“Define the sandbox for me to play in.”

This is a phrase I find myself saying more and more. It is something I have said in the past on occasion, but now it is creeping into my speech with greater frequency.

“The sandbox” I refer to comes from the childhood play thing – a literal box or tray, perhaps a half a foot in depth and a yard square, filled with sand that infants or toddlers would play in. This confined area is designed to keep the sand and the child in a defined space, all the while still allowing them to be creative and have fun.

Later in life the analogy of the sandbox would come into play (pun intended) in my chosen career of software development. Here, a sandbox is an isolated system of servers, network, software and end-user computers and mobile devices where development and experimentation can go on without impacting live software. Though there’s no sand in a technology sandbox, it can easily be as messy.

Thinking Inside and Outside The Box

Many years have passed since my early playing and I have been in all sorts of environments – business, volunteering, social, among others. I have invoked this metaphor of the sandbox as the definition of the overall boundaries or rules of engagement with whatever endeavor I am involved with. In raising this, I am asking for these parameters to be defined, upfront and complete, so I know the limits I am to work within.

In asking for the sandbox definition, I am not looking to limit what I can do. It’s actually the opposite; I want to know the boundaries so I can push them to the limits. When you think about it, there are limits in some way, shape or form in most aspects of life. There’s laws, regulations, policies, traditions, norms, emotions, budgets, physical space, time and design guidelines to name a few. If they exist, let me know them going into whatever I am going to do, so rather than being a hindrance, they are taken into consideration in my planning and actions.

Define your sand-what?

When I speak this phrase – and I find it most effective when spoken – it is often met with puzzlement. What I am asking for is not only something that is not often asked for, but the answer may not even exist, or exist in a form beneficial to myself and others. I am not a perfectionist, and I am not asking for the perfect sandbox either. In some cases, I get various documents or a conversation with someone. When this happens, I try to document what information I have received and as a result am defining the sandbox from these materials. When I do this it is met with some apprehension, especially from those who don’t want to commit or acknowledge the sandbox I have just defined from them.

It’s all play until someone pokes an eye out

Running up against the definition of the sandbox has had both positive and negative results for me in the past.

One time I felt I knew definition of the sandbox, only to find out I didn’t, which had a big impact on my work and emotions. I had to create the technical components of a presentation on a topic, with others creating the other supporting materials. The presentation was short, and I knew I was not going to be able to discuss all aspects of it, so I included external resources for the participants to explore further after the presentation. These resources were Web sites that are known for their leadership on the topic and ones I use myself. However, the day before the presentation, all but one of the links I included was struck from it by the firm’s legal counsel.

Why? They said the sites they had an issue with were run by organizations that also offered consulting services, and by including them it could be implied that the firm were endorsing these vendors. As the firm had strict policies on endorsing vendors, which I found out only as a result of this presentation, these links had to be removed. Period. When I pushed back the lawyers wouldn’t let me finish my sentence.

With the presentation so close, I had no time to find other links to include – I had the best of them, and would have to vet their information thoroughly, as well as ensure they were not offered by someone who was also consulting. So my slide had one link, the one at the bottom of the list, which I had included simply as a reference site. The presentation went on and caused confusion in the mind of some participants, and some told me this. Had I known about this endorsement policy going into it, I would have had plenty of time to rethink my material overall, from what I wrote to what I linked to. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t, and had no fun playing in this tiny sandbox this time.

A more positive example of pushing the limits of a sandbox is when I moved for a more prominent search function on an Intranet portal project I wrote about recently. Even though in this case I didn’t have the full definition of the sandbox in the form of lack of support from my director, I had the confidence that leadership would approve of this change, which they did. Even if it had not been approved, my team and I felt the effort to play to the edge of the sandbox was worth it.

Do you want to play a game?

Even with the sandbox defined for you, it is ultimately up to you if you want to play in it. Though I don’t remember specifically, I bet there were times when I would crawl or jump out of the sandbox as a child. If you do choose to play in it, be aware that on some occasions the sandbox definition may change while you are playing, and this can also trigger a decision point if you want to continue playing or move on.

The decision not to play can be unfortunate for both the person who could have played in it and for the sandbox owner as well. For the owner it can, if they accept it, create a learning moment. Typically a sandbox is there for someone to play with. But what if nobody wants to play in it? The owner – the employer, organization, what have you – has a decision to make. Do they have a sandbox nobody wants to play in?

Deconstructing Defining Sandboxes

I hope the metaphor of a sandbox resonated with your and did not distract from my overall points. In any endeavor there are boundaries. Knowing what they are going into it will make the activity smoother. Changing or just disclosing boundaries late in the process can cause disruption to all involved with the endeavor and can have repercussions to the individuals – the players – and the organization – the sandbox owner.

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

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They’re everywhere. They’re annoying. But they’re effective.

Where the above 3 sentences could apply to a lot of things, here I’m talking about Internet advertising. From banner ads to text ads to search ads, they are what supposedly finances the Web site you are on, or at least that’s the idea. The earnings from ads here on The Hot Iron this month won’t even buy me an hour of on-street parking in my city. But some ads, especially those found when searching for something, can be very lucrative.

My thoughts on these ads and how they are pervasive on Amazon.com was featured in an article published today by the Associated Press. Titled “Ad business a boon for Amazon but a turn-off for shoppers” by Joseph Pisani, I was one of a few who talked about the ads and their impact on consumers. An example of a recent frustration I had when searching for a product on Amazon opened the article.

I connected with the author through Twitter, seeing a tweet of his asking for people to share their experiences on searching for products on Amazon. The example I stated was real – when I was searching for one product the results showed a different “featured” brand, followed by other brands then 4 or 5 items down the list (differing on various searches) I found the brand and model I was looking for.

Is this type of advertising deceptive? It’s hard to see the small text or icon stating the other items are ads. These days I look for these things, others may just buy the product that paid to be at the top of the list. The ads on Amazon are unique as most all of the items are for sale through the site, and I say that as Amazon even displays paid ads for products on other sites.

The reach of the AP

Articles published by the Associated Press are often carried verbatim or in a modified form on many news outlets. As a result this article can be read on the Web sites for the New York Times, Fox Business, ABC News and even in the Spanish Edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Thanks to Jonathan Hoenig for first bringing the article to my attention.

I welcome your thoughts on these types of ads and if they have impacted you, as well as any comments on the article in general.

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

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When the long-awaited report on Russian collusion in the 2016 election and obstruction of justice by the Trump administration, better known as The Mueller Report, came out, I was eager to read it. I had enough of the media and political spinning and wanted the information from the source, the Special Counsel’s office lead by former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

When I downloaded the PDF report from the Department of Justice’s Web site moments after its release, I was a little overwhelmed - it was over 400 pages, and I’d have to print it to read, as I certainly wasn’t going to read it on my phone or computer. Staring at the redactions that permeated the pages as I scrolled through it, I thought to myself there had to be a better way to read this.

That lightbulb over my head led me to Amazon, and to my wonderment I saw a couple of versions of said report, which just came out for pre-order. In one click I had added myself to a queue of unknown quantities of people who wanted to read the report the old-fashioned way.

The book, The Mueller Report, The Final Report of the Special Counsel into Donald Trump, Russia and Collusion, arrived a few weeks later, just in time for a work trip. But as I should have anticipated, this was no quick read - written by lawyers, why would it be? Plus I spent as much time reading it on flights as I did talking with people sitting around me, wondering about it as much as I was, so it took even longer.

Eventually I finished the 472 pages of the book, which was longer than the report as it included extra materials, such as the powers of the Special Counsel. The report itself was shorter than the original for instead of showing 33 redacted physical lines, for example, it just mentioned 33 lines were not included. My takeaways were mostly on the content with a little from the report itself.

Details on what was being called hacking – As someone who works in Web technology and social media, it was not enough for me to just hear there was “hacking,” for I wanted all the details of what was being called that. What was in the report satisfied that to a certain extent, listing accounts on Twitter and Facebook and what was posted and by whom. Where I wouldn’t necessarily call it hacking, I do believe there was a deliberate attempt to influence people. However as no analytics were presented with the account activity, it is open as to its effectiveness.

Michael Cohen was Executive Vice President of Trump Organization – In any press mention of Donald Trump’s personal attorney I ever heard, I never heard of his title in Trump’s business. I heard he was a personal lawyer, fixer, handler, bodyman and various other labels that were slang not to compliment him. Granted you can give anyone any title in your own business, but if EVP was his title, why did the media never use it?

The infamous Trump Tower meeting yielded nothing – There was a lot of talk about a June 9, 2016 meeting among Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, then-campaign staff member (and later campaign chair) Paul Manafort and representatives from Russia. But after reading the testimonies from those in the meeting and what followed it, nothing came from it. Was their intent? That wasn’t even clear as it seemed like if there was to be some collusion, these weren’t the people capable of colluding!

Speaking of which, collusion wasn’t even considered – On pages 167 to 168 of the book it states, and I quote, “… this Office’s focus in resolving the question of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as described in federal law, not the commonly discussed term ‘collusion.’” So all this time - years - and all of everyone saying collusion, and the label wasn’t applicable? And none of the TV talking heads who are lawyers knew that?

Richard Pinedo was jailed for fake bank accounts as a result of the investigations – There were other charges against others, but I heard very little about it in the mainstream media. One was Richard Pineda, who was sentenced to prison for providing fake identification information to the Russians who were running the “hacking” social media campaigns. Presumably this information was used to eventually make payments to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for promoted posts. Perhaps information on Pinedo was released to the media, and they chose not to promote it widely?

Trump didn’t “recall” a lot in his responses – The book includes the written responses to questions sent to President Trump in lieu of live testimony by the office of the Special Counsel. Most of them began with “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall,” all of which did not come as a surprise to me.

I got lost a lot in the second part – The second part of the report was focused on obstruction by President Trump and his staff. Much of this presented a case, then a very long description of the applicable laws and case laws that applied to the case followed by a conclusion. This was a difficult read for me as it consisted of so many legal terms, as well the phrasing of legal descriptions doesn’t exactly follow any rules of prose. As I am not familiar with any of these laws and case laws referenced, there was little meaning to reading the middle of each case, and as much as I tried not to, on occasion I skipped to the end.

If you are interested in hearing something from the horses’ mouth, as the phrase goes, I would recommend reading The Mueller Report yourself. Again it is not a quick read, and not always an easy one, but everything is in there in its source that has been translated by the media for the general consumers.

As I give away every book I read, I will give this one to the first person who makes a comment to this blog post. Don’t post your address, as I will follow-up with you outside of this. Note I have moderation on comments, and they will not appear right away. This offer is open to anyone, anywhere in the world. Make sure to follow the comments to see if you are the lucky winner!

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

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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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Yesterday was a crappy day. Problems by someone else at work consumed my time to rectify it, which took away from the things I needed to do and am still catching up on. Then on top of it I offered to help a friend after work who had some trees get knocked down by storms a week ago.

Interestingly, it was helping with the trees, something I wouldn’t normally do or think I would enjoy otherwise, that brought back the spark that was snuffed out during the day.

Godzilla vs. The Mighty Oak

If any of you reading know me, you are probably already laughing at the fact of me helping someone with fallen trees. Even my own kid said that I am not known as a nature person. As I responded to my friend this thought came to mind, but I offered as it would certainly be a case of strength in numbers, plus my friend and others helping knew of my, well, affinity to nature as well.

Getting to his house meant passing downed trees for literally a mile. When I pulled into his place, a couple of other friends were helping him split the last of a few logs off the driveway. Though I was a little late, I was just in time, as the next task was to tackle a giant oak – 30 feet if it was not 100 – that was in his backyard. If you are unfamiliar with oak, it’s heavy, and as it was a recently fallen tree, it was still “alive” and full of moisture, which when it dries out will make it a little lighter.

After helping to wheel the log splitter down the slope of the backyard – no small feat in itself – it was time to start splitting the tree. It was cut into segments with chainsaws, and then the arm of the log splitter, named Godzilla, would scoop up the roughly 2-foot segments to be split. Splitting the logs, which were anywhere from 6 inches to almost 2 feet in diameter, required multiple passes through the splitter, which is a hydraulic press that forces the log into a sharp wedge. Splitting a large, heavy segment into 2 made for 2 slightly smaller and slightly less heavy pieces, which needed to be further split, hauled and stacked. All of this for one segment, only to repeat for each one. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I was assigned the task of operating the splitter, as the other guys used chainsaws to cut up the tree, and then were doing the stacking of the cut pieces. Where I never used a splitter before, I certainly didn’t use a chainsaw either. As the splitter was stationary and straightforward to operate, I guided Godzilla in the splitting of this fallen tree for winter firewood.

Where I certainly would have failed a log splitting efficiency test, after several pieces I was getting the hang of it, and frankly found it to be fun! I was nowhere near as agile \ as my friend whose backyard and tree this was, but as he said he was splitting wood since childhood, I wasn’t worried about speed. Plus I wanted to make sure I kept all of my fingers on each hand.

As the last flickers of light from the sun shone on us, we wrapped up the last piece of this mighty oak. What started out as a Herculean task without a solid plan turned into an achievement of firewood and, for me at least a great sense of accomplishment… not only in completing the task, but in completely forgetting about the crappy day I had earlier.

Changes in Latitude

Afterwards talking about task we wrapped up, over beers and brats, I commented on how much fun this was for me. Much of my time is spent within my comfort zone. I don’t necessarily plan or go out of my way to ensure I am in that comfort zone, but it’s where I end up spending my time. Getting out of it, in a heavily wooded area that looked nothing like where I live but a mere few miles slightly north of me, is what the doctor ordered for this day.

Where I may not be adding log splitting to my LinkedIn profile anytime soon, I am certainly up for the task in the future.

Deconstructing Getting Out

In the past I have written about how we all have our place and to play to your strengths and in many cases that approach to things still pertains. The scenario I was in was not in my mind a great risk. Granted if I was goofing around I could have easily chopped off a digit or 2. But going in with a base level expectation, doing something I had never done before and doing it well, adjusted me not just for that day, but a little on what lies in the days ahead. And perhaps it can for you as well.

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

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