Ora, Kew

I may have borrowed the "you can't beat Wellington on a good day" for Sydney a couple of blog posts ago, and while Melbourne on a warm, fine, Spring day is pretty nice - Melbourne on a grey, sometimes drizzling day is spectacular. It's as if this city was made to glow under the diffused light of rain clouds.

Ora's breakfast hit my broad bean spot...

...and is bound to hit any number of spots you might have in your food-heart and your breakfast-stomach too.

Ora had been accurately described as "small". The cafe was spilling out into Pakington Street with people wanting to put their names on the list, and those waiting to be seated. My name went on the list while others changed their minds about waiting and those who decided to take their breakfasts "to go" making it an easy 15 minute wait until Nick, Ben and I got our seats. We parked ourselves at the outside bench table betting against the rain for at least the time it would take for us to have breakfast.

My very first impressions of Ora, after the "holy cow, this place is packed" was of the graciousness, and gracefulness, of the staff. The woman taking names and approximating wait-times was spot on with her estimations, and so very pleasant and unflustered dispite the recent inundation of people wanting to eat on a Saturday morning. Our waitress didn't keep us waiting long and was perfectly caffeinated and playful as she gave us each a menu returning to deliver our coffees, and take our orders back to the kitchen.

Everything on the menu was appealing. The pancakes, the black pudding, the hash. I was on the verge of ordering pancakes when I changed my mind. Thankfully, Ben ordered them so I could get to see how great they looked, and Nick and I each ordered the ricotta and broad bean mash with mint and a soft egg.

The food arrived in a timely manner and looked gorgeous on thelarge, white platters. We all stopped talking - we'd been chattering about this and that, flitting and firing with perculated conversation. Ben got stuck into his gorgeous stack of pancakes and blueberries while I yummed and ahhed my way through the combination of the sweetness and freshness of my broad bean mash. I have no idea what Nick was doing, I was far too busy eating.

My breakfast was absolutely delicious, and exactly the right size. The creamy ricotta was the cool foil to vibrant green mash with the oozy yellow yoke of the egg giving every mouthful a wonderfully silky texture. I was transported with every bite and while satisfied, rather sad that I'd come to the end of my breakfast with the empty white platter smeared with the memories of the food it had delivered a undeterminable number of minutes before.

I looked up to see that both guys had cleaned their plates too. Did we inhale that food? How long was I eating? it was as if time had stopped; I was so in the "now" with my broad beans, nothing else had mattered until the continuum was restored by that vast empty plate.

They didn't rush us off. The number of people wanting seats had dissapated and we casually chatted while drinking second cups of coffee. The bill was reasonable and Ora allows bill splitting which is wonderful. The heavens opened up after they kept their promise to save themselves until after breakfast and we spalshed home in the rain, a thoroughly wonderful Saturday morning at Ora, in Kew.

Ora:156 Pakington Street, Kew, VIC 3101.

Great coffee, superb food, outstanding service.

Web Content Workshop with Relly Annett-Baker

As if I wasn't excited enough about attending a Web Directions South 2011 workshop about content being run by Relly Annett-Baker, but then I find out during her introduction that she's working with those brilliant people at CERN to wrangle web content for the Large Hadron Collider well - let's just say that it was mostly the canines in the area who could hear my squeee'ing.

Workshops before conferences are the bomb. First of all, they get you into the grove so that when you hit the conference you don't spend much time adjusting your shorts and getting acclimatised to not being at work. Secondly, these speakers who come Downunder to speak at Web Directions and Webstock: they know their onions.

Relly really knows her onions

Do you want to know how she knows her onions? She's learned from experience, from mistakes, from her network of colleagues, from the pain of working with clients who just do not get it. She presented us with great ideas - but even more valuably - really, Relly-practical advice and steps - STEPS - to how to DO this content wrangling stuff.

What makes good content?

1. take away all the bad content
2. replace it with all the good content

EASY!

Website Audits

Relly got right down to business talking about web site audits. There are two types:

• qualitive - the quality of the content produced (does it meet user needs, have the right content, is the content valuable?)
• quantative - the bones of the content (number of pages, the links, the id tags, heading tags, meta data, H1/H2 headings)

Collecting every page URL, deciding who owns it, capturing the title, deciding whether it needs editing, re-writing, or deleting and then putting that information into a spreadsheet is a big job for most sites, but is so important to give a real sense of the size and shape of the site. To recognise the spidery growth the site has probably experienced over the years since it's went live and to see where content is duplicated, missing or just plain wrong.

The spreadsheet keeps a track of the thoughts as we read every page of our site while asking ourselves:

• what is the point of this page?
• what is good? bad? missing?
• who owns this content?

This is time consuming but important to do the first time, and then becomes part of a regular, scheduled, ongoing audit that is all about looking after the site's content and value to users.

Page Tables

This really got my juices going. Having come from an interactive/elearning background, I am very used to story-boards. It never occurred to me that content could be, or should be, story-boarded! In the content world though, they're called Page Tables.

A page table works for each individual page on your site and what you want to put there. What goes into a page table, I hear you ask:

• ownership, detail, process and implications of this page and content
• messaging (what are we trying to communicate - set a priority of points)
• methodology (format, what is it going to be - who will update it, ownership, dependencies)
• call to action (connection, related content, learn more, follow on SM, find out more about me)

For example, include:

1. Page title
2. Sub heading
3. Opening (This article will cover, By the end the reader will be able to)
4. Messages (What am I trying to explain)
5. How do I break these up into headings
6. Content (Current content on site)
7. Call to Action (What would I like people to do next?:)
8. Description tag /tagging?
9. What a good sentence to describe this article?
10. What should I tag it with to allow searching for related content?
11. What else?
12. Do I need to prepare images/audio/video/other articles etc?
13. Ownership/Signoff

"Suddenly content isn't this thing that pixies magic up" Relly said, "it's actually hard work - it requires team work and the client is part of the bargain."

How do we make good content on the new, new web?

Relly finished up the workshop with a list of things we need to do, to create a state-of-mind for making and governing content. We need to make content:

• ACCESSIBLE - include information about how to use the physical space, to complete the task they want to do once they have the information on board. A literacy level that encompasses the broadest range of people. Translations. Look at the design, location aware (closest post office).
• SEARCHABLE - not just to get to the front door but how to find your way around once you've opened it. Meta data is optimised so there are unique keywords and descriptions for site search. Curate search results.
• FINDABLE - smart (human) URLs, shorteners may not be all they could be/should be/ obscure destination and may hide phishing activities. Be true to your site. use the inverted pyramid to display authentic valuable content. Tag with sense.
• DESIRABLE - the best content is that which people want, and need.
• SHARABLE - via social media. Make it Tweetable. curated content/trusted sources => good for organisations to do with quality syndication.
• SELECTABLE - allow people to be able to find content within it, to be able to share it, to be able to build upon it - points in recordings, anchors in text, choose the bits they want. Is there a disconnect between creator and consumer? free to repurpose it as they wish. annotate it.
• SELF AWARE - cr oss referencing. tagged. linked. semanic.(splines) linkedata.org
• PORTABLE - across all devices. not stucked on one planet. it's important enough to take with us. ownership of space is becoming an issue rather than the content on it. who can access to? who are we denying it to?
• FLEXIBLE - grow into the containers content is in. responsive. ubiquitous computing, invisible information SPLINES.

Relly Annett-Baker promised that she would put a fire in my belly and by goodness, she sure did. She put more strings in my bow and more powder in my horn. She unveiled a few new tools which will help hone the work of all of us lucky enough to have been in her workshop. She delivered her message loud and clear, with humour, fun and energy - and may just have changed my life.

ATM Glitches

"You understand, Michelle, that our ATMs don't dispense five dollar notes."

"I understand what you're saying, but it gave ME two five dollar notes so I think you'll have to say that sometimes, your ATMs do give out five dollar notes."

"Ah, no Michelle. They do not."

"I understand why you're saying that because this is weird. But it did. To me."

"When you took the money from the machine, did you somehow reach under the machine?"

"The machine gave me the money. I didn't reach anywhere. The machine presented the money to me."

"I've remoted into the machine Michelle. I can see that you've used it, that you've withdrawn $300, and your account has been debited that amount. I can see that the machine gave you that money, and it has not recorded an error. The machine gave you three hundred dollars."

"No. The machine gave me $210. I asked for $300. That amount has also left my bank account. But what I have in my hand, from the machine, is four fifty dollar notes and two five dollar notes."

"Michelle, our machines don't dispense five dollar notes."

"Well today, this one did."

It doesn't pay to get up early and try and get things done on a Thursday. Well at least it didn't pay for me this morning. I'm still $90 out of pocket. Despite the shop owner confirming to the ATM Help Desk that he had reviewed the security video and it showed I did nothing wrong, or sneaky, or weird, or tamper'y. That I was standing there, with him, holding $90 dollars less than the $300 I'd asked for, they just would not admit that maybe, somehow, their ATM had dispensed two five dollar notes in the place of the two fifties for my withdrawal. It's not a huge stretch of MY imagination to see how someone, somewhere along the line may have swapped out the fives for the fifties - either maliciously or accidently.

Of course, the ATM people couldn't so much as hint that it was even a remote possiblity that their machine dispensed five dollar notes. Instead, they told me I had to phone my bank - it seemed like this was my problem despite the fact it was their machine - and the bank would deal with them if they felt they needed to take it further. I was out of the picture, and still out of pocket.

Westpac said I couldn't deal with this over the phone, and advised me to visit a branch. As this is the first time this has happened to me they would pay me back the money I'd lost, and they would handle the investigation from there to redeem the money from the ATM operator. But, if this happens to me again, I would not necessarily be paid out and a different process would need to happen.

So if this happens to me again, I'm on my own. As if it's my fault. These banking types take care, but no real responsibility, do they?