Strategy

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism does a fantastic job reporting annually on the state of the American news media.  The Pew Project's sixth edition for 2009 is no exception and provides lessons for all businesses on the importance of agility, adaptability, and competitiveness.  The following paragraph from the report's introduction says it all.

Journalism, deluded by its profitability and fearful of technology, let others outside the industry steal chance after chance online. By 2008, the industry had finally begun to get serious. Now the global recession has made that harder.

"An objective without strategy, or a strategy without execution remains a dream."

- Dries Buytaert, Drupal, Acquia, and Mollom, "Contributing back to Drupal", Buytaert.net.

"Your reputation and your character are what sell you for the next big job."

- Magalene Powell-Meeks, Deputy CIO, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Quoted in "Me, Myself, and I", CIO, April 1, 2008

It looks as if Laura Scott, pingVision, had some free time on her hands. There are reasons free servcies on the Internet are free. Laura wants you to start asking yourself, "why?".

Is the future really free?

It seems we've entered an age where there's a land-grab happening for personal data and attention time. Look at all the web start-ups backed by venture capital. They aren't investing out of philanthropy. There's value there. YouTube is "free" but Google paid over a billion dollars for it. Why?

Here's a hint: It's not about the Tube. [Read more at Laura Scott's Blog]

"Blogging as a business is business. It takes business training and skills to make money with your blog."

- Lorelle VanFossen, "Business School for Bloggers: How to Make Money With Your Blog", Blog Herald, April 7, 2008

MySiouxFalls.com is a new and local online news source for the city where I currently reside, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  At first, I was not all that excited about the site and had not plan on mentioning the MySiouxFalls.com site in my writing. We've all seen these sites before, right?  In fact, I would say that many of the visitors to this blog likely have designed or participated in building sites similar to MySiouxFalls.com.  That's not to say that there are not some things from a content management perspective worth mentioning.
 

Recently, I read some good posts regarding content management systems (CMS) on a few blogs I visit almost daily.  The posts have had me thinking and reflecting in general about CMS.  However, I won't talk too much about them so you get a chance to go on and read the articles yourself.  The first post comes from OpenSourceCommunity.org and the second post from Gadgetopia.

On Planet Drupal, there have been a number of posts lately about the difficulty project leaders and developers have in  saying "no" while working on a project.  As much as Project leaders want to please both their client and their team members, real leaders understand the responsibilities they have in saying "no".  More specifically, I'm talking about Boris Mann's post, "Susan Mernit on the role of "no" in product development" as well as Laura Scott's own post You've got to know when to 'no' them.

"IT has no value whatsoever if you can't help people carry out their missions."

- Chris Niedermayer, "Go with the grain", Government Computer News, May 2, 2005

I'm finally down to just the finishing touches on that osCommerce project I mentioned about last month. The site is Dakota Angler, a fishing bait and tackle store, that finally is ready to sell their goods online.