Merry Xmas and Happy New Years to everyone I have worked with over the past year... I love my work and solving your business problems and applying great technlogy to do so!

A video tutorial going through the basic setup and getting the APES (Automated Provision for Email Services) on SilverStripe CMS up and running.
APES is a module that sync's your SilverStripe Member information up to mail services ready to send out newsletters.

It will help you sync your Member information in SilverStripe CMS with your email newsletter lists (MailChimp only at present) for eMarketing and Membership newsletter needs.

*Available in HD if you view through the Vimeo site too!

On the 27th Oct 2011 I presented my casestudy of a recent project that was built with SilverSripe CMS for the New Zealand Young Professionals Network.
The slides and keynote video are now available below and a video of the  Q & A session will be coming next week. Thanks to the SilverStripe Meetup organisers.

*UPDATE: APES now supports a new email service, GetResponse.com... more to add in the new year!

I am pleased to announce that a major web project I have been working on over the past few months for the New Zealand Young Professionals Network (NZYP) has launched.

In reality it has been almost a year in the making if we factor in the initial consulting and business analysis the took place pre-project when Canterbury Young Professionals (CYP) approached me with their idea to revamp their website. Even though there is no formal NZYP organisation, the idea quickly turned into a joint venture between Auckland, Dunedin and Canterbury Young Professional Organisations (YPO's) as a collaborative project dubbed “NZYP” with the groups working together toward a common set of goals.

If you are in the Wellington region this week and are looking for some web geekery, networking and a dose of good music then check out the Web Dev Conference (WDCNZ) on this Thursday 14th July 2011

I spent some time today porting my ClickTale module over to github which is now available with more documentation at https://github.com/cam-findlay/silverstripe-clicktale.
You can also grab the download package and a bit more information from the SilverStripe.org modules section: http://silverstripe.org/clicktale-anayltics-module/.

Finally got around to updating the design on my blog, I also have just moved it from Wordpress to SilverStripe CMS... which meant I have to migrate all my posts and also take care of old links since the urls for the new blog don't match the old using a little mod_rewrite action and some good old fashion regex.

Information is everywhere...

Some research suggests we consume some 34 gigabytes and 100,000 words of information per day, enough to fill up 10-20% of an average notebook computer’s hard drive.

However, information is no longer a by-product of business... it is the lifeblood. “Information is no longer a by-product of business it is the lifeblood of business” - Oliva Parr Rud
(Internationally known expert in Business Intelligence, check out her book Business Intelligence Success Factors).

Its not just about pulling a report or looking at a number.

So we need to pay attention to what our business information is telling us... or rather its about deeply understanding what that information means using ways to simplify and trend without losing the message in translation.

Video from the SilverStripe Meetup