I've been thinking a lot about communications, both with respect to politics and my job. Here's a list of eleven things that every company and non-profit should make available, on its website (via login, probably), for subsidiaries or chapters or departments to use. These eleven steps will go a very long way to ensuring organizational memory, consistency of branding, and an easy way for under-funded sub-entities to look like their grown-up parents:

1. At cost website namespace, templates, and hosting - ie: xxx.organization.ca or organization.ca/xxx, on a giant CMS and via cPanel, infrastructure permitting. Yes, cPanel is not just for the big boys anymore. Yes, I'm saying that every company should be in the hosting business. Why? Because it's ridiculously cheap to buy resale space on banks of servers, it's just intimidating to think about. If the company can afford one web developer, they can do this with not much additional overhead.
2. A website template in Wordpress, Drupal, and Blogger.
   • In an ideal world, all chapter content should be automatically available to the organization as a whole, and in a format that everybody knows, to ensure continuity after so and so quits or whatshername gets too busy to update things anymore. The best way to do this is with option #1: a giant CMS, or at least space that the company can peek at now and then.

     The problem arises when, inevitably, the organization gets some web developer who really wants to put on their resume that they designed the website for their local chapter of the Brotherhood of Pigeonhawk Breeders or Ernst & Young or whatever. This person, who has just enough tech savvy to be dangerous, will inevitably throw around acronyms like "AJAX", "CSS", etc, and convince somebody in charge that their chapter/department is unique so they really, really need their own website to host the pet technology of the web developer. They're special, and not like the other departments/chapters because they have X members or are in a situation of X demographic anomaly, or whatever... The key point is that they absolutely, totally, completely need to go it alone.

     This will happen, and when it does, there needs to be lots of policy and guidelines around branding to allow the website to follow general look-and-feel while still being aggravatingly independent.

   • Conversely, this may be necessary because Head Office has gone on the wrong track, picked a horrid CMS that nobody can use, or has an overworked web developer who can't service the influx of requests for tech in a timely fashion, or the servers are overloaded and there's no money for more infrastructure. So it needs to be as easy as possible for sub-organizations to follow look-and-feel and basic branding so they can do it themselves instead of being tethered to a sinking content-ship.
3. Photoshop headers, swoops, ticks, gradient backgrounds, and stock photos for website and print materials. Essentials include:
   • an icon set
   • bullet points
   • a starter CSS file and XHTML page
   • Any other small but essential graphical elements that make up the organization's branding
4. An InDesign and Publisher newsletter template
5. An InDesign and Publisher newspaper (b/w) and magazine (color) ad template in a few sizes.
6. A one-page "Come to our great xxx"-type flier template in MS Word, InDesign, and Publisher
7. Logos in all colours and reverse-outs (this is duh territory, but hey)
8. T-shirt templates (seriously!)
9. Sample letters-to-the-editor, memos, and letterhead
10. An email address, chapter@xxx.organization.ca, for placing on communications (if it's a non-profit or similar organization where boards change their members more than Paris Hilton changes shoes).
11. A form where organizations can post events and news to the main website and access an RSS feed of same.

Except for #1, this is all stuff that the organization should already have. And #1, a basic CMS, is something they should have. cPanel hosting is a nice-to-have, to at least keep content, if not in the same format, at least in the same locally accessible space.

That's about it off the top of my head. Can anybody else think of anything more?

ARGH.

One of the problems with, say, Drupal (guilty look) is that the release cycles are kind of fast. And right now they're in the middle of one - a major move from 5 to 6. The only problem is that the vast majority of user-contributed modules (major ones, like CCK and Views) have only recently been ported, so many users haven't migrated. But with fewer migrations it means that there are fewer smaller modules being developed for 6. It also means a less mature code base, and more bug hunting. Which, in open-source terms, is great -- users who are willing to bug hunt help the entire community.

But for production sites, it's not so great. And I want to use 6, because it is very nice, a huge step up from 5. It has the Usability Testing Suite, which ROCKS, and it has a few other fairly substantial improvements in the behind areas. So I'm sitting on my hands waiting - literally hitting refresh every hour on some of the CVS queues. I've tried to pitch in on a few modules but there's only so much you can do if the maintainer is working on it at the same time.

In short: GRAH. I'm about *this far* from going back to 5 (mature, stable, but with fewer cooool features and cludgier UI) and worrying about upgrading later, when all the modules I like are available. But that is a big pain in the butt, and I want my users to get used to doing things the way of 6. Sigh.

The wheel, it is being reinvented every day.

I've been doing a survey of the systems that Queen's uses for content and learning management, going around and meeting with people and chatting about web solutions. It's great, because I get to meet my contemporaries and forge connections. There are a lot of us out there, scrunched away in tiny offices, working away in the dark.

However, nice as it is to meet and greet, I'm simultaneously dismayed by the number of custom solutions we've all created, solutions that individual admins have spent years (and in some cases tens of thousands of dollars in salaries) working on... solutions which replicate functionality that out-of-the-box, open-source software already does.

And what for? In every case there is an admin - or, worse, a contract company - who leaves a custom, legacy system that nobody else knows how to update, maintain, or use.

This started when I was at Applied Science - they created a student portal, fully custom coded. Why were we reinventing the wheel? There were many reasons, but most of them came down to failures of research, rather than failures of options. But it wasn't just us: this survey I'm doing is turning up similar issues all across campus.

Part of it is excusable - sometimes, the technology wasn't quite ready yet, so three years ago admins went their separate ways, and created stopgap solutions that became institutionalized. But god, even if they'd worked together across Queen's we could have gone so much farther.

And then the failures: ITS chose an open-source solution that they abandoned a year later... because it didn't have the functionality they needed, and it wasn't being maintained anymore. Whoops. Again, I think, a failure of research and planning - decisions were made based upon thinking about negatives (we can't use it if it can't do this, this and this) - without considering the positives (can we roll our own modules? Is there a development community? Will the tech get better?) In geek-speak, then, Queen's has been talking closed shop when we should have been talking open source.

Why? Part of it is that everybody works in isolation and doesn't know the ins and outs of the available web technologies - let's be gentle and say simply that Queen's can't afford to pay industry standard salaries, so they tend to get hobbyists-turned-pro (like me) rather than people who were working for companies who already went through these issues using good project management plans. So the decisions about what systems to use, or not use - as ITS found out - still failed them, because they didn't actually have a CMS expert working with them to tell them what was what. They made decisions based upon slick demos rather than upon developer community consensus.

And here we are: three custom, unsustainable portals, two failed open-source ventures, two completely custom, unsustainable CMSes, and one monolithic and frightfully expensive LMS later. And we're SO FAR BEHIND other universities it's not even funny.

Enter Drupal.

I said to somebody I was chatting with recently that Open Source, and being a Drupaller, is like religion. But that was just me being flippant, beacause it's actually not: unlike religion, I have extremely good, earthly reasons for why I am so devout. And Sony, IBM, Warner Brothers, SPIN magazine, Yahoo, UPEI and Calgary, porn.org (no, really), The Onion, Adobe (just Flex for now), Universal Studios, Nike, FedEx, AOL, Sun OpenOffice, Popular Science, Amnesty International, Harvard, Belgium, and the frickin' UN all agree with me.

I started developing my newest project in Drupal 6.3 last week, up from 5.1 at my last position, and HOLY GOD IT IS AMAZING. I forgot a) just how easy, and how much fun it is, to use Drupal, and b) how fast Drupal evolves. Six looks much like Five, but it has simplified so much - hooks for module development, menuing, theming, and views - that it is, literally, a joy to use. Fast, simple*, easy. I can't tear myself away.

So GET ON BOARD, QUEEN'S.

That is all.

PS: Use Drupal.

* For developers. Drupal is not MT or Wordpress: it's for programmers. But that's alright - you wouldn't expect a civil engineer to use MS Paint, would you?

Why are monitors getting wider instead of longer?

I'm gathering SMEs! SMEEEEEEEEEEs! That sounds dirty, but it's not. I'm talking about "Subject Matter Experts," part of the requirements-gathering process for the integrated web presence that I'm working on in my new job. And by the way? My new job rocks, with the exception of the closet I'm temporarily working out of (which wouldn't be so bad except that the air conditioning vent is RIGHT UNDER MY FEET and there's nowhere else to put my desk. I'm going to have to rethink skirts). Still, on a scale of one to spiff, everything is fairly spiffy.

Things that I have: new quad core computer? Check. Universal Principles of Design? Check. Dual 22" monitors? Check. Cool co-workers? Yes indeed. Upper management with vision and a strong commitment to students rather than budget line-items? OH YES.*

(Also, good communication of that vision between management and staff? Oh, how I've missed you. I promised myself not to turn bitter, because it was so good for so long, and those are the times I want to remember. But it's hard to watch something you built fall apart - and the things that others built, too - especially when you leave and discover that it indeed wasn't you, it's them, because it's hard not to doubt yourself, you know? But never you mind, Internet. It's probably none of your business anyway.)

My new computer doesn't have an on-board speaker. Isn't that odd?

* Which is interesting. Does career education have a place in academe, where the emphases (was) education rather than jobs? Discuss.

The Puzzle Inn is a new theme cottage in Gananoque, with dozens of board games, crosswords, and puzzles. This charming 3-bedroom home can be rented for the weekend or for a month... it's a great jumping-off for exploring the beautiful Thousand Islands. Web design by Early Afternoon Media (that's me!).

I had an assignment due this morning, and when I went to print it out yesterday night I discovered that oh no! We were out of paper! A mad basement hunt ensued. Boxes were torn open, the recycling bin was pilfered for pages with nothing on their backs, and stationery supplies were thrown about in panic. Then, suddenly, a container caught my eye. What's this? Paper?

Oh, wait. It's stinky ol' A4. Yuck.

(I have no idea where it came from. I never used to touch the stuff, myself). Well, good enough. I printed out my paper and grumbled about the weirdness of it all. It just felt odd in my hands. It was all... long. And ... narrow.

Yeah, my life is tough.

Then I did some reading about A4 because, after all, I can't just use the damned paper. No, I have to understand its in-depth life history, relatives, motivations, and where it was on August 12 1954 at 10:00am. This behaviour, by the way, is basically the primary definition of a nerd. Which I clearly am.

Well. I did my reading. And now? I am an A4 fan. I'm all about the A4. It still feels weird and strange, but I'm just going to get over that because, from a design standpoint, A4 is FAR SUPERIOR to 8.5"x11" paper. It's all about the mathematics, folks. A4 is not based on the length of the King's foot ... no, A4 is based on ratios. Which are COOL.

The ratio in question is a very pretty ratio. It's √2. So for every single kind of A paper, the length divided by the width is the same. It means, in non mathy terms, that you can fit two A4s perfectly on one piece of A3 (2*1:√2 = √2:2), for example. No squishing, no lost margins or things cut off. It's so... exact. And METRIC!

The US is the reason why we're using the imperial Queen's-big-toe paper standard in Canada. Turns out that every other country in the world uses A4, and it is actually its own ISO standard. I love standards. I love international standards even better. The US is slowly starting to adopt A4 in some situations, finally, so there is hope for us here in Canada to adopt A4 at some point in the next millennium too.

So from now on I'm going to use A4 paper. All my assignments will fit awkwardly in my TAs binders and I will stand out! As weird! Or possibly British. Which is... er... good?

But at least I will be hardware-standards-compliant, kind of like using Firefox in the meat world -- a pain in the butt full of smug moral superiority and annoying layout issues. But that's the price you pay, isn't it? So I'll spearhead the movement: Spread A4! It's mathematical! And math is cool!