Subject: Technicalities Resent-From: staff.newyork@agency.com, tech.newyork@agency.com, tech.newyork.regional@agency.com, techmanagers.newyork@agency.com Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2000 13:49:11 -0400 From: "Mitch Golden" To: nystaff@agency.com, Richard Harris , Denise SooHoo Technicalities Oct 2, 2000 *) Notes From The Editor I hope that the readers of these notes appreciate the conflicting forces endured by your humble correspondent. On the one hand, I have the continuing antics from those outside the tech department who, desperate for even the minimal publicity offered by an intraoffice memo, will do just about anything to get a mention herein. I also have to contend with the harangues - invariably from females by the way - entreating me to make these notes racier. (Last week the two tendencies were poetically combined. One of the project managers forwarded a note that had been circulating in London to our own beloved Andy Traff, suggesting that he could achieve his goal of employment in the UK by taking a job at a porn web site. I was CCed on her missive, and I'm quite sure that her concern for Traff's career was secondary to her desire finally to do something so outrageous as to be written up by name in Technicalities. I don't think that simply forwarding an e-mail qualifies, do you?) On the other side of the coin are those quiet eminences in management who feel that the announcements that "This is a test of the fire alarm system" and the bimonthly reseatings should be exciting enough for us all thank you, and who frown on the iconoclasm of notes circulated to nystaff without first being vetted by a group of lawyers. I am happy to tell everyone that I have as yet kept my cool through this all, preserving my editorial independence and focus on the tech department - if not my sanity - at least for now. *) I'll Be Laughing In Three Months Speaking of reseatings... Chris Needham is one of several people who have taken to walking past my new cubicle and snickering at my fall from favor with the cubicle gods. He has forgotten that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and that mine is the cubicle specifically reserved to punish the former VPs. I hope you all taunt him ruthlessly when it is his turn to sit in my spot. *) That AGENCY.COM Spirit As everyone knows I have somehow been tapped as the arbiter of the special $200 bonus. In said position I have gained a profound insight into the colleagues with which I work. Boy is this place lame. Up to now, I have signed forms for no more than 25 people. I have a hard time getting my mind around this: no one wants free money. My colleagues are too jaded even to find a way to spend $200 each on a night out with a bunch of buddies from work. Too cool just to give the money to charity. Can't think of a single thing that would make the office a better place. Now there have been some good ideas. My favorite self-indulgent one was from Harmony Fusco and Kuan Sng, who are flying to San Diego for a weekend to take a trip to the zoo. Donna Joyce suggested buying a marionette theater for the office; what do people think? And I am embarrassed to note that my beloved tech department hasn't been any better than any of the others. Only after a diatribe from me did anyone submit a form. C'mon folks, doesn't anyone want a couple of Java books or something? Don't we need a set of AGENCY.COM pocket protectors? *) Goings On There may be some slack in some of the other departments, but Tech seems to be pretty much purring right along. **) I saw Chris Stetson actually wearing a tie the other day, when he and some other folks went out to meet with Colgate. James McHugh will actually do the work if we get it, but naturally we didn't tell the client that. **) This week eMaritz goes into full production, with Yuju Yen and Laurence Hill leading the project. Soma Chowdhury, Marya Doery, and I have been going through a painful design process, while Yoo Kyung Chang and Florette Massillon have been working for several weeks on a prototype. The team has already pulled one all-nighter, as Florette and Yoo Kyung train for the olympic 4x1500 meter Java coding finals. Richard Tsai is set to join the team this week. **) Our office's first substantial B2B system is proceeding apace, with Peter Gluck and Eli Yasnyi busy working on data uploading and data display, and desperately trying to clarify the difference between in and out of scope items. (Check out the "Tech Answer-O-Matic" on Peter's cubicle. **) Peter is also involved with the iUnifi launch, though minimally. The site goes live this month, most of the tech done in Woodbridge. Peter is never content with only two projects, so he's also launching the Fire Department pro-bono site - the office's stealth project - this month as well. **) Dante Gomez, Sundar Jayabose, and Tamer Elmenayer are building a JSP front end to permit the customer to manage Sprint ION services. **) Tamer is finishing the work for our longest running pro-bono client - the Jackie Robinson Foundation. **) Scott Huang and Cathy O'Sullivan are knee deep in a discovery/design phase for Sirius Satellite Radio. **) David Bortnichak is starting the Cushman-Wakefield discovery. Anyone want to help him review an even dozen legacy systems? **) Traff and Joe Fusion are upgrading the BA site to work off Oracle. This is deeply emotional for Traff, who wrote the original mSQL database code over three years ago. **) Reid Kleinman is working on a discovery for the internal i-traffic (an AGENCY.COM (r) company) project. Can you say "business process automation"? **) Deb Ronsvalle is starting work for The Bank. **) Jamil is polishing his stand up routine. Needs it to sell the m-business unit. **) Eugenia is still working for Corporate. We miss her. **) Even Ritesh is in the office this week (I think). One interesting thing about this list is how much of it is now Java development, compared to, say, a year ago. Are all you PMs geared up for more complex technical projects? One note of advice: always be sure to catch every throwable.