EZINE - mde.net - September 2002

MDE's Practical Technology Tips & Techniques Newsletter
You have received this monthly edition of my Practical Technology Tips & Techniques Newsletter by subscribing to it or selecting the free tools sample while visiting my web site.
For reference to all past issues, go to www.mde.net/ezine.

This month's articles include:

MDE News ------------------------------------   More to Come
I.   IT Manager Tips -------------------------   "War Story"  -  Understand the request before acting
II.  Web Development Tips ---------------   Highlight table cell with mouseover
III. Product and Service Review --------    bCentral's List Builder
IV. Entrepreneur Thoughts ---------------   What is an Entrepreneur ?
V.  Special Offer of the month ---------    Building a Strategic IT Plan

MDE News

It has been a long, hot summer in Atlanta and we are ready for some cooler weather. MDE has had significant growth over the past year and many initiatives have become realities. For example, just a few significant milestones for us include:

    -  Finished the ten books in the IT Manager Development Series
    -  Released the IT Manager ToolKit
    -  Published the first book in paperback format  -->  IT Management-101
    -  Became an Amazon.com Affiliate and started selling IT Management-101 on Amazon.com

More is coming !!

Key projects for the next year include:

    -  Writing more books. I have eight defined and hope to release the next title before the end of the year.
       Titles include:
              -  Building a Responsive Help Desk
              -  IT Policies and Procedures
              -  IT Management Models
              -  Managing the Virtual IT Organization
              -  Disaster Recovery  -  Keep the Business Operating
              -  Effective Presentations for the IT Manager
     -  Publishing the other 9 books of the IT Manager Development Series in paperback
     -  Writing a book that "tells all" on how I have built a successful Internet business model
     -  Create an outlet for quality affiliates to offer their products to the IT management community.

Many other products and services are being kicked around. My goal is to provide new products and services each year that provide practical insight that helps IT managers of all levels achieve more in their challenging roles. A lot has been done; much more is needed.

Stay tuned !

I. IT Manager Tips
"War Stories" are valuable lessons  -  Understand the request before acting

One of my favorite "war stories" occurred when I was with IBM in the late seventies. Although this incident did not happen with me, it has been a valuable lesson for me that I have shared with others many times.

One day, I had occasion to make a visit to a new prospect that was planning to install a Time & Attendance (T&A) solution that IBM offered at the time. The prospect, a large hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, had a competitive Honeywell mainframe system installed at the time. As one of the Systems Engineers in the company with both hospital experience and familiarity with the T&A systems we were proposing, I tagged along with the Marketing Rep to try to close the deal.

The CIO meets us at the reception area and takes us back to his office. As we are walking through a corridor, we notice a concrete ramp leading up to a door with a sign on it titled, COMPUTER ROOM. Neither the Marketing Rep nor I thought anything about it and followed the CIO to his office.

Later, we were given a tour of the computer room and the hospital to determine the number of T&A stations that the hospital would need for their application. On the way back to the office, we walk through the corridor that had the concrete ramp leading up to the computer room again. When we got back to the CIO's office and finished our T&A discussions, I asked the CIO about the purpose of the ramp leading into the computer room.

The CIO replied, "I was wondering how long it would take for you to ask about that."

He goes on to explain that when the hospital purchased their existing Honeywell mainframe system that an engineer came out and did some pre-installation planning with the hospital. One of the things he mentioned was that they would need a raised floor for the computer room. The former CIO had never experienced the term "raised floor" before so rather than ask questions that would clarify the request, he decided to install a raised floor.

When the Honeywell people came back out to inspect the site for the hardware delivery, they notice a ramp leading into the computer room. When they opened the door and entered the room, they were shocked and couldn't decide as to whether they now had a significant problem or how difficult it was going to be to hold back the laughter.  The CIO had "raised the floor" by pouring a two-foot slab of concrete into the computer room. So now, when you walked up and into the computer room, you also had a real raised floor for the mainframe to house all the cables on top of the original concrete slab "raised floor"

The lesson of the story is that when you hear something that is new or different, take care to understand what it means rather than assuming you know. It may save you a lot of time and money, even substantial embarrassment.

Send me an email and let me know if you like stories of this nature. If so, I have quite a few of them that can be provided in future newsletters.

II. Web Development Tips
Highlight table cell with mouseover

This small piece of code allows you to highlight an entire table cell on mouseover and create a hyperlink url to any web site you choose. Simply add the following code to your html Body section as needed for the effect you want.

<table cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0 border=0>
<tr>
<td align="center" width=150 onclick="window.location='http://www.bravenet.com/index.php'" onmouseover="this.style.backgroundColor='#FFEB5D'" onmouseout="this.style.backgroundColor='#FFFFFF'" style="cursor:hand; border: 1px; border-style: solid; border-color: #000066; background-color:#FFFFFF" align="left"><A style="text-decoration:none; color:000000; font-weight:bold;" HREF="http://www.mde.net/cio">Learn more about MDE Enterprises</a></td>
</tr>
</table>

Move your mouse pointer over the sample cell below to see how this works.

III. Product and Service Review
bCentral's List Builder

I began using bCentral's List Builder in mid-June of this year. It has been an excellent service and has helped improve my productivity quite a bit.

Before adopting List Builder, I maintained my newsletter email list myself. When a newsletter request came in, I manually sent the person a Welcome email that told them a bit about my newsletter and about MDE Enterprises. Then, I would copy the email address onto a WORD document that I used to maintain my list. When I got ready to send out my newsletter every month, I had to break the list into groups of about 100 or so in order to process through my email server. Bottom line is that it was very labor intensive and just a pain in the neck trying to do it all myself.

Enter List Builder. Now, I have links on my web pages for people to sign up for my free newsletter and to download free tools from my IT Manager ToolKit. ListBuilder handles everything once the link is selected by an interested party. Plus, I get a lot more with the service.

A few features of List Builder that are very helpful for my Internet business include:
    -  Automatic collection of newsletter subscriber email addresses
    -  Automatic responder email sent to all new subscribers.
    -  Flexible and user defined information is collected and saved for demographic statistice. This feature helps me
        know where my newsletter subscribers came from, what level of responsibility they have, how they found me ,
        and more.
    -  HTML email creation capability allows me to send emails with graphics and more professional fonts.   
    -  Open email statistics tells me how many emails that were sent were opened.
    -  Links selected statistics tells me which links were selected and how often. This is a very good tool to help me
        understand the dynamics of what my readers are interested in looking at .
    -  Unsubscribe capability is handled totally by List Builder  -  I don't have to touch a thing !!

Since I have migrated to List Builder, my productivity has definitely increased and the additional statistical information is giving me much better insight into my subscriber base.

For more information about List builder services, click here.

IV. Entrepreneur Thought
What is an "entrepreneur" ?

I have been giving this question quite a bit of thought lately. For most of my life, I have been a corporate employee and had achieved reasonable success as an IT Manager and CIO. I have been fortunate to work with many excellent people over the span of my career and will always have fond memories of many events and relationships.

For some reason, I have always wanted to do something of my own. I know many people that are very content to be a part of a company, I guess because of the relative security of being an employee. I believe that over the next twenty years we will see a tremendous movement of people making efforts to do more on their own and to create more independence for themselves. I know that I love the flexibility of working from home and the sense of accomplishment I get by running my own successful company, no matter how small it happens to be.

MDE has grown significantly in the last year. I began writing articles for TechRepublic and completed ten books on the topic of IT management principles from a practical, true to life experience point of view. I had written one item in my career prior to this adventure so I never thought I would become a "writer", and I use the term loosely. I also never really thought I had a creative side to me--I always thought I was very logical and structured. I'm finding that the creative path is a lot more fun, and when applied right can be very profitable.

My definition of an entrepreneur is someone that goes outside the traditional walks of life and creates a path of his/her own. I took a risk in November 2000 that has started to pay off--both financially as well as being personally gratifying. I can honestly say that in the past year I have worked harder than ever before but it doesn't seem like hard work because it has been so much fun.

Every entrepreneur has to have perseverance to achieve success. Every successful business I'm familiar with (apart from the dot.com companies of the past) started relatively slowly and through hard work, focus, and perseverance became a viable business entity. I can list many companies and people that are tremendously successful today that had very meager beginnings. Perseverance is possibly the greatest asset an entrepreneur can have. It is easy to remain with a winning team; it takes a lot more character to stick with a struggling organization and to help it achieve its full potential.

Entrepreneurs tend to be flexible and adaptable in order to take advantage of opportunities. A true entrepreneur "smells" opportunity. Part of the reason is that they are always looking for the opportunity in most situations while too many people look at the negatives of a situation. Positive attitude and seeing the "glass half full" as opposed to "half empty" actually creates an opportunistic environment for the entrepreneur.

I hope to be considered a successful entrepreneur one day. With focus, hard work, and perseverance, I just might make it a reality.

V.  September's Special Offer
Building a Strategic IT Plan

Most managers tend to be very tactical and reactive as opposed to being able to take charge by developing and implementing a strategy. The more responsibility you have, the more strategic thinking you need. It is not something that comes natural, but it can be a much easier process than you might think with guidance and a few examples to help you get started.

The strongest managers of any discipline, whether it is in IT, sports, finance, restaurant, or whatever, have been those that anticipate future events and decide on a strategy that they want to implement. These are the managers that take charge of their own destiny rather than to be bounced around by events they can't control. A perfect analogy is to try to visualize two boats in a fast flowing river. The boat with a motor and a rudder that is being used takes the course it chooses. The boat that doesn't use a motor or rudder floats along at the mercy of the flow of the water. In my case, I have always taken an approach that tried to define my own destiny rather than to take whatever course tends to be pushing at the time. My books are written very much from such a standpoint and Building a Strategic IT Plan is all about carving out a direction that compliments your company's needs.

IT strategies are not much of a benefit if they do not embrace and support the business needs. Specific focus is included to help you ensure that your IT plan is developed with your company's goals and objectives in mind.

The ebook normally sells for $29.95. In this special offer, you may purchase the ebook for $24.00. It will be sent to you via email attachment the same day as your payment is received. This offer ends on 9/30/02.

For additional information on the offer and to order, click here.

Keep a positive attitude and focus on doing things that you like to do; it can be more rewarding than you can imagine. Until the next time, have a great day.

Mike Sisco
 
Mike Sisco is the author of the IT Manager Development Series and President of MDE Enterprises, an IT management consulting and training company. This newsletter is free and intended to provide a variety of practical technology insights to help you improve your business. All material is copyright protected and is available for your personal use but is not available for distribution or resell purposes unless specifically authorized by Mike Sisco.

To subscribe to MDE's Practical Technology Tips & Techniques Newsletter, sign up here. Past editions are available at www.mde.net/ezine.

Send me an email with comments.