Video: Citizen Service Platform in Porto

You can read the Case Study here.

Hi all,

Daniel Dias Pereira will be presenting our Board Meeting solution on a live webcast this afternoon.

His presentation will be in portuguese:

Webcast 26 - "The Best of Techdays 2008 ITPro" - Innovation Day - Administração Pública Electrónica: Gov 2.0

- CaveDigital (Daniel Pereira): Reuniões e Colaboração Digitais;

A solução CaveDigital Board Meeting 2007 vem potenciar a Modernização Administrativa ao nível dos Decisores de topo, permitindo que as suas reuniões passem a ocorrer no plano digital, contribuindo assim para a diminuição drástica do consumo de recursos naturais e do impacto ambiental, bem como para potenciar o aumento da agilidade nos processos de tomada de decisão. Na sua variante Town Hall Edition, esta solução dá resposta às Reuniões de Câmara, desmaterializando por completo o fluxo de trabalho, desde a elaboração das propostas até à sua deliberação em Reunião de Câmara e resultando também na criação automática de minuta de acta.

Será demonstrada a solução implementada na Câmara Municipal do Porto, onde a plataforma supracitada estima-se (baseado em dados recolhidos desde a entrada do sistema em funcionamento) permitir a poupança de até 30 àrvores por ano, para além dos ganhos na qualidade das propostas e tempo de preparação de cada Reunião de Câmara.

To subscribe to this webcast, go to: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032379345&Culture=pt-PT

Cheers!

Hi everyone!

Last week both me and Daniel Pereira went to Porto for the LRG Forum where the Microsoft Citizen Service Platform was launched.

On this event we did two presentations, one showing the Executive Portal for Porto Council and another demoing our contribution for the CSP, using a lite version of our solution.

The Porto Council Executive Portal is based on our solution for Council Meetings: CaveDigital Board Meeting 2007, Town Hall Edition, which has already beaten the initial estimated Return Of Investment - we initially estimated that 11 trees would be saved yearly.

Based on live data, we can now estimate, so far, that Porto Council will spare 30 trees per year by lowering drastically their paper consumption. These yearly 4 tons of wood, still had to be converted to paper. Since this isn't happening anymore, that's around 51 million Kw/year that don't get spent on doing so, 1.3 tons/year of solid waste that don't happen anymore, 3 tons/year of CO₂ like gases that don't get generated and released to the atmosphere anymore and 91000 litres/year of water that don't get consumed anymore.

Another interesting fact is that prior to our solution, a staff of 4 people where needed, fulltime, to provision Council Meetings at Porto's (lots of photocopying had to happen). This staff of 4 would work for 2 weeks on average to prepare 1 Council Meeting (2 meetings happen regularly per month). Now, roughly, 1 person can do this work in 1 afternoon. That's around 7296 work hours freed yearly for more productive and value-adding tasks.

The cool thing is, summing on the national prize this project had already received, during the LRG Forum, the project got awarded another recognition, this time international: Sustainability Award - City of Porto and CaveDigital, Portugal.

To name a few, our solution is built on top of the following technologies:

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Microsoft Office 2007 Professional
• Windows Workflow Foundation

For more information on our solution, please visit: http://www.cavedigital.com/bm/

For more information on Microsoft Citizen Service Platform, please visit: http://www.citizenserviceplatform.com/

Paper calculations thanks to http://www.papercalculator.org/

Keeping up with the usual flow of information sharing in the hopeless effort of saving others the troubles and perils I go through, I'm documenting here my first trip to Redmond, Seattle

Last week I had 2 full days of meetings at Microsoft campus in Redmond, regarding this project our company is participating on called Microsoft Citizen Service Platform (let's call it CSP ). It was really nice to meet all the folks and talk about über-geek stuff, with special kudos for the OCS guys, which won the «best meeting award»!

For CSP we'll be delivering a Lite version of our solution for Board Meetings on its edition for the Local and Regional Government market, the CaveDigital Board Meeting 2007, Town Hall Edition and which is in use at Porto Town Hall Council (the second largest iconic Portuguese city (also known as Oporto)).

But let's get back to the reason why I'm writing here about, which is, how I got there, and that's where the fun begins.

It all started on the previous week - my flights were booked and the person in charge for making that happen emailed me my e-ticket.

Saturday I hopped on the first flight from Lisbon to Frankfurt...

At Frankfurt they flagged me for security check... so there I was waiting for 10 mins looking at a guy on the phone holding my passport and thinking «hey, this isn't my first trip to the US». Good thing from this was that on my next flight to San Francisco they moved my seat to Business Class.

At San Francisco I realized my luggage didn't fly there with me... Tried to fill in a bagage claim but they instructed me to do so on my final destination... so I hopped on my next flight to Redmond/Bend... «Bend?» I inquired myself... «just go with the flow».

When I landed at Redmond Municipal Airport, the first thought on my mind was «hummm... this seems a tad smaller than I expected».

I procceded to fill in a bagage claim and while giving the hotel address the lady behind the counter inquired «this address is Washington state... we're in Oregon». A sinapse storm occured instantly as my brain reached for the stored geographical represenation of North America. «Humm, Seattle isn't in Oregon ... what's going on here?»... So I procceded to explain that I was heading for the Microsoft campus at Redmond, Seattle, and that's when it hit me: «I'M ON THE WRONG REDMOND!»

Lucky me, NOT!, being a Municipal Airport, they closed at night, so I could only catch a flight to Seattle on next early morning. The people there were really nice though, and the lady behind the counter was kind enough to give me a ride to a nice dinner called Sharis (or something similar to that)  where I sat for a few hours and got back to the airport. People at the «wrong» Redmond are actually really nice

After arriving at the airport and checking-in, guess what? They flagged me for security check again, yes, at  municipal airport ... So there I waited for 10 minutes again, while they went through my backpack and laptop zzzz ...

Finally hopped on the flight to Seattle and there, got a cab to my final destination: Redmond, Seattle, Washington State

Bottom line, it took me more than 30 hours to get there, so... make sure they send you to the right Redmond.

Cheers!

May good things and excellent moments happen to all of us

Have fun and accomplish successes!

Cheers.

I hope you all have a good one!

Hi everybody!

Please vote for our solution - CaveDigital Board Meeting 2007, Town Hall Edition - for Council Meetings on the Clean Technology vertical for the Ingenuity Point contest.

Our solution renders Council Meetings paperless, thus saving a LOT of trees per year

Plenty of SharePoint, Windows Workflow Foundation and Office 2007

Thanks for your support!!

Both me and Daniel Pereira just did 70-630. Instead of bragging about it, let's just say it's done, with style

Three or four weeks ago I did this during a weekend (yes, had no sleep...)

Basically, I integrated the Timeline from SIMILE (Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments) into a SharePoint web part which consumes event itens from a SharePoint Calendar list.

I really fancy on how I might be using this in the future

Yes, I am still alive

And to prove it:

Just been busy, good busy 

Cheers,

Yes, we're hiring again, for those interested, here's the description in Portuguese:

Cargo/Posição: Programador(a) Web .NET

·         Nome/Designação da empresa: CaveDigital - Consultadoria e Soluções Informáticas, Lda.

·         Localidade/Distrito: Lisboa

·         Tipo: Full-time

·         Descrição da oportunidade:

Procuramos Webdeveloper .NET (M/F) com o seguinte perfil:

§  Conhecimentos de HTML, CSS e Javascript

§  Conhecimentos ASP.NET (C#)

§  Conhecimentos de SQL Server 2000/2005

§  Conhecimentos de XML

§  Disponibilidade imediata

§  Procuramos pessoas pró-activas, com iniciativa, humildes e trabalhadoras, com forte espírito de equipa, boa capacidade de comunicação, motivadas e com paixão por aquilo que fazem

Os interessados deverão enviar os seus CV’s, exemplos de trabalhos, nacos de código, etc, para: recrutamento@cavedigital.com

We're hiring, for those interested, here's the description in Portuguese:

Cargo/Posição: Programador(a) Web .NET

·         Nome/Designação da empresa: CaveDigital - Consultadoria e Soluções Informáticas, Lda.

·         Localidade/Distrito: Lisboa

·         Tipo: Full-time

·         Descrição da oportunidade:

Procuramos Webdeveloper .NET (M/F) com o seguinte perfil:

§  Conhecimentos de HTML, CSS e Javascript

§  Conhecimentos ASP.NET (C#)

§  Conhecimentos de SQL Server 2000/2005

§  Conhecimentos de XML

§  Disponibilidade imediata

§  Procuramos pessoas pró-activas, com iniciativa, humildes e trabalhadoras, com forte espírito de equipa, boa capacidade de comunicação, motivadas e com paixão por aquilo que fazem

Os interessados deverão enviar os seus CV’s, exemplos de trabalhos, nacos de código, etc, para: recrutamento@cavedigital.com

Wish you all a 2007 full of successes and happiness!

Wish you all a Merry Christmas!

Last month we produced a video on Paperless Meetings, also in context of an event by Microsoft Portugal called «The New World for Public Administration Work».

You can view it here.

Also, check out the unofficial making of.

Naming some of the technologies used: Tablet PC, Windows Vista, MOSS 2007, LCS 2005, Office 2007, Office Communicator, ...

For those of you installing Beta 2 TR, you probably run into trouble when uninstalling the WinFX 3.0 Runtime Components Beta 2... Here's a tool for that:

Brief Description

Thanks to another member from our team, Marcos Alves, for helping me find it

In Brussels I had the chance to learn about SLK (SharePoint Learning Kit) roadmap and strategy at the Brussels EBC

I was lucky enough to, after landing at Brussels, three people were kind enough to pick me up and give me a ride to my hotel: Peter de Seranno (very similar name to mine ) and his wife Ioni and Bart Bultinck (while a baby, he was fed with radioactive milk composite, ence his height nowadays :-P). Uppon arriving to the hotel, we had a chance to sit and chat a bit together and in that time I had the opportunity to verify how great these people are as much as on the previous online experience. I hope we can meet together soon, it was really nice meeting you guys

After that, Azores for a MLG (Microsoft Learning Gateway) project prepping.

Paris Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Deep Dive Lab was a great experience, thanks to Doug Mahugh, Hannes Decorte, Jeff Fattic and Jimmy Löfkvist for all their help.

Tomorrow I'll be flying to Brussels, to attend SharePoint Learning Kit AIRLIFT at the Executive Briefing Centre for European Innovation.

On this same trip to Brussels, I'm hoping to meet up with Bart Bultinck and Peter de Seranno (yes, very similar name!) and enjoy some of the known belgian hospitality

October will be bubbling busy!

Tomorrow (actually, today) I'll be flying to Paris for a MOSS 2007 Deep-Dive Accelerator Lab.

Next week, Brussels - SharePoint Learning Kit Airlift. Still to get confirmed on the same week, Azores.

Let's keep on MOSSing it

In internal meetings and project brainstorming, we've been using often a software called MindManager^® 6, from a company called Mindjet.

This has greatly helped us to express graphically brainstorms that occur in meetings. I could easily in the end of a meeting convert it to PDF and email it to everyone who would need it.

This was nice, but not enough, since teamwork normally outlives a meeting... So, I did this:

And there you have it: we can now publish and view our brainstorming maps on SharePoint (WSS v3 and MOSS 2007), whenever we need to, on the web browser.

By the way, we're looking for trainees at our company.

If you've just finished your college and are looking for an internship, send us your CV and why do you think this will be good for both our company and you (up to 500 characters, keep it simple and straight) to info@cavedigital.com.

Skills required:

• IT college course (i.e.: Eng. Informática, Informática, Informática de Gestão, ...)
• ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server (for starters, ...)
• Good team player and communication skills