Rodent Regatta

I’ve found a community I want to join! It’s the growing creative class in Memphis.

Memphis would not make anyone’s list of global centers of design excellence in any field, much less web design. In fact, Memphis is probably one of those places where the nephew’s FrontPage site is good enough for eight out of ten small businesses (i.e. fewer than 50 employees). Memphis is a place where price always trumps any other criteria for purchasing anything.

A few of the weblogs written by people in this area actually strive for valid (X)HTML mark-up. Many of them are excellent political, lifestyle or gossip blogs. Apparently, there’s even a gathering of bloggers from time to time. However, there isn’t a great deal of discussion—that I’ve been able to locate—involving web standards, design tools and techniques or sites free of tables and spacer gifs.

Perhaps that is changing! Our local fish wrap ran an article this weekend about tech firms that use blogs to connect with others. The article specifically mentioned the following blogs, firms and people in Memphis:

• Encytemedia – Justin Palmer
• Clear Function – Stephen Rainey & Aaron Boeving
• Emerge Memphis – Gwin Scott

Weblogs I read are written by people who are hitting all the latest conferences for the best and brightest. While those conference attendees are looking at next-generation technologies and techniques, Memphis wrestles with how to become one of the so-called Smart Cities.

Contrary to popular notions, some of the leaders of the march to creativity in Memphis are not twenty-something. Rather, there is a blend of leaders who have caught the vision that Richard Florida has described for urban centers along with the young creatives who are actually getting it done. The beauty of this blend is that it isn’t limited to specific age, gender or other demographic data. Those with a willingness to grasp the ideas can drive the growth of and focus on creativity.

There appears to be a practical side to all of this as well. People who are leading the efforts here are profit-minded capitalists who have recognized a better way of providing products and services to customers. They understand what Jeff Cornwall explains in Revisiting Self-Interest. Whether one sees self-interest from the perspective of the designer or the designer’s client, the rewards are congruent.

Take web sites as the example. The hierarchy of enlightened web design creativity looks something like this:

1. Creatives using standards-based design for all their work.
2. Web site designers who found a tool and use it free of any concern for web standards.
3. Ad agencies who added a web site design department without understanding the medium.
4. The nieces and nephews with a copy of FrontPage or Dreamweaver.

Each of these groups is creative. Each of these groups makes a (handsome) living. However, only one of the groups is fostering the growth of their businesses, growing their clients’ businesses and leading a community to see creativity, design and the role of standards in a completely different way. That’s a community I want to join!

Is it just me or is Chris Matthews among the most unskilled, rude and pompous interviewers in all media? I’m just sayin…

Whatever you do with your choices about technology in a small company (defined as a business with fewer than 25 employees), DO NOT use the Microsoft Active Directory Migration Tool or the document (doc download) that tells you how to use it.

After almost 21 hours of phone time on a $245 Microsoft case number and 7 engineers’ efforts, recovery from the effects of using the ADMT was complete. The real work could then begin. Remember the Apple ad that says something like, “sounds like you’ve got some stuff to do before you can do stuff?”

Weeks ago answers were promised. We were seeing beta versions of Office and Windows Vista. Ubuntu was making a splash and has made even greater noise since that time. Long-time loyalties to a single platform continued collapsing.

Apple runs Windows, though it’s been unclear just how dependably a Mac can remain joined to a Windows server domain when there are multiple network connections installed on the computer. With all of the announcements, what’s a dependable path? Remember, we’re not talking about businesses rich with I.T. savvy or time to work on their I.T. problems.

To keep this brief, I’ll boil it down this way:

• Career-perspective: Were a new entrant into the business of installing and supporting basic I.T. needs in small businesses to inquire about where to develop expertise, what would we answer?
• Business owners perspective: Were a small business with basic collaboration, email, file-sharing, backup, calendar sharing and office productivity needs to inquire about what to install, what would we answer?

Short answers go like this:

• For the server, install Microsoft Small Business Server 2003R2.
• For the workstations, install Intel Pentium 4-based PC’s running Windows XP Professional.
• For the adventurous who have access to a knowledgeable support team, you can consider replacing MS-SBS with Ubuntu’s server and a mix of Windows XP Professional and Ubuntu PC’s. Just be certain you know how to replace the Windows applications that users are accustomed to with their corresponding products in the FOSS world.

Finally, whatever you do, begin to think of long-term data storage as something that must withstand a series of short-term technology changes. Remember, 8-inch floppies? Remember when you took photos at low resolution to “save space.” Remember when you downloaded music at low bit-rates to “save space.” Some of those things will be terribly disappointing in thirty or forty years. Decide whether or not your applications really are providing data that you can save and see long after the application or the storage medium is gone.

Know how to pick and update your technologies in 36 to 60-month intervals so that the 40-year run is sustainable!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

Thank you Katherine Lee Bates and Samuel Ward.

Warren Buffett has announced plans to make substantial annual donations to five foundations. You can read the five letters at the Berkshire Hathaway site. You really should. You’ll gain some insight into how the really large sums of money change hands.

Rick Warren launched his P.E.A.C.E. plan. Beyond merely identifying his notion of the globe’s five (previously) insoluble problems, he’s thinking of the ways that technology and coordination can help the efforts of the many service initiatives around the world. In effect he’s identified the five really large problems in the world today.

Bill Gates has a 2-year plan that allows him to migrate from full-time duty at Microsoft to full-time focus on the efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With today’s announcements by Warren Buffett, the Gates Foundation will have to find ways to double the amount of money they distribute annually by 2009.