Managing Digital Projects Day 3. Warm-up Exercise

Managing Digital Projects

Day 3

Warm-up Exercise

How Did it Go?

Thoughts and experiences after first two days?

What is a computer?

What is a program?

A set of instructions that you give to a computer.

Computers Speak

01001000 11100011 00101010

Computers Speak

01001000 11100011 00101010

Humans Speak

“Say Hello”

Human language

class HelloWorld{ public static void main (String args[]) { System.out.println(“Hello World”); }}

“Say Hello.”

ComputerLanguage

MachineInstructions

01110101,10110111

Human language

ComputerLanguage

MachineInstructions Compiler

Editor/IDE

Why is it so hard?• Invisible

• Unforgiving

• Alien

• Tractable

Learning about programming

"I've been the MD of two or three technology companies and I thought I understood what software was all about. I thought I knew all about technology. Then, just recently I started writing some macros in Excel, and then I got into VBA - and I thought - how hard could this be? And then after a couple of weeks it was like wow! Some things you think are easy are really hard - they take you days and other things, once you've got the hang of it, they're really easy. But when I'm doing this stuff - you'd better not talk to me, I can't be answering my phone or reading email of any of that stuff, when I'm writing code I've got to CONCENTRATE.

"And then suddenly it struck me - all these things programmers had been saying to me all these years..."

Basics of a Programming Language

• Assignment

– a = 4;• Loops

– while (a > 4) { b = b + 1;}• Conditionals

– if (a > 10) { b = 0;}• Input Output

– System.out.print(“Hello”);• Sub-routines

– printTimesTable(12)

Programming Exercise


Programming ExercisePossible solutionX = 1

Y = 12

WHILE X <= 12

TOTAL = X * Y

PRINT X

PRINT “ TIMES “

PRINT Y

PRINT “ EQUALS ”

PRINT TOTAL

PRINTLN

X = X + 1

END WHILE


1 TIMES 12 EQUALS 12












Break

What is the web?

Serverdemon

Get Document Request

Serve document

HTMLHypertext Mark-up Language

HTTPHypertext Transfer Protocol

Serverdemon Server

demon

Serverdemon

Serverdemon

Serverdemon

Serverdemon

What’s wrong with the phone?

• Hierarchical

• Secret!

• Specialised

What’s great about the internet?

• Not hierarchical (packet switching)

• Public (how it works available in RFC’s)

• Generalised (doesn’t worry what’s in the packets)

c:\> tracert www.google.com

Tracing route to www.l.google.com [209.85.229.103]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 2 ms 1 ms www.routerlogin.com [192.168.0.1]

2 28 ms 27 ms 27 ms galileo-sub-lb.zen.net.uk [62.3.82.19]

3 27 ms 28 ms 27 ms lotze-ae0-140.hq.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.141]

4 27 ms 29 ms 28 ms nietzsche-ae2-0.ls.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.70]

5 68 ms 27 ms 28 ms nozick-ge-3-1-0-0.ls.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.74]

6 38 ms 85 ms 38 ms lorenz-ge-3-0-0-0.te.zen.net.uk [62.3.80.78]

7 37 ms 35 ms 36 ms 195.66.226.125

8 37 ms 37 ms 43 ms 209.85.255.175

9 45 ms 43 ms 43 ms 66.249.95.170

10 42 ms 43 ms 51 ms 72.14.236.191

11 51 ms 54 ms 45 ms 209.85.243.81

12 45 ms 43 ms 45 ms ww-in-f103.google.com [209.85.229.103]

Trace complete.

Anatomy of a Web Page

Look at the HTML for http://www.agile-lab.co.uk in the handout - identify what each bit

does?

Break

SEOSearch Engine Optimisation

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

SEO - Page Rank

Examples of Google Page Rank

• http:news.bbc.co.uk - 9/10• http://en.wikipedia.org/ - 9/10• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ - 8/10• http://www.agile-lab.co.uk/ - 4/10

Keywording

• What will be people be searching for when they come to your page?

• Use a keywording tool to figure out what keywords to use (e.g https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal)

Making your HTML search-engine and Keyword Friendly

• Meaningful and Unique Titles– <title>A book about Boats</title>

• Meaningful Headers– <h1>A Book about Boats - chapter 1</h1>

• Alt-text for images– <img src=“boatImage1.jpg” alt=“A picture of a boat”>

• Meaningful and appropriate link text– <a

href=“http://www.bookaboutboats.com/SeaSailing.htm”>Our exciting section about sea sailing</a>

• Meaningful domain names and deep-linking– http://www.bookaboutboats.com/chapter3/oars-and-rowlocks

Analyticshttp://www.google.com/analytics

<script type="text/javascript">var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));</script>

<script type="text/javascript">var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3476939-1");pageTracker._initData();pageTracker._trackPageview();</script>

Analytics/SEO Exercise

Thrills and Swoon OnlineThrills and Swoon have been publishing romance novels since 1928, they sell 2 million books a year. T&S were recently purchased by the multimedia giant Big Corp, Big Corp feel that there is a market for selling T&S books as downloads on line. They are especially interested in publishing T&S's back catalogue and are also interested to use T&S's experience in this market to inform similar attempts to provide on line access to other Big Corp titles.

If people type “Romance Novel” into a Google, the T&S site should be in the top 5 results returned – ideally, in the top 1!

Work out an SEO strategy for Thrills and Swoon.

• What kind of text should be in the pages of the Thrills and Swoon

site?

• What should the directories be called?

• What other things should go into the HTML of the pages to improve

the site’s search engine performance?

• Which other sites would it be good to have links from?

• Which domain names would it be good to own?

• How can Thrills and Swoon improve their page ranking?

• What other things could Thrills and Swoon do to drive traffic to their

website? (clue: blogs, Social Media).

• How could you track the progress of your SEO attempts?

Break

Projects?Or Products?

Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad.

- Clay Shirky (Blog Post) Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

Denial:"I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."

Anger:"Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who

is to blame?"

Bargaining:"Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything

for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if..."

Depression:"I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . .

What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"

Acceptance:"It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well

prepare for it.”

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross “On Death an Dying”

5 Stages of Dealing with Radical Change - Exercise

Web 2.0

Smart companies try to commoditize their products'

complements. - Joel Spolsky (from the Blog Joel

on Software)

Documents

Managing Digital Projects Day 3. Warm-up Exercise