Channel 15-City government

Street Lighting Ceremony - Hawkins/Montana 10/30/2009
  Will  help the fire department, the police department, the neighborhood association put up 50k for the landscaping, plus federal funds of 260k in lighting.  Daryl Cole from Streets Department.  Burges HS drum corps.   Daryl Cole and the gentleman from the association both  lauded City Manager who really helped them make this happen.   Emma Acosta was mistress of ceremonies.  Wish the announcement of the ceremony was publicized a bit more by Ms. Acosta's office so maybe people would have come out to celebrate.

Public Library system-Clardy Fox Branch 5515 Robert Alva
  Pictures of the library.

Rachel Quintana and her relatives cutting their hair for Locks of Love at a local day spa.

Passport Card  information - $75 for adults and good for 10 years.  Wallet sized card.  $25 Execution fee.  Mexico, Canada, Bermudas, Carribean.  Not valid for air travel   County will also take the pictures for $10  http://www.epcounty.com/ for more info  915.546.2021

Update on H1N1 virus   Michael Hill,    8,000 vaccines given out.   Those in line hated the lines (cold and wet)  but the Health Department was trying hard to get those vaccines out to everyone.  They are looking to use the convention center or somewhere large next time to avoid people waiting outside and process people in one place (consistency in determing priorities). Lessons learned.   Will try to take more control over lines, if only 100 doses, then cut the line off at 100.    Need a mike for the questions.  The volume was too different between questions and answers.   Red Cross was trying to help make people comfortable, handing out water and coffee.  Little seasonal flu, just H1N1 is being seen.  Clinics are trying hard to be good customer service, they will try hard to honor the waitlist.  Helping those who are standing in line is being looked at.  Other places do have the vaccine for sale.  High Risk is Pregnant women, caring for infants less than 6 months.  Healthcare workers, Emergency Care.  

Lights on Afterschool Recreation Centers - Azcarate Elementary School Nanette Smejkal, Director Parks and Recreation.   Mauricio Cano, Principal.  Introduced staff.  Emma Acosta  3 schools represented.  A couple helped fund this Gary & Cindy Aboud.  Their son died in skiing accident and enjoyed being around their friends.  They sponsored these programs.

Arbor Day 2009 - Nanette Smejkal, Director Parks and Recreation,  Lisle Davis invocation,  Deniece Baisley, vocalist for the national anthem.  Fire truck flew the flag and it was very pretty.  Cub Scouts/Brownies from a local school led the pledge.    Oscar Mestas, Texas Forest Service, Fall is very good for planting trees in El Paso, they get established well.  Sam Calhoun, Parks Superintendent read list of all the donors.  Info on the Memorial Tree Program

SharePoint Tng-Functional Overview (0:39:49 - 1:54.55)

Adding columns to a list is very similar to Access

1. The syntax appears to be the same
2. Datasheet view(table view) vs Standard View (quick form)
3. Calculated columns - =datedif([Column 1],[column 2],"d")
   
4. Hyperlink to other pages (but it wasn't clear how he knew what to type)
   
5. Adding multiple entries to a column means no sorting, only filtering.  
   

Working with Views

1. Create View takes me to the list of view formats Standard, calendar, access, datasheet and Gantt
2. Can rename views as well
3. Works very similar to Access

Versioning

1. Check out means you lock the editing of the document.   It is only available for documents.
2. Can lock it on the server or temporarily to your my-documents, keeping it locked until you finish working and re-check it back in.   Can use offline this way, no one can change it while you have it, and then your amended copy is reloaded and the check out flag is removed.
3. Working offline is faster than working on the copy that is still on the server.   But working on the server is fine for a quick, minor change.
4. Publishing features allow control over the documents (doesn't apply to anything else).
1. Can tell who checked it out by hovering over icon before title of document
2. Versioning settings can control the documents to be checked out.
3. The changes are self-reported.
4. For any materials we are all working on, this makes it much easier to avoid stomping on each other.
5. Versioning and checkin is set list by list, no global setting.
6. Versioning can number for major or minor changes.  Changing a minor version to major changes the version number.  (e.g. 3.1 would become 4.0)
7. Can require an approval process. 
5. Versioning can be for tasks as well.

SharePoint Tng-Functional Overview (0:00:00-0:39.48)

Definition: Site

1. Collaboration
2. Document Management
3. Portal
4. Content Management (publish/design processes) 

Not sure if we have MOSS-Standard (user profiles/audiences/web content) or MOSS-Enterprise (InfoPath, Excel).

Features:   Navigation, Sites & collection; Lists,Columns, views; Versioning; Notification; Web Parts; Personal Site; Search

Site: Illustration
Sample course had

1. Course Materials using Document List Template
2. Calendar
3. Assignments (tasks assigned to students)
4. Class Discussion
5. Lab Inventory

Definition: Site Collection
Site collection is a set of sites together.   Site template which determines the site functionality and initial configuration of content on the site.  

Definition: List
Lists stores a collection of items. Pages, people, documents, calendar entries, tasks etc...  Default views can filter based on permissions.  List templates determine list functionality

Navigation Terminology
Example included 6 tabs:   Training Intranet, document center, news, reports, search, sites. 

1. Tree view can make it very busy (Set under Navigation)
2. Global navigation at top; current navigation on left
3. Open link in new window checkbox with add link  (Misstyping at 18:00, distracting to viewer)
4. Navigation setting that controls what appears in tab (Navigation> Show Subsites)
5. Blank template vs a template like team site (which added a series of pages)
6. Can upload documents either one-by-one or drag and drop (use internet explorer option
7. Tasks in all task using the datasheet view makes it easier to add (looks a lot like access)

NLA - Oct 28, 2009 Mayor Cook, Carl Robinson

Mayor Hires:

1. City Attorney
2. Executive Assistant
3. Admin Assistant
4. Rates the City Manager along with the opinions of the council
5. National search for a trained City Manager

Compared city council to being like herding cats.  

1. Each has different needs, goals and desires. 
2. Some districts need more of something than other areas, eg the westside is park-poor. 
3. Keeping old infrastructure is different than new infrastructure.
4. Hires a moderator during the strategic planning session. 
5. Produces vision, mission and goals for city manager but also have to come up with the funds.
6. Sometimes there is no choice about the raising of taxes. 
7. Fema only paid 75% of the value (eg a 20 yr old road that has 30 yrs of life, they paid 75% of prorated 33%)
8. He has to try to extract the common elements from them and then convey that to the various other elected officials. 
9. Talking with the mayor of Juarez when the dam was about to break, and then sent pumpers and engineers to help.   Otherwise the downtown would flood.   Fires over there, our firefighters have to volunteer because workman comp would not have paid out-of-country but they are doing it because the very next warehouse was full of toxic materials that would have filled the air with poison.
10. County is an extension of the state.  Very different from the city.
11. 2500 emails a month to the mayor's office.

Carl Robinson, City Representative

 

1. Understanding that we, the council, are supposed to choose what's best for the city, not just our district.
2. Satellite office in NE, 9600 Dyer, NE command center Police 10-4 on Friday.
3. Running for office means sacrifice time, money, personal life, family time, and it is very hard. Walk, take criticism, icky people,involved in community causes name recognition.
4. NE will build some apartments for the soldiers
5. Ft Bliss has the largest land mass in all the world for training.

SharePoint-Understanding Key concepts

Understanding Key Concepts by Sharepoint Training Videos.com
Goal:  Fundamental concepts of how Sharepoint is built.

1.  Sharepoint as a series of sites and lists.   Every site having its own lists of things with multiple lists that help you find what you want.  
2. Think of links (and Web Parts) as shortcuts to what you want on a site.   The WebPart is just a display of information, not the item itself.
3. All Site content will display everything, not just what is on the "Landing Page" that has the web parts.   WebParts can filter so not everything will display.  This can be called "Views".
4. Navigation is based on two types.   Global navigation is the tabs at top and controlled by the college.   The left side is usually controlled by the owner.
5. Permissions -   SharePoint will not let you view anything you do not have permission to see.

Very nice video.

Sharepoint -It isn't the technology.......

Mark Schneider-It isn't the technology, it is what you actually do with it...
A great article that helped me get my head around who will want to implement (vs who will be required to implement).  Here are some of the quotes that especially hit home.

Don't forget that the point of SharePoint isn't technology, but improved business performance where ad hoc data is concerned.

Sharepoint.....is a virtual environment that connects people, information and work areas in order to accomplish ad hoc tasks. The truly amazing thing is that it does so in a way that enables the knowledge workers to have a great deal of tactical freedom while maintaining a strategic structure and focus to all of their activities.

The bigger portion of the story is what you do with it once you have it in place. Your organization has to understand what SharePoint "means" to your culture, your processes and your people. It is the peopleware and not the hardware or software, that will differentiate vendors moving forward. Can your implementation and services vendor help you figure out how to successfully leverage and use SharePoint after it is in place? If not then all they have done is help you install a really expensive "U: Drive."