Last week saw the release of some awesome plugins (one that has been long-awaited by the community) as well as a new beta release for the next version of Movable Type and lively discussion on the MTOS mailing lists, especially in area of translations.

Welcome to Movable Type Monday!

CleanSweep: Early last week, Byrne Reese released an update to his Clean Sweep - a plugin that sounds like a must have for almost every blogger. In his own words:

Clean Sweep is a plugin I released in conjunction with Movable Type 4.0 to help users keep URLs and permalinks valid on their web site even after a major change to your URL structure. The plugin worked by tracking broken links on your web site and allowing you to create rewrite rules within Movable Type for those broken links.

In his announcement entry, Byrne talks about how Clean Sweep helped him manage his site along with the new features in the latest version (including mapping old MT URL formats to knew ones).

RF2CF: Chad Everett of Everitz Consulting released a long awaited update to his RF2CF plugin which allows people who use the Right Fields plugin to upgrade to MTOS 4.x with its built-in support for Custom Fields (via the Commercial Pack). The latest version of the plugin includes support for migrating RightFields users who used custom SQL datasources and file upload fields as well as makes the whole process a lot more stable and reliable.

The response he received to the plugin on the MTOS-dev mailing list shows how much this plugin was needed and removes one of the last remaining hurdles people had for embracing MTOS 4.x!

Polish, Russian and Italian Translations: There was a tremendous amount of activity on the MTOS-translators mailing list with Patryk ?ciborek beginning work on a Polish Translation and Mirco Macrelli updating his Italian translation.

Alex Demidov also linked to the Russian translation now found on Google Code. Screencasts of the translation in action can be found on movabletype.ru, where the founder of the Russian translation project, Andrey Serebryakov, blogs about Movable Type and the Russian community.

On MT Feed Support: Following a lively debate on the MTOS-dev mailing list, Tim Appnel posted a follow-up on why the decision to only provide an Atom Feed by default from he next version of MTOS was a wise decision.

Beta 5: Beta 5 was released early last week and according to Byrne Reese, Movable Type product manager, should be the last beta release. Release Candidates should begin to appear starting this week! Perusing the changelog, the most exciting change with this beta is the integration of Widget Manager. Widgets are now just another type of template! As a result, you can now have global widgets too (i.e. a common set of widgets that can be used on every blog on the system).

Generating a Changelog: Byrne Reese also documented the process of creating a changelog from the code repository on the MTOS Wiki. This is extremely useful when you’ve checked something out directly from the repository (rather than downloading one of the official beta releases) and want to get a list of changes since the last time you updated

At more and more conferences, Twitter is becoming the conversation of choice. Instead of live blogging, people are twittering live reports from conferences, as well as chatting among themselves as if Twitter were a live chat or instant message service.

Twitter is easy. It’s accessible from the web and cell phones. Anyone can do it. You just have to stay within the 140 character limit.

People are adding Twitter to their blogs, integrating their tweets into the blog’s sidebar, as well as tweets from others.

So how is this helping or hurting your blog?

Twitter helps many by directing the masses towards specific information, such as a new blog post or an old one that applies to a specific inquiry.

Twitter helps with blog research, since you can ask just about anyone anywhere about anything and often get an answer that helps you write your blog post.

Many Twitter comments are becoming inspiration for blog posts, helping bloggers find something to write about.

As a straight communications and networking tool, Twitter helps you monitor industry information from niche bloggers and experts. It helps you learn more about your area of expertise as well as new avenues that can help you blog better and improve your business.

You can also make strong connections and find guest bloggers and business relationships that may reflect improvements and news on your blog.

There are many ways Twitter can help the blogger, so how can it hurt?

Twitter can hurt your blog the most because Twitter is becoming a replacement for blogs.

I don’t think that Twitters will ever truly replace the blog as a form of searchable, viable bodies of work, especially with the current 140 character limit, but it is taking energy away from your blogs.

Many bloggers aren’t blogging as much as they used to as they have found a way to say what they need on Twitter. The rush to be the first to blog the news is not as important as being the first to Twitter the news.

Twitter can be a major time suck, pulling you away from the time you would normally spend working on developing content for your blog, responding to comments on your blog, and commenting on other blogs. Why bother with the blog conversation when it’s defintely more exciting to join the Twitter conversation.

When you choose to Twitter rather than blog, and your readers aren’t tracking you on Twitter, who wins? Who loses?

Don’t forget your blog readers. Continue to support your blog. Continue to provide service to them. You can’t put pictures on Twitter. You can’t upload videos or podcasts. Twitter isn’t the end all and be all of online communication.

Think of your blog as your virtual business card and resume. It serves as a placeholder in your personal and professional life that showcases your talents and skills. Communicate through all the various online social media and networking tools, but make sure that your main showcase, the centerpiece around which everything else should revolve, still gets the attention it deserves, and that it still speaks well for you.

ComScore data reports that Google sites continue to hold a firm grasp on the online video space, accounting for 38% of all videos viewed (4.3 billion). Of that, 98% is straight from YouTube.

Nearly 139 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March.

Since so many of us do the majority of Web searching at work, have we gotten really good at minimizing windows when danger lurks, or are employers’ more understanding of the online video phenomenon? Which leads to the bigger question: Should text bloggers, who have no interest in stepping out into the video realm, be concerned that they are losing eyeballs?

Far behind Google is Fox Interactive Media, ranked second with 477 million videos (4.2 percent), Yahoo! Sites with 328 million (2.9 percent) and Viacom Digital with 249 million (2.2 percent).

After launching a new feature for desktop users, the Google Reader team is experimenting with a new version of Google Reader for iPhone users.

(Official Google Reader Blog) To make our (and your) Reader iPhone experience better, we wanted to really take advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities. Today we’re releasing a new beta version of Reader designed for the iPhone and other mobile phones with advanced browsers. You can use it by visiting http://www.google.com/reader/i/ on your phone.

This new version is designed to offer many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. If you’ve used list view, then it should be familiar to you. Scan the titles for an item that interests you, tap and it expands in place. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. We think it’s a very fast way to power through your reading list.

The first thing many iPhone users will notice is that the new beta version will display 15 articles/post “snippets” instead of the usual 9, as well as the ability to see the articles/posts underneath (or above) the one that you are currently reading.

Starring the articles is also easier, as iPhone users can now actually tap the star tab next to the story, instead of trying to place their “fat fingers” on the tiny add star link at the end of the article.

iPhone users can also mark a feed as unread (on the Keep unread link), a helpful feature that is missing from the current version. Last but not least (as far as useful features go), the iPhone version recognizes YouTube video’s, and places a link instead of Safari’s “we can’t play flash video’s because we are not a real browser” image.

Unfortunately the new beta version of Google Reader loads a little slower than the previous one on Wifi which means that users on AT&T’s EDGE are going to have to display more patience than usual.

Even though users can check out the notes that they have shared, their still seems to be no way for iPhone users to share a note alongside of an article, which (in this authors opinion) makes the notes feature more like a tease (as there is no way to add anything interesting via the iPhone).

All in all, the beta is not half bad, although hopefully Google will make the iPhone version as powerful as its desktop version–not to mention roll out a similar version for other smart phones (like Black Berry’s) as well.

Update: Centered image.

The practice of blogging does not only consist of writing but it usually also involves reading other blogs, commenting and networking. Most of us are not fulltime professional bloggers so how do you divide your (spare) time between all these different blogging aspects?

1. Writing
   While writing new blog posts seems like the primary function of the blog at first it is not the only thing that counts. On top of that it depends on what kind of blog you run. Is it a personal blog, a professional blog or a news blog? The type of blog will determine your daily blogging schedule of either publishing several posts a day or just once a week.
2. Reading
   The feedreader is a blogger’s best friend and worst enemy. The pitfall of keeping up with too many other blogs is that you don’t get into the act of writing anymore. Are you suffering from being overwhelmed by the amount of unread blog posts in your feedreader? I notice that I have a tendency of being sucked into my feedreader, unable to get out of it to actually write a new post. Try to unsubscribe from some blogs you hardly read or make a schedule with strict reading and writing hours.
3. Commenting
   Engaging in conversations by commenting is often considered an important aspect of blogging. Not only replying to your own readers’ comments but also on other blog posts. Lorelle VanFossen recently realized that she needed to comment more as “I haven’t been commenting as much as I’d like to on other blogs. I’m so wrapped up in my own little bloggy world, I forget to open the door and see what others are doing out there and give my feedback out there.” I find that I often try to keep up with all my feeds leaving me no time to leave a comment. Instead of trying to read tons of blog posts a day I am going to aim on trying to comment more.
4. Networking
   I have a Technorati profile, a MyBlogLog profile and probably many more profiles on different blog networks yet I don’t ever do anything with these profiles. These services either exist to gather stats on your blog or to manage your blog community. I plan to visit my services and communities more often in order to socialize and network.
5. Statistics
   I am addicted to statistics. Technorati, Feedburner stats, I don’t care as long as it contains numbers. I spend a lot of time just staring at my blog’s statistics instead of focusing on the content or upgrading my plugins.
   

I think how you divide your time between different blogging activities determines what kind of blogger you are. Can we categorize bloggers by the time they spend on each aspect? Can we distinguish the reflective blogger, who mainly reads other blogs and writes a few long contemplative posts a month? Does it make sense to speak of the social blogger who writes regular posts with a fair amount of links and spends a great deal of time engaging in conversations and networking on blog networks.

I wish it was that easy. It is hard to put people in restricted categories and in the case of blogging bloggers it may be even more different because all these activities are part of the blogging experience. The key lies in dividing your (precious) time between all the aspects so that you feel happy about your blogging time. I am currently in the process of rethinking my blogging practices and how to spend my time.

Have you found your blogging balance yet?

Earlier this week, a fan of the British TV series Dr. Who was forced to take a portion of his site offline after receiving a cease and desist letter from the BBC. However, Mazzmatazz, the fan is question, was not posting clips onto YouTube or making pirated copies of DVDs, but rather, posting knitting patters to let other fans make their own Dr. Who characters.

In a similar, but much more famous case, J.K. Rowling has sued one of her fans, the author of the Harry Potter Lexicon site, in order to prevent a book from being published using information from her series.

These are just two examples of creators butting heads with their own fans over matters of copyright. Ever since the Internet made the fan site possible, it seems that copyright holders have struggled to find where to draw the line with their own fans and fans, for their part, have had difficulty finding just where that line is.

But how can such bloggers fan site creators avoid drawing the ire of those that they admire? What can copyright holders due to avoid needless clashing with their own fans? Sadly, copyright law is of little help in this area and the real key lies in making an honest attempt to resolve a very complicated matter.

Fan sites, by their very nature, use intellectual property from the entities they wish to pay homage to. Whether it is a trademarked name/logo or copyrighted content, it is very difficult to run a fan site without using at least some portions of the original works.

The problem is that this use of original works can often cross the line of what would be typically considered fair use and can delve into outright copyright infringement. Many common things fans do, such as create fan fictions of a popular series, buy domains containing the title of the work or build sites using original artwork, can be considered infringing activities.

Copyright holders, not wanting to hamper the thriving fan community, generally take a lenient attitude toward such infringements. Many, such as Blizzard with World of Warcraft, create fansite kits to promote the creation of such sites. Most also tolerate fan fiction for non-commercial purposes and others offer clips and passages for posting on fan sites and blogs.

But this balance can lead to serious problems down the road. Fans can go too far, believing they have ethical and legal rights that don’t exist, and copyright holders, used to setting terms for their audience, try to control every use they didn’t intend.

The result is that, as unpleasant as it is, authors, movie makers and musicians often find themselves in conflict with their fans over intellectual property. But while suing ones fans is never pleasant, nor good for publicity, it is a step that many feel they have to take.

Avoiding awkward situations, such as the one at the Harry Potter trial, requires an effort from both the copyright holders and their fans. Without cooperation from both sides, lines are inevitably going to be crossed and likely with dire consequences.

Specifically, copyright holders should consider the following:

• Post Clear Guidelines: Fansite kits and other tools are great steps, but more important is a clear set of guidelines for how fan sites can use copyrighted material. Broad, easily understood and accessible guidelines are the most powerful tools for preventing awkward situations. It is almost always better to speak the unspoken rules than trust that they are understood.
• Anticipate Unforeseen Uses: As technologies change, predict unforeseen uses of your content by fans and approach them with the same spirit the guidelines were created in. Being heavy-handed does no good when it is out of step with your other policies.
• Communicate Openly: It is important to communicate openly with your fans. If one crosses a line, before sending a cease and desist, try to find a productive arrangement. Being hostile across the board only creates more tension.

Fans, of course, have their responsibilities as well. It is easy, in the rush of building a fan site or blog, to completely neglect the copyright and other intellectual property issues that can bring headaches later.

As such, I strongly recommend the following steps:

• Avoid Trademarked Domains: The issues with trademark and domain names are notoriously sticky and can come back to haunt you at any time. Avoid slogans, names and titles that are protected under trademark law when picking your domain.
• Follow Posted Guidelines: As copyright holders need to post such guidelines, fan sites need to adhere to them. Every fan community operates under a different set of rules and guidelines so it is important to read what information is available and adhere to it.
• Avoid Commercial Use: Though commercial use may not be a huge factor in determining fair use, it is a line that many copyright holders would rather their fans not cross. Avoid running ads or selling merchandise without the explicit approval of the copyright holder.
• Establish Contact: The most successful fan sites almost always establish contact with representatives from the copyright holder and have an ongoing dialog with them about copyright and other relevant matters. Such a contact can help the site in many different ways, not just copyright.
• Follow the Community’s Lead: In the absence of good contact or published guidelines, locate sites in the community that have been around for some time and are very successful. Follow their rules for using copyrighted material and contact them to find out what they know. Though it is not a legal defense, most likely such sites are operating with at least an understanding from those holding the rights.

All in all, it comes down to a matter of mutual respect. Fans need to be aware of copyright and other intellectual property issues when building their sites and copyright holders need to understand that some element of infringement is necessary for building a good fan community. Striking a good balance is never easy, especially since these topics are always difficult to talk about, but that doesn’t make it any less important.

Fan sites have always been one of the more interesting, and difficult, areas of copyright law. It is an area where the law is often especially vague, emotions run high and conflict is almost predestined. Though the upcoming J.K. Rowling ruling may help shine some light on the legal standing of such fan works, most would prefer to work with the artists they enjoy, not hide from them in a legal gray area.

On the other side, copyright holders would much rather nurture the fan community and encourage the development of a fan presence as it helps promote their work and the related goods. This spirit of cooperation creates a rare opportunity for both sides to work together, something rarely seen in intellectual property law.

As such, it behooves both sides to take advantage of this good will and work together. Other copyright holders may never get that chance and most would feel lucky if their greatest intellectual property issue came from well-intended fans.

If both sides can approach these matters in good faith and discuss these issues like adults, then everyone can walk away happy and we never have to read about the big name artist taking her fan to court for crossing a perceived line.

Belkin seems to love both iPods and podcasters, so it’s no surprise that one of their latest products is aimed at budding iPod-owning podcasters.

I took a look at a prototype of the Belkin GoStudio in London a week ago. The product is so new that a production model wasn’t even available, which is a shame as it sounds like a great product and I would like to have had a play with it.

A much cut down version of their four-channel TuneStage iPod recorder, the battery-powered unit will feature built-in microphone and various recording controls, as well as offering full integration with iTunes and other Apple software.

Belkin says that the audio quality will be “superior”, though you wouldn’t expect them to say anything less. What’s great is the price — expected to be around £80 (about $150). Expected to arrive, at least in the UK, in June.

(Via Tech Digest)

That marks the end of the Minnebar coveage for 2008 - I’m off to the Metrodome to watch my beloved Boston Red Sox beat up on the Minnesota Twins.

Now in the discussion session on “How to build a kickass web development team”.. facilitators are from Bloomington, Minnesota web development firm Sierra Bravo.

“some of our success has come about by growing the talent within…”

Star Tribune’s project manager for the internet - “my development team is moving onto another floor - how do we handle this when we’re used to just yelling over the cubicle wall?”

interesting discussions here about roles within a team - do you have dedicated project managers or not? Where should this go?

Be careful of pigeonholing people into specific roles - better to develop generalists rather than focus too much into one single area…

typical team for Sierra Bravo is 2-3 developers looking at a 400 - 1000 hour project

SB guys: “our philosophy is that collaboration is king. within the interview process we’re asking ‘if you have a really hard problem, what are the steps to solving that problem’”.

“we encourage people to get up talk each other - move about, etc”

“we encourage you to work closely together and have alot of collaboration… we want to give you power to innovate…”

innovation clearly becomes more challenging as a company grows…

in-house development teams have different priorities and roles..

U of MN Medical Education group - no web development team (formal, anyways) - team of 3 that have taken on web development but lack a project manager - just now putting some processes into place to deal with this..

discussion about how to expand teams with getting better & stronger people on the team… how do you build a cohesive & effective group.. getting bodies is a challenge…

getting out and into your local user groups is a good method for building our your teams.. if your team is happy and content then you’ll have an easier time recruiting folks…

How do you ensure a cultural fit within your corporation or team? — is it about the interview process? Formal and informal?

Do you require code samples from programmers or design samples from designers? Mix of about 50/50 in the room on this question…

Code samples do allow you to look at how the individual tries to solve the problem…

Sitting in on the panel discussion about Distributed Teams. I was asked to be a part of this panel and declined since my main intent here at Minnebar was to cover the vent as a blogger/journalist for The Blog Herald.

How do you build a strong distributed team for your projects(s) will be the theme here.

“Distributed ain’t all that…” says one panel member.

“Have any of you worked with a remote team that has gotten it done better, faster, and chaper because of the remote team?”

“Have you had any issues with passing the work back and forth amongst the teams”

Structure of the team will be part of your success - particularly with software projects

Is it advantageous to have a remote team or not?

Audience member: “With distributed teams, the management overhead can really become part of the problem…”

Economic value of the dollar is also impacting the ability to offshore..

24×7 reality with the right software and management solutions can make problems be solved faster - and push a product forward in a much faster timeline - but this experience is relatively rare.

Barry Hess: “I’m the small team guy here… our company is all about the people. New designer at the company is based in Portland because he was the best guy that applied…”

Cost reduction / cost savings is the driver in some companies - china/india is much cheaper than US based labor…

“How many jobs are moving overseas - is this what is driving some of this…”

U of MN CompSci Professor: “Population since 2001 here at the U of MN in computer science is way way down… the bubble had an impact…”

Some companies shift to outsourcing because they can’t manage software projects - so they outsource or offshore in order to drive down costs… and then find themselves with an even bigger issue because now they can’t manage distributed software projects…

audience member: “a distributed team is much more than just designers and programmers”

We’re finally getting to talking about tools rather than some of this philosophical stuff around whether or not this is the right thing to do…

“how do you convince your client or employer to allow you to work remotely” as your own distributed team? Rather than having to work onsite… - trust and having a personal connection is a big part.

“sometimes communication amongst distributed teams is better because in a colocated team we talk more than we document and build processes correctly from the start…”

“sometimes you have to distribute a team in order to increase productivity…”

Many tools mentioned - including most of the 37signals applications.

“is anyone using sharepoint? does anyone like it?”

Google is using high def video conferencing on all day in order to have two halves of one team work together across multiple locations (Mountain View, CA + Boulder, CO)…

I’ll be writing a follow-up post later about how to manage distributed teams along the lines that I’ve seen during my time as a blogger and blog network owner as well.

The Disqus blog commenting service is catching on - with many popular blogs such as Scripting News signing on to use the service.

VC Fred Wilson talks about three reasons to use Disqus in a recent post:
2a) Email Replies - Disqus emails every comment to the blogger. If the blogger wants to reply to the comment, he/she simply replies to the email and it is posted as a reply (with the indent described above). This feature, which I requested the day I met/saw Disqus for the first time, is the single best thing about Disqus and has transformed my blog comments because I can now participate in them in real time throughout the day as the conversation develops. This is a BIG DEAL.

Now in the panel discussion on State of the Technology in Minnesota with speakers from Microsoft, Split Rock Partners, Dow Jones, Geek Squad, and elsewhere…

Discussion around the level of talent in Minnesota - and seeing more folks moving back to Minnesota from silicon valley in order to work for some organizations here. Adobe has had an office here since 1995 in Arden Hills, MN, for example.

Split Rock Partners - big booster of talent locally - more than $200m invested in local tech startups and in the area of healthcare as well… but don’t kid yourself - it’s a brutal competitive marketplace.. we just believe that this standard is being hit on a regular basis here in Minnesota - but there does happen to be more density of that sort of activity in Boston, Austin, and elsewhere..

“we need more of… people who get the business of software” - Dan Grigsby

“it’s about leadership - great leadership is hard to find, they don’t grow on trees… U of MN is not a top Computer Science School.. it’s not a top school for business”… This is interesting since Carlson School of Business is a Top 25 business school…

Geek Squad founder: “so when geek squad acquired best buy… ;)… my dream is to turn the death star into a theme park, not to blow it up… no one is trying out the $500 idea within best buy because is costs us $100k to get the $500 idea through the theme park…”

Robert / Geek Squad: “Maybe we could get an API that would cause the IT department to calm down…”

“How do we knock down this barrier to risk… with open source, there’s nothing holding you back…”

Concept of Silicon Prairie as a nickname for the midwestern technology centers, like Minnesota….

“doesn’t take alot of money to write software.. it takes guts.. be bold and do what you think is right.. especially in corporations, it’s appreciated much more than you might think it is…”

“great example of big large successful companies like Skype.. rumor is that no two developers live in the same city.. we do not have to look at geography as a huge limiter…”

If you were in charge of the social networking industry, what social product or service would you offer?

WordPress has always been defined as “social” when it comes to creating an online presence and community, after all, a blog is all about community building, which differentiated it from a static HTML site.

I see many of today’s social networking services as accessories to your blog. No matter where you go around the web, you can always point to your blog like a virtual business card and resume. “Check out my blog! See what I can do!”

However, Matt Mullenweg and others want to really push the limits of what social means in social networking and put WordPress at the center of your social experience online. Their first steps came with the release of the Prologue WordPress Theme and the incorporation of BuddyPress. They are hard at work to make it even more “social”, though what that means is my question.

Let’s brainstorm. What would that look like? If you were in charge of social networking around the world, what would you want on your blog to make it more social and connect all the online social with your blog as the center focal piece?

Statbot has taken a look at the all-time leaderboard for TechMeme.

Of course, no one should be surprised to find that TechCrunch is at the top of the list…. interesting data, however, nonetheless…

U of MN professor teaching the session - also works at IBM.

First mashup - Mapdanjo. In the words of one participant “most crap thrown up in one place”

Again, audio/visual problems in this session (same room as last session).

Some of the mashups allow for integration of behind the firewall information as well - he’s referring to Google though as “the google” which is entertaining… Google Maps can also be brought inside the firewall completely through some of their licensing options…

IBM has an internal Map Analytics ‘2008′ application with a whole ton of options - but unfortunately it appears to be internal only at the current time… The capabilities are pretty impressive though…

Solutions could look like: Trusted secure reusable information services + web 2.0 + data visualization. Everything from metadata and web 2.0 information merged with various business problems to create unique internal mashups…

Now in the 10am session on Social Search in the Corporate Environment here at Minnebar.

Presenter is Rich from Honeywell Labs - he built the first websites for Honeywell back before the graphical website days when most folks were browsing using Lynx and other text online web browsers.

Original blogging platform at Honeywell was Movable Type under their commercial license approach - we’ll find out in a bit if he’s still using that internally. Session will be focused on social media and search within a large corporation.

Honeywell using alot of open source based software within the firewall for social media and social work.

Appears that they are using Connectbeam for social media search inside the firewall - and also using a Google Search Appliance for internal search. Mmm, I’d love one of those at some of my clients.

Connectbeam integrates with Exchange Server, if that’s your poison, and integrates with internal Google search appliances as well as external Google searches as well. It’s not an issue integrating services like LinkedIn, Facebook, and others into the Connectbeam platform. Interesting..

Unfortunately, his projector is not working so we may go without any live examples…

<5 minutes later> PROJECTOR IS NOW BACK UP. Yay

Connectbeam appears to integrate directly into Google Search and other search engines - displays bar on the right with related internal content and tags…

10 licenses for $1k - rather cheaper than what I would have probably expected.. upcoming versions will have RSS feeds and an API…

Confluence is their wiki platform - $3k for a license… 16,000+ users are contributing to their wiki..

Wiki has a tag cloud already associated with it - plus can be tagged for use within ConnectBeam..also has a Sharepoint 07 tie-in.. very semantic web connections here… looks like the goal is to provide discovery within the enterprise..

Honeywell has tried for years to build a skills database to let folks connect with each other - the tagging within Connectbeam has really fulfilled that function.. Senior leaders (direct reports of CEO) are using the system to some extent - and want to foster more connectivity amongst individual contributors throughout the company…

Using some simple windows based feed readers inside the firewall - doing this to read competitive intelligence feeds and other RSS feeds within the corporation…

technical library showing information on various pre-built RSS feeds on key topics for research to keep team members and employees informed on their competition, etc.. using Compendex Plus for some of this (license fee involved)…

Honeywell running daily rss searches/google searches on the names of key engineers at their competitors

Rich’s blog is at eContent.

Sitting here at Minnebar in the session on “Small Teams, Big Results” along with the guys from August Ash, Inc., a web design firm here in Minneapolis.

The session is being led by Ben Edwards of Refractr. Ben happens to also be the co-organizer of Minnebar.

Ben’s key point here is that small teams can be as highly effective as large teams - and often without alot of the administrative overhead that large organizations bring with them. Being small allows many teams to simply “be nimble” - able to move with extreme agility as needed.

Should development teams be co-located with the business teams in larger organizations? Ben recommends that even if you can’t co-locate then try to find ways to incorporate the teams together through effective meetings… not just meetings to have meetings.

Small teams often have more accountability - “one’s ass can really be on the line”.

Many references made to later session on Distributed Teams which I’ll also be liveblogging this afternoon.

Audience is now stepping up and participating…

“Small Teams need smart generalists” that are good at a number of things - agile, self-curious, self-driven are all attributes that will be critical for success in this environment.

“Hire passionate and curious creators” - people who do creative things… and do so with passion.

Book references - “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman.. “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink - both excellent books.

“Ensure that team members can manage themselves…”

“Fire prima donnas and complainers” - great advice - the highest maintenance bloggers that I’ve had on small teams have been poisonous - I was happy when they chose to move on…

Asking audience for thoughts now… on how to build small teams

“Look for people that dabble in alot of different areas…” - look for who is building something and are naturally curious..

“Most business side folks don’t understand the soft fuzzy side of software project management estimation…”

Lots of discussion around firing prima donnas - some are saying they’re the best people on the team - others saying that they are poison…

“don’t overdo your processes” - empower your team to make decisions.. i.e. “empower or take power”

“do, don’t document”

“use unobtrusive tools” - best question so far today “Has anyone found an actual job for Microsoft Project?” hahaha… I am personally not a fan of MS Project - simple tools like BaseCamp is much easier to use..

Russell Beattie, who we earlier profiled as eating more than buttered macaroni as his startup Mowser failed to catch on, has sold the property to dotMobi.

Russell states on his blog:
This is great news - Miker and I got pinged by a surprising number of people and companies interested in Mowser, but we went with dotMobi because they were first, enthusiastic, and we felt they would provide a good home for our work. While we didn’t get rich on the deal by any stretch, I’ve been able to pay off a bunch of debts (and not worry about stuff like rent and food) which has been a huge load off my mind.

TechCrunch also covers the story.

I’m at Minnebar 2008, the unconference being held here at the University of Minnesota. We’re just about ready to kick this thing off.

There’s an anticipated 400 attendees here today - I’ll be twittering and liveblogging as the day goes on.

Drop me a note or @reply via twitter if you’d like to hook up.

Oh my.

Oh my oh my oh my. I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just say it outloud.

BusinessWeek are stupid!

Not the journalists or editors working there though, but the knucklehead that thought it was a good idea to tell users not to link to pages on the site, and put it in a user agreement (the only link to BusinessWeek you’ll find in this piece) at that, and then follow it up by telling you not to link should you do it, well, s/he’s stupid.

Web 2.0, oh yes.

I thought old media (this is ancient media really) had gotten a bit further than that, and an overall pretty good site/mag like BusinessWeek should be getting it, right? Well, obviously they’re not, as SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill found out, after wanting to link to an interview with him from his blog. My, my, very smooth.

What happens next? Well, Gawker picked it up, along with CNET’s News Blog, and I’m guessing this’ll make even more rings on the water.

So stupid. Really, it is stupid. Why would you say no to free traffic? Traffic brings ad dollars! Making it hard for bloggers and well-meaning sites like this makes them pissed up, and you end up on The Blog Herald with a cranky editor whining about your policies!

What do you think? How stupid is this?