If you are aware of your infrastructure team, they're doing it wrong

 I've worked on the infrastructure side (servers, network, datacenters, etc) of the interwebernets for 13 years.  In that time I've seen all kind of infrastructure teams.  Network teams, server teams, monitoring team, and all in one teams.  By fare the best ones had one thing in common.  They were invisible.

Like the trash companies, the water companies, electric companies, or even the companies that deliver groceries to grocery stores most people don't think about them at all.  Normally the only time you do is when they aren't doing their jobs or when you pay the bill.  I bet most people would have to stop and think about what color the garbage truck is that comes through their neighborhood is.

Like all of these, a good infrastructure team is there, keeping things running so smoothly that you hardly notices them.  Sure, you include them on new project and involve them in everything that puritans to them.  If you're a check writer for the company (CFO, etc) then you know about them because you write checks for their equipment.  But, if they are doing their job correctly, you'd have to look up how to open a ticket before you could open one to report a problem.

Some would say that a good infrastructure team is pro-active.  Taking care of any issue that comes up before it impacts anyone in anyway.  What I'm saying is that a pro-active team is a good team.  However, an excellent team would prevent the issues in the first place.  Now, I'm not saying it's cheap to do or that it can be done quickly. I'm just saying that if you or you're customers are calling your infrastructure team often enough that you can do it in your sleep and you know exactly who to speak to to get stuff done, maybe there is room for improvement. 

Good infrastructure should be (mostly) invisible.

i was attacked by a bear….

….in a dream last night. it was a giant polar bear, and i mean giant for a polar bear type giant. i was being chased through a motel.  every door i got behind had no latches or door knob. i was unharmed but running for my life. then this guy and his two kids appeared. they where oblivious to the danger. i quickly tried to to explain to the father the danger we where in, to no avail.  the giant for a polar bear type giant polar bear broke through the wall.  i leaped onto it's back and start stabbing it in the neck. it threw me off and takes a chunk of flesh from my right leg and leaves.  i take my belt off and make a tourniquet so i don't bleed to death. but, i couldn't get it tight enough. i begged the father to either help me or to go get help.  he takes his two kids and walks away like nothing had happened. just before i passed out from blood loss, i wake up.

After thinking about it for a few minutes i took away 5 lessons:

1) Never piss off a giant for a polar bear type giant polar bear (or any sized bear for that matter).

2) same as #1. (#1 is that important)

3) a motel with no door latches or knobs is not a good place to run/hide from anything.

4) some people are willfully oblivious to the danger they are in and are quite happy with their lives because of it.

5) don't try to help anyone from #4 if it could cost you a chunk of leg.

the bonus was that i'm still thankful i don't remember most of my dreams.  this is about as close to "normal" as my dreams get.  my unconscious mind is as straight and true an over-knoted pretzel.

also, i think i'd give a chunk of leg (or two) to be one of those people from #4.

support your support

At one level or another I have been doing customer support my entire working life. Over that time I have developed a hatred for abuse of customer support as well as a intense desire to fix it.

You may not even know that you are abusing your support staff. You may be nice and pleasant to them and they may be nice and pleasant to you. But, that doesn't mean they jump for joy when they see you walking up to their desk.

Generally speaking, I'm seen as an "asshole" at $CURRENTJOB. I'm ok with this. However, my goal is not to be mean or unhelpful in any way. I've learn over my career that a support staff that, at least on the surface, appears to be "assholes" is the quickest way to get people to learn how to effectively interact with their support staff. Of course, once you learn how to effectively interact with your support staff, they wont seem like such assholes anymore. I may be totally wrong about this. But, I've yet to see any evidence of it.

So, I want to apologize to anyone that ever thought I was treating them like I was an unhelpful, down right mean, asshole. However, I'd also like it noted that if you followed the simple rules laid out below you would have been much happier with my response. Your unwillingness to help me so I can help you makes us both useless. For that I am deeply sorry.

When using your support staff to solve an issue understand that your first interaction with them has more influence over their success with your issue than anything else. Here are the rules you MUST follow when dealing with any support staff.

1) Open a ticket

Don't stop by their desk, send them a direct email, IM them, or give them a call.

The main reason for tickets is to have a paper trail of the entire issue and resolution. This is REQUIRED by all support staff for a reason most people never think of. Your issue is not the only issue. You see, support staff have to switch between issues all day long. "The printer doesn't work." "Excel keeps crashing." "Email doesn't work on my phone anymore." "I need a new laptop." Lots of unrelated issues all day. Even the best support staff cannot keep it all straight. Honestly, if your support staff can even remember what day of the week it is, let alone what your issue is, they are doing good.

Another reason for opening a ticket first is that generally there is more than open person that can help you. By opening a ticket more than just "your" support guy can see it and may be able to help. Remember, just because "your" support guy always "does a better job" it doesn't mean the rest of their team is useless. On a side note, if you can name "your" support guy I'm going to tell you right now that you are over working them and their heart sinks every time you come up to their desk.

2) The worst sin you can commit with your support staff is being vague

If you think your support staff is too slow and is trying to delay by playing "ticket tag" with back and forth messages never leading to a solution, just keep one thing in mind. In most cases this is entirely your fault.

Opening a ticket that has a complete content of 'When I do X I get an error" is totally useless. The first thing support staff is going to think when they see this is "Well, WTF is the error". It will also be their first reply to your request. All though they will most likely phrase it a bit nicer.

Details, details, details. Give the error message. A screenshot never hurts. Include as much detail as you can so your support staff can reproduce the error. The more detail you give the faster you're going to get a solution. Also, you will likely get ahead of the line. You see, while your support staff is waiting for details on a high priority ticket, they can work on your low priority (but very detailed) ticket. Shhh.. That's a secret.

3) The second worst sin you can commit with your support staff is lying about the importance of your request

It's important to you. It may be the most important thing in your world. Support staff understand that. However, the importance level for your issue should be set based on the importance to the entire company. The fact that you forgot your password and locked out your email account may be important to you. However, a server that is on fire may be just a little more important to your company at the moment.

4) "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." -god

Support staff spend at least some of their time planning for the worst case situation. They do this because they want desperately to avoid those situations and to recover from them quickly when they do happen. Why don't you do the same.

Why leave everything to the last minute? Your support staff is not there to be your personal "ass saver". If you need the video conferencing equipment for a meeting, don't wait until 5 minutes before it starts to ask your support staff to get it working. If you've know that a project needs your support staff to do something a month from now, tell them now and don't expect them to do it with 10 minutes notice.

Home Movies

Vacation 1979 from Shawn Butts on Vimeo.

More movies here

my social networks manifesto

With the recent release of Google's latest social app (buzz) I finally feel the need to step and say what I've been thinking about social networking for a long time now.

You see, I'm a geek in general, and a computer/internet geek in particular.  This means I spend the better part of my time on the computer.  This also means I spend much of my time seeking, consuming, and creating information on the interwebernets.  Like many of my fellow computer geeks, and an increasing number of family members I like to keep in touch with everyone via the net.  Like many people that use this stuff for a leaving I try just about every new things that comes along.  This means I get to pick the new things I like the most (I miss you Pownce) and let the rest go unused.  This leads to some rather annoying issues.

The first is separation.  These silos of social connections are really starting to get to me. I can follow most of my fellow geeks on any of these networks.  They signup for almost everything just like I do.  But, we each pick our own favorites and mostly ignore the rest.  For family members, it's even worse of an issue.  For example, my father recently started using facebook.  This as allowed us to keep in contact more than ever before.  Same for my siblings.  However, I'm ready to move on from facebook and can't ask them or anyone else to follow me around the internet.  For the vast majority of people it hard enough to learn how to use one site. (note to facebook and the others, don't change your interface in major ways too often).

The second is usability choice.  I realize this part is personal preference and that the majority of people will have other preferences.  However, I still feel I need to say this for those of you that agree.  I hate web apps.  I hate flash apps.  I hate air apps.  I know everything has to be a web app these days and I'll admit some of them are very nice.  However, the more I use something the more I want an app native to my platform.  The only reason why I tweet as much as I do is because I almost never have to log into twitter via the web.  I have an app for my mac and an app for my phone.  Here's an example.  I'm trying yet again to really "get" google wave.  But, I don't want to stay logged into a webpage all day.  So, I'm on the hunt for an app that makes it more usable in the way I want to use it.  But, so far all the apps I'm finding just put the web app in a box.  Not really integrated the way a native app would be.  So, I will likely give up on wave again.  At least until a good app comes along.

So, now that I've laid out my gripes; on to the meat of this post.

I want someone to create yet another social network service that provides the following.  

I want to be able to post in a single place and selectively have that service post for me on all the other sites I want or to post on any of the other sites and have it replicate that out as I want.  When I say "selectively" I mean per post.  I might post something everywhere.  I might want to post something just to twitter.  I want full control over it.  If I post something to flickr in a particular folder with a particular tag, all of my own choosing, I want a rule that says post it to twitter, and facebook as well as take the original size of that picture and post it to a specific mobileme gallery as well.

I want to be able to see all the posts from all the other social networks in one place.  I want full control here too.  I want to be able to ignore any posts from a facebook app for a particular user or any user.  I also want time controls.  Maybe I want to queue everything posted from everything but twitter until after 5pm unless the post comes from a flickr feed and contains the word "snowball" to cut down on distractions.

I want to reply to posts from other people. Here too, full control.  I want the option to post the reply to my whole social network, or just on the native network of the original post.  

I want this service to have a completely open API and a dedicated group of developers (employed by the service) providing native and full featured apps for any OS with more than a million real work users.  This means I have an app for 95% of the platforms I would use as well as the opportunity for anyone to make a better app for those platforms or for the missing 5%.

I want this service to also be completely transparent to the users of the other networks.  I don't to ask other people to go here and signup for this so I can follow you or click this link to this other site to see my reply.

In short, I want a single silo that pulls together all the other silos and gives me full control over how I use and interact with all of them together, individual silos, or individual users of the other silos.

I'd be will to pay for such a service and I'm sure other would to.  I think $10 a month to give me the flexibility to intelligently consume my network of social streams the way I want, and to seamlessly interact with the users of those networks without getting in the way tremendous value.  I might even go to $20.  I think others like me that live in these networks would too.

Dear creators of all things interwebernet related; go forth and meet my demands so I can give you my money and make you rich.