What's the difference between disconnecting from a remote computer and logging off?

 I put this in one of our internal chatrooms, but it may be useful generally.

Some people are disconnecting from remote computers (using Remote Desktop) and not logging off when asked. If you disconnect all your programs are still running, even though you can't see them. If you log off, they're all closed down. Disconnecting is like leaving an office with your stuff all over your desk. Logging off is like putting everything away and leaving your desk clear, before you then leave the office. I got Dall-E to illustrate these:

Disconnecting:

Logging off

To disconnect:

To log off (ok, sign out is the new fangled word for it)

Click on that icon of a person to get the sign out option

Moving to Google Apps - our experience

Many other Wycliffe organisations in the Wycliffe Global Alliance have moved to Google Apps, and we decided to join them. Here are my experiences:

Google Apps is free for UK charities, which is an attractive price. However it doesn't mean that it doesn't cost in time. Doing the migrations, plus user training and support all take non-finite amounts of time.

As well as the familiar Google tools, such as Gmail, Calendar and drive/documents, you also get the management interface so you can create and suspend users, turn services on and off and generally manage the stuff.

I've been disappointed with a number of problems that we've had. They are mostly to do with the migration. If you read the forums you find that some of them have been around for a few years with no sign of them being fixed. For example, when you view email that's been migrated using IMAP from Outlook all the dates on the emails are set to the same value. This is because the migration process sets the received date to the migration date. There is a workaround - display the sent date. However, it's a bug - fix it already Google.

There are some Outlook features that are lost when email is synced back to Gmail, but I'm not entirely surprised that Google won't implement features across the board just because Outlook uses them. More information here.

The standard package doesn't include backup so you may want to purchase Google Vault just in case Google loses your email.


If your users already have Google accounts then it copes quite well with multiple accounts in the browser. There are a couple of exceptions - Drive and Blogger require you to log out of all accounts and log into a single one. It's not a surprise that Blogger doesn't do that, as it's a pretty dormant product, but Drive seems like a key part of the offering. Maybe it's being worked on.

On the plus side you do get other Google Apps features, like Drive and Hangouts which are of corporate use. Overall the experience is positive, but if you do decide to switch then allow plenty of time for migration.

Update: I found information about future updates on the Google Apps release calendar and linked newsletters. It looks like there's a fairly healthy amount of work being done on improving Google apps, if not the migration tools.

IT and Bible translation

An article I wrote on IT and Bible Translation has been published on the Kingdom Code blog. Andy Geers approached me a while back and asked me to write it. I'm just waiting for a flood of email to my inbox now.

New website with info on IT in Wycliffe worldwide

I recently found out that there's a new website with information on IT in Wycliffe worldwide. The previous one (IT World of Wycliffe) has been replaced by Check-IT-Out. Check IT Out, geddit? (More accurately the website for the Check IT Out events has been expanded to include more information.)

It's got lots of good, up to date information about all the different ways IT is used in Wycliffe. Why not have a look at it? (Did you see that I resisted using a cheesy phrase there?)

Tech videos from Africa

Steve Moitozo II, who is a fellow member of the Polder Consortium visited Africa recently and shot some interesting videos.

I've heard of Ushahidi (crowdsourcing information via SMS for, for example, at the site of a natural disaster) before, but I didn't know who was behind it. Steve met one of the co-rounder, Erik Hersman (who blogs at whiteafrican.com) and shot a short video of him.


Erik Hersman from Steve Moitozo 2 on Vimeo.
He's also behind another thing that crossed my radar a while back Brck "a backup generator for the internet". There are a couple of TED videos about him too. He's the son of Wycliffe missionaries.

There are a couple of other tech-related videos in Steve's Africa 2013 album:

• The impact of ITConnect - video.
• Lean Digital Publishing and Distribution of Audio Scriptures. I've blogged previously about portable audio Bible players, so there's another one that's available.

IT/Missions networking groups

I've been revising the list of links on the right of my blog. One (a mission tech wiki) is defunct and I've added two more. So I thought I'd write about the two new ones and a reminder about another one.

(Global) Community of Mission Information Workers "We work with information and we want to see that information bless the world and contribute to the growth of God’s Kingdom."

itconnect.info  "has been set up to connect Christian organizations providing Information Technology (IT) support to the field. It helps these organizations in providing IT Support to field entities who have:

• Limited IT Personnel
• Limited equipment
• Limited IT Infrastructure"

oscar.org.uk "If you're involved or interested in world mission or Christian work around the world, OSCAR is your gateway to useful information, advice and resources."

The unique way we're funded (part 2)

I previously posted about the unique way we're funded. A couple of present and future members of the department are facing issues in their funding. I'm not deliberately being invidious in mentioning these having never written anything about the rest of the team, but I thought I'd make use of the tiny readership that this blog has to spread the word.

Peter Oatley is going to be joining us in the IT Department. Over the past 15 years that I've been here we've had a series of interns working for us. We've had gaps of a few months where we haven’t had any. I counted 21 different people in those 15 years. At our new office location we won’t have any accommodation so we’re not able to offer the same opportunity any more. However Peter should be able to provide that fourth full-time member of the Department that the interns have previously provided. He also brings years of IT experience in South Asia, which he will be able to use on the “passing trade” we get.

You can find out more information about Peter and the rest of his family on their page on our website: Peter and Hilary Oatley. Now that they are back in the UK they need to increase their support.

Tim Gaved has been working part-time in the department since the start of the year. As well as being a linguist he’s also familiar with IT and some of the specialist language software that translators use. He set up the virtual environment that is going to be used at Redcliffe college now that our linguistic training has moved there. He’s also doing more general support for the IT Department. He’s married to Maggie and you can find out more about what Tim does with the rest of his time, Maggie’s work and how to support them on their page on our website: Tim and Maggie Gaved.

Laptops and our nomadic workers

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how we're not your usual IT Department because of the type of people we support.

We help all sorts of Wycliffe people out, not just those working in our offices, but people passing through from all over the world. 

Today I'm writing a bit more about those sort of people. We have a mixture of management types who are working with teams who span the globe and linguist/translator types who are working with language projects in a different country to the one they live. Sometimes we have couples where one partner is here for a specific reason and the other is coming along with them so they don't have to be apart, and because they are able to continue their work away from their normal work location.

These are highly mobile people, who have one thing in common - a laptop. (No sign of tablets being the primary work machine yet.) Here's a picture of the inside of one which came our way last week:

This amount of dust is more than we usually see, but not surprising. We see a number of common problems with laptops - broken screens, broken backlights, liquid spilt on keyboards and corrupted hard drives. I say "we", but in fact its my colleagues who do this stuff. We are able to do so without charging commercial rates. One of the local suppliers we order parts from charge £90 for hardware repairs, and £144 for a screen replacement. We just charge the cost of spares + 8%.

Laptops are a vital part of the nomadic Wycliffe worker's luggage and we are pleased to be able to help them with their problems. In case you're wondering what we recommend for international travellers - Toshiba.

CheckITOut - IT in Wycliffe

I'm involved in an event called CheckITOut - a couple of hours of info about IT in Wycliffe on 6 April 2013 in Coventry. We've got a number of speakers covering some interesting areas. I did a Prezi to advertise it.

How an IT Director chooses a phone

I've got a new phone, but I thought you might be interested in how a chose my old phone:

 

Let's start with battery life - 10 days on standby, not bad at all.

User interface - apart from one quirk (the "go away" button for a reminder and the alarm isn't the same) it's pretty much perfect. The thing you most want to do is on the top left hand button. So once I've composed a text I can send it to my wife with just 5 clicks on that button (so long as she's first in my address book).

Security - it has no internet access, so it you can't get at my email or into our corporate network. It can't get viruses. As an IT director this is important, so that's a great strength. One flaw - memory isn't encrypted.

Price - This has to be the one thing that clinched it for me - my mum swapped it for my old phone so it didn't cost me anything.

What would an IT entrepreneur look like in a mission organisation?

A few years ago I was at the conference for IT people in Wycliffe worldwide. There was someone there who had written a really neat program that enabled you to produce a dictionary. (Stop me if you've heard this, but I can't find it elsewhere on my blog.) Someone else stood up and was conflicted by what he'd seen. Whilst tools that do one thing well are great in themselves, there's also a need for getting a group of people together to develop a series of integrated tools. I'm guessing the guy who stood up was somehow involved in, or had a stake in, the team developing integrated tools. I'm all for the consensus and teamwork approach, even though it's painful and slow. However if it's too painful or slow people just get on and develop their own system, like this entrepreneurial person.

I've just been in a meeting planning an IT event next year, and we touched on IT entrepreneurs. It got me thinking about what would a good IT entrepreneur look like in a Wycliffe context?

I can tell you what we don't want:

• We don't want people to come in and set up servers or systems and not leave any documentation behind.
• We don't want people to come in with loads of ideas, and not listen to why we think they won't work, and who give up and go away.

That's not to say that you can't have people who come and do good stuff. I hear good things about the people behind Lightsys.

Here's what an IT entrepreneur might look like:

• They spot a need across several organisations.
• They develop a prototype system that meets the need and open it up to the users.
• The users get on board and nag their management to make this system an official part of the organisations strategy.
• Crucially, they make sure the system is sustainable and now that people are sold onto it, that it continues to adapt to meet their needs.

Just thinking out loud. 

Update: Tom Lucas has posted a thoughtful reply on Google+.
Update 2: This post got picked up on my company blog: IT entrepreneurs in a mission organisation. 

Update 3: Tom has written a blog post on the subject himself.

Why analysing a hung SQLServer database helps Bible Translation

Our Executive Director sometimes tweets something like "Today I am helping the task of Bible Translation by writing papers for the board". (I can't find a recent example to embed.)

I just tweeted

Today I am helping the task of Bible Translation by analysing why a SQLServer database hung.
— Paul Morriss (@paulmorriss) October 17, 2012

Actually, I'm not doing that, but I'll tell you why at the end.

I thought I'd bridge the gap between the two parts of the sentence.

• The SQLServer database hung while I was adding a new linked database.
• The linked database connects to our worldwide personnel database.
• (Although we're an  autonomous UK charity, we work in partnership with many other organisations, many of whom are also called Wycliffe. We send people to many of those other organisations, so we need a common personnel database.)
• If you're working on Bible Translation then it's good to know who's working for you so you can look after them.

There are other links too:

• The SQLServer has our Raiser's Edge database on it. That's the system we use to keep track of donations and mailings.
• We send mailings to our supporters so they can hear about what's going on and pray for us.
• We need to keep track of who gave us money, so we can thank them and Gift Aid (where appropriate) their donations.
• We need to keep track of where the money's going to, so that it goes to the right place and so that we can keep to the legal principle that you have to give the money for the purpose with which it was given.
• Money pays for translators salaries, amongst other things, so the translation can happen.

If the database keeps on hanging then that stuff can't happen, so I need to find out why.

Actually, I'm not finding out why it hung, I'm writing a blog post about it. That's because one of the unstated (until now) reasons I write this blog is so that IT people can see how they can use their skills in Bible Translation!

Is looking stuff up on Google doing work?

(I was going to tweet this, but my thoughts started to fill more than 140 characters.)

While working at home one of my children made the observation "you're just looking stuff up on Google, that's not work".

I was actually looking stuff up on stackoverflow.com, or more precisely, finding out what technique the Google analytics tracking code uses.

I said that I was doing work. It made me think, though, that "looking stuff up on Google" is a useful skill. Not just looking stuff up, because we all do that, but quickly finding solutions to problems that you face.

A while back someone (and here my Google searching skills have failed me) wrote on their blog what they put on a job application form under "preferred programming language":

1. BBC Basic
2. Any language + Google

In my job I dip in and out of various languages - Javascript, PHP, ASP.Net - and for using those using Google, stackoverflow and MSDN is essential. I can't remember the arguments for PHP's strcmp function, but I just search for "PHP strcmp" and I'm there. So yes, "any language + Google" covers it.

For software development it's not very controversial to say that web searching skills are necessary. The same is true for other IT related skills, as IT people have often been the first to share their knowledge using IT technology. Fortunately using the internet no longer needs IT skills so many other professions have shared knowledge using the internet.

Is there a job where "looking stuff up on Google" wouldn't be a useful skill?

Edit: This gives me an excuse for a bit of a rant. I don't like it when someone starts off their article on subject "X" with a statement like, "Google has Y million results when you search for X". OK, so you increased your wordcount, but that's research any one of us could do. Lazy.

My public speaking engagements in 2012

I've read a couple of blog posts recently where people have outlined their public speaking engagements this year. Now I get to do it too!

Actually there's only one.

We're having the Wycliffe Conference at our church on 4th February 2012. I'm doing a session entitled "Tech Transforming Translation". What I'm planning to do is try and condense our Check IT Out day (which we're unfortunately not running this year) into 50 minutes.

So it's going to be a bit of a roller coaster ride. At the moment I'm planning to cover the following topics:

• Using media (videos, CDs, websites, mobile phones, mp3 players) for distributing Bibles
• Translating sign languages
• Complex fonts
• IT support in harsh conditions (dust, heat, humidity, lightning, dodgy electricity supply)
• How you can use your IT skills to help missions, without leaving this country - MissionAssist (formerly Wycliffe Associates UK)

More details on our Wycliffe Conference page.

Charity IT Conference 2011

I attended the Charity IT Conference yesterday.

Cloud

"I think we're all getting a bit bored of the cloud" said the chairman of the meeting. You're telling me. The first two speakers covered this subject. The first was from an outsourcing company, who reminded us that just because the technology's moved to a different place doesn't mean you don't need to get your ducks in a row with contracts, agreements, T&Cs etc.

The second spoke about the need for business processes to change. He talked about a process in a bank that took 15 weeks to get something going. Having reduced the technological side to 20 minutes it still took 12 weeks because of the other processes around it.

Bring your own device

As I'm going to be looking at security of mobile devices this was a good session as it covered that, and other aspects, like support (you don't get any) and administration (I may want to wipe my data from your device). And of course you need to be letting users know where they stand.

Website personalisation

It's a good idea.

Security

As well as detailed steps which you can see on the powerpoints when they put them up on the conference site the speaker suggested using an iterative approach - improving things everywhere, rather than trying to do one thing well. He also suggested a risk assessment approach, which I was planning to do anyway. He mentioned a Charities Security Forum that he's part of, but the website appears not to be working so I won't link just yet.

Knowledge management

The speaker had quite a hard job giving an introduction to a big subject in half an hour, but she did well. I realised that a couple of the projects I'm working on are actually doing knowledge management, so I can find resources under that name to help me out.

Final session

In order to manage my own knowledge I left before the final session as my brain was full. It was from the global CIO of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. Seeing as we're a bit smaller than them, it might not have been relevant.

Social media

It was interesting to see the place of social media. Normally every conference like this has something about social media on the programme. However it wasn't there this time. Maybe because it's a bit more mainstream now. The conference had a hashtag on the publicity #citc2011, which I don't remember last time. I saw tweets about another conference Lasa European Not for Profit Technology Conference when it was on last week #lasatech11. I don't know for sure, but I get the impression that Lasa is more useful to small to medium charities (though I may be wrong), whereas this conference was definitely for the bigger charities. However they did get Martha Lane Fox, who has quite a big responsibility! Lots more tweets on their hashtag too.

Can you put it back together? IT Intern skills

Various colleagues have asked what we're looking for in an IT intern. As well as particulars listed in the advert what we would like most is the ability to learn. That's easy to say, but hard to assess on an application form. One of my colleagues in the IT department said that they were probably the sort of person who took things apart when they were kids. We hope that by now they've learnt to put them together as well!

When discussing this one of the things that we agreed was that the sealed-box nature of many modern gadgets - including PCs which come with all you probably need - and you can plug in if they don't. People don't need to  build or tweak PCs go get good ones, so the knowledge about how they work and how to fix them isn't so easy to find.

On the other hand, if you're so inclined I think the time is never better to build electronic gadgets. In the past there was Capsela

now there's Arduino and other open-source hardware systems.

There's also plenty of information out there on how to hack your Wii remote or Kinect. So if you've done that, get in touch...

You can quote me on that

I was just getting ready to leave work last night when I glanced at a brochure on my desk, a brochure I'd already read the inside of.

The brochure is for the Charity IT Conference 2011. I went to the same event last year and that quote was taken from my feedback form, so I'm not entirely surprised that they used my words. And they spelt my name right.

I guess I'd better go this year as it comes so highly recommended.

Prayer and Training - behind the scenes

IT training

Tue, 20 Sep 2011

Wycliffe Centre: Paul Morriss is leading another IT training seminar for some of the 100+ computer users today. “Improving the computer skills of staff is important to help them support Bible translation more effectively and efficiently.”

This is an item from our prayer diary - Call to Prayer. The way this item came about was this - the writer of Call to Prayer, Graham asked departmental directors for specific things that were happening in September. I'd arranged an hours training in our computer lab, so I mentioned that.

As it was I also did some one-to-one training with someone in the morning on Outlook and Excel. I've recently felt like a beginner myself as I've tried out Windows 8. A good user interface provides prompts to help you discover what you can do. For the person I was training in the morning one of the things they took away was that if you right click on something then it gives you options as to what you can do with it.

Was the prayer above answered? The people taking the training (on Excel) did will in the exercises I set them, but the answer will only become clear in the coming days and weeks as they are hopefully more proficient in Excel.

Classroom training has its place, but I'd like to plug the online service we've subscribed to - Time2Study. It doesn't give you motivation for self-directed study, but if you can motivate yourself I think you can learn a lot.

You do know how to backup and restore your software don't you?

Based on a not-very-representative sample of the software we use I have concluded that people like to build stuff on the Microsoft platform. So that means SQLServer and IIS (and .net, though that's not relevant here). I have also concluded that for understandable reasons the companies that sell you stuff on those platforms don't support the Microsoft bits. This is because they could get sucked into all sorts of issues that aren't related to their software, but are very much to do with, say, tuning your IIS setup.

So whilst they make sure that it's all up and running when they first install you might find that you need to at least know a bit about SQLServer and IIS. So here's a checklist:

• Do you know how to backup your database?
• Is there more than one database?
• Have you tried restoring the database onto another machine? This is crucial, because a good backup is no use if you can't restore it.
• Do you know how to back up your IIS settings? iisback is the key to this
• Do you know how the application software interacts with IIS?
• Again, have you tried restoring your IIS setup on another machine? Web deploy for IIS 6 and 7 looks like a good (if not straightforward) way of having a standby server.

Sharing information

I'm working on how we share information inside our organisation. Some information is available on our intranet, but it tends to be information about the IT department that people need to know. Using an intranet is a very "IT" thing to do. It occurred to me that in any given organisation, not necessarily ours, that various departments could use various methods:

• IT create an intranet
• Maintenance/Facilities Management put a noticeboard on the wall
• Personnel hold an information sharing meeting
• Catering hold a meeting in the dining room with free cake
• Finance put a message on the bottom of a financial statement
• Marketing/PR create a glossy leaflet and circulate it
• Fundraising send an up-beat email
• Legal send a sternly worded email with lots of bold bits
• Cleaning leave a note on your desk

Of course, the method of sharing should be appropriate to the audience, not the author of the information. What other methods could other departments use?