That said, I don’t put anything in my Dropbox folder that I wouldn’t mind other people seeing…because I really don’t know who is on the other end of Dropbox and what they may do with my data. Mind you…I don’t think Dropbox or their employees would actually do anything without reason…but the ability to do ‘something’ bothers me a bit.

With that in mind, it did bother me to see reports about stalkers, and subpoenas but again…I’m not too worried about that, but everyone should know that these issues exist. For more on these issues…take a look at this post: 7 Scary Things About Dropbox, Google Docs and the Cloud at Large….some good points there.

With these issues in mind, I was happy to see a new project named Xendow.   Normally, I’d overlook things like this until I could find more details, but in this particular instance I’m friends with Magnus – one of the gurus driving this project – and I’m excited to see what this turns into.

A description of the new service is:

Xendow will let you simply and easily use cloud services like Dropbox to store, sync and share your data but you will stay in control of who can read your data. Xendow will safely encrypt your data in the cloud but keep the encryption key in your control. With Xendow, none of the employees of Dropbox or their partners or even Xendow will be able to view your data. With Xendow, you’ll be able to share data with confidence knowing that at any time you can remove access to read the data.

If they can deliver on this and deliver it really well, this will be an awesome service.  In addition to Magnus‘ driving this, its also backed by Credant…a big name in the Data Protection space.

Things are looking interesting. Now…if I can just get an invite…

In my regular Foto Friday posts, I have a section of content that I copy and paste into each post that points readers to other areas to find my photograph on the web as well as ways to help me with my addiction habit of photography.

The text is:

See more photos in my flickr photostream and/or my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography, feel free to support my addiction habit by visiting Adorama (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear. Or, if you are interested in renting gear before buying, try out my favorite camera, lens and gear rental site –  Borrowlenses.com (affiliate link) – the folks at Borrowlenses are awesome.  All proceeds from clicking the above affiliate links go to more photographs. 

For each Foto Friday post, I would go back to the previous post and copy the text and then paste it into the new post. While not difficult, this was getting to be a chore for me….and I started wondering how to make it more automated.

I’ve built themes and custom functions for WordPress before so I knew about shortcodes….but hadn’t really used a shortcode for just adding text before…but I figured it would work just fine….and it did.

This is a fairly easy thing to do for those of you who are technically inclined.  All you need to be able to do this yourself is a self-hosted version of WordPress and access to your theme’s “functions.php” file – and some basic HTML (and perhaps PHP) knowledge.

Building a Custom Shortcode

I found my theme’s functions.php file a pulled it off my server to edit it.  Using Notepad++ (create free editor for Windows), I added the following lines:

/* Add shortcode  */
add_shortcode('phototext', 'addPhotoText');

The above is the definition of the shortcode text to use. In the add_shortcode function, the first field ‘phototext’ is my actual shortcode text that I want to use in each post. The second field ‘addPhotoText’ is the name of the function that should be run whenever the shortcode ‘phototext’ is found. Pretty simple so far, no?

Now…the code below is the actual ‘addPhotoText’ function. The only thing I want this function to do is insert the HTML code listed below into a post whenever the ‘phototext’ shortcode is found.

/* Function for added shortcode  */
function addPhotoText() {
    return '
See more photos in <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericbrown">my flickr photostream</a> and/or my <a href="http://500px.com/ericbrown">500px portfolio</a>. If you like my <a href="http://ericbrown.com/photography">photography</a>, feel free to support my <del>addiction</del> habit by visiting <a  href="http://www.adorama.com?kbid=65146">Adorama</a> (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear. Or, if you are interested in renting gear before buying, try out my favorite camera, lens and gear rental site - <a href="http://www.borrowlenses.com/?blpid=photographyminute">Borrowlenses.com</a> (affiliate link) - the folks at Borrowlenses are awesome. All proceeds from clicking the above affiliate links go to more photographs.
';
}

Once the above shortcode and function have been added to the functions.php file, I uploaded the file to my test server to make sure i didn’t fat-finger something. Once the new shortcode was confirmed to work, I moved it over here to my blog.

So now…anytime i type my shortcode phototext wrapped in brackets (a shortcode is wrapped in brakcets – e.g., [shortcode]), I’ll get the following added to any post/page:

See more photos in my flickr photostream and/or my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography, feel free to support my addiction habit by visiting Adorama (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear. Or, if you are interested in renting gear before buying, try out my favorite camera, lens and gear rental site -  Borrowlenses.com (affiliate link) - the folks at Borrowlenses are awesome.  All proceeds from clicking the above affiliate links go to more photographs. 

Shortcodes make life much easier for WordPress users. If you have some content that you like to re-use (author bio, etc), take a look at using shortcodes…they may save you time.

BTW – If you have any questions about WordPress, shortcodes or anything else, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do to help.

So…being the clever person I am, I decided I needed to 1) drive out and pick something up or 2) figure out how to make hamburgers appear from nothingness.

I haven’t got my sorcery badge complete yet, so I chose option #1.

I remembered that our favorite local burger joint Mooyah offered online ordering.  Brilliant! I can sit on my tookus and order my burgers…then drive down (again…on said tookus) and pick them up via curbside pickup.

I fired up the browser and landed on Mooyah’s website and easily found the ‘order online’ option and started placing my order. I entered my zip code, then selected my local store.

Then…I was presented with an ‘order setup’ option that looked like the screenshot below  – notice the content inside the red box:

So….I could either pick up my order or I could do something else…but I’m not sure what. Clicking in the box, I realized it was for a phone number, so i entered my phone number.

Then went ahead and clicked through to the next screen…and got an error message (below).

So…I tried again and this time I got through to an ordering screen.

I entered order #1. Then Order #2. Easy Peasy.

Then, I was asked to sign in or sign up for an account. After many attempts, I finally got my profile filled out.

Now…it was time to checkout…10 minutes after I started the checkout process.

And had my credit card declined. Tried again. Same thing. Weird.  So..I tried another card. and another.  All declined.

After the last credit card was declined, I think i said something that wasn’t appropriate for polite company.

After 15 minutes of trying to order, I was frustrated and hungry. I had wasted 15 minutes of my life trying to order a couple of stupid hamburgers.

I decided to get into my car and go down to the Mooyah and place an order to go…but half-way there, I decided to not give them a dime of my money and went to a Sonic instead.

The next day – an email was sent and a phone call made to the company….with no response.

More than a rant

This is more than a rant.  This is learning opportunity for all of us.

If you are going to offer a service like this, make sure it works.  In all my searching, I couldn’t find another burger joint close to my house that offered the option to order online…that’s a differentiator for Mooyah that they used against themselves.

Here was a burger joint using technology to allow a customer to order in the way that made that customer most comfortable….and that ordering system doesn’t work.  Not only did it not work, it took way too long to setup an order and place it.

I would have been perfectly fine placing an order over the phone and going to pick it up – but they offered me an online ordering system….so I used it.

Mooyah’s intentions were good…they just don’t have the system(s) in place to deliver.

The moral of this story – Don’t use technology just to use technology. If you do…you may end up loosing a customer or customers over it.  Mooyah went from being our favorite burger joint to being a place that I’m ranting about.

Oh…and those Sonic burgers…much better than Mooyah’s.  By far.

Image Credit: RANT, this way By Nesster on flickr

In many application modernization projects, the best option is the one that provides the best long term value for the organization.  Since we don’t live in the real world, the best option is the one that can get funded, get done in the time-frame and provides the best value today and on the near term.  Of course, I’d argue (and do argue) that you shouldn’t allow near term to over-rule the long term, but oftentimes we all do things that aren’t perfect but get the job done today.

There are times when you have to make a decision that may not be optimal. Maybe you’d really like to completely replace your application / system but budget constraints or time constraints force you to choose to do something other than replacement…maybe you rewrite some of the system functionality or maybe you make your system work a little differently (for now).

I’ve been through this myself and have a nice little story to share of a project where we had to make the decision to replace, rewrite or replumb a major application.  Actually, we had to make the decision on two major systems within a very short timeframe.

Before we get started, thought let me take a second to define the three “R’s” that I’m using:

• Replaced - the application(s) will be fully replaced with a completely new application
• Rewritten – parts of application(s) are rewritten to bring new functionality to parts of the application but the entire application isn’t replaced.
• Replumbed -  the application(s) remains the same but new technology/platforms are implemented to provide new services and connectivity to other platforms.

The Backstory

A few years ago, I was involved in a project to revamp the website of a major organization.  We had a fairly large project underway to rebuild the main website for this organization using.  We were rebuilding functionality and trying to do some major information architecture to the website as well as doing some basic re-branding to meet new branding guidelines.    Some of the functionality that we wanted required a connection to the organization’s authorization and authentication  system and access to training/personal records that required a login to access. From this point forward, I’m going to call these two systems the AAR system.

The AAR systems had both languished in disrepair for years with hacks upon hacks added to each to add new functionality and make the system work.  There had been little real architectural work had been done to ensure changes to the system were viable, feasible and well planned.

So…we needed to connect to the AAR systems and build new functionality to allow users to login to access training modules, training records and other information that needed to be hidden behind an authentication system.  In their current state, the AAR systems would be difficult to seamlessly integrate with our Sitecore driven website, so a decision was made to review both the authentication / authorization and records systems to see if what needed to be done to make the integration work well and seamless for users.

The options available to us were either to rewrite, replace or replumb one or both of the systems.

The Plan

After many discussions, meetings and planning sessions, the final recommendation was the following:

• The AA system would be replumbed.  A new system was added to the IT infrastructure that would provide a gateway to the AA system from all new systems built in the organization.  This was accomplished using a new application that provided a service engine that allowed new systems to communicate using a standard service instruction set to check authentication and authorization.

• The Records system would be replaced.  The current record system had been hacked together over many years and would be easier to replace now than wait until after the roll-out of the new website & integration. In addition, this system was only used for a few activities in its current state…but if it could be rewritten, it could be morphed into something much more useful and powerful to the organization. The Records system would be replaced with a SharePoint driven system, which would be integrated Sitecore to allow a seamless transition from the public website and content to the non-public records and information in the Records system.

So….the plan was to replumb one system and rewrite another.  Sounds like fun, right?

The Outcome

The AA system was replumbed to allow new systems to more easily interface with it.  The Records system was replaced to allow a more flexible platform (SharePoint) to be implemented and utilized.

The decision to replumb the authorization and authentication system wasn’t ideal but it did allow the project to finish on time & provides for a new, easier to access AA system for the organization. Our decision to rewrite the Records system was the right one…it gave the organization a very flexible and powerful framework to build upon in the future.  That system has since been expanded on and more functionality is being planned for it.

The timeline was tight but the project(s) turned out well and we released on-time.  Our new website built on Sitecore was rolled out with some fairly tight integrations with Sharepoint for user authentication and authorization as well as record access. We also added some additional functionality that allowed our Sharepoint system to act as the search engine for our Sitecore driven websites…pretty cool stuff – and something I may have to write about in a future post.

Like most projects that are rushed out the door, there were quite a few issues found once the system was released, but nothing that wasn’t fairly straightforward to fix.   Most people within the organization didn’t realize (and probably still don’t realize) how much time, effort, blood, sweat and tears went into that project by everyone involved…but that’s the way it normally goes in these types of projects…and that is, yet again, material for another post.

Lessons Learned (?)

So…I’ve written a lot here (a little over 850 words so far). Hopefully its been an interesting read…but i’m not writing this just to share a story.  I’m writing this to highlight the compromises and trade-offs that we regularly make in the real world of IT.

There are times when you need to replace / revamp system, but you don’t have the budget or timeline to completely replace the application / system so you’ve got to determine a ‘best approach’ for the situation.  Rather than replace, you sometimes have to rewrite portions of the app/system and other times you need to replumb that system.  There are times when you have to take the non-optimal path…but if you have to take a the non-optimal path, at least take the best non-optimal path.

In a perfect world with unlimited budget and time, you’d do the absolute perfect option that gives you the absolute perfect functionality, growth opportunities with the least amount of maintenance…but we don’t live in a perfect world.

In the real world, we do what we have to do…we replace, rewrite and replumb.  The key is to know when to do what.  The key is to understand how to determine the right option for the organization and your team.

Image Credit: Question mark made of puzzle pieces By Horia Varlan on flickr

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

One key area that interests me is around content management and content management systems. I’ve worked with a lot of them in the past and my two favorites right now are WordPress and Sitecore.  WordPress is a no-brainer for individuals, small businesses and is a very good platform for medium / large businesses with a bent toward open source software / LAMP.

For those organizations that have a .NET focus, Sitecore has done well for itself over the last few years and is great for those businesses some money to spend for Sitecore licenses and development efforts.

Lately, I’ve been hearing from friends and colleagues that Sharepoint 2010 is being hailed as the next great content management system (and/or collaboration platform and/or search platform and/or …). Of course, those touting that are Microsoft and their sales / partnership channel for the most part.  I say that partly in jest, but also because I haven’t found many developers, content specialist or marketing person to echo that statement…none have been impressed with Sharepoint as a pure Content Management System (CMS). Does this mean Sharepoint as a CMS is bad? No…just means that its features haven’t been enjoyed by end-users.

For those of you out there with any history in IT, you’ll know that Sharepoint has been around for quite some time and there have been many iterations and foci of this platform. Its a document management system, a work-flow system, intranet system, security management system and has been used for much more.  The new 2010 version is being touted as “collaboration software for the enterprise” by Microsoft….which isn’t a bad marketing approach.

Sharepoint is a great platform for collaboration and community. I’ve seen some wonderful systems built for those functions….but is it a great content management system? Can it really compete with pure CMS platforms like Sitecore?

Sharepoint 2010′s new content management features are impressive, but anyone with experience can see these new features for what they are – a classic Sharepoint reorganization and reuse of functionality plus some new features to bring out this ‘new’ CMS  functionality.  I don’t mean this in a bad way…this is one of the strengths of Sharepoint…it can do most anything.

Sitecore, on the other hand, is built to be a CMS from the ground up. There’s no pretense that Sitecore is anything more than a CMS.  That’s why I like it so much. Is the product perfect? Nope…but no product is.

So…which is better as a CMS….Sitecore or Sharepoint?

For a pure content management system, I’d pick Sitecore hands down. The system is built to be a Content Management System and has a focus on communications & marketing.  Sitecore is focused on delivering content to external audiences and improving insight into website visitors and user experience via new products like the Sitecore Online Marketing Suite.

Of course, Sharepoint can be used as a CMS and is now being touted as one, but I currently find it hard to recommend Sharepoint solely on its CMS capabilities alone.  Of course, very few IT shops are going to look at Sharepoint for a CMS only…most are already using Sharepoint for other functionality like internal collaboration, document management, security, etc and their focus may soon move to using Sharepoint for external focused content delivery.

I’ve implemented Sitecore and Sharepoint and used both products.  I like some things about Sharepoint and some things about Sitecore.

So…how do you choose between the two?  I’ll never tell a client or company that one technology or platform is better than another…but I do like to point out differences.  Here’s a quick list of things that I would think about when choosing between the two products:

• For an external content focus, choose Sitecore.
• For a marketing driven platform, choose Sitecore.
• For a platform to customize the web user experience based on non-authenticated users, choose Sitecore (and the Sitecore OMS)
• For an internal content focus with enterprise level security requirements,  choose Sharepoint
• For a collaboration platform, choose Sharepoint
• For an IT driven platform, choose Sharepoint

Some IT shops will argue Sharepoint should be chosen over Sitecore for some of the above reasons (namely security for content delivery, etc) – but those arguments can be countered easily with Sitecore’s extensibility and features.  I can plug modules in that allow me to use the same security systems that Sharepoint uses.  Of course, there are modules that can be plugged into Sharepoint to get different/more functionality as well

At the end of the day, comparing Sitecore and Sharepoint as CMS platforms is like comparing apples and oranges – they are different products targeted at different uses.  Sharepoint can (and is) used as a CMS – but Sitecore has a more robust CMS feature set for marketers.

If you are looking for a .NET based CMS, either product will work – but right now, I would lean toward  Sitecore when looking for a pure CMS that provides fast development times, stable platform and ease of use for non-technical content creators.

Of course, each organization is different…don’t take my word for it…check out both products and run them through your technology selection process to determine which is best for you.

Image Credit: Apples & Oranges – They Don’t Compare By TheBusyBrain on flickr

Open Your Doors By Frank Wuestefeld on flickr

There’s been some excellent content and discussions recently about reinventing IT.  Mark McDonald at Gartner has been talking / writing about the subject quite extensively lately.  He’s been making quite a lot of sense too.

A recent post by Mark, titled What does it mean to reimagine IT?, he lays out a nice call to action for CIO’s and IT professionals to start thinking about reinventing and re-imagining what IT can be in the future.

In the above mentioned post, Mark argues about the need to re-imagine IT when he writes:

This is a unique time for IT as CIO strategies focus on new architectures and the potential of these lighter-weight technologies. With business expectations for growth and cost cutting on the minds of CIOs, the door to re-imagining IT is wide open as well as the technologies involved to reposition IT.

The door is indeed wide open.

But its not just open for IT. That door is open for the entire organization to rethink and re-imagine IT.

Marketing groups are starting to think about how to manage and drive their own technology. Marketing Technologists are starting to pop up everywhere.

Shadow IT is as rampant as ever and employees are extremely technically savvy these days – which will cause Shadow IT to grow even further in the years to come.

That door is wide open and organization’s are looking at ways to change IT….and IT must be willing to look at itself to make the necessary changes.

Can that be done?  I hope so…but more importantly, it must be done.  I just hope CIO’s and IT groups help drive those changes rather than waiting to be walked out that open door.

Image Credit: Open Your Doors By Frank Wuestefeld on flickr

Technology By ismh_ on flickr

I wanted to follow up to my last post (For Models for Success for the CTO / CIO – CTOVision) with a few quick thoughts on the The External-facing Technologist CTO / CIO role described by Tom Berray (link to a Word Doc).

The external facing technologist role is one that’s lacking sorely in most organizations.  This role doesn’t necessarily have to be the one undertaken by the CIO / CTO, but should be a fairly important role in any IT group and organization.

This is the role that many non-IT groups are screaming for today. A great example is the many people within marketing  looking to create / fill a role that focuses on marketing technology (e.g., the marketing technologist).

I wrote a little about the technologist role, and its importance to the future IT group in a Cutter Journal article titled The Futureproof CIO (co-written with Gene DeLibero).  In the article, Gene and I talk about what CIO’s need to do to ensure there’s a role for them and the IT group in the future.

In that article, I wrote:

Tomorrow’s CIO must continue to evolve much like the CIO of today has. Gone are the days of the ‘old’ CIO who manages IT operations and ‘keeps the lights on’. Also gone are the days of the ‘present CIO’, who’s focused on delivering low cost IT services while providing innovative platforms for organization’s to overcome their competition. Tomorrow’s CIO will need to be focused first on the business and technology second.

The CIO of the future must find a way to use the commoditized world of today’s IT platforms and services to create competitive advantage in the future. Rather than spending time building systems, CIO’s and IT groups need to utilize systems in new and unforeseen ways.

The article continues on (and on…you know how I like to type) but eventually I come back around to talk about Google and Amazon’s use of existing technology platforms to drive new revenues.  Another piece from the article:

Both organizations have seen information technology as an enabler to drive new revenue.

Much like the IT groups within Amazon.com and Google, the CIO of the Future must find ways to capitalize on IT investments to deliver measureable value to the organization. The organization of today demands this and the CIO of the future must deliver or the role of the CIO will no longer be relevant.

The External-facing Technologist role can help an organization drive new business but using new and/or existing technology for new service and revenue opportunities.

Of course, the External-facing Technologist role is a key one but it isn’t the answer to every prayer.   There still needs to be someone within IT that takes on the The Infrastructure Manager, The Big Thinker and The Technology Visionary and Operations Manager roles.

Which role is most important to your organization?  Which one is missing?  I’ve found the External-facing Technologist is usually the one missing in most organizations.

Image Credit: Technology By ismh_ on flickr

Last week, in an article titled “CIO’s vs. CMO’s – what’s the real problem?“, I shared the following 2010 goals/projects that CIO’s and CMO’s are reportedly working on.   In that article I also promised a discussion of what the real issues between CIO’s and CMO’s are…but I wanted to get this little tidbit out of the way first. Come back next week for the deeper leadership/communication discussion I promised.

To reiterate, they top 5 goals/projects for CIO’s and CMO’s are:

CIO’s:

Improve end-user workforce productivity

Lower the company’s overall operating costs

Re-engineer core business processes

Improve quality of products and/or processes

Innovative new market offerings or business practices

CMO’s:

Digital marketing makeover – platforms, programs, people

Sales and marketing organization alignment

Customer data integration and analytics

Marketing performance measurement

Lead qualification and harvesting system

See anything there that jumps out at you to highlight the difference between a CIO and a CMO?

Anything at all?

I do….and it just hit me while thinking about this article.

The CIO’s goals/projects are very operationally focused.  Words like ‘improve’, ‘lower’, ‘re-engineer’ start the top 4 goals/projects.

The CMO’s goals/projects at first seem operational too.  Data integration. Performance measurement.  Systems. Platforms.

Interesting stuff….but after digging a little deeper into each goal and thinking about them for a few minutes, something jumped out at me.

It seems to me that the CIO is focused on deep organizational issues.  It seems that CIO’s are starting to focus on the business rather than technology.

What about the CMO?  I see a bunch of projects and goals focused on tactics.  I see a lot of projects focused on technology.

Is this a good thing?  Bad thing?

I can’t really say….but maybe we are seeing a shift towards the Marketing Technologist now.  Mitch Joel just pointed out that the time is ripe for the Chief Marketing Technologist and Scott Brinker has been talking about the marketing technologist and chief marketing technologist roles for year and is also talking about the role(s) of the CMO & CIO in the future organization.

I just hope the CMO and Marketing teams don’t focus too much on the technology and lose track of what that technology is to be used for.

That’s the reason CIO’s and IT groups have been in trouble over the last few years, isn’t it?

Back to my original question: What’s the difference between the CMO and the CIO?  In today’s world…not a whole heck of a lot….and that doesn’t bode well for the CIO of the future.  Makes me wonder how much a real CIO and IT group  matter to organizations.

As some of you may know, I’m working on my Doctorate in Information Systems.

In addition, I have a full-time gig in the consulting world as well as provide some freelance technology consulting for small businesses.

On top of that, I’ve got a couple of entrepreneurial activities going with one particular idea that should come to fruition in the next few months.

Oh…and I try to spend as much time as I can with a camera in my hand out in the ‘wild’ photographing landscapes and wildlife.

Somewhere in there, I’m trying to spend a good portion of my days with my wonderful wife Tracie, who’s a great Dallas Photographer specializing in weddings, boudoir photography and seniors.

So…when people ask me “what do you do?”,  I have a bit of a hard time answering that question.

Some people have snappy comebacks to the ‘what do you do?’ question.  Things like “I type” or “I sell” or something short and sweet.

Personally, if someone tells me ‘I type’ if I were to ask them what they did, I’d think they were sitting in a secretarial pool somewhere.   I actually ran across a software developer who said ‘I type’ when I asked what he did….I didn’t hire him for the project after I heard that.  I want a developer who can think…not just type.

But I digress….

So…what do I do?

A little bit of everything these days.

I’m juggling being a full-time employee, part-time doctorate student, full-time entrepreneur and must less than part-time amateur wildlife/landscape photographer.

When people ask what I do, I never lead with the doctorate work and for the majority of  interactions, I lead with my work in my current full-time gig since that’s what my main focus is.  Sometimes, depending on the circumstance, I’ll bring up my entrepreneurial activities and at other times I’ll dive into photography if I know the other person is interested in the subject.

But the bigger question, for me, is this:  What do I want to do?

Let’s use that big ‘what if’ to think this through.

What if I didn’t have to pay the bills, would I have my full-time gig?  Probably not.

That’s not to say that I don’t like my job…I do.   But I’d prefer to be out traveling around with Tracie looking for some outstanding photographic opportunities.

Back here in the real world, I know I’ve got to pay the bills so I continue doing what I have to do…but I’ve started looking at ways to replace my full-time income as an entrepreneur. This isn’t something that will happen in the next few months or even the next year but I’ve got a plan.

That plan will allow me to build a base of revenue over a few different entrepreneurial activities over the next few years to allow more freedoms in the coming years.  The plan will also see me finish my doctorate by 2012 (woot!).

Let me say this…I’ve wanted to do something different for a long time.  I’ve wanted to…but never really set any goals or made any plans to force the change that I wanted to see.

I look back over the last 15 years and see a lot of mistakes I’ve made. Lots of ideas but little execution on my part.  Some blame placed on other folks because ‘they’ didn’t do something.

But I’ve come to realize that ideas without execution are worthless.  Common sense stuff…but something I somehow forgot.

Earlier this year, I realized that I don’t want to look back in another 10 or 15 years and feel the way I do now…so I’ve made some changes and have a path towards change.

I’m walking that path now….walking the line towards a bit of a different future my previous approach to life was allowing.

So…what do you do?

Are you doing what you want to do?  If not…are you looking for ways to do what you want?

There are a lot of motivational speakers out there that will tell people that they can do anything they want to do…and for the most part, I agree.  You can do whatever you want to…you’ve just got to figure out a way to do that without destroying your career, your finances or your life.

Are you creating your future and walking the path towards that future?  Or…are you just walking a line drawn by others?

Maybe you’re more comfortable letting others draw the line for you…nothing wrong with that.  Just make sure you want to go where that path leads.

In 5 or 10 years when you’re asked “What do you do?”…will you be able to answer with a smile and know you are doing what you want to do?  I’ll be able to….hope you will too.

I use WordPress for everything these days. This blog runs on WordPress. My photography blog runs on WP.  My wife’s photography websites (a moment to keep photography and Boudoir Moments) run on WordPress.  Like I said…everytime I build a website today, I start with WordPress if I can.

So…when I was asked to help build a new website for Silicon Valley Expert Witness Group, an intellectual property consulting and expert witness services firm, I jumped at the change to use WP.

Jump over to www.svewg.com and take a look at the site. Does it look like a blog?  Nope.   It looks like a website. It’s a website.  We used the new Custom Post types found in WordPress 3.0 for the expert bios and added some interesting functionality to the site.

Does WordPress make sense for all organizations?  No…but its worth a look to see if it can work for you.    The open source approach (and community) that WordPress has allows you to build whatever you want to build.

WordPress has moved from a ‘blogging engine’ to a ‘website framework’….take a look at it for your next web project.