Five Years, 300-ish Posts, and Counting...

I've been anticipating and humble-bragging that I would soon reach 300 Tridion blog posts.

But I had to double check and the truth is since joining the Tridion online community, I've already posted 311 posts, but not all have been about Tridion.

See a breakdown of my posts since 2011* across my personal blog, the official community site (previously TridionWorld and now SDL Community), and TridionDeveloper, a blog hosted by ContentBloom.

*I'm not including the cookbook, PowerTools, or my BA Toolkit code as posts. And though I started blogging and Tridion a few years before 2011, I didn't have the nerve to blog about Tridion until 2011.

After gathering my posts from the sites, I roughly categorized them into the following categories, listed in alphabetical order:

• Blogging and Community
• Example Code
• Humor/Satire
• Industry and Events
• Personal/Career
• Practices and Design
• Product Features
• Short or !Tridion (for really short posts or posts that had little to do with Tridion, its community, or my participation in the community)
• Training/Guide

I'm sure posts could be reclassified or might have multiple categories, but I'm keeping it mostly simple.

Breakdown

I posted on a variety of topics on my own blog. But on sites with a clearer audience, I posted on fewer topics, meant for the intended audience. For TridionDeveloper I had a few technical posts on practices or design as well as example code. I also announced the Tridion Stack Exchange beta. On SDL Community or TridionWorld I shared training information or guides, product features, and a few posts on practices, industry events (Innovate), and community.

Combined, these made up my past 311 posts.

Audience-Focused by Channel... Mostly

You probably already filter your communication to the channel and audience. But if you find yourself asking what might you blog or share about, a good answer could be:

Share whatever you want, as long as its appropriate for the audience.

Below you can see I kept humorous, personal, or non-Tridion posts off both the official SDL Community sites and TridionDeveloper blog. But topics were "fair game" on CreateAndBreak.net.

Someone once made a point to me that "having an online persona without a personal website is almost like having a great party and not inviting anyone over." A personal site or blog offers those curious about you more information than just LinkedIn or Twitter. Also...

"...there’s nothing like meeting someone physically for the first time after having 'known' that person for a while online – and then sharing a beer!"

In addition to the Tridion-specific topics, I've shared some personal or career updates as well as some humorous posts, where I think I managed to piss someone off once, but promptly apologized and corrected the offending bits.

That's a lot of blah blah blogging.

Mostly Tridion

And since I had the data already (in Excel), I took another view with radial diagrams to emphasize the focus for each of these channels.

My personal blog, CreateAndBreak.net, features lots of topics, with the majority about Tridion practices and design. However, SDL Community/TridionWorld as well as TridionDeveloper are more about the audience.

I'm trying not to see a baby seal in this profile of blog topics. 

So though it's true that I've long advocated blogging and shared about the Tridion community itself, the majority (~29% or 81 posts, give or take) of my posts have been about Tridion practices and design. I somehow managed to share about a dozen snippets of code as well.

I suspect my posting velocity will drop a bit in my current role, but I'll continue to share about product features, industry news, and observations about our excellent community and developers.

Thanks so much for all of your help and community contributions along the way. Keep sharing and let us know about your own milestones.

Tridion Developer Summit 2016

Congratulations to Robert Curlette, the sponsors, and fellow presenters on another successful Tridion Developer Summit (TDS) 2016!

I want to share some quick observations as a presenter and fellow attendee as well as advice to those wanting to present or represent a vendor or partner. Oh and there'll be pictures at the end.

Context Matters, Especially for Developers

Tridionauts really love their IDEs. From DD4T to Alchemy GUI extensions to XView templating, implementers will find ways to do everything in their IDE of choice. Call our own Content Delivery API? Nope, they'll wrap it in DD4T. XML Configuration? Nope, they'll do that in a class in Alchemy (intellisense ftw!). Individual Template Building Blocks? Nope, instead maybe create a single Template Building Block (TBB) with the logic in its own MVC application in the Content Manager (TOM.NET) and call it XView.

By the way, our own DXA in Azure appeals this type of persona. As much as Tridionauts like Tridion, I see the work in these projects supporting the idea that Web developers want to develop. The product, extensions, and community work to make that easy.

Congrats 2016 SDL Web Community Winners!

Congrats to the SDL Web 2016 Community MVP Winners!

Five quick tips for a successful year:

1. Enjoy the uber geek status. Be sure to get to the retreat if you can. It's awesome.
2. Keep sharing. Year two is harder than winning the first year.
3. Don't under-appreciate what you have to offer.
4. Don't get complacent or over-confident either. Winners aren't "the best," though the best often share.
5. Connect with others and encourage the next generation of sharers.

To previous winners that "fell off" this year, welcome to the alumni group. Here are thoughts back from 2012 on having MVP alumnus status. Big thanks to those that shared less but maybe mentored more.

For anyone else interested in this award, 2017 will be even harder for a few reasons:

1. Community members can get an SDL Web 8 developer license for research and sharing. The list is growing. Don't wait to get started.
2. Alchemy.
3. DXA.
4. DD4T.
5. The Next Big Thing in the Community (I've seen it. You're not ready for it. It's impressive.).

You may have read how to win my vote in a post from last year. That's old advice. To join the 2017 MVP class first join today's community. Then optionally see what everyone else is doing. And then share more than everyone else.

Tridion Doesn't Work That Way...

This post contrasts things you may or may not know about Tridion (SDL Web) connected by an embarrassing moment in my role as a product manager. Let's talk about too much knowledge, not enough, and why I'm not asking you to share this time.

Too Much Knowledge... Can be Embarrassing

We were recently discussing the idea of "tagging" content in SDL Web Experience Manager (XPM) as seen in the rough wireframe below. This specific idea won't end up in the final product without a bit more discussion, validation, and iterations. Or it might get swapped with something with a higher priority.

Rough wireframe exploring the idea of "in-context" tagging. Our UX designer stressed it's very rough. Don't tell him I showed this to you.

The Presentation that Launched a Tridion Blog or Two

I was an SDL Tridion customer for four years before I joined SDL as a consultant. Four years later I'm hoping I can make a difference for another four or more years in Product Management. Let's start with a reminder to share more.

In February 2012, I gave this presentation to a room of peers. More than few started blogging shortly after. ;-) For the next Tridion blog you find, see if it happened to start in or around March 2012.

Blogging in the SDL Tridion Community (2012) from Alvin Reyes

It took me this long to get the time (courage) to finally share this presentation. I'm trying to follow my own advice to continue sharing in a new role. What should I focus on?

The Future?

With the help of Product Marketing and UX, we released posts about the future of SDL Web. It's hard sharing about the future mainly because I'm not building the future, but rather helping predict and prioritize the future.

The future sounds so great until... expectations. It'd be too easy to become the Peter Molyneux of enterprise software development.

The Past (~300 Posts)

I learned some things in the past role. But it's odd being close to 300 Tridion-related posts since 2011 (267 here, 13 on TridionDeveloper, and 13 on SDL Community/TridionWorld), while not being sure what to post next. Though I still have a few more topics left in my "tips for Tridion consultants" blogging queue, it's time to move on... to the present.

Present

After tasting what it's like blogging about the future and getting my fill of the past, let's continue collaborating in the present.

I've been recently asking for your feedback on Tridion Meta in terms of custom reports, commenting features, and your extension ideas from the Tridion Developer Summit. I should be clear that I'm looking for your pain and needs (while attempting to predict the future) rather than features. Features for the sake of features are overrated, but we can cover that in another post.

I think my next post might be on how the Idea Fairy (or Idea Fairy Tale) works, but who knows what the future will bring?

Pick A Topic, Any Topic

I am trying to get the new SDL Community site (in the Tridion section) to recognize my past posts. I'll explain how to do the same for your posts after we get it sorted.

In the meantime, here's a side effect. Feedburner sent me an update on all of my posts since 2011 minus the past 25 blogger posts.

This is just text below, see my Feedburner Feed for summaries and links.

• SDL Innovate: Web Content Management Workshop Recap -- Prototypes
• SDL Innovate: Contextual Matters
• SDL Connected Recap
• SDL Connected: Post-Event Team-Building Experience Day 2
• SDL Connected: Three Tridion Important Integration Questions
• Let CRUD Guide your Tridion Integration
• SDL Connected: Post-Event Team-Building Experience Day 1
• CXM Pillars and Journeys Cheat Sheet
• Quick and Dirty Way to Determine X and Y Coordinates
• SDL Media Manager Bootcamps 2014
• You Know You Travel A Lot When...
• The Difference Between Tridion Designs and Tridion Settings
• Breaking the CXM Ice at Knowledge Days
• A Corporate Team Building Journey (Event Planning)
• New to SDL Tridion?
• Managing Robots META Tags with Tridion or any CMS*
• What Does Contextual Image Delivery Mean for SDL Tridion Images?
• Quick Navigation Tips on an SDL Tridion Environment and Asking Smart Questions
• First Step in Designing Content Entry Forms
• Brand Defending and Organic CXM
• SDL Tridion Experience Manager via XBox Kinect for the Ultimate Experience
• Testing Testing, 1, 2, 3, 45678...
• Example SDL Tridion Sandbox Proposal
• Are You Ready for a Contextual Web?
• One SDL Document by Document
• SDL Tridion Component Synchronizer is Dead. Long live ComponentSynchronizer!
• Ask Yourself Why Three Times
• Keeping Up with the SDL Tridion Community
• Parking Lots, Bins, Tables, and WVTTK?
• Carbon 2.0, Standards, and SDL Tridion Education Updates
• MVP Chat Part 2
• Congrats to the 2014 SDL Tridion Community MVPs!
• Adding a Background Page in Visio
• If perfect is the enemy of good, what does 100% mean?
• SDL Tridion 2013 SP1 is Out
• SDL Media Manager Bootcamp
• The 4 D's of BluePrinting "Promotion"
• Content Modeling Best Practices
• How Many Users Can SDL Tridion Support?
• A Must Read: Content Strategy for the Web
• Content Strategists
• The Best Parts of SDL Tridon Experience Manager are the Easiest
• Making a Blog with SDL Tridion
• On Tridion RTF Links and Empty Parents and a 99% Answer Rate on Tridion Stack Exchange
• Deal with the Shadowy Figure
• How Can I Pass the Tridion Certification Exams?
• SDL Tridion Trainees Predict the Content Manager Explorer
• Technical Questions in SDL Tridion Foundation and Workshops
• Cancelling Booking Requests, A Story of Slightly Scary Usability
• Feature-Driven CMS Development Part 3
• Feature-Driven CMS Development Part 2
• Feature-Driven CMS Development Part 1
• Can SDL Tridion Poop?
• Let's Play What Published That (aka SDL Tridion Link Propagation)?
• SDL Tridion Humour Part 5
• Contextually Aware Content Part 3
• Contextually Aware Content Part 2
• Contextually Aware Content Part 1
• Awesome SDL Tridion MVP 2013 Summit
• Sharing More by Caring Less (How to get over the fear of sharing)
• Quick, Pick the most Important SDL Tridion Item!
• More on XPM Regions: Difference between Insert and Drag-and-drop
• Use These Automation Options Sparingly
• Documenting Component Presentations
• Shifting Requirements
• CXM Requirement: Don't Be Creepy
• Flaming Sword of Sharing (10% Chance to Proc)
• The Sixth Tridion Environment
• SDL Innovate: Enchanted by Tridion's Future and Tridion Re-Reimagined Today
• Find Your Way With Tridion's BluePrint Viewer
• Understanding TOM.NET Before Using TOM.NET
• You're Too Close to Your Expertise
• Places to Get Started with SDL Tridion GUI Extensions
• Discover the Power of SDL Tridion 2013
• Does your Tridion Item Metaphor Work?
• Subscribe to Functional or Technical TRex Tags. Roar!
• CM-Side Integrations Mocked Up
• The "S's" of CM-Side Integration
• Inline vs. In-Context Editing
• Tame the Content Injection Monster
• Guess the Tridion Blogger
• Less is More? Just Enough is More.
• New New Tridion Best Practices
• How Do I Revert Back to a Previous SDL Tridion Item's Version?
• Recognizable SDL Tridionauts: An Answerer, a Coder, a Community Builder, Mr P, and the Button Presser.
• Dynamic Vs. Static Component Presentations Vs...
• Fun with SDL Tridion Icons and Visio Stencils
• Applying CMS Principles To Your CMS Designs
• Experience Manager Content Types and Regions
• TRex Logo Ideas
• Don't Let a Format Dictate Your Content Model
• Navigation for One Structure Group
• Mind-Shifting Tridionauts
• SDL Tridion and Alt Text. You're probably wrong, but still doing it right.
• Where Do We Place SDL Tridion Keywords?
• Tic Tac Tridion
• Alvin.getUrlByTopic()
• How Long Should it Take?
• More Blogging Tips for the Tridion Professional
• Welcome the New SDL Tridion Community MVPs!
• SDL Tridion Humour Part 4
• SDL Tridion and Web Analytics (aka How to Identify Unique Content Instances?)
• Goodbye "click here"... again.
• Making Config Components Disappear
• WebDAV is Fast. Upload Multimedia is Faster.
• Can't Paste from VMWare Player to Windows 7
• Yet Another SDL Tridion Navigational Approach
• SDL Tridion. Bottom-Up or Top-Down?
• Why Page Types Are a Very Good Thing (TM)
• The Vendor-Client Dance Partnership 
• When Near-Duplicate SDL Tridion Schemas Makes Sense
• Creating an SDL Tridion BluePrint 
• Seven Quick SDL Tridion Experience Manager Tips
• Quick Look Back at My First Year with SDL
• Documenting SDL Tridion Folders the Lazy Way
• Types of Tridionauts
• Never Gonna Get an Answer
• Can We Discover the "Best" Tridionauts?
• Good User Design Hides "Mistakes"
• Pousada De Palmela
• Tridion Content Analysis: Part 5, The Answer
• Tridion Content Analysis: Part 4, The Process
• Tridion Content Analysis: Part 3, Inventory
• Tridion Content Analysis: Part 2, Context
• Tridion Content Analysis: Part 1, The Trivial Example
• Scalable Schema Fields
• tl;dr
• How about Verbs instead of Nouns for Publication Names?
• Amusing JSON Details
• Not always an Extension
• You're Not Really a Tridionaut Until You've...
• SDL Tridion Parent Publication Permissions Simplification
• IS vs IT
• BluePrinting Naming Conventions. More Questions than Answers.
• Tridion and Technical Debt
• SDL Tridion CME Authorization
• PowerTools 2011 Robot Pics
• Blah blah community
• Best Practices? Let's Talk Best Patterns.
• How to Remember Tridion Dynamic Linking
• Train and Untrained. Which are you?
• We Didn't Start the Fire
• SDL Tridion: I Wish I Knew Then...
• Inspect Component XML With C#
• SDL Tridion Lisp Mediator
• BluePrinting Metaphor Re-imagined
• Opportunity and Challenges for Third-Party SDL Tridion Tools
• You Need the Best Design Tools Money Can't Buy
• Aint Got No (SDL Tridion) Workflow... Blues?
• What's Wrong With a Tridion Project Plan?
• Who do you Trust?
• SDL Innovate 2012. So Much Content!
• SDL Tridion, The Most Interesting Man, and Chuck Norris
• Step-By-Step Blogging Guide
• Blog Recipe: Be Relevant While Sharing Experience, Passionately
• Fascination with SDL WCMS and SDL Tridion
• Seven Wins in Developing a Technical Community
• SDL Tridion-related Online Information. A 30 Second Snapshot.
• SDL Tridion Resource Dynamics
• SDL Tridion Community on the Horizon
• More SiteEdit Insight
• SDL Tridion Content Delivery Tips, Tools, and Troubleshooting
• Salsa and Stroopwafel
• New Blog Page
• SDL Tridion "Integration" in 30 Seconds
• Simple Content Update Instructions
• Combined Layout Template Building Block
• Congrats New SDL Tridion MVPs
• Quickly Start a Layout Template Building Block in SDL Tridion 2011
• Inspect Component Details with an XSLT Component Template
• 10 Extreme Schema Scenarios
• Have your Content Authors Roleplay SDL Tridion Terms
• SDL Tridion Custom Help
• Favorite Parts of 2011 (it's not ALL Tridion)
• SDL Tridion 2011 Favorites Feature
• Dreamweaver Syntax with FieldPath
• Blogging Tips for the Tridion Professional
• Web Content Management Done Better
• PowerTools Gotchas
• The Seven Deadly Places... to Add Markup with SDL Tridion
• Enterprise Software Rivals
• SDL Tridion and Consulting Jokes
• Who are your Organization's Superstars?
• What's a Professional? What Dance Teachers and Consultants Have in Common.
• Conspiracy Theory
• SDL Tridion 2011 MVP Retreat
• Nominate the Next SDL Tridion MVP
• Happy Thanksgiving
• Happy Hallowsgiving
• Template Building Blocks via .NET Assembly
• I'm New to This. Really.
• When and When Not to use "SDL" When Talking about Tridion
• How to Get Started with SDL Tridion
• Matching Software Licensing to SDLC
• On Software Costs
• Alvin vs. October. Alvin wins!
• Tridion 2011 Queries
• Secondary Memory: "Didn't I ask that Before?"
• The PowerTools Team's Power
• Inspect Publication Details with an XSLT Component Template
• Character Encodings with Tridion
• Logo Fun with the Tridion PowerTools
• Midas Rule of Open Source Projects
• Tridion Schema Change
• BlueBrinting Fridge Magnet Kit
• Hating your Software?
• Joining the SDL Tridion Community
• Send-off to Fellow Graduates
• Give More. Get More.
• Key-Value Lookup Example (Tridion R5.3)
• Lessons Learned from WFM
• Tridion BluePrinting Use Case
• Develop XSLT Templates in Three Steps
• The New Tridion 2011 Criteria Objects
• Waterfall Methodology and Agile Methodology? Both Wrong!
• Technical Temptation to"Solve" Problems
• UML Perspective
• Multiple Modeling Methods
• Tridion-Influenced Business Analysis
• San Diego Code Camp 2011 is June 25-26 at UCSD
• Analyze This!
• Tridion Target Types
• Tridion End-user Issues and Fixes
• T-Shirt or Bumper Sticker?
• Tridion Setup Considerations for End-User
• SDL Tridion MVP Winner!
• Crossroads

The lesson? Even with "SDL Tridion" (from mostly a functional perspetive) as my main topic, there was plenty to share these past few years. Pick a topic that you like of your own for your blog and the post topics will come.

Congratulations to the SDL Tridion MVP Class of 2015

For the first year since I started using Tridion, I could not keep up with everything. It's awesome. But I'm also sad because I wrote a guide on keeping with the Tridion community.

So rather than (yet another) community video (my last one might be the last one), let me send my congratulations to the group.

Congrats to the SDL Tridion MVP Class of 2015!

Nothing says "good job" like Clip Art. Good job to the MVPs employed by SDL, aka Community Builders.

Winners, Alumni, and Future MVPs

Even before going into the nomination process, I had a feeling this was going to be a hard year to get selected and chosen. Indeed we've had strong contributions by new members and some that didn't qualify for sharing-in-2014 (I prefer the term "alumni" because they don't necessarily leave, but often guide and support the community, even when not doing Tridion anymore). For those that got a nomination but didn't win, see my last post and definitely continue sharing to potentially win in the future.

So Many Topics for a Mature Community

I'm especially impressed by both quality and quantity shared. I especially appreciate the topics—from BluePrinting, to SmartTarget, to even more on GUI extensions we had the bookmarklet challenge, plenty of videos, ways to use "new" software, comprehensive guides, and forecasts for the product (industry). We saw plenty of Tridion Stack Exchange questions and answers (see how you ranked in 2014). Forget podcasts, Robert Curlette brought everyone to a developer summit. This is definitely not a comprehensive list (like I said, it's hard to keep up now), so I encourage you to highlight your favorites publicly or by nominating someone to be part of the next set of community MVPs.

The posts, videos, code, Q&A, and blogs definitely reflect what Product Manager Nuno Linhares calls a mature technical community.

So congratulations and remember sharing in year 2 can be harder than starting. And for those starting (again), it's not necessarily hard, but you do have to start. The rewards in sharing, connecting, and helping others go beyond any company-sponsored award. I even recommending sharing something, anything, non-Tridion and see what you can create (or break, your call). Then come back and get ready for the 2016 MVP awards.

Feel motivated? Need a call to action?

• Nominate someone else
• Start a blog. I could give you a direct link to Blogger or Wordpress, but you do Content Management for a living.

Selecting Community Winners

The first (and really only) thing the SDL Tridion Community MVP Selection Committee does at the start of the year is vote on MVPs and Community Builders (internal MVPs).

In the spirit of sharing, let me post thoughts on the selection process, a winning formula (there is none), a practical approach at selecting, and making this easier for me, which will ultimately help you.

I Don't Pick You and You Didn't Pick Me

First of all, I don't choose candidates except for the few I nominate myself. Suggesting candidates is the community's (your) job.

I ended up on the committee as a case of Midas Rule--a colleague changed job roles (it's old news but congratulate him if you haven't already), which left us with a spot open in SDL Professional Services (PS) to vote on community contributions. I've been both an MVP and a Community Builder and tend to both share about Tridion, but also promote and comment on the community itself. So having me vote on the community was a good fit at the time.

The committee has 2 from SDL and 3 externals. Committee members cannot vote for themselves, so being on the committee means I need to earn 3 out of 4 votes instead of 3 out of 5.

No Formula

There's no formula or minimum to winning aside from the "Becoming a MVP" selection criteria. If we posted detailed requirements, we'd likely encourage a slight-to-significant skew in the results as seen in this exaggerated graph:

 And a hypothetical histogram against these results might show that most only shared enough:

Three Tridion Years

It's been three years since I joined SDL (seven since my first Tridion project). Here are some of the highlights since my start in SDL.

Tridion Technical Community

The community is so active I can't even keep up with everything. I had to automate much of my Tridion-in-30 Seconds video (and double it to 60 seconds!).

I also joined the Tridion MVP selection panel awhile back when we lost someone in PS (and gained a Product Manager).

With great verbosity comes great responsibility. Remember, I don't choose nominees. Someone else nominates you for sharing, and I put in a yes or no vote if it was enough for the past year. If you'd like, I could vote if you shared as much as I did. :-P

I recently became a pro tem Tridion Stack Exchange moderator.

I've also had some great experiences beyond the community.

Industry

I presented at SDL Innovate this year! I blew up the event's Twitter feed as part of the selfie contest, which was kind of scary for some reason. The typo on the website was awesome.

Promotion to Training Manager? Nah, I just filled in for the real deal.

I also improved my SEO skills and connected with the bigger picture and SDL's larger audience. As of today, I show up high for non-personal Google search results for "Creepy CXM." The blog also broke 200,000 page views (though Yet Another Tridionaut beat me to 100k first).

I connected with, or otherwise engaged, honest-to-goodness Content Strategists on Twitter and in blog posts such as Tridion Can Poop or Training Your Tridion CMS.
Despite fun and growth in the community and industry, I've had a blast in the main thing.

Career as "Just a Functional"

Knowledge Shared. Helping our internal knowledge sharing days was also awesome, having the chance to make ice breaker games to explain Customer Experience Management and getting to design this (it's even Carbon 2.0 complaint).

Don't tell anyone, but we had just enough publicity to get a jealous remark ("hey, what's that? Who gets to go?").

Travel Everywhere. I still had travel across the US but also more international trips including Bucharest, Amsterdam (again), Gothenburg (Sweden), and Lyon (France). I fly for Paris next week.

Learning languages and about cultures in school didn't help me with work and business directly, it's helped me connect with the people at work and business.

Customers Everywhere. Related to the travel for clients, I also see our customers' products in banking, insurance, retail, and entertainment everywhere and not just because the Web knows I'm visiting their websites. I have to double check if an email is from my bank or work for my bank or if the special is for the local amusement park or the one I have to travel to work for. ;-) 

Here are some images that may or may not remind you of projects we may or may not have done together.

Images aren't just images when they're licensed IP (intellectual property). Picture: Barcroft Media via The Telegraph.

Dimmer or dimer? I can't pronounce certain types of light switches anymore.

3-D flowers were cutting edge... in 2012. The hardest thing to do in a consultancy of Tridion Professionals? Taking them off projects to update content. :-) 

Forget Tridionaut Consultants, Furbysultants FTW!

Not project related, but some of my former colleagues and I get excited over Minions. We'll share pics from Minion knitted caps to "look what I bought" moments.

The best part of it all isn't Tridion, but (new) friends and (new) family. Since I've started this latest career, we've moved three times, we saw Allana grow up into a First Grader, and were joined by Caden. I've said Allana looks like me, but pretty like her mom. Allana's also quite sharp, but Caden worries me with that brain and smile of his. There's something about a baby/now Toddler, that can make the guys go, "hey what's up little guy?"

The family's also joined me on two out-of-town trips (San Antonio and Orlando) and we'll have other opportunities for us to travel together. As one of my colleagues might say about these first three years: "it was awesome."

I'm looking forward to the next three.

Here's a recap of previous recaps::

• Year Zero in October of 2011 was a flurry of activity. Everything changed.
• My First Year was awesome.
• Year two was awesome and busy, but I did manage 14 blog posts in October of 2013 including my fifth "humour" post.

If perfect is the enemy of good, what does 100% mean?

The perfect is the enemy of good. Here are some stories of the pursuit of Web, writing, grades, and Tridion sharing "perfection" and its unintended consequences (in Pixar Prompt format).

Once Upon a Web Development Time

Once upon a time there was a Web development team. Every week, the business analyst checked the site for broken links. One day the team wanted perfect error logs. Because of that, the team redirected all 404 page-not-found errors to the homepage. Because of that, the BA stopped finding broken links. Until finally the team brought the 404 page back to properly monitor broken links.

In a past role I was in charge of basic Web Business Analysis tasks which included everything from requirements to reporting. I used tools like Webtrends and SortSite to report on my company's sites. The development team also used ELMAH to find and track errors.

Over time we were able to track, fix, and reduce errors across sites but pesky 404 (page not found) errors kept coming up on the corporate site. These could be from out-dated bookmarks, typos, or occasionally when I entered a url that ended with /alvin-says-hi.aspx.

But one day we achieved 404 perfection. My link checking tests reported no broken links. Suspiciously this included pages meant to return a 404.

To "fix" the 404s, apparently we redirected all 404 errors to the homepage.

Oops.

Did that sink in yet? This meant for awhile that:

• The site could have an unlimited number of broken links that would never show up tools meant to detect broken links
• Web analytics might still report bad links that we actually visited, though (if someone looked for it)
• Issues linking to certain pages could go undetected. Email campaigns that had a typo would still seemingly link okay to the site, even if the link should have gone to a specific page.

The team eventually brought the 404 page back so they could better monitor broken pages.

Some things can't possibly be 100% 100% of the time. You can't improve if you don't honestly measure.

Btw, I should plug the fact that SDL offers SDL Safeguard, a comprehensive site quality/brand/compliance checking solution.

Don't Measure the Small Stuff

Once upon a time there was a proposal writing team that answered RFPs. Every day the manager reviewed proposals for spelling errors. One day she found five errors. Because of that, she sent the proposal back. Because of that, the writer fixed it. Until finally the team (mostly) never worried about spelling errors again.

BSMSO has an approach for things that should be 100%. When reviewing a proposal, if it hits a certain number of errors, she kindly asks for another review. She doesn't need to maintain a list of "proposals with 100% correct spelling." When excellence is expected and typically delivered, you don't need to nitpick the fact something was less than perfect. You fix it and move on.

There's no need to measure the small stuff and if they did, the tedium for professional writers would either impact morale or slow the process down. You don't need to measure the things that don't need to be improved.

100% Might Be Too Small

Once upon a time there was a student. Every day, she got good grades. One day she got a less-than-perfect score. Because of that, she realized what she could improve on. Because of that, she worked on what she was good at while fixing the things she was bad at. Until finally "100%" held no sway over her.

Although school taught us to aim for 100%, you can't learn to be better if you always get perfect marks. "You're at 100% and doing everything expected of you" doesn't confirm what your impact is, what you could achieve, or what you could work on (or ignore to focus on the things you're really good at). Set your bar too low and people may miss their true potential.

The Cost of Winning

Once upon a time there was a Tridion consultant. Every day, he asked and answered Tridion questions privately among his peers. One day he decided to try for the sharing award. Because of that, he shared very much. Because of that, he won an award. Until finally...

I'm on the selection panel of an uber geek award for Tridion sharing. The impact of "100%" on this program is similar to that moment at the end of the school year after a big exam. In the last nights of cramming for the test maybe you promise you'll go back and really learn the material. Or maybe you'll send in the extra credit assignments to guarantee a certain grade.

What really happens is you finish the big exam, your mind starts to slowly forget very-important-facts-now-turned-trivia, and you go off to do something more interesting.

So by offering a known award with supposedly clear criteria, we've created an extrinsic award when we really want intrinsic motivation. Watch or read Paniel Pink to get the difference.

This suggests my attempts to encourage you to share should focus on the parts of sharing that appeal to you most. I know it's not time, because I see you on Facebook and Skype. :-)  You can't claim a lack of topics because there's always a topic in your email, in recent code you've written, as a section of the documentation, or from a growing list of questions.

Tip for those trying to win any award: know why you're starting in the first place. If your target (e.g. win a community sharing award) is your incentive, then you'll likely reach it. But there's a chance you won't have the drive in subsequent contests or years. Interests change over time for sure, but some longevity demonstrates you're in it for causes larger than yourself.

If "100%" has no away for you, if you're compelled to learn, excel, and to give back then you will win awards, the appreciation of others, and maybe eventually you'll start shaping the communities you chose to join.

So how do we end this story? "Because of that, he won an award. Until finally..."

• He paid the price of 100% and stopped sharing as much because he reached his goal. Or...
• He encouraged others to share. Or...
• He changed the community itself.

Don't let 100% nor perfection distract you from improving or recognizing what you're already great at.