful.
This morning, I swilled coffee and read an article in Fast Company about Seattle, named the magazine’s City of the Year. The article, by Garth Stein, details the city’s emergence as an intellectual, geological and gastronomical land of plenty. Once the land of Boeing — because of easy access to timbers needed for planes during World War I — it is now the land of Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, REI, Jones Soda and many, many more innovative companies and bio-tech researchers.
While I read, in the background, NPR’s Steve Inskeep was reporting on Weekend Edition from Detroit, a broken down city plagued by a lack of industrial vision, marked by Ford, GM and Chrysler’s collective failure to transition from automakers into transportation titans. Detroit’s city leaders hitched their wagons to a dying industry. And now, the nation and taxpayers must help them tighten up a rusty, rusty belt. We’re paying the price now for yesterday’s conservative, stay-the-course philosophy.
Meanwhile in Seattle, a spirit of innovation, of creativity, of self-sufficiency long ago allowed the city’s economy to soar beyond the work of making planes. Seattle’s unemployment rate is less than half that of Detroit’s. And its prospects for the future are much, much brighter. Amazon’s reporting record profits. And this week, Microsoft reported that for the first time in 23 years its profits declined. During the worst economic times in 80 years, profits declined. They did not evaporate, and Bill Gates is not panhandling. Over the same period, Detroit stood idle or slid backward, committed to milking the last drops of prosperity from a shrinking industry. Seattle moved beyond, intent on the future, forward-looking, do-it-now types setting the stage for the next century.
Detroit could have been a rustic gem of the midwest, where creativity and efficiency blossomed. Instead, taxpayers will prop it and the Big Three up a little longer, desperately grasping for innovation they should have been chasing years ago. The hybrid has left the building. And it’s a Toyota. The high speed train? Light rail cars? Mass transit?
GM, Chysler and Detroit could have headed that direction a decade or two ago. They could have built a lot of things other than rusty piles of debt and layoffs. We can only hope it’s not too late. The only thing more obnoxious than hindsight? Repeating history.
8 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: Amazon, bail out, Bill Gates, Chrysler, Costco, Detroit, Fast Company Maganzine, Ford, GM, green, hindsight, hybrid, mass transit, Michigan, Microsoft, REI, rust belt, Seattle, Steve Inskeep, Toyota, unemployment, Washington, Weekend Edition Saturday | Permalink
Posted by zackbarnett
March 22, 2009
You know the feeling. The words slip out of your mouth before you realize they’re not funny — or better yet your phraseology is as funny as it is inappropriate to the moment.
You know, — at least I do — you get in one of those cringe-inducing conversations about stuff you’ve got no business talking about, asking questions like why do lactating mothers “express” milk?
Those moments are awkward enough in person. They can be downright painful on social media and networking sites, where you can bomb in front of the masses, in front people you hardly know.
Sometimes people have no idea if I am joking in person. I take pride in a dry delivery that sometimes people really hate. But it’s tough to be dry on twitter or facebook.
When an acquaintance updated her Facebook status to say that Dateline NBC was interviewing one of her co-workers, I of course had to comment even though it had been years since I’d actually spoken to my Facebook friend. “I hope your colleague is not the subject Dateline’s ‘Catch a Predator’ series,” I wrote, congratulating myself on sheer hilarity. I didn’t hear back for a while, and when I did she ambiguously wrote, “We’re all glad of that.” Can’t tell if she thought I was funny or if she was humoring a social media ass.
Cyberspace, like the water cooler at work or the theater for a comic, can be awful silent, especially without the sympathetic pity laughs. Then again, sometimes I don’t deserve the laughs. Sometimes I need to think before I type just as I have learned to muzzle my unusually large and blunt mouth.
Gotta admit though. Express is an odd verb when it comes to milk.
2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: awkward jokes, censoring yourself, social media, social media ass, social media humor | Permalink
Posted by zackbarnett
March 5, 2009
In 1984, I was a second-grader in love with the Denver Broncos. My dad taught me to read win-loss columns, and Monday mornings after Sunday games I’d devour the sports page. At the time, the Broncos had a baby-faced, barefoot kicker named Rich Karlis.
Late in a game against the Seahawks, Karlis missed a game-winning field goal when he banged the kick off an upright. Karlis missed kicks off uprights two weeks in a row, and Rocky Mountain News cartoonist Drew Litton drew what he calls “a fork with multiple uprights.” It was one of his early sports cartoons. “If you didn’t see it, someone was going to tell you about it,” Litton says in this 2007 interview. “It solidified my role here at the News. And probably allowed me to keep my job.” Litton’s “Win, Lose and Drew” features even evolved into some animated shorts. The Rocky’s owner, the E.W. Scripps Company, turned the paper from a place that employed one of the world’s best sports cartoonists to a paper that employs nobody.
Drew Litton was just one of the many unique creatives who found a niche at the news. So, as we bid farewell to the Rocky, it’s good to know that Drew’s still plying his craft on his own WordPress site. His art is telling great stories and making fun statements, mocking Jay Cutler, the Yankee payroll and spring training. So stick with it, Drew. You helped me learn to love storytelling. Don’t let the cartoons stop just because the presses have.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: Colorado, Denver, Denver Broncos, Drew Litton, drewlitton.com, E.W. Scripps, Rich Karlis, Rocky Mountain News, sports animation, storytelling | Permalink
Posted by zackbarnett
January 31, 2009
News in the paper is as sad as news about the paper. In 2008, American newspapers cut 15,554 jobs, according to a tally kept by St. Louis Post-Dispatch graphic designer Erica Smith on her “Paper Cuts” blog. Smith tallies more than 2,000 cuts already in 2009. Smith’s effort opened Robert Hodierne’s essay in the American Journalism Review about how journalists are finding work outside the newsroom in PR, liquor stores and even yoga.
This morning, the front page of my local paper featured a story about painful local layoffs, an LA Times piece about the deepening recession, and a feature about a mother-son funeral. The only psuedo-bright spot? A piece about Rep. Peter Defazio, D-Ore., blasting the stimulus package as too heavy with tax cuts.
We’re riding a broadband connection to hell. Or not.
Maybe these are just unusually difficult growing pains, a sort of economic adolescence, as technology reshapes the way journalists tell stories. The sooner newspapers adopt new models, the better. Case in point? Slate Magazine. The online pub, owned by the Washington Post, has always been edgy. But now, as the New York Observer reports, Slate editor David Plotz will, one at a time, give staffers four to six weeks to leave the office and turn out a long-form feature, possibly with multimedia components for the web.
So, while the old-school papers are slicing jobs and whining their way into what they depict as a web-only oblivion, Slate, a web-only pub from its start, is sending journalists out to tell long, important stories in new ways. Maybe there’s a bright spot after all. Maybe not all the news about the news is as sad what’s in the paper.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: AJR, American Journalism Review, David Plotz, Erica Smith, graphicdesignr blog, journalism layoffs, multimedia, narrative journalism, New York Observer, newspapers, Peter Defazio, recession, Register-Guard, Robert Hodierne, Slate, stimulus package, storytelling, web storytelling | Permalink
Posted by zackbarnett
January 18, 2009
Having trouble with Dell customer service? You are not alone. I had a problem last month, and when Dell customer care failed miserably over the course of three hours, I turned to the company’s employee blogs. After an exasperating few days, I remained cordial despite being treated in an outrageous manner. In the end, I was rewarded with a $75 gift credit from an employee in the states who cared about keeping my business with Dell Online. The company just settled a lawsuit over customer complaints. Here’s how to get Dell’s attention without a lawyer.
1) Visit Dell’s employee blogs. AND COMMENT ON THEM. A LOT.
Like a lot of tech-ish companies, Dell’s employees blog. A lot. Now these aren’t the customer care folks at far flung places around the globe you’ll get when you dial the customer care number that comes with your order. Rather Dell’s bloggers are professionals with titles like, “Blog Editor” and “Customer Care Specialist.”
2) Make a list of the bloggers’ e-mails.
Now, Dell doesn’t make it so easy as to offer up e-mails of their bloggers. But a quick glance at the contacts listed on the company’s news releases indicates that Dell’s e-mail convention is firstname_lastname@dell.com. That means you can read bios of employees, say of blog editor John Pope, and then plug his name into the convention, john_pope@dell.com. (I contacted several of these employees during the holidays, which resulted in out-of-office replies containing their company cell-phone numbers. Don’t bother these folks at home. They likely have no idea how incompetent their overseas call centers really are. Wait ’til they get back to work to deal with you.)
3) Compose a friendly message. Keep it cordial. Remember, the objective is to resolve your issue. The more you thank these people and let them know how much you appreciate their time, the more successful you will be. Dell’s not a company in good shape. Its stock is falling. Its service is so awful it lost a class action suit. Let these people try to keep your business and maybe avoid being laid off.
4) Send your message to as many Dell employees as possible. And just maybe somebody’ll get back to ya’.
In the meantime, Dell also has what they comically refer to as a Global Escalation Management Team. Be warned. These are just the same overseas call centers, only the escalation team is staffed by people with better English skills. Here’s a couple contacts for it, but these people can only provide form letters and read from scripts:
Divya Pradyumnan: 1-800-624-9897, Ext. 7283898, divya_pradyumnan@dell.com; Kapil Gupta, kapil_gupta@dell.com.
Stay friendly, and Dell might just give you a free $75. It’s the least they can do for your trouble.
10 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: customer service, Dell awful, Dell blog, Dell call centers, Dell class action, Dell complaints, Dell Customer Care, Dell deals, Dell escalation, dell escaltion team, dell escaltions team, Dell help, Dell lawsuit, Dell News, dell nightmare, Dell products, Dell Public relations, Dell responses, Dell reviews, Dell sales, Dell social media, Dell sucks, Dell terrible, Dell tips, e-mail Dell, hate Dell, John Pope, Michael Dell, tips for Dell customer care, worst service | Permalink
Posted by zackbarnett
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