Very, very, very rarely do I wish that I had stuck with web programming for a little bit longer. This is one of those times. As posted on MyCareer.com:

Executive Producer (M5)

I’m looking for a Senior Project manager / Senior Producer to work with my outstanding client who is a well known and highly regarded organisation pioneering some of the most innovative and in-depth communications strategies in Australia.

Due to massive success the Production team requires the services of a Senior Producer to support the production team in online, print, marketing and digital media initiatives.

O’rly you say?

Ya’rly!

If you are a 733t project manager or senior producer, with mad skills (over 9000!) from the delivery of flawless web projects, as well as the Real Ultimate Power of performing under pressure and delivering spectacular results then this is the role for you.

For this senior level role you will be involved in:

• Supporting and guiding business strategies
• Manage Producers, Designers and Developers on significant projects
• Deliver agreed outcomes throughout the Project lifecycle
• Implement new developments throughout the business portfolio and ensure business agenda’s are met
• Engage with all facets of the production process.

You will demonstrate:

• Experience working within the internet, media and print industries
• Exposure to formal Project Management and methodologies such as Agile and or Prince2
• Articulate, concise communication skills with the ability to assert a point with empathy
• The ability to work from both a strategic angle and a creative one
• Good technical understanding of web design and development as well as print production and media environment skills and knowledge
• Strong time management skills

Communication and interpersonal skills will be just as important as having the following experience and education:

• Tertiary qualifications
• An absolute minimum of 5 years experience in a Project Management or producers role in a web based environment utilising Flash, .Net, ActionScript and Adobe products. Seriously, save the Internet some bandwidth by not applying if you don’t have a significant web background.
• Previous experience managing the code grinders and the colouring in types.
• Strong scope management
• Excellent judgement on best action to take
• Excellent documentation skills
• Best practise knowledge in Project Management practices
• Excellent time management skills

Put on your robe and wizard hat if you have knowledge of:

• Developing solutions in .NET and 3D modelling
• Games development
• Managing Production Shoots

A passion for the web is essential, my client represents the best in Melbourne and we are only looking for the crème de la crème of the marketplace. You MUST attach a compelling cover letter to your application for this role. 

*sigh*

I don’t usually do link posts but I’ve been so busy these last couple of weeks I haven’t had time to write about the following useful links in any detail:

1. Samuel Dean from Web Worker Daily wrote a post called ‘VTC: Killer Online Tutorials, Mostly Free‘
2. HR World wrote about the ‘The Top 100 Management and Leadership Blogs That All Managers Should Bookmark‘ [via Trevor Cook]
3. Jeremiah Owyang presented ‘A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008‘
4. Ross Dawson, writing in BRW Magazine, listed the ‘Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications‘

If you’ve been following what’s been going on in the world of technology, politics, and international travel over the last few years you’ll know that, if you want to enter the US, border patrol agents are allowed to search your laptop, mobile phone, or MP3 player without limitation and without telling you why. Meanwhile, if you want to enter the UK and you have some encrypted stuff on your hard drive, the UK government can demand that you hand over your encryption keys or face jail time.

In light of all this, both CNET and the EFF have come up with ways in which you can keep your data both safe and private when crossing the border. Before reading that, though, check out Computerworld’s Jaikumar Vijayan’s article on Five Things to Know About U.S. Border Laptop Searches.

Then read these:

• For a quick overview of how to secure your data, read CNET’s Chris Soghoian’s article Keep Your Data Safe at the Border.
• For a much more in-depth discussion, read CNET’s Declan McCullagh’s Security Guide to Customs-Proofing Your Laptop.
• And, for a more legal perspective, read EFF’s Jennifer Granick’s article on Protecting Yourself From Suspicionless Searches While Travelling.

Most important of all: be careful. Your really don’t want to suffer Maher Arar’s fate.

Toby Ward of Prescient Digital Media has a couple of really good models on what it takes to have a successful intranet. Specifically:

• The Nexus of Intranet Success Model
• Intranet Project Methodology

You can read more about them in his article Intranet Planning: An Intranet Model for Success. Great stuff — and very close to home as well because, at MBS, we’re in the middle of rolling out our new intranet portal. In fact, the first phase of our project is in the Implementation and Marketing stages of Ward’s project methodology model. Exciting times, indeed.

In the wake of Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo!, Amy Webb from mydigimedia has updated the Who Owns What list to version 2.1 (available for download as a PDF). It includes the important recent acquisitions by Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, AOL, News Corporation, and IAC and makes an interesting read. [Via Download Squad].

Neat-o-Rama published a fascinating post on the evolution of various technology company’s logos. The timing of this post is fun since we started discussing brands in my Consumer Behaviour class last night and my Brand Management course starts one week from today.

By now, everyone’s heard of Microsoft’s $44.6bn bid for Yahoo! and everyone’s talked about it as well, though Yahoo! isn’t saying much for the time being.

Here, in my opinion, are some of the most interesting articles currently published on this topic:

• To start us off, there’s Long Zheng’s side-by-side comparison of the services that each firm offers: Microsoft + Yahoo = Big Mess?
• And then there’s The Kelsey Group’s Peter Krasilovsky’s article, MS & Yahoo!, that discusses the proposed acquisition from a number of angles
• Louise Story from the New York Times argues that this deal will be good for the industry: Deal That May Create More, Not Less, Competition
• But Robery X. Cringley (writing in InfoWorld) thinks it’s going to be one big mess: MicroYahoo: A Marriage Made in Heck 
• As does Scott Rosenberg:  Microsoft Plus Yahoo? The sum is less than the parts
• Paul Kedrosky, on the other hand, thinks that Yahoo! should take the deal since it makes a lot of business sense: Yahoo: Finally Catches a Bid. Deal is Done. — even though he argues it won’t make too much of a difference to either of them
• Finally, skipping a lot (and I mean a lot) of other articles on this topic, the last one — and I’ve been saving the best for last — is Paul Thurrott’s analysis of the offer: Microsoft + Yahoo? An Analysis of Microsoft’s Blockbuster Offer for Yahoo

In fact, if you’re only going to read one article on this topic, read Thurrott’s. Though it would be good if you checked out the comparison table in Zheng’s article as well.

Finally, in light of all this merger talk, check out Josh Lowensohn’s article on Dot-com pioneers — where are they now?. It makes and interesting read.

Eight Black’s Simon Chen wrote a really good article today on what a Content Management System (CMS) should be. He argues that, for a company considering a CMS solution for its website, “buying into a stand alone CMS is just not logical.” Instead, open source CMS’ like WordPress are the way to go.

I agree. In fact, in my last job in Pakistan, I spent a couple of years trying to convince firms working in that country’s development sector (both government and NGOs) of exactly that. I didn’t use WordPress, but I did use, among others, applications like Mambo, Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, phpBB, Alfresco, Moodle, MediaWiki, as well as countless plug-ins, add-ons, components, and modules. Each CMS has its own strengths and weaknesses, of course, and some are designed for specific things (you can’t do much else with the message board system, phpBB, for example) but all of them do their job quite well. [Good article on how to choose an open source CMS]

And, though over the last year I’ve worked mostly with commercial systems like Intranet DASHBOARD (iD) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), I really do think that open source systems are a great way to go for most small companies and, increasingly, for medium-sized companies as well. It’s only large firms that need much more than just a CMS solution that truly benefit from all the other features that systems like iD and MOSS bring with them. In fact, I’d almost feel silly using something like MOSS in a small company environment. That’s like having a 40-seater bus as the company car for a firm that employs 15 people.

Anyway, my point is that Chen makes a good point, though it is worth it to look at much more than just WordPress.

Well, whaddya know? Amazon has reached a deal to acquire Audible. Amazon now sells books, e-books, and audio books. Awesome. [CNET, Last100]

Though I’ve know about this for a while now, I’ve only recently tried out the 2007 Microsoft Office Test Drive and I am very, very impressed — both with the way the test drive is set up and with the 2007 Office suite. If you get the chance (and if you have a high-speed Internet connection), check it out.