Category Archives: Inspiration

Thngs that inspire me and have made an impression upon me in some way

Adobe, Customer Experience Management and Day Software

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Update 10/28/2010: Adobe successfully completes its acquisition of Day Software. Day will operate as a new product line within Adobe’s Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit, joining Acrobat, Connect and LiveCycle. Welcome to all my new teammates! :-)

Adobe has just announced a definitive agreement stipulating its intent to acquire Day Software. This acquisition will bolster Adobe’s leadership in Customer Experience Management, bringing Day’s industry-leading Web Content Management, Digital Asset Management and Social Collaboration applications, better known collectively as CQ, and Web scale content application infrastructure (CRX) together with Adobe’s LiveCycle, Connect and other enterprise software offerings–not to mention Adobe’s Flash Platform and industry-leading tools for creative professionals.

There is plenty to talk about in terms of how deeply aligned this acquisition is architecturally, technically and in terms of shared vision, and I plan to use this space to go into more of these details over time (e.g. synergies between Day’s targeting and optimization and Adobe Omniture‘s capabilities). However, I’m equally excited by the people involved here.

I’m looking forward to shortly being able to call folks like David Nuescheler, Kevin Cochrane and Roy T. Fielding not just industry colleagues but fellow Adobe employees. Welcome to Adobe, Day Software!

For more on Adobe’s approach to superior customer experience, I encourage you to subscribe to experiencedelivers.com and/or follow @AdobeCEM.

Update 7/28/2010: The Web is all a-buzz about this acquisition, and I would say it’s with good reason. Simply put: customer experience wins and therefore customers win, which means that businesses embracing Adobe CEM increase their own profitability.

Since my brief post above, Adobe has posted a press release and FAQ about the acquisition. Rob Tarkoff, SVP and GM of Adobe’s Digital Enterprise Solutions Business Unit (or DESBU) has also posted his thoughts, offering some key takeaways to consider from this acquisition.

Adobe Community Action Week – RAFT

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This week has been Adobe Community Action Week for Adobe employees globally. On Monday, I mentioned that I was looking forward to my particular action choice: RAFT. Today I had the privilege of serving local teachers with members of my team (LiveCycle) along with others from Adobe by investing time and energy into RAFT (Resource Area for Teachers).

Adobe at RAFT

RAFT provides thousands of Bay Area teachers and community groups with a wide range of interactive learning materials, enhancing math, science, technology and art programs. Materials are surplus items donated by over 1,000 local businesses and range from cardboard tubes to computers!

My Mom was a middle-school teacher for 16 years; so I know firsthand how great an impact teachers have on the lives of their students, yet how underappreciated teachers often are in broader society. So, it felt especially good to “give back” to such important individuals in the local community.

Adobe at RAFT

There were about 50 volunteers altogether and together, in just a few hours, we were able to make a significant contribution in the assembly of various kits that will be used by local teachers (e.g. glove-a-phone packs, sticker packs, etc.).

Adobe at RAFT

I was drawn, along with my project-teammates, to the adhesive paper station. Basically our task was to unroll, about 12 feet at a time, lengths of two foot wide adhesive backed white butcher paper, rolled up and rubber-banded for individual application by teachers. A full roll of this paper weighs about 350 pounds, and we proved this by finishing the better part of one roll and starting on a second, new roll before our time ran out. The photo above captures the state of the receiving bin for these individual rolls before we started with our contribution.

Adobe at RAFT

Adobe at RAFT

There were roughly four distinct tasks involved, although some of us on the team (ahem) were a bit more creative about “tasks.” :-) Unrolling was easily the most strenuous; cutting; re-rolling and rubber-banding; binning.

Adobe at RAFT

Adobe at RAFT

Adobe at RAFT

Adobe at RAFT

It may not seem like much, but when you compare the previous two images with the first bin capture, above, I’d say that we accomplished a fair bit of work. It’s fun to think about all the classroom projects that were enabled in the process, too!

Adobe at RAFT

Acts of service are always more rewarding to those who serve, and today’s experience at RAFT was no exception.

If you’re a teacher and can make your way to Sunnyvale, you should really check out RAFT. If you’re a parent of a student whose teacher can get to RAFT, consider giving a RAFT gift card. If you want to make an impact on Bay Area teachers, volunteer your time and energy at RAFT. You’ll be glad that you did!

Rich Internet Applications

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During the MAX 2009 conference, Duane Nickull was interviewed by DZone on the subject of RIA architectures. As an architect, I appreciated Duane’s comments about the responsibility of architects, versus developers, where RIAs are concerned (e.g. focusing on and valuing interaction design and user experience, distilling key business requirements by working closely with those the RIA will serve, being mindful of the framing process-oriented context, etc.).

In particular, don’t frustrate users resonates with me (e.g. it’s a non-technical answer to “what is an RIA?” (or “reeyah”). Duane’s Revenue Canada example (or not “getting” this) is a good one. It just so happens that I encountered my own today…

First, two exhibits off Twitter:

Don’t get me wrong, more vendors need to be reaching out and engaging with their communities in deep and meaningful ways. So, I’m not suggesting that creating a forum for community discussion is bad. However…

What if, instead, the forum was seeded (pre-launch) by a reasonable distillation of those who’ve already voiced their concerns, like Pie? The Web is there to be culled–”listened to” if you will–you just need to mine it.

As Duane and his co-authors talk about in Web 2.0 Architectures, more and more of us are living declaratively. Certainly this is true when it comes to providing candid feedback and standing behind things we believe in (e.g. vendors we want to succeed…and those we don’t).

So, an alternative forum post could have listed Pie’s identity management feedback alongside the feedback of others–fully annotated with community profiles, source links, etc. Of course, those supporting the forum could proactively reach out to folks like Pie to confirm that discovered feedback is appropriate for syndication and could enable contributors to easily follow the conversation moving forward–ideally in the medium of their choice (e.g. email, feed, etc.).

Update 12/29/2009: Of course, Pie, being the strong advocate he is, reached out again and updated the forum post himself. :-)

Adobe LiveCycle ES2

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If you’re at the Adobe MAX conference this week, then you already know: Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2 has launched.

And judging by the attendance at the pre-conference session on LiveCycle, there’s significant interest in building user-centric applications in the enterprise–exactly what LiveCycle ES2 is designed to unleash!

As you will see on the main LiveCycle site, ES2 is all about:

Given my work on smart client architectures, I have to say that I’m particularly excited about the potential in LiveCycle Mosaic.

Mosaic provides a compelling framework that brings together aspects of business and collaboration to drive richer context pivoting. The task (goal) at hand is more richly represented at all times, allowing the user to pivot more effectively and efficiently and leading to better outcomes more rapidly.

Mosaic is not merely about aggregation as is portal technology. Rather, Mosaic is about intuitive, contextual composition that puts the focus back on the user’s task rather than all the supporting systems underneath. Users can access their mosaics either in their browser or on the desktop (via AIR support). Catalogs of mosaic application assets like tiles can be shared to encourage reuse and to simplify future composition.

LiveCycle Mosaic should be a boon for user-centric, content-enabled applications development.

By the way, if you’re not at MAX (like me), you can still participate online. For example, view the top three sessions from each day at MAX on demand. (Today’s keynote stream was five-by-five at my desk!) Check out the MAX Companion, too, while you’re there. October 11 will see all the MAX content posted online, too!

Cheers! :-)

Update 11/25/2009: Please read the “what’s new in ES2” document. I also recommend that newly revised LiveCycle Developer Center (aka DevNet site).

In Pursuit of Elegance

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Last month I read In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing and am finally posting my thoughts on this book by Matthew May.

First of all, it’s a well-written book that applies its message to itself.

I’m glad that I found it after my previous read, since it covers similar ground in places as does Subject To Change but ends up exploring different vistas, too. As a matter of fact, I can relate the contents of this book to several previous reads, and In Pursuit of Elegance has refined my thinking drawn from past reading through deeper correlation and, well, elegance.

“To find elegance, you must appreciate, embrace, and then travel beyond complexity.” The pursuit of elegance is more like chess than checkers. Elegance is “far side,” not “near side,” simplicity; it is at once symmetrical, seductive, subtractive and sustainable.

Concerning this book’s refining effect, take the somewhat popular subject of kaizen–a principle and a practice of “change for the better.” A student of kaizen creates a standard, follows it, and finds a better way. A student of kaizen understands that there are two types of work: value-adding and non-value-adding. In the pursuit of value-adding work, one must be wary of muri (overload), mura (inconsistency), and muda (waste).

Up to this point, I focused more on muda (waste) as a concern, drawing from lessons learned in The Machine That Changed the World while contemplating software factories. However, May writes: “Muda is the easiest to target because it is generally more visible. But muri and mura are often the more evil of the sins, as they can be the actual cause of all muda.” Yes, of course!

Taiichi Ohno, Toyota engineering pioneer and the man behind kaizen, taught his colleagues that new thoughts and better ideas do not come out of the blue, they come from a true understanding of the process. [Aside: Developing and applying empathy is an important theme in Subject To Change.] Writes May: “By requiring keen observation before action, by demanding that one look beyond the obvious surface symptoms to better see the deeper causes, by never giving answers and only asking questions, Ohno taught people to stop and think.”

Make decisions that are based on observation, not assumption (or necessarily inference alone). Therefore, actively form your mental model through firsthand observation (empathy) to ask “What is possible?;” don’t passively succumb to the “ladder of inference” and prematurely ask “What should be done?”