By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 3:31 PM

Did you ever notice that the more people that are on a meeting invitation, the more likely you are to mess up the time, date, duration, location, or conference call information for a meeting?

So if you are sending a meeting to your spouse, who loves you no matter how badly you mess up, the invite goes fine...even if it is a partially recurring, every other 3rd Wednesday of months with the letter R in their name, it's fine.

But if you have to send a meeting to a bunch of clients, their bosses, your PR guy, the CIO and some local politicians, it is guaranteed that your invitation process will look like this:

1. Draft the invite.  Proof several times.  Get a colleague to look it over.
2. Send the invite.
3. D' oh! you got the time right but for the wrong time zone.
4. Update meeting, with apologies
5. Double D' oh!  You got the time right but the date is wrong.
6. Repeat step 4
7. Breathe a sigh of relief. 
8. Receive e-mail that points out that the team in Canada will not be able to attend because it is the 2-4 holiday (What the heck is the 2-4 holiday????)
9. Pick a new date, repeat step 4, again.
10. Repeat step 7
11. Read new e-mail from the CIO that points out that while you got the date, time, time zone and topic right, you got the name of the client company wrong.
12. Repeat step 4, again....
13. Wait 30 minutes.
14. Repeat step 7.

Outlook Law #1 (OLL1): The probability of getting a meeting invitation correct on the first try is inversely proportional to the number of people on the invite list.

There's probably a corollary related to the stature of the invitees as well...

By the way, this effect really has nothing to do with Outlook as it applies to any scheduling system.  It just sounds good as OLL1.

 

By Karen Lopez on Sunday, August 24, 2008 3:33 PM

  A reminder that Monday, 25 August is the finale date for making a proposal to speak at the 2009 DAMA Symposium Wilshire Meta Data Conference being held in Tampa, Florida in April.

Get your proposals in. 

Call for Presentations: DAMA 2009

 

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, August 21, 2008 6:44 PM

Rob Drysdale and I have written a whitepaper for Embarcadero on how IT professionals can improve collaboration with the business side of the organization, specifically around how accessibility to meta data impacts user engagement in the IT process.

This paper introduces you to Embarcadero ER/Studio Enterprise Portal, a brand new product that is like a search engine for your data model meta data.

Rob brings his multi-decade experiences as a business user on projects to this effort, providing examples of how the Portal can encourage business use of data model information.

Go download this paper via the link below.  Rob and I would love your feedback, too.

 

Embarcadero Technologies // We Make Data Work

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, August 07, 2008 1:53 PM

John Zachman has announced changes to his operating companies. ZIFA will be winding down and Zachman International will be the primary organization for delivering Zachman Framework related products and services.

Stan Locke will be Managing Director and President, and John's son, John P. Zachman will be VP of Marketing.  David Kingston, of Toronto, will be VP Customer Support Systems.

Sam Holcman of Pinnacle Business Group and partner in ZIFA will be moving on to his work in EACOE.

John also announced a new website, which looks great (it also uses a content management system similar to InfoAdvisors' site).

• Register

• for our iPod Touch® Give-away! (even if you are already a member).

• for the new Enterprise Standards

• to see or print the new Enterprise Framework2 graphic.

• Review

• my own 'wikipedia' concise definition of The Zachman Framework.

• the details of Zachman Certified requirements for practitioners, methodologies and tools.

• current and popular articles and reference material.

• Frequently Asked Questions that I personally have answered.

• timely announcements and press releases.

• Purchase our support products (requires registration)

• Various editions of my eBook.

• any of the new Zachman Framework2 posters.

• the new Framework2 model kits .

• An annual subscription to access the MetaFrameworks research work

• See and plan for

• Attending a scheduled conference engagement

• Attending a MasterClass course on our schedule.

• Requesting an in-house seminars or executive briefings.

If you register for the new site (and you should, even if you previously registered with ZIFA), you will be eligible to win an iPod Touch.  John is doing the right thing by not assuming that information collected as part of ZIFA should be reused without your consent for ZI.  So get over there and register.

So get on over there, register, and dip into all the great stuff available.

Zachman International

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 9:39 PM

As I posted previously in Discounted Complete Compare Education for PLC Members and Always Report Your ERwin Enhancement Requests via PLC, there are benefits to joining CA's Global PLC for Modeling.

Today PLC members were sent a spreadsheet of ERwin Enhancements and other changes for review, comment, and voting.  This is your chance to have your requests heard.

Some of the items listed overlap with our discussions on the ERwin User Discussion Group:

• Printing of all the subject areas at a time (one of my favorites since Web Publisher was killed off)
• Nested subject areas
• Complete Compare usability enhancements
• DBMS-specific issues
• Dialog usability enhancements

If you aren't a PLC member, now is the time to join to influence the direction of future versions of ERwin

http://causergroups.ca.com/UserGroups/Welcome.aspx?ID=397

 

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 7:42 PM

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (www.fgdc.gov) has posted the US Department of Homeland Security Geospatial Data Model for review and comment.

 

Instructions are provided in the link below for supplying your comments.

Department of Homeland Security Geospatial Data Model — Federal Geographic Data Committee

By Karen Lopez on Friday, August 01, 2008 1:28 PM

It's Friday and I thought you'd all enjoy watching this video to remind you of your favorite data & process modeling sessions.  This one is about the interactions between overly-zealous marketing consultants and a designer, but I can certainly see parallels to some possible business processes I've been pitched by overly-zealous business people.

Of course, now that I think about it, I've definitely been pitched data models that looked a lot like the resulting product of this video...Hmmmmmm.

 

Creating A Stop Sign video

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:03 PM

The ERSIG organizers are pleased to announce the next ERSIG online meeting! Please join us on Wednesday, July 30, at 7PM UTC /6PM BST /1PM EDT /12PM CDT /11AM MDT /10AM PDT for...

"Going Beyond Database Modeling: LDMs for X-Solution Design and Integration," by Mehmet Orun from Genentech.

There will be a Q&A session following the presentation.

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Wednesday, July 30 at 7PM UTC /6PM BST /1PM EDT /12PM CDT /11AM MDT /10AM PDT

Meeting URL:

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/embarcadero/join?id=ERSIGJuly&role=attend

&pw=ERSIG

Alternate URL:https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/embarcadero/join

Meeting ID: ERSIGJuly

Entry Code: ERSIG

Audio Conferencing (Toll): +1 (702) 902-0735

Audio Conferencing (Toll-free): +1 (866) 533-0065

Participant Code: ERSIG

FIRST-TIME USERS

To save time before the meeting, check your system to make sure it is ready to use Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=90703

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