Darren Ferguson - Blog
12 April 2010 at 12:31
Some information about me, my work and Ferguson Moriyama
I seem to be answering a lot of questions about the way I work recently so I thought I'd write a blog post to clear it all up. The confusion seems to be around how I split my time between Umbraco and TeamSite/LiveSite work and what Ferguson Moriyama is - just a front company for my invoicing or an actual company?
Here is how it all fits together.
Firstly, I'm often on a full time contract. In the last 3 years I've been exceptionally lucky to have a great client (The Bank of New York Mellon) that has kept me busy 9-5 - and no more I gratefully add. This relationship is now drawing to a close.
When I'm on contract, I'm still the MD of Ferguson Moriyama. My company is myself plus 2 other full time employees. My wife is one employee - she takes care of the books and lots of other admin tasks - this isn't income shifting she actually has a full time job. Employee #3 is a full time developer unlike myself he isn't into blogging, social media and developer communities, he just likes to sit in a room and code.
Ferguson Moriyama also makes use of an extensive network of freelancers and contractors - my "little black book" contains 10 people, graphic designers, HTML/CSS gurus, people who build servers etc etc. These people are the best of the best in my opinion - the list has grown slowly over more than a decade and I trust the people on it to deliver excellence every time.
Whatever my day to day commitments at Mellon, I'm still the QA who oversees anything that Ferguson Moriyama delivers. To use an Americanism "the buck stops with me".
So what does Ferguson Moriyama do exactly? Well, a few years back we wrote this rather naff mission statement. Much of it still rings true but it probably needs updating and expanding upon a little.
We do web - applications and content. We are very good at Interwoven (Autonomy) content management products and Umbraco. If these technologies won't contain your application we'll work with ASP.net or (PHP or Perl if you want) to create something that does. Good quality graphic design and user experiences are very important to us.
Here are some reasons that you should work with us:
1. 15 years experience. We've been building the web for that long.
2. We often turn down work. Strange as it may seem this is a good reason to work with us. If we agree to work with you it means we are confident we can deliver you something exceptional within budget and timescales. If we don't have this confidence we'll say no. I won't farm out to unknown/un-trusted 3rd parties so if we can't do the job we'll say so.
3. Quality as standard. You'll never been chasing us for accessibility conformance, valid XHTML, valid CSS etc. We wouldn't deliver anything that didn't conform to current standards.
4. We don't do exploitation - Controversial subject this, but if I offshore work I pay what I would pay someone in the UK to do the job. I also believe in working 9-5 5 days a week and quality of life - no-one who works with/for Ferguson Moriyama will be coding at midnight (unless they really want to). I should stress - no-one who works with Ferguson Moriyama will be taking 2 hour lunches at the pub either!
5. We support the Umbraco community - If you get us to do Umbraco development we'll look for components of your CMS that can be componentised as Umbraco packages. We'll offer a 25% discount on any packages that we create as part of your project so long as they can be open sourced and made available to the Umbraco community.
Finally, one of the most common questions I hear is how do you fit all of those Umbraco packages in? Just how do you have the time? The answer is simple - I code quickly. I've been doing this for so long now - I'm probably faster than someone who hasn't.
10 April 2010 at 09:47
Do you speak French?
Phone rings:
Me: Hello.
Him: Do you speak French?
Me: No.
Him: Oh, not even a little bit?
Me: No.
Him: Errr, OK so you don't speak any French?
Me: That is an accurate summary of our conversation so far, so what can I.....
Him: [cutting me off] I'm looking for an Interwoven consultant, but they must speak French.
Me: Well, I think we've established that there isn't a conversation to have.
[Long pause]
Him: So you don't speak French....
Me: No.
Him: Do you know anyone who speaks French?
Me: Yes, quite a few people.
Him: Great, well do you think...
[cutting him off]
Me: But not with Interwoven skills.
Him: Oh, well thankyou. Bye.
06 April 2010 at 09:34
UK Government IT incompetence: hmcourts-service.gov.uk
Prime minister Brown recently proposed a dashboard that allows every citizen to personalise the explosive growth of government services on the web. Personally I think the government should stick to the basics.
Following on from a previous blog post UK Government IT incompetence: fco.gov.uk I'm sad to report another far from satisfying experience, this time with hmcourts-service.gov.uk
I tried to make a simple form submission on the site and received a message along the lines of "We cannot accept your submission at this time: Please try again later". So try again later I did - several times.
Patience exhausted I fired an email off to their customer support team only to receive this exasperating response:
Thank you for your email. If problems persist, please provide your user ID and password and we will investigate the matter further, or, alternatively you can call our helpdesk on the number below who will be able to talk you through it.
Please check for any other error messages.
Please note - your particulars of claim must be no more than 24 lines totalling no more than 1080 characters (including space and punctuation). Also, that the only punctuation you can use is full stops or commas - all other punctuation is treated by our system as illegal characters, including £ and & signs.
Can you confirm which internet browser you are using as the site is only compatible with Internet Explorer at the moment. If you're using another browser you may have to switch to a machine that has Internet Explorer in order to submit your claim.
Now you my readers are more than aware what is wrong with this - on so many levels.
My plea then is to the government. Why in this day and age do you have so many difficulties building a simple website? It isn't difficult. With so many qualified agencies out there why do you continually pick those who are simply useless?
A genuine offer if anyone who commissions government websites stumbles across this post. I will come and see you free of charge and explain the issues with government websites, how they can be addressed at a minimial cost and how to appoint a web manager/commissioner who understands the basics of the web.
05 April 2010 at 13:07
Umbraco, Microsoft and Me: Update and more swag
The video diary below is an update on the Microsoft/Umbraco project I'm taking part in.
I keep on referring to Windows Vista ultimate in the video diary instead of windows 7 ultimate - I'd only had one beer - apologies.
If you can spare the time to watch this then there is more swag available. This time the prize is a copy of this book. To enter watch the video and leave a blog comment answering the following question: Which product that is part of website spark seems to have impressed me most?
Winner randomly selected from correct entries :)
The last winner is also announced in the video