A blog? Here?

[David Kernohan]

Yes, why not.

Firstly, anyone who wants to ask me stuff (about JISC things mainly, but I'm an approachable guy so if you need advice with your love-life or whatever, carry on - you fools...) can do so. In fact, if you can, ask here because then everyone can read it.

Secondly, today I am mostly putting things on the JISC CMS. Is it just me or are CMS three of the most depressing letters in modern technology? Some how, the bright, uncluttered punk-rock FTP connection to update your site has turned into a bloated airbrushed monolith that actually tries to look (and act) like Office 2007. As if this were somehow a good thing.

Now, of course, it doesn't quite work like Office 2007. Some of the buttons (with the same image) do different things. The file tree behaves oddly - filenaming is bizarre and has several stages without any real explanation of which name is used for what. So there are hacks around it, passed from programme manager to programme manager in order to ACTUALLY GET SOMETHING DONE and then get back to looking after our lovely projects. But then the website might not work quite as expected and eventually we go back to it and have to change everything again.

Now programme manager's time costs a reasonable amount of money. We are hardly fat cats, but this is a cost that comes out of the JISC running budget. Is it really the best use of our time to take 16 clicks and at least 10 minutes getting one document hosted online linked to one webpage.

Prompts a wider question - in bending over backwards to make things easier (specifically to use a desktop metaphor for a web app) are we actually making things slower and more painful? Sure, everyone can use a desktop - but there are other metaphors out there. Metaphors more suitable for writing something that will degrade gracefully onto multiple browsers, form factors and OSes?

Thoughts?