Business Consultant for hire

I leave Fujitsu today, i.e. at the end of September. I am striking out on my own, and plan to do contracting work in the North East of England. Hopefully this will be a springboard to more varied projects – reflecting my interests in cutting-edge collaborative tools and virtual worlds etc.

In putting together my leaving note to Fujitsu colleagues (and the associated mailing list), I was able to reflect on all the fantastic people I have worked with, in nearly 10 years with Fujitsu. Also, that I genuinely believe Fujitsu has been an excellent employer and good place to work.

Those ten years have given me a great foundation to help Customers maximise their return on their Technology investments. In practical terms, this means helping them:

• Exploit existing collaboration tools and infrastructure
• Understand impact of consumerization and Web 2.0 on Customers and other stakeholders
• Create a successful blend of infrastructure, using established collaboration / information management tools and leading edge ones
• Understand technology’s impact on People, and create programme of change to manage this impact and maximise Return on Investment
• Make informed decisions about which tools / trends match needs of organisation - don't just go with the flow

I’ve worked for Fujitsu with a number of large Government Departments, and a mixture of Private and Public Sector bodies.

More details at http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinguysouter.


Props to Laughing Squid / Scott Beale, Ariel Waldman and, of course, to Hugh Macleod

Technorati Tags: work,business,success,technology,consultancy,advice,web 2.0,NE England

Template construction lessons learned

(so far)

• Save your template before and after each change, e.g.:
  • Embedded code, like Google Analytics
  • Adding various widgets
  • [Change control becomes important later, so best start at the beginning! :$]
• Going back to original Blogger template
  • Under Layout | Edit HTML | Edit Template, choose "Revert template to classic"
    • This indeed takes your right back to the default Blogger template, which includes your blog posts, and a couple of standard widgets, e.g. About Me, Previous posts etc.
    • There is then an intermediate step -- to be able to get to the 'upgraded' Blogger layout editor, you have to 'upgrade' the layout editor
    • This seemed to bring back my existing widgets! :-s
    • I then removed the widgets one by one
      • I was expected that a reversion to the Classic template would take them away
      • It did, but 'upgrading' seemed to bring them back... :-(
• I then ran the reverted template back through Disqus - still no joy :'(
• I then chose "Revert widget templates to default", and ran the code through Disqus - success!
  • I think returning the widget templates to default stripped the Disqus code from any widgets
• N.b. I encountered an "Upload template error" in Blogger (code bX-9khcxc), when I pasted the code from Disqus back into the Blogger edit html frame - very frustrating!
  • However, I did a quick search and found that the problem was because I was using Chrome, and also Firefox - use IE instead, it worked for me :-D
  • This Google Group helped me work this out
• I have opted to keep existing comments on this blog, and chose the option on Disqus for comments 'from now onwards'
  • Will check existing posts and Not allow comments, and hide existing ones (where there aren't any) - if I can be bothered!
  • The only glitch with Windows Live Writer that I have come across is that you don't have the option to switch off comments - essential if you want to allow Disqus to handle comments for you
  • Therefore, one has to publish a draft from WLW, and then go to the Blogger interface online to switch them off <yawn>, before you publish!
• On the other hand, Flickr publishing in WLW is rather good
• Check this rather good post to help credit original photographer etc.
• I'm putting a couple of FriendFeed widgets into the template until I have a discussion with a web designer I know.
• I'm also trying to get the 'Recent Readers' widget from MyBlogLog
  • Part of the process is to paste this following link - Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification - into a post, which 'verifies' your site in the eyes of MBL.
  • You can also try putting a meta tag in your site homepage, but putting it into the Blogger template hasn't worked for me, hence this Plan B...
• Umm, I think that's it for now! Comments / amendments very welcome.

Technorati Tags: blogger,flickr,mybloglog,disqus,howto,template,windows live writer,chrome,firefox,IE

Template under Construction

Photo by Otavio_DC

Quick head's up to say that I'm editing the Blogger template which makes Wellbanked look nice -- ostensibly to sort out the Disqus commenting function.

At the moment the functionality seems to appear twice for those commenting, which isn't good.

Hopefully I should have this sorted in a couple of days. I have / intend to:

• Saved the existing template to my PC
• I have saved the titles and contents for the various widgets in my Google Notebook
  • Gives me a backup of the widgets :-)
• I've checked the underlying code for analytics tools like Google Analytics, AmungUs etc. that I've put in over time
• Revert to original template - Blogger functionality
  • Save it
• Put original template through the Disqus template integration process
• Restore widgets as appropriate / as needed
• Put in a widget from Twittercounter
• Put in a widget from MyBlogLog
• Pick up on a number of dormant draft posts and publish them!

Technorati Tags: template,under construction,excuse me,look and feel