mindgraffiti

As Sale season comes to an end, I’m looking forward to fewer updates and developing some new projects. Last week Web Services (that’s us) had a meeting with Information Services (think of the Apple commercial where PC meets Mac). It was funny, yet nerve-wracking. Here were the desktop programmers, neatly dressed to the nines, with a team of nine people. Here are the web programmers, sloppily dressed in jeans and tees, the motley crew of five. Okay, great, you say, but why was this meeting significant?

These are the keepers of the keys. They clearly outrank us: the technology team from the parent company, who makes the decisions on the hardware and software used on our web servers. To be dramatic: they can help end the suffering and pain we experience on a daily basis when trying to use the outdated administration section in the Angus Journal web site

I have waited two years to hear that bit of good news.

They listened politely, but none looked eager to help with this project. We are not asking them to clean up bad code or ‘unbreak’ the site. We are asking for a new build, from scratch. No easy task considering how much archived information lives in those databases. I can’t blame them for looking unhappy at the prospect, but I am certainly grateful to see we have help.

So many of the departments are fragmented, little factions unwilling to share their information across departments, despite all of them being owned by the same parent company. I hope our two departments can show others how to collaborate and play nice.