Everything is cool now, thanks to one Dennis Howlett.

A few things were wrong about this whole thing. First, I left a comment Monday about the podcast being borked; then two other people also commented to the same effect the next two days. No response. This perplexes me, since ZDNet is a media company, you’d think they want conversation.

Second, if oracle.com had anything like this happen, it would be picked by Twitter and certain bloggers (ahem, Dennis).

So, asking Dennis, a ZDNet blogger himself, to do a solid and help me get this sorted, seemed like a logical ask. I asked over Twitter (natch), and he replied in vintage Dennis.

Well, he wasn’t kidding. This morning I woke to a note from Larry Dignan that the podcast was fixed. So, thanks to Dennis for wielding his power for good, and to Larry for his help.

In case you’re wondering, I think Dennis bears a separated at birth resemblance to Zeus. His lightning bolts are verbal though.

Anyway, thanks Dennis. Please don’t fry me.

Not really, but it’s funny to me. Won’t someone please think of the children?

But I digress.

People frequently come to me wanting to start this or that community as a done deal, e.g. I want to start a social network like Mix for my own product. To me this feels backwards. Usually, the reasoning is fine; they want to share content (product or support related) with their users. Great.

However, they tend to jump past the fact that there is already a huge Oracle community, spread across several sites (Mix, Oracle Wiki, OTN Forums) that is bound to include most of the people they hope to reach.

So, why would you want to do all that development and maintenance work? Reinventing the wheel is wasted effort.

In reality, starting a community has nothing to do with software or Interwebs. Communities already exist IRL, so moving them online is a natural exension that benefits everyone.

By going online, you can bring the community closer together, across geographical barriers and draw in new members. Interwebs +1.

So building a community isn’t really the goal; it’s finding the community and attracting it to wherever it is you want it to be. This is beauty of the social network. People coalesce around affinity groups, and chances are they’re already out there talking about your product or brand or whatever. This gives you a logical place to start.

Again, don’t reinvent the wheel. Join an existing community; asking people to please come over to another community is work. Take the path of least resistance.

OK, so you found a network, but it’s too general. How can you stake your claim and get your users talking about your product? This is where social apps, deployed within a network rule; think Facebook’s F8 platform and OpenSocial.

You found where your users are, now build them a space within that network where than can talk about your product and, mostly importantly, where you can engage them to collect their thoughts and share your own. Create a group. Ask questions. Share insights. Talk to them.

Now comes the tough part, managing the community. Community manager is rapidly gaining acceptance as a real job. Starbucks and Dell both have dozens of community managers whose job it is to interact with people who submit ideas online.

Protip: People like to be heard. Bonus points for a quick response.

Many times when I get feedback about Mix or Connect, it’s a bug. I often feel badly when I have to tell the person sorry, but we can’t fix that right away. Bugs suck.

Oddly, at least to me, people tend to understand and are forgiving. Frequently, they thank me for getting back to them so quickly, even with bad news.

You can see the same behavior on blogs, which are micro-communities (some are macro, I guess). Commenters want to have a dialog. If you’re blogging and not replying to comments, you’re doing it wrong.

The community manager’s job is to make everyone feel welcome and heard and help them find answers. It’s like being a concierge or a Walmart greeter, and yes, it’s a full-time job.

So, the main points here are: 1) the Field of Dreams approach doesn’t work well enough, leverage an existing community and 2) manage and cultivate your community, listen and respond.

Yeah, I glossed over some stuff like promotion, moderation and content, but that stuff’s secondary IMHO. After all, it’s moot if no one shows up to your community.

What did I miss? I know a lot of good community managers who could chime in with points I’ve missed.

Well, I dragged my feet, and the weekend ended; XP must not have got the memo because it’s being more temperamental than normal. It’s complaining about disk space on C; it’s killing applications without warning; it’s so slow to come back up after a prolonged sit.

And then today, I got an email from IT explaining that I had to clean up the C drive to at least 15% free so they could push me updates. This is fine, except for the fact that I’m in Apps, and we have our own IT department, with their own policies. Chief among them is the policy to ignore updates from the corporate IT department because the Apps division has its own images.

Uh oh. How can I ignore updates when my machine is essentially a zombie? Not to mention the fact that an update requiring 15% of free space (or at least 1 GB) will seriously cripple my cable modem connection. And what if it requires a reboot? Egad.

The final bit of advice in the message was if you can’t clear that much space, you’ll need to reimage.

So, off we go. I’m making a final copy of my files from XP, just in case everything goes South, and I need to reimage to (gasp) XP again.

Then it’s off to Ubuntu. Luckily, like many people, I have most stuff online, and my own trusty Macbook to keep me connected and working.

Wish me luck. I have Rich on speed dial for questions, since he’s a veteran at this.

Update 7/2/08: Decided to wait until the upcoming long weekend because I didn’t burn the CD correctly. Of course, I head into XP to get some work done, and the Norton Antivirus weekly scan starts. I’ve had problems with that for months, unresolved by IT and Symantec. That scan cripples XP, making work impossible. I guess if the drive failed that would be worse.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the green movement has gone from non-existent to a hot-button topic seemingly overnight? The recent Tesla factory announcement has me thinking green lately.

I know it’s been around for decades; I’ve been recycling since the 80s. I used to go around collecting aluminum cans to take to the recycling center and use the money to buy baseball cards with the cardboard bubble gum in the pack.

I always liked the slogan, “think globally, act locally” since it always seemed like a grassroots (no pun intended) movement. Things have really changed in the last two years or so, as corporations jump on the green bandwagon.

I hope this is a good thing; it seems like it should be, even if it’s motivated by the other green, money. Because if it isn’t altruism, at least consumers are demanding green products, which has motivated producers into provided them.

Anyway, data centers present huge areas for green-provement. I’ve blogged in the past about greening up your blog. I’ve been trying to follow Jason’s tips.

I’m sure you’ve seen email signatures with pleas to consider the environment before printing the email. These make me chuckle; other people have a different viewpoint. It’s been a while since I sat in a corporate office, but I do recall seeing a lot of emails on the printer.

While we’re on printing, what’s the need for a print job separator anymore? These alone have to eat up reams of paper every day; sure, maybe 80-95% of them get recycled, but still, it seems wasteful.

About ten years ago, I remember a guy who went on a crusade to replace the bleached white coffee filters with the natural brown ones. I guess the bleach can seap into the coffee and can be toxic in landfills and to the water supply in general. All good reasons. Man, did he fight an uphill battle.

At the time it seemed a little crazy to fight that fight, but now, I’ll bet it would be a moot point.

No realy point here, just a stream of consciousness related to green. Add your thoughts in comments.

The podcast of Paul’s panel at the Churchill Club is available here, just in case you didn’t make it out to see him in person.

Thanks to Larry Dignan at Between the Lines and ZDNet for recording the panel discussion and posting the podcast. Note, the recording seems to be incomplete right now; all you get is the ZDNet ad. I assume this will be fixed soon. I’ll try to upload here and embed a player. Update: Fixed and embedded below, w00t! Bummer that Paul is announced as “Vice President, Strategy and Innovation, and founder of Oracle AppLabs Oracle.” Grrr.

• Steve Bendt, Senior Manager, Social Technology, Best Buy
• René Bonvanie, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing, Partner Programs, and Online Services, Serena Software
• Shiv Singh, Vice President, Social Media & Global Strategic Initiatives, Avenue A|Razorfish
• Charlene Li, panel moderator and Vice President & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Update 7/1/08: Fail. The podcast is still borked, and there are a couple comments on the post to that effect. What gives? Anyone know if this recording exists elsewhere? I looked all over and found zilch other than ZDNet.

Update 7/2/08: Wow, there are now three unanswered comments on that post noting that the podcast is borked. If you’re blogging and not replying to comments, ur doin it wrong.

All the recording says is “ZDNet. The biggest voice in business technology.” That’s awesome, how about a podcast?

I finally called in the big guns, asking Dennis to do me a solid and shake some trees. Stay tuned.

We will be turning off the submissions end of day Pacific time. So, get your idea entered before then. Voting will continue until July 15 13.

If all goes well, we’re hoping to deploy a filtering feature to Mix soon that will help you find and vote for your favorites. I still don’t know how many sessions will make the final cut, so every vote counts.

I’ve avoided shamelessly promoting my own sessions, but here are few I’d like to attend.

• Good Old Fashion Coding Competition
• Building Web 2.0 Social Applications in Ruby on Rails using BEA AquaLogic Interaction
• Using Ruby on Rails with Oracle E-Business Suite
• Ruby/JRuby on Rails on Oracle (hosted by Rich, w00t!)
  
• Advanced Techniques for BI Publisher
• Use these simple tips to quickly find answers to your Oracle related questions and keep your Oracle skills up-to-date
• So, you want to be an Oracle ACE?

Vote early and often.

It’s ironic to me that D-Day for good old Windows XP is coming up on Monday, since for several months, I’ve been trying to motivate myself to dump it in favor of Ubuntu as the O/S on my work laptop.

Tracking Dan’s recent jump into the Mac pond chronicled over Twitter and in his blog has me motivated to think about it more seriously. Don’t laugh, inertia is strong.

I’ve had a Mac for years, since they moved to Intel, and I love it. I don’t consider myself a fanboy, though; that ethos doesn’t really fit me.

I tend to be O/S neutral. I’ve used XP happily for several years, and I actually like it best of all the Windows flavors I’ve ever used, which is a lot: 3.11, NT 3.51, Win 95, NT 4.0, Win 98, Win ME, Win 2K, and XP.

Still, I’ve found that any O/S tends to get slower and buggier the longer you run it, which makes sense. I’m reaching that point with my laptop, and the choice is whether to reimage it with the Oracle image for XP or go off the reservation with a brand new Ubuntu Hardy Heron installation.

Why, you ask? My reasons aren’t really good O/S vs. bad O/S. I’ve just run Windows as my primary O/S for more than a decade, and it seems like a good time to change.

When I started at Oracle back in 1996, Microsoft was the enemy, not that they aren’t now, but more so then. The problem was at the time, Windows and Office had no viable alternatives. So, we had to use them to do business.

Today, you can pick from a menu of great substitutes with equivalent functionality, in many cases for free. The deciding factor now is time and effort.  It’s easy to reimage; all the software is included and configured for me. I’m likely to be back to normal operations in less than a day.

Not so with Linux, even Ubuntu, which hardcore sys admin friends of mine scoff at as “too easy”.

That’s more of a project that could eat an entire weekend and still not be operational. Plus, I know I’ll still need XP for a few work tasks like web conferencing, so I’ll need a virtual machine. I’m not sure how the hardware will tolerate running a virtual XP image and Hardy Heron at the same time.

Why run a VM of XP and not just XP natively? I’m lazy. Now you see the dilemma.

From my years in PC support, I know that most people are deeply superstitious about computers. They don’t want anything to change because if it’s working now, life is good. If it breaks and they can’t work, life is bad, and fixing a problem could keep them down for a long time.

This inertia is why IE 6 still makes up a huge percentage of browser traffic, and why web app developers continue to support it, despite it’s idiosyncrasies. If you want people to use your app, you can’t rely on them to install Firefox or Safari or Opera or even IE 7.

So, over the next few days/weeks/months, I’ll continue to vacilate about switching to Ubuntu. If I do eventually make the move, I’ll blog it.

In the meantime, sound off with your thoughts on O/S, computer inertia, etc. in comments.

We’re all learning this Intertubes thing as we go along, so how do you keep track of it all? More accurately, how can you possibly listen in on all the relevant conversations and filter out noise?

Conversation topics could be anything you care about or are interested in following, including you, your product, your organization, your company, your blog, your Twitter account, etc.

I’ve mentioned some ways I stay informed in the past, and they’re repeated here for the sake of completeness. If you aren’t using at least a few of these tools, you’re missing a lot of good conversation.

Google
Google is a funny animal. Have you ever Googled a keyword and been floored by the results that pop up on the front page? Me too.

Turns out that most blogging software does SEO for you, so when you mention a keyword in a post, there’s a chance that post will come up high in the results for that keyword.

Two examples:

Search Google for “intercompany” and you’ll find friend of the ‘Lab, David Haimes, near the top for his post on Intercompany vs. Intracompany.

Friend of the ‘Lab Rick Turoczy, a.k.a. the Silicon Florist, shared with me recently that he has a very high number of referrals from Google for people seeking real florists in Portland. Ironic.

Blogging software will tell you how people arrive at your blog from search engines, i.e. what keywords they use to find your blog; knowing this will help you target your content, if you choose.

Now that you know how people find you, you’ll want to keep tabs on what Google knows about stuff you’re interested in following. Google Alerts does this for you.

I have about 20 or so alerts set up, so each day, I get a digest email showing me new mentions of a specific keyword. For example, I have an alert for “appslab”. This helps me catch mentions of our ‘Lab, which may or may not include a trackback. You can tell the alert what keyword/s to search for, what type of content to search and how frequently to notify you of hits.

Some ideas on what to track with Alerts: your name or Twitter handle, common misspellings of your name or Twitter handle, your product, your blog, your company, your competitors, your friends, anything really.

Combine keyword referrals with Google Alerts for maximum coverage. I’m sure there are ways to do this for Yahoo, and if you know them, feel free to add in comments.

Twitter
I’m sure many of your think Twitter is done to death here. You are right (and here you are). Still, conversations happen on Twitter about interesting topics too, not just mind-numbing, what I had for breakfast, how I’m feeling updates.

Actually, as I’ve documented before, the how I’m feeling stuff could be about your product or something that matters to you. How can you possibly follow all the millions of (cough, million-ish) people on Twitter?

With Twitter search engines like Summize and Tweet Scan, you don’t have to worry, just enter the keywords that interest you, just like with Google Alerts, and check out the feed. One common keyword to track is misspellings of your Twitter handle, e.g. jkuramoto for me. This helps you engage in conversations you’d miss just using Twitter by itself.

What you do next is up to you. Kudos to people who reach out and try to help Tweeters who are frustrated, e.g. our very own Matt Topper, who reached out to @kbaley recently.

Of course, Summize and Tweet Scan offer RSS feeds for keyword searches, so you can monitor in your favorite RSS reader.

RSS
I’m constantly floored by how many people don’t use RSS and don’t know what it is. If you don’t know and were afraid to ask, never fear. Check out this video by Common Craft for a great RSS 101 lesson. I would embed, but it makes us less green Boo! as Lee would say.

Everyone should use RSS. It’s bar none the best way to collect information off the Intertubes. Seriously, watch the video, start using an RSS reader, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. I use Google Reader, but it can’t read feeds inside our firewall. So, I plan to use one of NewsGator’s free, installable feed readers for that, especially now that Connect V2 is up and running with RSS galore.

I highly recommend following Marshall Kirkpatrick for instructional posts on RSS over at ReadWriteWeb, e.g. this post on tips for making the most of your reader. He’s constantly pushing the envelope of what you can do with RSS to make it work for you.

Mashup tools like Yahoo Pipes and Dapper are great (free) examples of how RSS feeds from different sources, when combined, can make your life even easier.

Social Bookmarking
Finally, bookmarking tools like del.icio.us or Ma.gnolia are must haves, both for storing links you want to remember and for discovery.

Using the network effects of these tools, you can discover content based on common tags or common people, i.e. by browsing the bookmarks of others who bookmarked the same link you did.

Throw in RSS and search, and you also have a way to gauge who’s liking your stuff (your blog posts and web pages), how many people are liking them and what other content they’re liking.

Digg probably fits in loosely here as well, but that may be another discussion for a different day.

Like I said, this is a thread. I haven’t mastered the Force; I’m just sharing what works for me. Sound off in comments if you have additional suggestions for how to keep track of all this Intertubes stuff.

About a week ago, I get an email from Noel Portugal, a guy who works at Oracle and likes to hack around with APEX, Web 2.0 stuff, technology in general.

In one line that stuck out, Noel mentioned that he was recently “bitten” by the Web 2.0 bug and that Twitter especially kept his interest. I snorted to myself, wondering how Twitter could keep anyone’s attention lately, due to its roller coaster status.

Anyway, I tend to forget that Web 2.0 is new to most people, and I was psyched to hear that Noel not only was “bitten” by the bug but that he had been fully zombied.

To gratify his desire to hack around, Noel built and deployed a Twitter clone called OraTweet. He wrote it in APEX and deployed it on his desktop. The feature set is nearly identical to Twitter’s. Noel supports 144 characters, +4 over Twitter, and he support groups, which is a long-standing Twitter enhancement request. He integrated the Twitter API, so you can associate your OraTweet account with your Twitter account and posts OraTweets to Twitter.

His version hasn’t tackled all the Twitter features, but it’s fast and slick and has way more 9s of uptime. Today, he blogged his PL/SQL stored procedure for updating Twitter.

Despite Rich’s scorn for PL/SQL, it’s still a hardcore skill that database and Apps developers need to have, and yes, I has it too.

Anyway, I dig Noel’s work. We can’t integrate it into our stuff just yet, but I really like to see people messing around and hacking together stuff in their spare time. If you work for Oracle and want to check out his work, drop him a note in his comments. Or hit me over email, and I’ll connect the dots.

Keep on hackin’ in the free world.

Spam in my work inbox is limited mostly to mail sent to distribution lists to which I subscribe. Again, a minor annoyance for me, since I can usually tell by the subject if I need to read or not.

So, today, my inbox was choked with about 30 messages all in the same thread. It was one of those ironic spam threads where at least 75% of the replies were unsubs or stern reminders not to reply to all, some of them in all caps, sent of course, to the whole list.

Let’s pause for a protip. In Intertubes speak, when you use all caps, it’s assumed you are yelling. As obvious as this may sound, I think most people use all caps for emphasis, like bolding, or maybe they like to yell. I don’t think most of these people would actually shout if the exchange were in person.

Next, the obvious protip: Replying to all to admonish others for replying to all, results in an infinite loop of spam and irony. And it’s really funny.

This thread actually went on so long, it caved in on itself. One message called out the “don’t reply to all” repliers to all as potentially failing an IQ test. Then, a few others ran with the IQ piece and made it into a pretty funny diversion. I’m still waiting for the final-final reply from someone on the list.

Anyway, aside from enjoyment, this thread did get me wondering how many people zombie reply to all. By this I mean, replying to all, without looking at the full to and cc list.

I’m guilty of sending too much mail, but I try to take people out of the loop when necessary and add them if necessary.

This is a CYA problem. Email is official business. It can be used as evidence to assess guilt or innocence. So, people, myself included, are conditioned to make sure all bases are covered (and are belong to us).

Therefore, we reply to all without even looking and frequently include new people in the thread, just in case.

With real business content, this causes inbox swelling, a necessary evil and probably not avoidable. We all get way too much email, which makes a lot of people cranky.

So, when someone zombie replies to some spam sent to a distribution list, people tend to go ballistic.

This creates spam wars. It usually goes like this:

• Someone spams a list.
• People reply to all with unsub verbiage.
• Someone replies to all with the proper process on how to unsub.
• People reply to all with all caps messages about not replying to all.
• The sender replies to all with an apology or explanation, bonus points for claiming not to spam.
• I laugh.
• Rinse and repeat a few times.
• Optionally, someone makes a funny about the irony of the whole thing.
• I laugh some more.

People get really touchy about unwanted email, and I don’t get it. But, I still try to avoid spamming because I’m that kind of guy.

The cause of today’s spam was a seemingly innocent list created to share some content. The poor person who created it got pummeled with unsubscribes and do not wants. Then s/he made the mistake of promising not to spam the list. People are rough.

Note to self, suggest Connect V2 groups to poor distribution list creator.

Anyway, no real point here, just food for thought. In case you’ve been following, all this post needs is a Rick Roll for the meme trifecta.

If you’re an employee, find me through email or otherwise, and I’ll get you the URL. We’ll be redirecting all traffic from the old version of Connect very soon, in case you’re not in a hurry.

Big thanks to Rich and Anthony who totally pwned this project. Anthony’s import scripts successfully copied all the data between versions of Connect, and Rich has rocked out a sweet new UI, in blue hues that match several of our applications.

Highlights of this version include:

• Upgraded data, including profiles, contacts, ideas, comments, kudos, all of it.
• Groups
• Questions
• Product taxonomy

So, yeah, this is the Mix feature set applied to Connect. Turns out that’s harder than it sounds. We’ve felt from the beginning that groups would be the killer feature for internal teams. So, now let’s see.
Now that we’ve got our instances on the same codeline, ahem platform, we hope to accelerate development. I guess we’ll see about that too.

Irony update: Friend of the ‘Lab Andy C notes the irony of announcing Connect V2 here, since it’s a public blog. He’s right. Many of you know I already announced via Twitter first. Why? Two reasons really.

First, we don’t have an annoucement mechanism or a PR machine for our work, and that’s not really our style. We prefer viral. If you read here or follow me on Twitter, you’re interested enough to care. If you care, you’ll check it out, and if you like it, you’ll spread the word.

Second, since we’ve talked about Connect before, I like to keep people updated on what we’re doing. It helps to remind you all that I do more than just blog. Sometimes.

One thing I like about FriendFeed is that it exposes content to a much wider audience, via network effects, e.g. people like VoyagerFan5761 would probably never have stumbled into AppsLab without cross-pollination thanks to FriendFeed.

Commenting on FriendFeed opens the conversation normally reserved to your blog readers to others in the extended network. However, the conversation becomes fragmented as some people comment on FriendFeed and others comment directly on the blog post.

A few months ago, Glenn Slaven (thanks!) wrote a WordPress plugin to unite the comments in a single view, and I’ve finally got it installed and running here on our little blog. You’ll see it right above the Disqus comments section of the post page.

Alas, there’s not a huge amount of commentary on our posts, but here’s an example of what FriendFeed activity looks like:

I think there’s a lag time between publishing here and publishing the entry to FriendFeed. So, it may take a bit for the plugin to show for a new post, like this one.

If you’re using FriendFeed, your comments will appear on the correct post here, as will any replies made on FriendFeed. If you’re not using FriendFeed, give it a whirl. It’s a nice way to aggregate information, engage in conversation and discover new content.

Plus, its uptime would make Michael Krigsman proud

I’ve always had trouble explaining what I do to non-technical people. It’s gotten better over the years, but it’s still a struggle to explain my job.

Usually, the conversation goes like this:

Q: What do you do for work?
A: I work for a big software company.
Q: Cool. What company?
A: Oracle.
Q: <Blank look>
A: Oracle sells software for businesses.
Q: <Relieved look>Oh. So you write code?
A: No, not anymore.

Or some variant of that. Depending on how much I feel like talking, I might say “I surf the Internet all day” just to bend the person’s mind a bit.

The answers get even tougher when I talk to people in tech. When you say Oracle to the average geek, the immediate assumption is database. After I explain that I work in Apps, it gets even harder to explain what I do here at the ‘Lab.

My answer when I don’t feel like explaining in this case is, “I blog”.

We here at the ‘Lab have very unique and cool jobs. If you’re new here or you’ve always wondered, here’s a brief synopsis of our charter.

We were formed back in April 2007 to explore innovation within Applications. I use the three E’s to remember our original charter:

Educate
We spent a lot of time early on explaining what 2.0 is (and is not) and why 2.0 matters. This is an activity of the past now, and everyone seems to agree that 2.0 is important. We probably had very little to do with raising the importance, but we can offer first-hand experience when people ask for further education, e.g. how do I start a blog, what if someone posts porn, how do I start a community, etc.

Evangelize
Again, this activity has changed since we started. Before it was about convincing people that 2.0 matters. Now, it’s more honing the message to what about 2.0 matters, e.g. you can’t always throw a blog or a wiki at a product and says it’s 2.0.

Of course, this is a subjective area where my opinion differs from others. We try to focus on the principles I list further down to keep ourselves grounded.

Execute
We always knew that talking would only get us so far. So, from the get-go, we knew we’d need to show people and let them kick the tires. We don’t have all the answers or the domain expertise to say confidently what will work for a particular group of users. Our goal was to provide a sandbox where product teams could get a feel for 2.0 and make that leap themselves.

The light goes on, and someone says, “this would be great for x problem our users face.”

This is why we built Connect. We operated initially as a skunkworks outfit, but those days are long gone.

Update: Dan’s comment points out that I did a poor job of explaining. So, I’ve added some meat to the bullets, expanding them into sections.

We’ve always followed two very simple principles.

1. Web 2.0 is about people, not technology (chat, forums, search, blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging, social networks, etc.).
2. Execution wins.

Following these principles, we built sites like Connect and Mix to execute on the first two E’s. An unexpected and happy side effect to our work is that people outside Apps used our stuff and got interested and involved in what we’re doing.

As the tide has risen for Web/Enterprise 2.0 over the past few months, we’ve done less innovative thinking and more maintenance and enhancement. So, what I do every day now is very different than a year or even six months ago.

Because I don’t code, which is a good thing for the team, I wear a lot of hats. In fact, my role reminds me a lot of my startup experiences from back in the Bubble.

So, lately, I’ve been saying I work in a startup within the giant behemoth that is Oracle, and in many ways, this is very true. Like a startup, we’re a very small team with many responsibilities. Also, we have to be nimble with our strategy and able to change direction depending on demand for our services.

We have very demanding jobs and work like we’re at a startup. I frequently see mail from Rich and Anthony in the wee hours. I’m actually suspicious SkyNet replaced them with cyborgs sent back through time, since they are rarely offline or not working.

Anyway, we might have the coolest jobs at Oracle, depending on whom you ask. I’ve been at Oracle for 10 years now, in several different capacities, and this is the most fun I’ve had yet, even if it’s the hardest to describe.

Which is why I tell people that I blog.

I’ve noticed a humorous trend that you can use for a laugh.

People like to rant at Twitter, just check out twistori’s hate feed for samples. The beauty part of Twitter and its many clients is that it provides easy outlet for your frustration. Can’t get a piece of software configured? Flame it on Twitter. Don’t like the customer service you’re getting? Rant about it on Twitter.

I’m guilty of this too. My reasons are a bit different than most though. Over the past few months, more and more companies are using Twitter as ad-hoc customer support. So, when I rant, I expect an answer. If I don’t get one, it tells me a lot.

For example, as I write this, I’m on hold with eTrade trying to figure out why suddenly, after 10 or so years, I’m being charged an account fee. You bet I tweeted my displeasure with this waste of my time.

I’ve mentioned before that I use Summize and Tweet Scan to track keywords on Twitter. Based on what people say to Twitter, I can only assume they think it’s semi-private. For example, earlier today, someone tweeted his Oracle database password. Actually, it looks like he tweeted an entire SSH session, including the connect string to his Oracle database. Fail.

And no, I’m not including the link or any other information.

As with many issues, a little bit of engagement goes a long way. For example, this guy was epically frustrated with Oracle a few weeks ago. Justin and I reached out to him, noting that are a lot of active Oracle experts on Twitter who could be polled for assistance. He seems to be happy, or at least, he realized that Twitter’s not as private as he thought.

Newsflash: Writing code is hard. Using new software is often frustration. If you have an easy way to vent, why not use it? I used to write code. One reason I left that line of work is that writing code can be maddening. I can only imagine what I would have told Twitter had it been around then.

So, for a giggle, subscribe to your favorite keyword feed on Summize and Tweet Scan. You don’t even need a Twitter account to play. Then, sit back and giggle at the things people say to Twitter.

And now for protips.

Protip: Twitter isn’t private, and it’s not meant to be. By making the conversation public, Twitter allows you to find interesting people and find interesting conversation, by using a search engine like Summize to track your favorite topics.

Another protip: I recommend setting your @ replies to “Show me all @ replies”. You can find this on twitter.com under Settings-Notices. This shows @ replies from people you don’t follow in your timeline. It’s a bit cumbersome to follow someone, wait for a reciprocal follow, then start a conversation.

Final protip: If you really want privacy, protect your updates. I always recommend against this, and I tend to avoid people who do this because it seems antisocial. Plus, it really fractures a discussion, since one side of the conversation is hidden.

Sounds a bit like voodoo, but the logic is sound. Cheap and plentiful broadband and iron have made website optimization a thing of the past. If you did site development in the days of dial up, you’ll remember all the tips and tricks to making your site load faster. Remember the eight second rule?

Jason cites research stating that the average web page has increased in size 22 times, with the number of objects per page growing by 21.7 times since 1995. Since 2003 alone, web page size has tripled and the number of objects per page has doubled.

This comes as no surprise as broadband becomes the standard for Interwebs access.

According to the Pew Internet Project, 77% of US home internet users have a broadband connection, and broadband is now present in the majority (55%) of American households.

As the pipe grows, additional content like videos and images are added without fear of slowing down page load times.

So what does all this have to do with the environment? Obviously, consuming less energy translates into using less natural resources, which ideally lessens the impact we have on the overall environment.

The unexpected side effect here is at the data center. Jason observes:

. . . businesses are now being told that they cannot bring any more power into their data centers. The power company is simply refusing to provide them with more capacity.

In many cases, the cost of powering and cooling a data center exceed the costs of the hardware within two years.

Essentially, constraints on power drawn by data centers are now forcing businesses to be greener. But wait, there’s more.

Steve Souders recently conducted a thought experiment on how much CO2 would be saved by optimizing the Wikipedia home page. He used the CO2stats.com estimate that three minutes on a Web site generates three grams of CO2 - roughly equal to the amount one person generates by breathing for 4.5 minutes.”

So optimizing browser caching lessens the load on the iron that serves your blog/web pages, which in turn lessens the CO2 output and energy used to keep the iron cool. Not bad for a pretty trivial investment of effort.

Jason offers some tips to make your blog or website less heavy. These tips come directly from Yahoo and are the result of Yahoo’s ongoing research into how to make their pages serve as fast as possible.

Yahoo built a plugin for Firebug, the Firefox add-on, called YSlow that tests any site agains these 13 guidelines. I ran YSlow on this blog and found we fail at many of the tests.

One problem was way too many HTTP requests. Since we switch hosts about a month ago, our CMS hasn’t worked. The CMS stored all the images displayed in posts. Rich does the heavy lifting for this blog, and he’s neck-deep in other stuff. So, rather than bug him to fix it, I’ve been using Skitch to serve the images.

I plan to wade through the fixes required to raise our overall score. One immediate thing is that I won’t be using images unless it’s super important until we get the CMS fixed.

Let’s be honest though. You don’t come here for the pictures. I hope.

Anyway, I wanted to share Jason’s insights and comments. I found them thought-provoking and interesting. I’m not out to chance anyone’s mind, just share interesting stuff.

You may or may not agree. Sound off in comments.

He will be speaking at the Churchill Club on Tuesday, June 17 at 7 PM. The session is called From Dilbert to Dude: Succeeding with Web 2.0 Within the Enterprise.

Moderating the panel is Forrester analyst and Groundswell co-author Charlene Li. Also speaking are:

• Steve Bendt, Senior Manager, Social Technology, Best Buy
• René Bonvanie, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing, Partner Programs, and Online Services, Serena Software
• Shiv Singh, Vice President, Social Media & Global Strategic Initiatives, Avenue A|Razorfish

Here’s the session abstract:

Whether we welcomed them or not, Web 2.0 technologies have quickly and quietly changed the way business is done. A new and ‘net-connected generation of employees is choosing its own way to collaborate and connect–in many cases without management’s watchful eye.

Given that this new work order has already taken root, what are the major challenges and threats we now need to deal with? What opportunities and wins does it represent?

Panelists from companies who are already in step with this new era in the enterprise will address their experiences with Web 2.0 technologies, providing case studies, strategies, and tactics about how these new tools are being used to transform organizations, from HR to Finance to the C-suite.

If you’re in the Valley on Tuesday, check it out and say hello to Paul.

Most of the operational details are the same as last year:

• Oracle provides the conference pass to qualified bloggers.
• Oracle does not cover travel or other expenses related to attending OpenWorld, just the pass.
• To qualify, your blog should be about Oracle, enterprise software, Enterprise 2.0.
• To qualify, your blog should not be brand-spanking new.
• The OpenWorld team reviews each registration submission and approves at their discretion.
• I have no authority over who is approved or what Oracle covers monetarily.

Update (6/16): I have been led to believe that for blogs that do not obviously fit the “about Oracle, enterprise software, Enterprise 2.0″ criterion that I will be in the loop to make a call. I won’t be applying any bias to my decisions.

For the record, from what I saw last year, there was no bias toward pro-Oracle bloggers or perceived influence. The goal, as I’m told, is to encourage attendance and coverage from all bloggers, regardless of influence or stance re. Oracle.

Listen folks, I do what I can.

This year there are a few differences:

• There is a blogger credential this year, no more registering as Press.
• There will be more cohesive program assembled for bloggers.
• There may be other differences that I’ll blog as we develop the program.

Interested? Register here. If you’re an Oracle ACE with a blog, Justin has your back. There may be a way to get the coveted blogger ribbon and show off your 2.0 savvy, even if you’re already attending in another capacity.

Questions, concerns, complaints? You know what to do.

Based on last year’s extended conversation, I hope it’s not an omen that we’re announcing this on Friday the 13th.

Update: Looks like the registration form doesn’t have a field for blog URL. So, do a solid and please enter your blog’s URL into the Company field.

I love the generation gap. It makes for the best (and worst) kinds of “teamism”, reminding me of a bit George Carlin does about nationalism. The crux is why do people feel loyalty to an accident of birth?

I don’t agree or disagree with Carlin or those who take generational sides. It’s impossible to compare generational attitudes and experiences quantifiably, so why do we bother? Back to the post, this tidbit jumped off the page:

“A recent survey by IT services provider Telindus found that a whopping 39 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds would consider leaving their jobs if a Facebook ban was imposed, reports vnunet.com.”

Wow. That seems high, even for that demographic. Ann’s opinion can be gleaned from her post title, and as usual, the comments are highly amusing. I especially enjoyed Carol N’s comment, ” . . . People that waste time can do it with or without technologies.”

If you read here, you’ll know how I feel about Facebook bans. Obviously, from our work, you can tell we feel that social networks are helpful to getting work done, especially at a large company like Oracle.

Generation Y represents the first hyper-connected generation. They’ve been wired from the beginning. They also benefit or suffer, depending on perspective, from the blurring of life and work boundaries. Ever-present broadband and wi-fi plus increasingly affordable computing power have led to widespread telecommuting and have created a new niche for web working.

So to them, it does seem overbearing to ban Facebook, especially if they’re not working a structured 9-5 workday. I’d be interested to see a breakdown by type of work among the respondents.

Anyway, I doubt I would have blogged this at all. However, then Digg threw me this news item: Study Finds Instant Messaging Helps Productivity. The juxtaposition was profound to me. When I started using IM more than ten years ago, many companies blocked it because of the standard IT fears, security, potential for distraction and lost productivity.

So, here you have a relatively new phenomenon, social networking, being challenged as a timesink and unrelated to work, right next to an older phenomenon, previously challenged on the same grounds, now being hailed as a productivity enhancer.

I thought this was telling.

What do you think about all this, not the generational stuff, but the productivity of social networks?

Sound off in comments.

The Events team decided that due to the popularity of the offer, it should be open longer. So, you have more time to get your session idea submitted and more time to shamelessly promote it on your blog and on Twitter

This will also give us a chance to deploy some changes to help with session filtering. Right now, Rich and Anthony are neck-deep upgrading Connect. So, we’ve not had a chance to address the problem.

Update: Rich just raised the number of sessions displayed in the Latest page and syndicated through the Latest RSS feed to 50. So, you can see a lot more below the fold on Mix, or if you’re using Topper’s voting widget, you’ll get a lot more ideas to randomize.

Stay tuned for another OpenWorld announcement tomorrow.

• Ruby/JRuby on Rails on Oracle (proposed by me) — details how to use Ruby, JRuby and Rails on an all Oracle stack using Mix as a case study
• Using Ruby on Rails with Oracle E-Business Suite (proposed by Raimonds Simanovskis) — Raimonds showed Jake and me some of the Rails apps he’s been building on top of E-Business Suite — pretty cool stuff that I’m hoping we’ll be able to blog about soon.