Thomas Resing's Blog: Tom Resing's Collaboration Blog, page 3

Put May 4th on your SharePoint Calendar

My first week as a Microsoft employee is complete and I’m excited!

This is my new office building!

 

Not only has it been a dream of mine to work for Microsoft, but it’s also a great time to be at Microsoft. I expect I’ll write more about that in the coming months. For now, I’m focused on SharePoint End User Content.

The Future of SharePoint

If you haven’t heard, Jeff Teper is streaming a live event on The Future of SharePoint on May 4th. Register for free to watch from your desk.

Even if you can’t make the event, expect a lot of news to come out of it. I’ll be following closely, myself and expect I’ll have some things to share about what I’m already starting to work on.

One thing I do know now, that I didn’t realize a couple months ago is that the future for SharePoint is brighter than I thought.

Upcoming Events

I’m excited to be presenting at SharePoint Fest DC coming up later this week and the Collab 365 Summit in May. Feel free to stop by my sessions and say hi!

I’m Working for Microsoft!

I’m happy to announce I’ve accepted an offer to work for Microsoft full-time!

Starting in April, I’ll be a Senior Content Publisher in the Modern Assistance and Support Experience (MAX) group. We’re moving to Seattle!

For me, this is really the culmination of a dream I’ve had for a long time. The first time I applied to work at Microsoft was in 1997, as a senior in Computer Science at Northwestern. If I recall correctly, the only response to my application was a form letter received months later. Fast forward 19 years and I’m a different person and Microsoft is a different company.

One thing that hasn’t changed is Peter Loforte, GM of MAX. He’s been at Microsoft since ’93 and a GM since 2002. As far as I can tell, he’s a rockstar. And, you want to work for a rockstar. I got the chance to speak with him during my 8 hour long interview day. And, like most everyone else I’ve met on the Redmond campus, he’s a very smart and ambitious person. I could tell from talking with him that not only does he believe in Microsoft’s mission, he really believes Microsoft is contributing to the betterment of mankind.

I’m excited to join a great team at a great company and move to a great city. I’ll miss San Antonio and all the friends we’ve made in the 15 years here. I’m sure we’ll be back to visit!

Daft punk in code. The bells.

Aerodynamic in Sonic Pi sounds great. There’s just one thing that bugged me. The bells.

The walk-through, featured on Hacker News, Techcrunch, Twitter and more, explains the code for the song in detail. And, the author  writes that the sound, or timbre, of the bells in the intro isn’t quite right.

Working on this project takes me back to my college days. Back when I was a Music Performance and Computer Science double major at Northwestern, I would get questions. “Do you want to write music with computers? ” No. I didn’t. I wanted to play bassoon and learn programming. But, in this one case, I’ll make an exception.

The Bells

Like I said, the Daft Punk song in Sonic Pi sounds great, for the most part. Sébastien Rannou, the author, explains in great detail how the pitch and timbre for the bells in the intro is determined. And, he explains some techniques for improving the synth bell included in Sonic Pi’s library. In the end, the sound just doesn’t come close enough to my ear, compared with the rest of the song.

Original

I posted the 15 second intro from the original to soundcloud so you can listen to compare it to the sonic pi version.

Aerodynamic Sonic Pi by Sebastien

You can hear the difference in the first 15 seconds of the Sonic Pi version by Sebastien above.

The Code, with a new Sample

Here’s the code for a somewhat improved version with Sonic Pi:

#church bell sample found from https://rbnrpi.wordpress.com/project-...

# http://r.newman.ch/rpi/SonicPiChimes.zip

use_bpm 123

4.times do

sample ‘C:\projects\sonicpi\samples\Chimes\chimes_a3.wav’

sleep 8

end

Download the chimes samples from newman.ch and change the directory in the sample line above to the directoty you exapand the zip to.

And here’s the result:

New Opportunities

After two and a half years in Sales Engineering at Jive Software, I’m exploring what’s next for me. I’ve enjoyed my time as both a Subject Matter Expert on SharePoint and as a Field Sales Engineer. And now, it’s time to move one.

At Jive, I’ve had the opportunity to work with leaders across the company. I consulted and co-produced work with IT, Engineering, Product Management and Product Marketing. As I visited and collaborated with different groups, I was also learning how a market-leading, publicly-traded software company works from the inside out. As a Sales Engineer, I also learned and practiced valuable Enterprise Software Sales skills with some of the best in the industry, preparing and delivering executive presentations, product demonstrations and visions of the future. I’ve always said that if the future of the digital workplace doesn’t include Jive, it includes something that looks an awful lot like it!

What’s next? I’m not 100% positive yet, but it probably looks a lot like what I’ve done before. For the past 20 years, I’ve focused on helping others take advantage of web and mobile communication and collaboration tools. Lately, my focus has been on packaged web collaboration software. Many of the companies I’m talking to today produce commercial, off-the-shelf software.

If you think I can help you, please let me know. I’d be happy to take advantage of my deep and broad technical knowledge and experience with web collaboration software and enterprise social networks.  Also, I’m open to learning something new.

I’ve published my availability at https://resing.youcanbook.me/ If you’d like to set up a time to meet over the next couple of weeks while I’m considering options, feel free.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve already had some great discussions with some awesome people doing incredible things in the web software industry. I’m looking forward to connecting with you.

-Tom

14 Day Video Challenge – Days 1-7

“How to Make a Udemy Video on your iPhone” is my latest course completed. The instructor recommends making a 1 minute video everyday for 14 days to get comfortable on camera. I’ve started the project and created a 14 Day Video Challenge Playlist on YouTube.

Here’s a summary of the first 7 videos:

Day 1

Day 1 is shot from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and includes a clip of me practicing a Toastmasters speech.

Day 2

Day 2 includes some tips on Twitter Analytics. Did you know you can see how many people viewed your tweet?

Day 3

I shot Day 3 from my sister Mary’s house. She asked how to remove certain sites from her Google Search results.

Day 4

Day 4 is a walk in University Park, Maryland with Mary’s dog Teddy and a visit to Kermit the log.

Day 5 – In Memory

My mother, Catherine, known as Kay and Nana, passed away peacefully on Friday, December 11, 2015 around 7pm in the evening at Anne Arundel Medical Center. She was a role model to me and so many others. We will all miss her.

Day 6 – Funeral Announcement

On Day 6 of my 14 Day Video Challenge, I recorded an announcement of the services after my mother’s death.

Day 7

Have you ever run out of space on an iPhone, iPad or iPod? Restore the device from iTunes on your computer and you may recover lost space. I recovered 3GB on my 16GB iPad.

Next Up – Your Requests?

As you can see in the videos above, I’m taking requests.

Don’t Talk. Or, Listen to Improve Communications.

One day more than 30 years ago, John Francis stopped talking. And a funny thing happened next. As he says it, “I started listening. For the first time in a long time.”

Walk the earth … my 17-year vow of silence

Quiet

Quiet was the theme of the Ted Radio Hour episode I listened today. It really struck me how important quiet is to communications. How can you listen if you can’t hear?

John Francis took it to the extreme. He didn’t talk for 17 years. He learned, by not talking, that he hadn’t really been listening. Without pausing to really listen to the other person, he never really heard what they wanted to say. Now, speaking eloquently, with humor, he is a better communicator because he listens.

Improving Communications

How can we apply this lesson of quiet in the digital workplace? Where can listening help improve communications with customers, partners and co-workers online? I’ve learned to listen when I publish.

TomResing.com

Blogging publicly for more than 7 years on digital collaboration topics, I listened to what my audience was interested in. I measured the interest in topics through tools like Google Analytics. What pages were most read? What search terms brought readers? How did they leave? Over the past year, tomresing.com had more than 50,000 readers. That’s up 83% from the year before, in part, because I’ve listened.

Jive Software

Is it any wonder I was so drawn to Jive? Internal communications has been begging for this kind of listening tool. With the products Jive-n and Jive-x, blog analytics are built in. They’re called Impact Metrics.

Indications of audience reaction are pervasive throughout Jive’s software products. Another built-in tool, Community Manager Reports, help owners of places large and small understand the impact.

Below is a view of “My Content.” I used this view to find a good example for the impact metrics picture above. The 7 recent items below have more than 1700 views. Maybe I should work on the likes, though. I only have 16 likes. In a short amount of quiet review, bookmark counts and comment counts give an author, or just a browser, more information. All together they help paint a picture of how content is resonating with the audience.

Don’t Talk? Or, Listen.

Ted Radio Hour has made it onto my list of top podcasts . I’ll listen to the full John Francis Ted Talk, too. Unlike Mr. Frances, I won’t stop talking for 17 years. Much like him, I do plan to listen and communicate better. Also, I’ll look for the best digital communication tools, like Jive. And, I’ll continue to share what I learn with others who want to listen.

Let me know what you’re thinking with a comment below, a private message through LinkedIn, an email to resingnet-website@yahoo.com or a tweet tohttp://twitter.com/resing. I promise to be quiet and listen.

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn on November 20th, 2015.

Live from UnJiveWorld 2015

I’m at a customer-organized conference in San Jose, today, called UnJiveWorld 2015.

Does it surprise you? My #Workstyle is “Powered by Customer Love.”

My #workstyle has me out visiting @jivesoftware customers and future customers.

A video posted by Tom Resing (@resing) on Oct 14, 2015 at 11:26am PDT

I’ll post updates on my Jive Community blog from the event, as the day goes on.

I posted my first blog, Live blogging from UnJiveWorld, straight from the Jive Mobile App on my iPhone. That was so easy, I’ll probably do more updates straight from the phone so I don’t even have to pull out the larger devices.

Social Intranet Resources Needed

Search google or Amazon for the words “social intranet” and you won’t find a lot of great resources. Why is that?

I started a conversation on twitter today asking a similar question and was lucky to have a number of very experienced intranet developers respond.

Who Cares?

When I do a search for “social intranet” on the Jive Community, I see a totally different picture.

Consulting companies are talking about it:

Making Good on the Social Intranet Promise, by Wes Goldstein, JCS Consulting, Feb 2014
Why You Need a Social Intranet, by Andrew Kratz, Social Edge, May 2012

Alcatel-Lucent is talking about it:

Social intranet unlocks knowledge and creates value, Jem Janik, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, April, 2013

And of course, Jive Professional Services and Product Marketing are talking about it and questioning it:

What’s In It For Me? An Adoption Strategy for Your Social Intranet, Virginia Ulrich, March, 2015
Is there such thing as a Social Intranet?, Deirdre Walsh and Tim Zonca, March 2012

Beyond the Jive Community

I don’t believe the words intranets and social are linked only by members of the Jive Community. It’s time for more resources. I’ll look at what part I can do to contribute. I’m sure I’m not the only one. If you see great material that covers both these terms, please let me know in the comments below, by twitter @resing or through my contact page here at http://tomresing.com

A Look at 1 year of Community.Nintex.com

I’ve been a fan of Nintex, as a company, for quite a while. I know they’ve got smart people like Mike Fitzmaurice working there. I’ve recommended their solutions for workflows and forms to many of my consulting customers over the years. At Rackspace, I even wrote a blogpost highlighting a neat Cloud Computing workflow in Office 365. And, for the past year, I’ve watched and participated in the new Nintex Community site powered by Jive Software.

Happy First Anniversary!

Nintex has an active community, that is a model for many others. As a fan of both Jive and Nintex, I’d like to send a special anniversary wish. Well done, Nintex!

Getting Started Guide

One area of Nintex Connect highlighted by a co-worker recently is the Getting Started guide. This place uses Jive web-based documents and blog posts grouped into sections based on the new community users’ background. Workflow builder, start with one of the linked documents in the first section shown in the screenshot below. Or, click “Read More” for the full table of contents of that section.



The community manager for Nintex Connect, Emily Billing, has done a great job encouraging community activity. Check out her her profile below.

Support Communities

Support communities in general have been getting a lot of attention lately. Jive’s powered a lot of household names for quite awhile, including Adobe, Verizon, T-Mobile and many more. The platform extends into internal communities, as well. Thanks to all the companies that show the Jive logo on their public website. I hope you enjoy interacting with Jive’s customers and your peers in their communities, both externally and internally!

TomResing.com Now Hosted at SiteGround.

TomResing.com’s pages are now being served from a provider called SiteGround.com.

Why make the move from Microsoft Azure? Two main reasons for me, performance and cost.

Performance

Azure’s performance for WordPress hosting just wasn’t cutting it for me. I want TomResing.com to be available 24×7 at the quickest page load time for readers. I’m sure part of the issue with Azure is the lack of a cloud-based MySQL service. I was using ClearDB, which is a MySQL service provider in Azure Marketplace that uses Azure as a customer. It was ok, but not great. I expect a lot of the performance issues I ran into were related to ClearDB.

SiteGround is one of the fastest WordPress hosts available according to WPSiteCare.com. According to SiteGround.com’s own comparisons it’s fast and scalable. I’ll test that overtime to ensure they hold up to their promises.

Cost

One reason I went with Azure was because I had free credits courtesy of Microsoft’s MVP Award Program. However, once I moved to Azure, I found that MySQL hosting was going to cost me. I started with the free plan at ClearDB through the Azure Marketplace. Quickly, I ran into limits that pushed me into the $10/month plan at ClearDB. I had to pay that out of my own pocket because Azure credits don’t cover Marketplace credits. After 1.5 years of paying, I decided I could spend that $10/month better to get better service for my readers.

SiteGround isn’t only fast, it’s relatively inexpensive. For less that the $10/month I was paying just for the database hosting, they are hosting the whole site. And, they are optimized for bloggers. WordPress is one of their specialties. I’m using the base WordPress plan which you can get currently for $3.95/month with a discount link. After purchasing, I signed up for a discount link of my own. When you purchase through my referral link, I could receive some money, too. I’ll see how that works. Seems like it could be win-win. You could save 60% on hosting and maybe they’ll pay me something towards covering my costs. Maybe it’ll cost me less than I even expected!