It’s been said if you can’t find anything on the Web by searching for it, it may as well not even exist. Since Google’s launch over 20 years ago that has certainly been the mantra, as their single search box with precise search results trumped all other search engines out there to become the dominant search destination it is today.

Around that same time, I felt the same about search, but on a slightly smaller scale, though with an international reach. I was literally promoting search for the Intranet portal for a global professional services firm in 1999.

Search Hidden and With Good Reason

In 1999 I became the manager of the front-end development team for this portal, which meant I was responsible for leading the team creating and enhancing its Web pages. As part of the role, I had to evaluate the functionality and design we had already, as the portal was being developed by a consulting team that was rolling off the project. When I evaluated the search function, by my best approximation it was poor to non-functional and of no value to anyone using it.

As I quickly came to learn, search was not a priority for the portal. The business sponsors didn’t even want people to simply search for content, rather to use a complex, nested set of 3 drop-down lists to select a category for which content would be presented. If that sounds convoluted, it was. The categories, or taxonomy, mirrored the structure of the firm. The idea was you would navigate to where you “worked” and voila, there would be content waiting for you.

Or so one would think, however this wasn’t always the case. Many times there wasn’t any content there, especially in the early days to months of the portal. But that wasn’t that my concern, as we had an entire other team working on getting content into the portal. The concern for my team and I was to ensure the front-end of the portal worked and was usable.

There was no real urgency to make search function well and have a great user experience as accessing it, as it was literally tucked behind an unlabeled icon of a magnifying glass on the second page of the portal, one you would miss on first glance. There was an option on the first page of the portal prominently labeled search, but it simply led users to a list of public Internet search engines, such as Lycos and Yahoo. Remember, this was 1999.

A Better Way to Content

After the launch of the portal, we decided to tackle search. The task of working on the search engine went to our top developer. He had both a programming and mathematics background, and was eager to get search working. After some time, he was successful, and it was a highly functional and useful feature of the portal, though most people still didn’t know about it. We added a text label to the search icon and others near it where it wasn’t obvious what their functions were. Even then, you had to click the icon which took you to another page where you got a search box, adding steps (aka barriers) to get to the content you want. Over time we found that portal users were using search, and we on the development team used it to validate testing for content. Even with this new label, search was still not a prominent feature on the site, nowhere to the degree I felt it should be.

Making the Case for Search and navigation

With the initial launch of the portal and other changes including the search function behind us, it was on to version 2.0. There was a laundry list of features wanted for the portal, and one was a new user interface. As my team worked through designs and functionality, they proposed putting a search box in a prominent position on the Web site, at the top left corner, literally promoting it from obscurity. Studies of people using Web pages have shown consistently over the years people start at the top, go across the top and down the left side. By placing the search box and button at the top left, there was no extra step needed to get to search results.

I was pleased with the work and designs we put together, and then we started the process of presenting it up the food chain of the leadership for review and approval. We knew we would have tweaks and adjustments to make, but we were hopeful much of the work we did would persist, especially search.

When we presented it to the director of the development team, my direct manager, he liked it. The next step was to present it to his manager, who was the overall director of technology. But he didn’t like it. He felt it went against the goal of navigating to content and wouldn’t be approved by the top leadership of the team. We pointed out the 3 drop-down lists remained, and people could still choose to use them, as well as the work we did to improve the search function. My director was also reinforcing this, from a usability standpoint, so the busy consultants in the field could get to the content they wanted. After hesitation he agreed we could present the search box design to senior leadership but that he would not back us up on it. This was fine by me, as myself and my director would be the ones presenting it.

Shortly after this less than exciting meeting, we had the meeting with the senior leadership and business leaders for the portal to present our proposals for version 2.0. We were in a beautiful and expensive conference room with cutting-edge functionality, very expensive for that time. We had an orchestrated presentation where myself and my peers would be presenting their team’s work on the next version of the portal, with the onus on me to present the new design and the search box.

When it was my turn, I was ready – the design was cleaner and more modern, at least for standards of that time. As I presented it, I talked to the major features in priority order, and search was near the middle of it. When I brought it up, I talked to the search improvements we made, the gain in traffic to the search page and how users could still navigate to it as they have before. As I finished saying this, I saw the director of the technology literally turn away from the table, though I don’t think anyone else noticed it. As I concluded the lead partner who oversaw the entire portal looked down, and I could tell he was thinking it over. He said he liked it. Relief doesn’t begin to describe the feeling I had, and I was excited for the meeting to end to share the great news with the team.

Another Search Goal Fulfilled Years Later

As we worked on version 2.0, we did a lot of talking about the future of the portal and how it could be enhanced. I had the idea of putting a “header” or section on the pages of other portals within the firm. This header would be a thin bar across the top of the page with links back to our portal as well as a search box. It was an idea that was batted around my team, but one I was not there to even take to any design phase, for not long after version 2.0 was released, I left the firm, being lured by a dot-com startup that folded a mere half-year later (and a topic for another time).

About a half-dozen years later, my wife got a job with this same firm, but working with a consulting practice. In between those years the portal itself had gone through significant change, namely not being the focal point for the firm it was previously. One night as she was catching up on some work at home, I looked over her shoulder to see what she was doing. Much to my surprise she was on a page of the firm’s Intranet, where our portal had lived, and across the top of the page she was on was a header bar similar to what I just described. Needless to say it made me smile, and I was patting myself on the back as I walked away.

Deconstructing Promoting Search

Technology and the way we interface with it is always changing. New ideas must be encouraged, embraced and tested to truly see their effectiveness. Search is one of those areas, and its importance is even more important today. In this case the functionality of the search box was not the innovation, rather promoting it to a position of prominence on the Web pages. Where I cannot take credit for the design of the header bar that evolved over time, it in itself was an evolution of what we started with and presented with mixed results now over 20 years ago.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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The next dMorning meetup networking event will be on Friday, November 9 from 7:30 – 9:30 am at Copper Rock Coffee Co., 210 W. College Avenue in Appleton, Wisconsin.

dMorning was started to provide a casual environment for those who work in the technology and creative fields in Northeast Wisconsin to meet, network and have a beverage of choice. The idea is to meet in the morning before the day gets hectic. There are no set rules and no agenda. More information is available at dMorning.com.

Hope to see you there!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Great interactive classroom instruction coupled with real-world work opportunities provide the best educational experience for students. When you have the chance to help make that happen, it’s extremely rewarding. That happened for me recently as I was a guest lecturer at a university class.

I was honored to be asked once again by Dr. Sara Steffes Hansen, a professor at University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh and chair of the Journalism department. Her class, Application of New & Emerging Media, provides that educational experience working with entities in the community on their social media and beyond. As her students make on-site visits to their clients, I was asked to speak to the class on the topic of consulting.

Last year I spoke to students in the same class, but after their client visit, where this year it was ahead of it. As meeting face-to-face with clients involves many factors – factors many don’t execute on well – I incorporated a role play into the interactive lecture. With a “volunteer” student, I did an improvised sketch where the student was the client and I was the bumbling, unprepared consultant. This segued into my discussion on preparing for and executing on the on-site visit, as well as the follow-up and deliverables from the class assignment.

For me, this guest lecture served many purposes. As I have learned from others, both in the classroom and in the real world, I welcome the opportunity to share my experience and “war stories” with the students. As someone who still thinks and works like a consultant, poor consulting skills from others stick out like a sore thumb soaked in sriracha and lit on fire! If this lecture can help guide students down the path of honing their consulting skills, then the world will be that much better.

This class is part of the UW – Oshkosh’s Interactive Web Management major, which is a combination of curricula from Computer Science, Marketing, Journalism and Information Systems. It is a unique major, mashing up key aspects of each of these areas to offer a comprehensive educational background for how companies today are staffing roles in marketing and tech.

Where you needed to be enrolled in the class to get the full lecture, I am sharing my slides. You can link to the slides from my guest lecture here on SlideShare, or view them embedded below. I am planning on coming back to the class at the end of the semester to watch their client presentations. In the meantime I wish great success to the students of Journalism 61-440!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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I am thrilled to announce a networking event for people who work in the tech and creative fields in Northeast Wisconsin. Introducing dMorning.

What is dMorning?

The idea behind dMorning is relatively simple – informal networking before the busy workday starts, with no set rules and no agenda. Since I moved to the Fox Valley last year, I have been looking for something like this, as I work in the Web and I am looking to meet people who work in similar fields in the area.

I hosted a variety of meetups when I lived in Chicago – some very specific and others more general – and have found the latter to be more interesting and worthwhile. A casual gathering of people to talk about what they are working on, sharing stories and bouncing ideas off each other… this is something I have wanted to restart for a while, and why not here? My plan is for this to be a monthly event.

The next dMorning will be on Friday, October 19 beginning at 7:30 am at All Seasons Coffeehouse in Appleton, conveniently located off I-41 at Wisconsin Avenue. I say it ends at 9:30 am, but anyone can stay longer. There is no cost for dMorning; you just pay for any beverages or food you purchase from this locally-owned business.

What’s in a name?

So why did I call this dMorning? As I sought out a name for this event, I didn’t want to pick something too limiting. On the Web site at dMorning.com there are some ideas of what the “d” can stand for.

Hope to see you there!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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After recently re-reading my post about “retiring” my New England Patriots fan Web site GoPats.com, I realized that with its shutdown, I also took down the last remaining Web site I built using ColdFusion Web technology.

For those of you who are not technical – no fear, as this is not a technical post, rather one about a journey and choices made along the way – good and bad – and where I am today. So you don’t have to tune out just yet!

You Never Forget Your First Web Scripting Language

When I saw the very first graphical Web browser, NCSA Mosaic, shortly after it launched in 1993, I was hooked, and realized this is where I needed my career in technology to go – creating Web sites. Up to that point I was creating reports and screens on mainframe computers and there was nothing exciting about a black screen with white letters. So the playing and experimenting I did with Web sites – including GoPats.com – led to my first Web job a few years later.

For as much as I did to that point, when I started that job I quickly realized I still had a lot to learn. Another colleague at the small consulting firm I was at realized it too, and reminded me of it consistently! Eventually we would become friends and solid co-workers and even did a successful project that pissed off the president of said firm. And it was this colleague who one day early on in my time there asked me if I knew ColdFusion. I said no. He said that I could learn the basics of ColdFusion in an hour, creating a dynamic Web page that queried information from a database and displayed it in the browser. He also said that if I couldn’t do that in an hour that I was stupid! Needless to say I was able to do what he said and within 60 minutes. For me this was a big event, and got me started on more advanced Web site development.

Armed with this new skill, I wanted to use it, but my firm didn’t have any projects that required ColdFusion. So I sought out such projects elsewhere. As I had recently created a Web site for the Boston Jaycees, a non-profit organization I was involved with, I decided to apply ColdFusion code to it, giving the Board the ability to maintain the Web site with ease, and not requiring any HTML or any other coding knowledge. For 1997, this was rather unique. I then applied similar code to GoPats.com and some other personal Web projects, as well as some freelance Web projects I had taken on, work that would expand and eventually lead me to starting my own Web consulting business.

Becoming Web Multilingual

In 1996, as I started working for that small consulting firm, Microsoft didn’t have a Web strategy. By the following year it did, combining its Web browser and scripting language with some of its marketing genius. It was in 1997, when working on a project for a client using Microsoft’s client-server (e.g. PC-based) Visual Basic language, they asked me if I knew anything about the Web. I said yes, and they gave me a Microsoft Web server and its Web applications as part of my responsibility. Only one small thing, I didn’t know anything running a Web server or the language – Active Server Pages (ASP) – the applications were in. This has been a recurring theme throughout my career, but I digress. With the purchase of a few books and some guidance of a summer intern about 10 years my junior, I quickly got up to speed in developing Web pages and Web business applications for the client. Life was good.

All along, however, I was still working with ColdFusion – I had several sites using the technology, plus ColdFusion’s owner, Allaire, was in the Boston area and it had a good user group. There was, however, the beginnings of a change in the landscape. ColdFusion, for all of its ease of use and power, was a commercial product and to run it on one Web server cost somewhere over US$1,000. Microsoft’s Web server and ASP were free. There were other open-source (also free) Web scripting languages I was aware of, like Perl and PHP, though I was not using those at the time. Over time Allaire was acquired by Macromedia who was later acquired by Adobe. Though Web sites written in ColdFusion continued to work just fine even to this day, the Web language fell out of favor for many and they felt it was time to move onto other tools.

For myself, when I started my Web consulting business in 2004, I too was looking at other options, including other programming languages as well as packaged software instead of custom developed applications. This research was done along with the ColdFusion and ASP I was working with for my clients. All of my sites were powered by a content management system (CMS), going all the way back to my first Jaycees site. As time went on I continued to enhance and perfect my own CMS, but at the same time other CMS products came out that allowed me to do what I did best for clients, without the need for developing the CMS itself. Over time I migrated sites to these new platforms, but GoPats.com kept running just fine under ColdFusion.

All Good Things...

As I discussed back when I was doing some major digital spring cleaning and closed down some Web sites, GoPats.com was the last one to go. As updates to the site declined, the cost of Web hosting did not, and is was a cost savings as well. Where I had mixed emotions about this, simplifying the number of languages I was working with and needing to keep up on was also a time savings with all else I have going on in my life now.

So, “ciao, ColdFusion!” It was fun, and we had some great times. Where we may not see each other again anytime soon, we will always have the memories of the pioneering days of the World Wide Web.

Deconstructing Working With ColdFusion

As I said early on, this was not a technical discussion, rather one of choices. We make a lot of them through life and at the time, a good choice may not necessarily be the best one down the road. Though I didn’t choose ColdFusion initially, it worked well for me and I did make decisions about working with it or not over time, until I eventually decided it was not one to continue with. The technology continued to work right up until the end, and I know there is still ColdFusion code working very well today, and you can’t ask for more than that.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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