Craig's Rantings...

McWeeney takes on the Hasso keynote

2010-02-11T11:17:00.001+01:00

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Dan McWeeney, Adobe, Enterprise Geek and Enterprise Irregular takes a crack at explaining what everyone saw in the Hasso Plattner SAP Sapphire keynote.

DIY Backdrop for Video

2009-03-16T19:22:00.002+01:00

I decided the other day that I wanted to do some experimenting with Green Screens, Blue Screens, etc. and realized that before I do that I should really at least get a proper backdrop up for when I am doing videos or the Friday Morning Report.

While I am at it I should think about lights as well but for now I will settle for a decent backdrop. Now remember I'm working on a very very slim budget so now I had to think of a way to do this without spending a fortune.

Whether it was simply because my wife knows best or because I used the wrong word in German the end result was a "roll" about 5 meters long of white table cloth, not really a "cloth" but very close to that type of material. I was a bit disappointed at first since I had this very grand idea of what I was going to do, but decided to just go for it since my wife spent only 9€ on this thing and what I wanted would have cost probably 30€.

So I grabbed two "hooks" that I could screw into the ceiling.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Next a length of rope that I tied at one end and the other I just made sure it was tight but not permanent.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Now the roll itself I slipped onto the rope so I could pull it down as well as wind it back up.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

I can also shift it around quite easily and adjust it as I need it based on where/how I am sitting at my desk to work on a video or do a live broadcast.

Turn on my lights and I end up with a pretty darn good backdrop! The even cooler part that my oldest is happy about is that if the bit I'm using is getting dirty, crinkled or otherwise not that great to use, I simply snip it off and give it to him for coloring and painting on.

The end result is probably 11€ worth of stuff gives me a nice backdrop that I can easily put in place or take away without taking away from being able to fully use my office space.

Technorati Tags:
experience, experiment, friday morning report, video, diy

Did you save a Tom today?

2009-03-04T14:39:00.001+01:00

Find more videos like this on megatom

Do your part!

Technorati Tags:
green, environment

Update to all and the 24 Hour Friday Morning Report Marathon

2009-02-13T20:21:00.001+01:00

To my faithful listeners and supportors of the Friday Morning Report, to my friends, family and co-workers and fellow community members.

Regardless that due to an unforseen medical emergency that has me laid up in a hospital now (going on 7 days) I wish to report that we've made it almost completely to the $2000 goal set forth. My access is extremely limited but last I was able to tell we were sitting a mere $99 away and based on my emails I've received that will be easily achieved once I am back on my feet and able to reschedule the show. This delay, and that is all it is, is just a small hiccup on the road of life!

Of course there will be some of you, yes you know who you are who will think I elaborately staged this just so I'd have an interesting story tell about doctors or wait it was about blonde nurses I think you said ;-)

With this small message that I believe is being rebroadcasted by my fellow eGeeks http://enterprisegeeks.com I want to say I am fine, and pushing hard to get on my feet and out of here. My family has lots of support and are managing very well which makes this easier as well.

Your thoughts and well wishes are heard and well received - Thank you!

Craig

Enterprise Geeks Podcast - Islands in the Stream

2009-02-02T16:59:00.002+01:00

In this episode, hosts Ed Herrmann and Thomas Jung talk with special guest Craig Cmehil. Craig talks about his prediction for more adoption of video and collaboration in 2009 and shares some sneak peek details about his special 24 hour live charity event. And of course, for all of our fellow SAP egheads, we share our views on SAP Flash Islands and what it means for future applications.

Enterprise Geeks Podcast - Islands in the Stream

Posted using ShareThis

Grab a mic!

2009-02-01T20:19:00.001+01:00

Grab a mic!

Posted using ShareThis

24 Hour Marathon for "Doctors without Borders"

2009-01-16T13:31:00.003+01:00

Myself and many others in my social and work circles spend endless amounts of time working and taking care of what we consider to be important activities in our lives. We are all dedicated, respectable and good hearted people. I applaud my friends and co-workers for their efforts day in and day out, having a family and successful careers in this day and age are not an easy task and many on top of that give of themselves daily to help others less fortunate.

For 2009, I decided that it was time I took another step, over the years I have always given time and money to certain activities local to my community to help but recently it has been reduced to simply "money" it became easy to just enter my credit card info or reach into my pocket and pull out some change or bills to drop in a bucket. Now though I have decided that I will start checking locally for some ways I can help my community more with my own two hands and I very much want to put some of the energy that I use for my various online activities behind helping another group of professionals who spend enormous amounts of their time and energy doing amazing work all around the world.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971.

Today, MSF provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. MSF provides independent, impartial assistance to those most in need. MSF reserves the right to speak out to bring attention to neglected crises, to challenge inadequacies or abuse of the aid system, and to advocate for improved medical treatments and protocols.

In 1999, MSF received the Nobel Peace Prize.

So I have decided that on February 12, 2009 at 15:00pm CET (Central Europe) I will begin a new and crazy endeavor to host a 24 hour long Friday Morning Report in order to raise money for charity. Specifically the "Doctors without Borders". My goal is to raise ~~$500~~$2000 (Updated due to such a positive response in the first 12 hours of announcing! Thank you everyone!) for their cause and I hope that you will support me and them in making this happen. Many of my friends have inspired me to take on this challenge not to mention the entire SAP Community Network who managed to accumulate almost 4 million points in 2008 for which SAP has agreed to donate a sum of 200,000 € to the World Food Programme. I have no doubts this will be a difficult task, stressful leading up to it and most likely stressful during the course of the 24 hours but I will push on and I will make it!

Everyone who is interested can tune in to watch me throughout the 24 hours as well as the various videos segments available about the MSF program and their activities as well as segments done by friends, co-workers, associates and others throughout the timespan of the show. You can catch the show here, http://fridaymorningreport.tv, there is a live chat available and I will be watching on Twitter as well. Many might wonder if my show is the proper format for such an event, personally I think any format is a good format for helping others, true on my show we laugh, and have fun and things are normally on a lighter side of life but that does not mean we care less and this show will be extra special because the fun we have will be made helping a great cause! So please join us for an interesting evening and participate and if you can donate to this great cause!

I've setup a site where you can donate directly to the cause, you can find that here. If you are unable to donate, please at least spread the word to those you know - there is a lot of things happening in the world right now that we may not be able to directly stop but we can DIRECTLY impact the support made available to those who really need it!

Technorati Tags:
community, csr, friday morning report, life, msf, doctorswithoutborders, donate, charity

Starting 2009 off with a thought!

2009-01-14T14:57:00.001+01:00

I decided to go ahead and do a small video, I seem to be moving more and more in that direction these days with my show, Friday Morning Report so I figured why not kick off my blogging here for this year with a small video as well.

The video is a look back at some of the professional/semi-professional things to happen to me during the 2008 year as well as what I think will be very dominant in the upcoming 2009 year now.

OK so 2008 here we go, some links to show my highlights, things of interest and importance.

Beyond that I honestly could go on for hours about friends, family, my books, my kids, the list is simply endless but those I will save for me ;-) and for all of you I will simply say I hope your 2009 is half as good as mine looks because my looks amazing!

So 2009, what do I think of 2009? I think we are in for a real awakening of technologies and their uses. As many sit back and fret over the financial situation I see this as an excellent opportunity for companies as well as individuals to make use of the tremendous amount of technology already in place to make working virtually very easy. I've been a virtual worker now since 2005 and although there are aspects of not being in an office that are missed the benefits to both me, my family and the environment far outweigh them!

2009 I think will be the year that we start to use more and more of these tools, such as Veodia to work, collaborate and communicate across the globe.

Technorati Tags:
collaboration, community, development, Enterprise, Enterprise Irregulars, enterpriseirregulars, eventtrack, experience, experiment, friday morning report, kyte.tv, life, sap, social, social networks, starshipenterprisey, ustream, video

Library of Congress and Crowdsourcing

2008-12-15T00:52:00.001+01:00

While enjoying my vacation I came across this interesting little read about how the Library of Congress is now offering some of their photo collections online via Flickr. Being a big fan of flickr this was a plus but after more thought I realized that at $24.95 a year for a pro account plus the multitude of services offered through flickr (many I use) this has got to be a major savings or?

"Offering historical photograph collections through Flickr gives the Library of Congress a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images with a new visual community.

We invite you to tag and comment on the photos, and we also welcome identifying information—many of these old photos came to us with scanty descriptions!"

(Via Library of Congress Photos on Flickr (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress).)

The other great thing was the simple fact they are inviting the community to help enhance the details available with the photos. Several have some great notes already, like this interesting panoramic one.

They even have a FAQ set up around the topic.

"Q: Why is the Library placing pictures on Flickr?

A: We have several goals:

To share photographs from the Library’s collections with people who enjoy images but might not visit the Library’s own Web site.
To gain a better understanding of how social tagging and community input could benefit both the Library and users of the collections.
To gain experience participating in Web communities that are interested in the kinds of materials in the Library’s collections.

With the launch of the Library of Congress pilot, Flickr began a new initiative called 'The Commons.' Cultural heritage institutions that join The Commons are sharing images from their photographic collections that have no known copyright restrictions as a way to increase awareness of these collections with the general public. For more information on The Commons, see: http://www.flickr.com/commons.

A webcast about the project is available: 'Opening the Photo Vaults: A Web 2.0 Pilot Project to Enhance Discovery and Gather Input for the Library's Photograph Collections' (presented Jan. 29, 2008)."

(Via Library of Congress Photos on Flickr - FAQ (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress).)

I think for me the underlying theme here is that we can really take advantage of simple services, e.g. a photo sharing site to achieve something grand. I personally have 17,000+ photos on the site and has I find the time I scan and upload older photos I have and eventually the plan will be to have all of my photos online in my account. Most are available only to myself or to family but from there I can easily create books, DVD's, etc. and thus be able to provide a photo journal of my life and that of my young family through the ages. This is no different than what my folks did with photo albums when I was a kid, the advantage over that though is that as the world becomes more global and you find yourselves moving more and more the books and albums become a burden (not to mention the added impact on the environment) - don't get me wrong I really enjoy siting down with those books when I have the time but I also enjoy the ability to pull up any one of my 17,000+ plus when I have the time as well.

Disclaimer - We've taken over 1600 photos in the past 3 weeks while on vacation so digital online galleries are very nice at the moment ;-)

Technorati Tags:
collaboration, community, experiment, photography

Taking photos in Jacksonville

2008-12-10T18:44:00.001+01:00

The wife captured the one above!

Stateside

2008-11-23T18:08:00.002+01:00

IMG_3219
Originally uploaded by Craig & Nicole

Things might get a bit quiet here for a bit while we are back stateside, enjoy the upcoming holidays everyone!

The Friday Morning Report, http://fridaymorningreport.tv will continue to broadcast every Friday morning as usual though, check the site and calendar for broadcast times.

Starship Enterprisey - Candid Bangalore Moment - Ecohub

2008-11-13T08:26:00.001+01:00

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Special event taking place here at the Bangalore SAP TechEd event, "Connecting for Success" is your chance to hear and learn all about the SAP Ecohub!

Time: 4:45 PM on November 13, 2008
Location: Room #L7
Session ID: SOA 122
Presenter: B.T. Narasimha and Singh Mecker

In addition you can come by the Community Clubhouse for one following sessions,

Friday, November 14 at 9:00 AM
Friday, November 14 at 5:00 PM

SE #17 - SAP TechEd '08 - Las Vegas Demo Jam backstage

2008-11-03T16:39:00.001+01:00

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