Blog posts tagged with 'community'

The NY Times published an interesting front page article (Aug 9) and online post discussing how NBC attempted to block web sites hosting video clips and live feeds of the Olympic Games opening ceremonies in the United States. According to the Times article NBC "sent frantic requests" to web sites asking them to remove videos and feeds of the Olympic ceremonies - amounting to a game of "digital whack-a-mole". Web sites including YouTube (Google) and Justin.tv pulled down clips, but could not keep up with users who traded links via Blogs and Twitter to stay ahead of NBC. NBC was attempting to protect its' TV broadcast coverage of the ceremonies which were tape delayed and presented in the USA during the evening hours on Friday August 8, a full 12 hours after the opening ceremonies actually occurred.

So why is this interesting for a Citrix marketing type like me? This interests me because NBC had an opportunity to engage its user community - and didn't. User communities are a fundamental component of today's and presumably tomorrow's web, and at Citrix we are fortunate to have a long-standing and vibrant user community that Citrix needs to engage with and make successful. Citrix has a renewed focus and commitment to make our community more successful via the newly re-designed and enhanced Citrix Communities site. We care about our users and our community and are investing to help make our community successful.

Is there more to this NBC video thing beyond the notion that traditional media outlets like NBC apparently still don't get the net, or that video has finally arrived on the net? NBC is posting thousands of hours of its Olympic Games coverage online, using Microsoft® Silverlight™ technology, so they do get the net, or do they? (this Silverlight aspect is a topic for another blog - can you say DRM!) NBC's decision not to live stream coverage of the opening ceremonies might be considered somewhat odd. NBC is obviously working to manage access to its Olympic video footage in an attempt to maximize its audience so as to charge higher advertising rates. This all makes sense - old school sense - or rather cents!

I'm sensing NBC has missed a glorious opportunity to engage its community who could have supplied content snips from their perspective, content that could have extended the NBC viewpoint. This user supplied content could have been a great complement to live streaming feeds of NBC's "official" Olympic games opening coverage - if NBC had in fact supplied a live internet feed. They have the infrastructure -see myNBC.com. My searches on myNBC.com turned up 2 Olympic Games clips, both of which returned "the requested video is not available" message"...

NBC blew a significant opportunity to begin re-inventing themselves to be more than just a source of content created in-house and to begin engaging and fostering a user community of associate content providers. Many news outlets, CNN, Fox News are attempting to leverage user supplied content to support their official coverage - NBC missed the opportunity to build their community and leverage the Olympics.

Hello Mac Users

First I would like to thank all of you for downloading version 1.0 of our blogs widget. We currently have 1400+ downloads, and this goes to show that the Citrix community has indeed a large number of Mac users.

I also would like to thank those users who sent us their feedback, this version of the widget is here because of you, so keep sending your feedback and comments.

 Meet the Citrix Blogs Widget

 Version 1.0:

• The latest 30 Citrix Blog posts
• Adjust view from Full to Summary
• Collaborate with your comments
• Open posts on Safari or Firefox
• Spotlight Search (Instant search)
• Push updates (no refresh required)
• Watch blogged videos
• Check for updates
• Send feedback

 Version 1.2:

• Widget Resizing
• Bug Fixes

Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4 or greater

Download:

Citrix Blogs Widget

In the age where Agua or Aero-glass interfaces are somewhat as important as the underlining kernel, same rules have been applying to Scripts and utilities, after all not everyone wants to be using complex scripts and endless command-line combinations.

For those who are not so keen on Scripts and CLI, our French friend Pierre Marmignon created an app that doesn't solve a new problem, but tackles it more elegantly. Pierre has created an GUI app that (bulk) imports/exports all your published applications.

If you have an useful Citrix app or utility that you would like to share with the world by showcasing it here on the Citrix communities, feel free to send an email to: gus.pinto@citirx.com with the title Community App.

This is the very first edition of a highly buzzed virtualization event held in London, UK, from Oct 14 to 16. The event is three days long: first day (Oct. 14) is dedicated for distributors and resellers, second and third day are for the attendees.

But wait a minute. Another trade show? The answer is, Not really!

So what makes Virtualization Congress special, VC is shaping up to be a truly unconventional conference.

• No Slide allowed on Stage - Only 1-hour long demos: the product is being showed while applied to a specific use case, hopefully matching the ones that attendees may have back at their datacenters.
• It's independent, following the very successful model we know from BriForum, Virtual Congress is an independent and unbiased conference.

Never mind the level of expertise attending the conference: Simon Crosby, Mark Russinoivch, Richard Garsthangen, Scott Herold and many others.

Citrix as usual will be there supporting the conference as a platinum sponsor and deliverying the keynote, you will be able to interact with our top experts and product specialists, so feel free to stop by our booth and say hi to myself, Simon, and others.

Anything else? Yes. Citrix Certified individuals (CCA, CCEA, CCIA) will receive an amazing discount to sign-up for the conference, an amazing 25% off the regular price or $400 US dollars for a pass. *Details coming soon, stay tuned.

I'm looking forward to this event and I have here a video invite from Simon to share with all.

In the meantime you can check out the following links for more information.

Home
Speakers
Agenda

See you in London.

best,
Gus

Today I have received two new applications to play with; that's exactly what I did.

After installing and playing with both apps, I can say they do exactly what their respective developers advertised. Each can be very useful to deployments and day-to-day admin tasks.

Kudos to both developers. I hope you guys find these apps usefull, if not, let them know where and how they can improve.

It looks like usability is important to a lot of people these days.  We recently ran a survey with Citrix's private Customer Advisory Community (CAC) called "Prioritizing Usability", and we got 106 responses, which is above average.  And the respondents definitely felt strongly.

The survey was meant to gauge what kind of usability was important for Citrix to address and whether people felt usability for administrators affects end-users and vice versa.   As the baby boomer population continues to make way for the new generation of echo boomers, "Old School" system administrators will be faced with the challenge of administering to an end user population that is used to customization and flexibility. That has not been a part of the "only give them what they need so they can't muck it up" policy that most administrators have lived by in the past.

Interestingly enough, most people in the CAC think our user experiences (UX) are already quite good, as you can see below:

 

79% felt the administrator user experience was "good" or "excellent".  84% felt the experience for end-users was "good" or "excellent".

Notably, almost all of those who had issues with the administrator UX pointed out the lack of one console, and others mentioned printing.  The end-user UX comments were not particularly consistent.

Where to focus

Still, if we had to focus our User Experience efforts somewhere, it was reasonably split with a leaning towards end-users (54%) as compared to administrators (38%).  And it is partially based on whether or not the current interfaces are considered "good enough."

For those who said we should focus on the end-users, a summary of the reasons is below:

• The End-user Experience  (EUX) can still benefit from improvement
• If end users reject the XenApp solution, it means there is no need for XenApp admins, or for XenApp
• Admins are trainable and can handle usability quirks.  End users cannot handle as well or simply will not handle usability quirks.
• Making users happy or more productive makes IT look good and can give IT more control or ability to standardize
• Fewer support calls

For those who said we should focus on the administrators, a summary of the reasons is below:

• The EUX is already good
• More EUX improvements won't boost productivity much, if at all
• If you make an admin's work easier, the EUX will naturally improve as well since admins can respond more quickly to problems or do it right for the user the first time.

Mutual Benefits

The other interesting questions we asked were about whether or not people felt that improving the administrator UX will benefit end-users, and vice versa.  Plenty of respondents would like improvements to both admin and end-user UX, as they see the benefits to each and how they feed off each other.  It's a win-win.

Others, on the other hand, felt pretty strongly that it was just one-way.  But the skewing indicates that more people strongly felt that IT benefits from EUX improvements than end-users benefiting from IT UX improvements.  The breakdown is below: 

How about you? 

Do you feel strongly?  Is there something here we missed?  If you're not a member of the Citrix CAC, feel free to jump in (I'd hate to count you twice, otherwise!).  And if you'd like to be part of this private community, we are accepting applications right now.  Here is a link to the page on Citrix.com where you can learn more about the community and apply for membership: Customer Advisory Community.

Thanks for your time.

Scott Novack

Usability Design and Evaluation Team

Sadly this year I missed PubForum, Rich however, made it all the way to Dublin and brought us some awesome pictures and videos, you can check them out on his blog.

I stayed in Fort Lauderdale really jealous of Rich. However the guys (AlexY/AlexD) who organize PubForum were kind enough to think of people like me and all those who didn't make to Dublin, for the BeerForum, ops.... I mean PubForum.

They recently posted all the videos and presentations for PubForum 2008, and you can do exactly what I did, download them all.

One session in particular caught my attention, Simon Frost, a colleague of ours here at Citrix, presented on the topic "AppReceiver", and he did a fantastic job explaining how Citrix will aggregate all its clients into one universal application receiver client.

You can meet all the rock start who put together this awesome user group event, during Citrix Synergy in Huston from May 20th to 23rd.

See you in Huston.

Cheers,

Gus Pinto
Microsoft MVP - Virtualization
Twitter/GusPinto

In this video I share a closer view of the new site on the Citrix Community named Citrix VideoTips.

I also explain a bit of the web application interface as well as how this site will integrate and expand the other sites within the Citrix community.

If you have any questions feel free to post them here on comments or email me: gus.pinto@citrix.com

cheers,

Gus Pinto
Microsoft MVP - Virtualization
Twitter/GusPinto

Originally this year there was only going to be one PubForum, PubForum 2008 Dublin. But, the game has changed! PubForum will be hosting another event this year. This time it will be in Nice, France from November 7 through the 9th. If you have never attended a PubForum Event, let me just say this, it is a must attend event! If you are looking for the real deal from an event, this independent conference is the event for you. The biggest catch is that since it is usually a limited attendee event, it's on a first come basis, so don't lose out and stay tuned for registration details as they become available.

Continue to PubForum: http://www.pubforum.net

Continue to the Photo Album for Day 3:
http://richcrusco-frameworkx.spaces.live.com/photos/cns!7CEE7FC8F528290A!219/