I’m looking for some volunteers to help with the best practices on Network Documentation and SMB Projects. This is a part of my soon to be announced agenda behind Shockey Monkey 2.0 and the way the product is being positioned outside of the backoffice. Thats about all I am willing to say until the week after February 4th when the Shockey Monkey conf call will happen. (if you are a current SM subscriber you’ll really want to be on that call)

Concept Description

Network Documentation – Picking up on the great work by Karl Palachuk, this will be an electronic network documentation offering. The problem with paper based network documentation is that it is obsolete the moment it is printed out. Still, it is a huge asset to the company because it identifies what it owns. I would like to come up with a basic set of network documentation items (server passwords, ISP information, etc) and a more complex one that will be commercial. At this point I am considering offering the ability to create your own templates and the ability to purchase other templates for your use.

Read between the lines: I am looking to create a commercial layer where you can make money by creating electronic forms and selling them to the other Shockey Monkey users who can in turn make SM a tool the company cannot live without, an asset instead of just your own backoffice automation tool.

Project Management – Again, pimping Karl because he turns vapor into wine. But as you may imagine, this rabbit hole goes even deeper than it appears. We all know how to move a domain from one registrar to another. We also know how to switch around MX records. We all also know the syntax to export users from the active directory. Not brain surgery by any means. But quick, can you in a single sit move a pop3 user to Microsoft Exchange in the office and roll out ExchangeDefender without referring to any documentation while the phone simultaneously rings while your boss is beating you down for not being a profitable asset of his or hers company. If so, come and work at Own Web Now, we’re always hiring! Ok, Ok, back to the topic

The concept behind PM is not to replicate the functionality of Microsoft Project or other tools that nobody with less than an 8 figure project uses. The concept behind SM Project Management is to create a process for the project. Assume process is deploying a brand new server into a p2p environment. The SMPM (another acronym) is to create series of tickets and forms that can be assigned and managed by multiple people. Heck, even one person can get distracted and thrown off their game far enough that they miss a step and take 5x longer to do the simplest task. But if there was a checklist, or better yet, if there were trouble tickets to go along and update as each part of the process was completed it would become rather obvious just how far along the project is, it would become easier for multiple people to work on the project and it will become easier to get contractors to manage aspects of it too! For example, what if you outsourced the box drop, cabling and connectcomputer tasks to someone that is more suited to sitting in front of workstations and running cables and fans? You could now integrate third parties into your project and because everything is outlined in canned (that means per-populated / pre-set) tickets the process goes on without your constant advice, followup and explanations.

Just as in the items above – mo money, mo money. Think of it as a layer of compensation for community participation.

If you are interested, please drop me an email at vlad@vladville.com. Please be patient as I only check that mailbox once a day and at times there are hundred messages, or thousand messages. Preference will be given to the individuals that are using Shockey Monkey (eventually) but this need not be locked down because of what I will be discussing during February re: Shockey Monkey 2.0

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