Toluu : The

The_Shed

A ramble through my thoughts and experiences with life and Enterprise 2.0 stuff.

One of the great things about blogging, both internally and externally is that it gives you a chance to get your foot in the door. By building your reputation online for everyone to see you avoid the uncomfortable first interaction and can get on with much more fruitful discussions straight away. It also means that you meet people who can help you, sometimes much more than you can help them.

Here’s a couple of examples:

A while back I got talking to @Natallini via Scott. We struck up a bit of a friendship and when I started chatting about pumpkin pie recipes she offered to send me some canned pumpkin pie. On the back of that I was a bit cheeky and had my Common Craft mug shipped to her address so I could get the canned pumpkin and the mug shipped together for less cost. It was actually free to me since Natalie paid. (I really owe her a big favour). I can’t wait to get making the next pumpkin pie.

Yesterday at work I pinged a mail to someone asking about a service they offer. I assumed I was making the email equivalent of a cold call but I wasn’t. His reply came back today (which is very quick in comparison to most replies) and included the line, “It’s obvious from your Web 2.0/KM tool implementations that your organization has some good experi

I work for PfizerNovember 20

Following on from the Nazaneen stuff I’ve done a little reading around, combined it with a few conversations I’ve had at work etc and it’s sparked something.

The purpose of this post is a little experiment. I suspect that like most large companies Pfizer keeps an eye on what’s been said of it. I don’t know this for certain.

What I’m curious to know is if anyone from Pfizer, other than the guys I work with, keep an eye on this blog. I’m more curious about those with an interest in security and protecting Pfizer’s brand/people etc.

If you do then could you ping me an internal mail. You’ll find me in the address book.

I’ll blog about this later but for now, that’s all.

Cheers

Sid.

BBC Response to a Facebook Friend RequestNovember 19

So, lets get the obvious out of the way…yes I am sad. Yes I did put a friend request in for our local weather presenter and yes it was because I think she’s kinda hot but in my defence she brings a little bit of sunshine to my morning with her chirpy presentation of the weather. I just happened to be on Facebook at the same time the weather was on and the thought flashed through my mind and I thought, what the hell, I’ll friend her.

The weathergirl in question is Nazaneen Ghaffar and let’s just say she beats Kaddy Lee Preston hands down!

Anyway, I decided to friend her on Facebook, having a bit of a laugh and knowing full well she’d probably ignore the request. Kind of like brushing off one of my dodgy chat-up lines she would have to endure if I saw her out in the street. (Yes I do still have a girlfriend but there’s no harm in a little flirt every now and then is there?

Then I forgot about the request until I got this response from a very mysterious

The IT factor.November 18

Anyone involved in IT support in anyway, be it on a helpdesk, be it as a IT BA/PM, be it just helping out a mate who you work with or be it that you’re just a bit of a computer whizz, I bet you’ve had a conversation that goes along the lines of…

A: Can you give me a hand with my PC?
B: Yeah, why not, I’ve got 5 mins, what’s wrong?
A: Well IT keeps doing this weird thing.
B: What weird thing?
A: Well when I click this button IT just decides to do this weird thing.
A: IT’s just so slow and then IT just decides to not work…

…blah blah blah.

Has anyone ever found an easy way to tell people the IT they are referring to is themselves?

My Dog of a ProjectNovember 18

I’m on a dog of a project at the minute. For anyone who I work with who is reading this they probably won’t even need to ask which one. The local team are pretty good but the global team lack a little bit of discipline when it comes to executing project plans.

When I tell people this I get a kind of quizical look followed by, “But Sid, you hate rules, process and conformity don’t you?”

It’s not that I hate rules, process and conformity etc I just think rules have their place and there’s a lot of rules in places where they shouldn’t be.

Let’s take for instance the rules of the road. They differ slightly from country to country but they are generally there to help people go about their driving and avoid crashing into people. In the UK this works most of the time. People stick to the left, generally adhere to the speed limit etc and we all tend to go about our business. When these rules are broken people crash and die. Fairly easy to see why we have these rules.

The same goes for project management and software deployment. There’s a set of rules that if you follow nobody has any major problems. Some people might moan and groan that the speed limit isn’t high enough or that the traffic lights don’t switch quick enough but they are generally there for people’s safety/sanity.

Like all things theres a little bit of bend and flex in most rules. For instance, if I’m heading down an empty motor