To the crux of the matter…I updated my latest job title and to my one at Technovated and wanted to add Technovated as a company profile. But it seems that technovated.com is already associated with Open Box Software, a South African company who Gareth and some of my previous colleagues used to work for. Because our domain is associated with their profile I can actually edit The Open Box company profile…not too good if I was malicious or a previous employee with some major gripes!

Also, for some other strange reason, the social network kindo.com which a few of us built is also associated with Open Box. What?!

So, I am unable to create a new company profile for Technovated because our domain is already being “used” and the same applies to Kindo!

I think there are some seriously bad SQL joins going on somewhere…did someone say amateur hour?

Mode details here:
_ Official Google Blog: 30,000 new Google Apps business users at Valeo

This marks a significant moment for Google Apps, because Valeo has 30,000 Internet-connected employees, making this one of the largest enterprise deployments of Google Apps to date. Valeo is moving to the cloud with the support of Capgemini, one of the world’s most highly regarded technology advisory firms. This deployment across Valeo’s distributed workforce of 192 business entities in 27 countries and five continents demonstrates the vast scalability of Google Apps. Whether your company has just five employees in a single room, or tens of thousands of people scattered around the globe, Google Apps can easily provide powerful messaging and collaboration tools.

Hopefully this is something of a beachhead for web services as a whole…

Check it out, you should start to see the first signs of our social direction, which sets us apart from being “yet another genealogy application”… 11 Languages helps too…

_ Kindo – Some new features & improvements to kindo

The kindo team is very proud to announce that we have released a number of new features which we hope will improve our users’ experience.

Firstly, we have added 3 new languages, namely Russian, Turkish & Brazilian Portuguese, which now brings the tally to 11.

Our family

Secondly, we have added a brand new page called “Our family”, where you can view the latest updates from all of your active family members. It also has a section with family statistics, so you will be able to see some interesting facts about your tree – the more data the better, so start updating those profiles

From:
http://blog.kindo.com/

1. Pruning is better (and you can use your keyboard to move your family tree around)
2. Invitations are smoother (and we’re playing nicer with Hotmail)
3. Your profile page has more information for your family (more status updates, and a better calendar)

Since we’re no longer in “beta”, you can be sure that your tree and pages will work as expected. So continue to build your beautiful trees, and share it with your whole family. And tell your friends to start their own tree too!

We feel we’re far from the finished article – Kindo will grow up, evolve, and get bigger and better all the time. We’ve launched a new Kindo forum [http://forum.kindo.com] too, which is a good place to ask questions if you need any help. Please tell us what you do and don’t like about Kindo, and also tell us how you want it to grow too!

Bye for now!

We have also released a new blog on blog.kindo.com, so if you would like to keep up to date with our latest news, then please visit it. Comments are more than welcome

Here are some snippets from two interesting posts on the Kindo blog

http://blog.kindo.com/2007/08/02/some-technical-details/en/

We’re having fun building the Kindo application and used a number of frameworks and components to achieve the finished result.

For the web framework we’re using Seagull which offers excellent integration with Flash through the AMF PHP request handling and easy integration with Ajax and Graphviz. For the Ajax interactions we use jquery exclusively, for Graphviz a heavily extended version of the PEAR lib of the same name. Working with the dot language has been interesting and a good opportunity to experiment with the subtleties of a genealogy graph.

http://blog.kindo.com/2007/09/04/welcome-to-the-beta-release/en/

A little while ago we released an Alpha to a small group of people, to gather valuable user feedback. Thanks to those great people, we’ve had our heads down improving Kindo, and as a result we’re releasing the Beta, and at the same time opening it up to a wider audience for more feedback.

Living and breathing what we’re doing every day sometimes means that often we don’t see the wood for the trees. Having people external to our team try out what we’re doing then give us feedback, is such a valuable process, and we’re hoping that it will help us to discover new bugs, problems, and cultural differences that will enable us to give our users something truly exciting. Of course, we are already aware of many bugs, but having our friends help us to find more is both important and rewarding. We like to think of it as continually polishing our masterpiece.

To do that we’ve created an area we’re using to discuss everything related to what we’re doing, because we want to keep things real. We’re hoping that as we grow and develop further, you’ll help us to make the right decisions about what features we add, and tell us what you think we’re perhaps doing the wrong way. After all, we’re only people, and we’re making the assumption that getting things right for users is going to be an interactive process involving everyone!

So today, while getting the Alpha out the door, it felt incredibly rewarding, both to be working with such a cool team, but also to actually get something out that people are using and testing.

Our initial stats show that the trend we were hoping for is in fact happening, which is also very rewarding. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to take something very complex, and turn it into something visually simple and easy to use. I’m not saying we’ve achieved that, but we’re certainly most of the way there.

So, it’s almost time to go home and do some more work, but it sure feels like today (even though it feels like we’re in a heat wave) was a good day

Must say that the last few months have been a blur…
Since January of this year, Technovated has gone from 4 people, to 10, to a venture funded project with 14 people in all, over three office moves and many many late nights and long weekends.

There’s a blog post coming up about it all soon, but the long and the short of it is as follows:

1. I’m responsible for getting our venture funded application out the door soon, so I’m stacked as it is
2. I’ve battled to find dates this year that get the right mix of African and international speakers together at the same time
3. I’ve battled to find the right kind of sponsorship early, which would mean the difference between something good and something mediocre – mostly related to point 2 (since sponsors like to be linked to speakers and topics)
4. I’m convinced that it would be a loss maker if we didn’t get the right speakers – there’s a very fine line between raising enough sponsorship to make the cost for attendees affordable as well as afford to bring out good speakers; all before you have fixed numbers that are all paid up… and without a pot of cash to dip into, it’s harder to take risks

So, in truth I’m not 100% happy about it ‘cos I’ve been talking about it for a while and I’m the kind of person to do rather than talk wherever possible, but I’ve taken some good advice from people who are helping out, and the consensus is that we should be aiming for around March / April next year rather, to give us more time to get points 1 through 4 above right. I certainly don’t want to spend time, effort and potentially my goodwill only to get great speakers out to SA and the event is a dismal failure and costs me more money than I have or can afford!

Anyways, this isn’t a sob story if you were thinking you were gonna be reading one.

A lot of people have either told me to give the idea up, or told me that I’m crazy, but I believe that they’re wrong. I’m pretty sure now that the original format and idea that I had bubbling in my head is going to have to be re-thought to take into account the difference environment, the cost of long trans-Atlantic flights, and the relative expense that something like this is when compared to someones monthly salary.

That said, I think the direction to take is to adapt and give more time to finding the right dates so that the right speakers can congregate for the event. Once that is done getting sponsorship will be easier and therefore the chances of success higher.

So, bottom line is that I’m still personally 100% committed to getting this off the ground and happening in Africa, even if it has to be delayed some – I would rather delay by 6 to 8 months and make it a good one where everyone benefits, than rush to make it work in October and end up with something that is mediocre…

So, I ask you to bear with me, and to stay tuned. It will happen.

If you know any business analysts looking for an exciting gig/role, then please get in touch with me

Job description below, can send word doc if you like.

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Business Analyst – Job Description

Openads is seeking a highly skilled Business Analyst with a level of technical expertise, to work within the Product Management group.

Candidate will help formulate and define the scope and objectives of systems and technology. Based upon user needs and a thorough understanding of the business and industry requirements, the candidate will assess and present the business case. Must help assess the implications and impact of deliverable on the current and future business environment.

Working closely with the Product Owner, the candidate will be responsible for translating the project vision and consequently lead developers to solve business requirements. The analysis of business and user needs, then translation of those requirements into system specifications will be an important aspect of the job. Will also be required to build relationships with users, functional managers and consultants regarding specific deliverables.

Must be happy to pick up knowledge and expertise quickly in a fast-paced environment. Ideal candidates will have experience in the advertising industry and Agile Project methodologies.

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with Product Owner
Will help translate key requirements from the Product Owner and translate them into a form that developers can work with. Will also aid the Product Owner in making key decisions

• Strategic Planning
Sit between the development group and the Product Owner. Must be able to provide input as required, communicate decisions and strategies and then help implement that strategy on specific projects.

• Process Improvement
Work within and help refine the requirement processes.

• Business Consultancy/Liaison
Play a supportive role in advising areas of the business and technical staff on the implication of new initiatives and ideas on existing applications.

• Business System Selection
Play a leading role in the identification and assessment of business systems solutions for specific projects. Ensure that the solutions are in line with Product Owner’s requirements

• Business Systems Development
Provide input into the development of new business systems through detailed analysis. Write specifications for external parties and internal staff to develop projects.

• Business Systems Delivery Mgmt
Play a lead role in the implementation of projects for business systems solutions. Assist in unit and integration testing, and manage sections of acceptance testing. Ensure components are delivered to satisfactory levels.

• Testing
Will play an active role in testing and identifying defects in deliverables

Mandatory Skills:
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• Extensive experience of leading business analysis
• Good experience of process analysis
• Good experience of data analysis
• Ability to resolve issues without clear or predefined solutions
• Motivated, quick thinking and have an interest in learning various technologies.
• Must be happy to work within a structured Agile project methodology

Desirable Skills:
• Experience of Advertising industry
• Experience of working with Agile project methodology, ideally Scrum
• IT Development background
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Thanks in advance if you do
Gareth