One of Jamie’s Arabian horses, Hot Stuf a.k.a. Spirit, may have found a new home this weekend. Some long-time trainers/riders came up to the stables this weekend from Idaho to check out Spirit and purchase him for their own training. Jamie has worked with Spirit for 12 years and currently ranked Prix St. Georges in dressage (english riding). She will begin training her baby, Aden, an Arabian/Warmblood mix this summer.

Here are some photos of Jamie riding either in clinics or competitions with Spirit:

Extended Canter

Showin’ off

Half pass

Expect to see some photos later this summer of Jamie breaking Aden.

Many months ago I posted some examples of our new logo design for Goomzee. I’m pleased to note that work has commenced on our new corporate branding, soon replacing the current goomzee.com site. I may post preview links here soon for the curious onlooker.

As outsourcing has exploded in the last couple of years both in practice and mind share, many CIO's have more questions than answers. For example:

• What percentage of my IT organization should be outsourced?


• How can I cut costs out of my organization while still delivery new capabilities to the business?


• How can I consolidate the number of vendors I use today, and how many vendors should I work with?

As an outsourcing consultant, I grapple with this question every day. And every day, with each different client or application space, I come to different conclusions. It seems there is a lot of variability to the answer depending on a particular IT organizations process maturity, industry, country, technology platforms and availability of local talent. Yet, today as I was catching up on my reading of CIO magazine, which was discussing the next generation of IT, I challenged myself to come up with a "simple" answer. Below is my first attempt at designing the IT organization of the future, if I were the CIO. I'd enjoy getting any feedback you might have on this idea.

CIO
Responsible for overall IT strategy and operations. This role and supporting team would provide overall leadership and direction.

Architects & Program Management
Managing the needs of the business and the resource bandwidth would primarily be executed by the outsourcing partner that would bring deep program and project management experience. Continuous evaluation of the IT operations technology platforms and future design would then fall primarily on employee architects that would feel ownership of their companies direction and capabilities. The outsourcing partner would then supplement with technology specific architects as needed.

Business & Systems Analysts
Driving the next generation of IT will require more business focused IT workers identifying and designing new ways to do business and generate top-line growth. The outsourcing vendor would provide support in methodology and domain or application specific experts that could rotate in and out to bring industry best practices from other clients.

Developers, Testers and Support Operations
Majority of workforce can be managed more effectively and less costly by a vendor with centralized development centers. Entry level employees would work with the vendor initially to build foundational skills for future roles.

The power of desktop search programs such as those by Google, Apple and Microsoft are impressive. I am a very organized person with a folder structure that usually allows me to find what I am looking for quickly. Yet, I have found myself gradually moving away from the depth of my folder organization structure to using the desktop search to pull up the same files. However, the major gap is non-text content such as images and video files that remain challenging to find over time. Yes, you can spend your life adding enough meta data to your image and video files to allow for better searching later, but I think it would be easier if an application allowed me to quickly scan available images or videos. One specific application I have for this tool is to be able to scan all the PowerPoint slides I have on my machine. Often, when I am putting together a PowerPoint presentation, I have an old design in mind. It could be an old deck that had a similar message or maybe just one slide that had graphics or a layout similar to what I intend to make. I’d like to see this capability today as I need to find the slide that has a pyramid representing different layers of an organization. :-)

Although Goomzee is still my baby, RSI Global has been taking on more venture projects since early 2005. I’m pleased to announce the launch of one of them, a yearlong engagement called Sportsmen’s Access (www.sportsmensaccess.com). Sportmen’s Access Inc (SAI) is a membership-based portal featuring localized content for outdoor enthusiasts. The first release boasts a plethora of content and features and our content team is diligently working on building out the most comprehensive sporting database available.

SAI members receive detailed information about public and private lands available, outfitters and trips available plus localized tips on dining, eating, drinking. In addition, we have partnerships with a growing number of content editors who will be furnishing localized reports. Finally, our agreement with GCS Research provides a comprehensive mapping engine that features species density overlays for hunting/fishing districts and a dozen other views including Topo Maps.

Currently focused on indexing Montana’s tens of millions of acres of land, SAI will be expanding to a 15-state region this following year. Our custom-built content management system (built/designed by yours truly) will be refined ove this coming year and may eventually be licensed to other organizations or developing countries.

I’m pleased to announce that in our first two weeks live, we’ve already had over a dozen members registered. Knowing that over 1.4 million out-of-state licenses were issued to sportsmen in Montana last year alone, we are bullish on the rapid growth of SAI.

Chalk another Internet Business success story to the RSI Global family and enjoy what SAI has to offer.