Viral Networking

Julie has invited me to participate on the blog, so I thought I'd share a little bit with what's been happening on the electronic frontier.

Intranet Profiles

The new intranet profiles were a big hit at Convention. In fact, I gleefully took notice of the fact that even during Legislative Council there were several people online playing with their profiles.

By far the most favorite feature is the family trees. I think we scored a big hit with how easy it is to navigate the trees, and how (relatively) simple it is to add people to your tree. It's gratifying to see them getting so much use so quickly. In fact, we went from just under 1500 "sibling" records to over 1800 just since last Friday! That type of viral networking builds on itself -- I think we're well on the way to seeing an uptick in interaction via the Brothers Intranet.

Just when you thought it couldn't get busier...

I spent the week before Convention frantically finishing all the features required to make the profiles work. The whole time, I thought of how nice it would be to sit back and watch it work afterwards. Silly me.

With the upsurge in intranet usage comes an upsurge in user questions, which means the Helpdesk has really been hopping lately. As a result, I had to put that little laurel resting on hold -- not necessarily a bad thing! All the support requests have motivated me to write a tool for merging duplicate accounts (now complete), and next I need to work on new tools for registering placeholder accounts and activating placeholder accounts.

I'm very grateful for all the suggestions and bugs that have been identified -- I want the intranet to be as useful to everyone as possible, and your feedback only helps make it more so. Keep it up!

Work/Life Balance

The next month is shaping up to be just as busy as the previous few have been. I'm out of town on business next week, my last graduate class (woo!) is winding down, and the dedication date for the parish center project I'm chairing at my church is rapidly approaching. One of these months I need to find time for an actual vacation!