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• David Bradford and Allan Cohen on Supportive Confrontation
  One of the most important skills that I’ve begun to develop is the art of discussing difficult issues in a direct way without being unduly confrontational or causing unnecessary defensiveness. (Note that I say “begun” because although I’d like to think I
  (tags: collaboration management)

• Mastering the Three Worlds of Information Technology
  There are three categories of IT, each of which provides different organizational capabilities—and demands very different kinds of management interventions.
  (tags: salesforce.com IT management)
• Where’s the Upside ?: Selling the strategic value of Salesforce.com
  This Harvard Business Review article (available free to read until end of November) by Andrew McAfee sets out a management framework for considering strategic IT investment. Now, whilst I could be pedantic and pick holes in the framework or suggest improv
  (tags: salesforce.com it management)
• Erik Brynjolfsson
  Erik Brynjolfsson is the George and Sandra Schussel Professor of Management at MIT Sloan School of Management, the Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business and the Editor of the Information Systems Network. His research and teaching focuses on how
  (tags: research economics IT productivity)

I sat in on a webinar for Jitterbit open source integration server. The goal of Jitterbit is to make your integrations easier by allowing you to connect various data sources together based on rules and schedules you create. You can save these out as Jitterpacks, which can be shared freely.

You basically are doing operations that go get data, and then do something with it. Go get all the Accounts from Salesforce.com, then update/create Company records in another database with that data. You also get to chain the operations together, so after you update/create the Company records, you can then go back to Salesforce and get all newly modified Opportunities, creating Orders in the database related to the correct Company.

The webinar walked through creating an integration with Salesforce.com and PostgreSQL.

• You describe Salesforce.com by uploading your enterprise WSDL to Jitterbit
• Chose the methods you want to use in your integration: login, describeGlobal, describeSObject, query, querymore, create.
• Create operations, like login to Salesforce, grab some data and put it in a database.
• Chain the operations together to make your integration logic
• Schedule the whole shebang

I built a series of operations that integrates our dotproject project management app with Salesforce.com. Using PHP, I wrote out the operations and transformations by hand. Seems like I could recreate this logic in Jitterbit fairly easily, once I get over the initial learning curve. I don’t think I’ll have time to go this route any time soon, but I could see making the investment if I had to make major changes to our integration.

It’s a pretty cool system. I don’t have clients who need this kind of thing right now, but I think Jitterbit would be a good option for people needing true integration between Salesforce.com and other database applications.

tags: salesforce.com, jitterbit, integration

• O’Reilly Network — An Introduction to Salesforce.com’s AppExchange
  This is part one of a three-part series on how to build and distribute applications on Salesforce’s AppExchange.
  (tags: salesforce.com)
• Lead Converter 4 Application Overview - Salesforce.com
  New mods to lead coverter with some really nice features. Asynchronous loading, async converting, batch converting and deleting. Thanks to evan for help on this.
  (tags: salesforce.com)

• Daily Kos: Liberalism is the “True Conservatism”
  Ever since the Bush regime began noticeably sputtering near the beginning of its second term, a growing chorus of conservative voices has grown increasingly distressed, and as it has seemed that Bush’s failures would come to tar an entire movement, the cr
  (tags: politics conservatism liberalism)
• Event Wax
  free web-based event registration
  (tags: events tools conferences web2.0)

Wow, this is what Bush said in his radio address:

Whatever your opinion of the outcome, all Americans can take pride in the example our democracy sets for the world by holding elections even in a time of war.

Wonder what he would have rather done…

Thanks Crooks and Liars.

• what we can learn from ‘06
  thoughts on the election
  (tags: politics communications)
• thoughts on the election
  thoughts on the election
  (tags: politics election)
• final roundup on technology and the election
  (tags: politics election technology)

• Account Address Copy to Contacts
  My modified version of the mass address updater: this one copies Account Billing Address to Contact Other address fields
  (tags: salesforce.com appexchange)
• Public Campaign | Clean Money Clean Elections
  Scandals are rocking our nation’s capital. From former Rep. Tom DeLay’s indictments for shady campaign finance dealings to former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunnigham’s bribery conviction, to Rep. William Jefferson’s $90K in “frozen assets,” The pu
  (tags: politics election democracy reform)
• Washington Public Campaigns
  Washington State should follow Maine and Arizona, and publicly finance OUR election campaigns — a common-sense system supported by ALL parties.
  (tags: politics election reform)
• Integrating process with web spreadhseets
  interesting case study using java, online spreadsheets with an API, and Google calendar to paste together a project time tracking system
  (tags: process ProjectManagement api)

• Walsh Iran / Contra Report - Chapter 16 Robert M. Gates
  Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA’s deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligenc
  (tags: politics Iran Contra)
• Mass Update Contact Address Application Specifications - Salesforce.com
  This easy-to-install link allows a salesperson or administrator to quickly update the address fields on contact records to match the account address.
  (tags: salesforce.com appexchange)

Corporate America has loved “early retirement”. This is where instead of laying off your older workers, you offer them a cash buyout. They take the lump sum, and head home at 52 to take IT classes at the local community college. It’s brutal, but has shown to be very effective for quietly getting rid of folks who would be difficult to layoff. We didn’t lay them off, just gave them an opportunity that some of them chose to take…

There’s clearly been a change in the country these last couple years. People want new ideas and new leadership. The election the other day showed that. But incumbency still is incredibly powerful and many congresspeople won’t be replaced because of their long relationship with their constituents.

So, could the Democrats give the people fresh choices in districts where congresspeople are entrenched? What if the Dems came up with an early retirement package for congresspeople? Give them financial incentive and they may well choose to leave their new-found minority positions. Especially in the House, minority status is not nearly as much fun as majority.

Dems are going to push through a hike in the federal minimum wage in January. I have some ideas of some other things they could include in that legislation that would be progressive, and also constitute an early retirement package for any Congresspeople so inclined to take it. For anyone who runs for office at the end of their next term:

• A 20% pay cut for all legislators. The American people have seen wage stagnation for the last 40 years, Congress should acknowledge that by resetting their wages to a more realistic level. This would be a great message to the middle class.
• A corresponding reduction in the annual salary retired Congresspeople pull every year for the rest of their lives. They get full pay till their dead, you know. By cutting salary by 20%, the annual retirement pay drops, and that adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the period of retirement.
• Cancelling the free health coverage for all retired Legislators who retire after 2008. The message: we have a lousy health care, we’re going to try to fix it, but until we do Legislators won’t be getting preferential treatment. We’ll pay our own way until you don’t have to.
• Reallocate the money saved to support for wounded soldiers and families of those killed in Iraq.

What normal person in America wouldn’t support this? We’re continually told that Americans don’t trust politicians, what better way for Democrats to gain trust that acknowleding the lousy prediciment Americans are in regarding wages and health care. This is a great populist statement that shows direct support for the troops.

Bush might veto it, but try explaining that position to the average person paying $1000/month for health care for her family.

And, it’s an early retirement package for the old dogs, creating open seats in 2008 when the environment will still likely favor change. Democrats may lose Robert Byrd, but overall I think most retirements would be Republicans who see the next 2 years as pretty unappealing.

This would be a bold populist statement that would require Democratic legislators to put their own pocketbooks aside for the good of the country. And it would set the tone for the next two years, even when most of the work they’ll do the rest of their tenure won’t be populist in nature. First impressions are important.