Schwartz starts by defining a test case. This is in essence a question; How can I future-proof my career? Once you know the question, you can then set about identifying key influences on your question–e.g. technological change–scenarios that may bring about the change–e.g. new competing technologies, lack of technological development in your sector, or the collapse of a key stakeholder–and finally, future implications.

Here is what Schwartz says in more detail:

1. List driving forces

What variables, trends and events will affect your mission? The first step is to list them. Next, divide them into uncertainties (such as economic, political and social conditions) and relative certainties (such as global population growth and climate change). Finally, rank the items according to their importance, from most to least significant. The result: a catalogue of factors that will determine the future of your area.

If I take web development as an example:

• Pace of technological change.
• Number of companies using the chosen technology.
• Number of people available in the industry (permanent and contract).
• State of the [digital] economy.
• Competing technologies, e.g. Ruby on Rails vs ColdFusion, AJAX vs Flash, offline vs online, desktop vs mobile.
• Support of the community, e.g. open-source software, tutorials and application servers.
• Support of key stakeholders, e.g. Adobe’s support of Flash, Flex and ColdFusion.

2. Make a scenario grid

Now it’s time to map out possible futures. The two most important uncertainties from the top of your list form the axes of the grid, with each of the quatdrants representing a potential future. Some may be more likely than others–and some may seem downright improbable–but they all depict the interplay of key forces. Thus, they’re within the range of possibility and deserve attention. They help you prepare for a range of possibilities and bolster core actions with those related to the future you deem most likely.

3. Imagine the possible futures

Sketched as a grid, these 4 possible scenarios are so abstract that it would be hard to recognise them if they merged. Make them more concrete by fleshing them out into imaginery, but plausible, news stories of the forces at play.

To continue the web development example:

• Global financial crisis prevents companies investing in technology. They cannot raise the adequate funding to push through key development projects, even if it means increasing efficiencies within the company.
• Adobe drops support for ColdFusion causing turmoil in the community. Railo picks up a lot of business, but can’t scale to fill the demand. Far-sighted companies migrate to other suitable platforms.
• Ruby on Rails booms under the paradigms: Convention over Configuration and Don’t Repeat Yourself, eating into ColdFusion’s key mantra: Rapid Application Development.
• Key advances in technology on the desktop and mobile continue at pace. Micro-payments allow people to create relatively cheap applications that appeal to a mass audience. Development frameworks allow developers to transfer their skills between technologies without the need for significant retraining.

4. Brainstorm implications and actions

Now it’s time to develop strategies for coping with each of the four possible futures you’ve imagined. Start by listing all the implications of each of the scenarios and then come up with actions that would enable you to prosper under any of the new conditions. Some actions would apply to almost any scenario: these should form the basis of your plan, since they help you to prepare for a range of possibilities. Bolster these core actions with those related to the future you deem most likely.

Examples of possible implications:

• Scarce funding.
• Limited demand for new technologies.
• Few companies to work for.
• Few new projects to work on.
• Increased competition for places.
• Increased demand for people with key skills, e.g. mobile.

and possible actions:

• Concentrate on existing technologies.
• Develop and exit strategy, e.g. cross-train into a new technology.
• Cultivate your network, make new contacts at major development houses.
• Polish skills in areas of uncertainty.
• Start your own cutting-edge business.

5. Track the indicators

The main value of the scenarios is that they sensitise you to the way the future is unfolding. Over time, the world is likely to gravitate toward one of your four quadrants. The trick is to recognise the shif in progress. As you monitor the news, look for signals that a particular possibility is becoming a concrete reality. Keep a file of news relevant to your scenarios, jotting down a quick note, along with the date, whenever you come across a significant story. Evaluate these developments on a quarterly basis so you can track the trends. Keep adjusting your action strategy to anticipate the future as it emerges.

Of course it is possible that none of your four quadrants becomes true. If this is so, you will need to go back and re-evaluate your scenario grid. Keeping a critical eye on your grid and apace of industry developments, you can be assured that the future will not change so quickly that you’ll miss an opportunity.

Virtually every single one of our international sports were invented or codified by the British. And I say this respectfully to our Chinese hosts, who have excelled so magnificently at Ping-pong. Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff. And I say to the Chinese, and to the world, that Ping-pong is coming home!

MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. It allows you to write powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its elegant, well documented, and coherent API.

In this post I will show you how to implement the AutoCompleter plugin by Harald Kirschner. Kirschner’s AutoCompleter plugin script for MooTools provides the functionality for text suggestion and completion. It features different data-sources (local, JSON or XML), a variety of user interactions, custom formatting, multiple selection, animations and much more.

The Goal

The goal of this post will be the same as the jQuery autocomplete post: Allow the user to type a few characters into a standard form text input field and to automatically provide suggestions from which the user can select.

Prerequisites

1. The latest copy of MooTools
2. A basic understanding of JavaScript and JSON
3. A server-side script that can respond to the AJAX request, in our case ColdFusion

Demo

The demo below will show how to interact with a simple ColdFusion script, but I’ll also provide more (advanced) examples in the download.

How It Works

Once the user begins to type into the form text input field, the MooTools auto-complete is activated. After a set character length and time interval (both optional), a list of items is displayed below the input field. The user can select an item with either the arrow keys or mouse.

NB. Clicking back in the input field will repopulate the auto-complete list, if options are available, so that the user can change the selection. Deleting part of the chosen item will also trigger a new selection list.

The Code

There are three parts to this demo:

1. The page’s HTML.
2. The server-side code to produce the dynamic page (i.e. to load the autocomplete div when the user types something into the input field).
3. The MooTools JavaScript.

HTML Form

<h1>Example: Country Lookup</h1>
<p>Using <abbr title="Asynchronous JavaScript and XML">AJAX</abbr> to interrogate the database.</p>
<p>Example data: Australia, Bulgaria, United Kingdom</p>
<form name="frmAutoCompleteCountry" id="frmAutoCompleteCountry" action="#" method="post">
<p>
<label for="country">Country</label>
<input type="text" name="country" id="country" />
</p>
</form>

ColdFusion

Below is a simple ColdFusion component that takes a string as an argument. This string is part or all of the country name. The query results are parsed as an array and returned from the function, as JSON, to the MooTools auto-complete function.

<cfcomponent output="false">
 
	<cffunction name="getCountry" access="remote" output="false" returntype="array" returnformat="json">
		<cfargument name="country" type="string" required="true" />
 
		<cfset var qryCountry = queryNew('country') />
		<cfset var arrCountry = arrayNew(1) />
 
		<cfquery name="qryCountry" datasource="test">
		SELECT countryName
		FROM country
		WHERE countryName LIKE <cfqueryparam value="%#ARGUMENTS.country#%" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" />
		</cfquery>
 
		<cfloop query="qryData">
			<cfset arrCountry[currentRow] = qryCountry.countryName[currentRow] />
		</cfloop>
 
		<cfreturn arrCountry />
	</cffunction>
 
</cfcomponent>

JavaScript

The JavaScript will attach itself after the DOM is ready — this more or less relates to when the page has loaded in the browser. Each time the text input field, with the ID of country, is changed, the Autocompleter.Ajax.Json event is fired. This makes a call to the ColdFusion component, which returns a JSON object of matched items. This JSON object is interpreted by the plugin and rendered as an HTML un-ordered list.

<script type="text/javascript" src="mootools.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="Observer.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="Autocompleter.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="Autocompleter.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<script type="text/javascript">
window.addEvent('domready', function() {
	new Autocompleter.Ajax.Json(
		'country',
		'data/Country.cfc?method=getCountry&returnformat=json&country=' + $('country').getProperty('value')
		, {
			'minLength': 1, // We wait for at least one character
			'overflow': true // Overflow for more entries'
	});
});
</script>

Where to Take it Next

Unobtrusive JavaScript

As with any page that is loaded with JavaScript and AJAX functionality, it should work without JavaScript.

To achieve this with the above tutorial, you will need to replace the MooTools autocomplete functionality with an ‘interim’ page that allows a user to select from a list of items, effectively turning the input field into a simple search interface. Of course, all other form field information would need to be retained between pages.

Download the Code

The example code can be downloaded from the demo page. Included are ColdFusion and PHP examples.

In the dim and distant past, the job of publicising yourself was extremely difficult. Can you imagine life without the Internet, mobile telephones and email? How did people ever do business? With the advent of the World Wide Web and in particular search engines and blogging, this all changed and a wealth of opportunity has become available, especially to the freelancer.

But where do you start?

Create a Brand

Creating a brand is a great way to market yourself. This does not have to be the same as your company, and through time you may set up different brands for different sectors or ideas you may have. Brands serve to create associations and therefore, expectations of products you create, so a good brand name is a great way to get recognised in your community.

You can register the brand in the UK, Europe and the US, although the latter requires a US address. It is also not a given that your brand registration will be successful, making it a costly exercise. Careful consideration is what is needed here.

Create an Avatar

Avatars are images or icons that represent you in the online world. They are an extension of your brand. For example, the header of my website is also my favicon and avatar on various online services. It is a great way for people to draw an association between your online presence and you.

Create a Blog

Blogs are a great way to get yourself known and therefore heard amongst your peer group. Your blog should really be an extension of your brand and is a great avenue to showcase your skills, demo example applications, code and designs, or simply give your opinion on a subject.

I use the excellent WordPress blogging application, in a self-hosted environment. You don’t need to do this since there is a hosted version at WordPress.com, or you could use Blogger, another popular blogging platform, provided by Google.

The key to blogging is talk about what you enjoy, don’t just keep it technical. Blogs should be an extension of you, not an avenue for pretentious comment; you’ll soon be found out!

If you go the self-hosted route, you’ll need a domain name, hosting provider and obviously a blog application. I have listed a few below that can get you started.

Domain Names:

• Nominet
• Easily
• EuroDNS

Hosting Providers:

• HostMySite
• Titan Internet
• Flint Hosts
• UKHost4U
• 1and1

Blog Applications:

• WordPress (free)
• Moveable Type (free)
• ExpressionEngine (free)
• TypePad

If going the self-hosted is all too complicated for you or you simply don’t want the hassle that is associated with self-hosting, all is not lost. WordPress.com and Blogger are for you.

Blog Hosting Providers:

• WordPress.com
• Blogger

Both services take the onus away from the user when it comes to management (backups, plugins etc). At the simplest level, all you need to do is create and publish the content.

Join feed aggregators

To get noticed in the blogosphere, you can’t simply rely on the Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft search engines ranking your site. You will need to alert your peers to the fact that you’ve created some content that is worth reading. You can achieve this with feed aggregators.

Below I list a few that I use:

• Adobe
• Full-as-a-Goog
• ColdFusionBloggers
• Feed Squirrel
• London Bloggers

If you use WordPress, then you’re in luck. WordPress has a service called Ping-o-matic, which updates different search engines when your blog has been updated. You can also add your own services to ping and therefore notify the service of new content.

Comment on Blogs

Commenting on blogs is another great way of getting yourself known as well as offering an opinion. Since comments allow you to include a link back to your website, try and comment as your brand.

One tip, try not to be defamatory towards the blog owner, or others unless you have a strong justification for doing so. It’s all about the karma!

Join Micro-Blogging Services

If blogging is not your thing or you don’t have time to write articles, there are a number of blogging and, more importantly, micro-blogging services available to you that allow you to get your thoughts out into the wide-world.

Such services include the not-always-venerable Twitter, the feature rich Pownce, the new kid on the block Plurk and the blogging service, Tumblr.

Building a following will allow you to announce to your followers important events and ask questions of them.

What’s Next

In the next part of this series, I’ll talk about networking, a natural extension to publicising yourself on the web.

Most creative people are unable to make a living from the sale of their work alone and therefore becoming self-employed as a freelancer enables you to manage your finances more effectively by earning additional money from short- or medium-term opportunities.

Graphic design, illustration, photography, journalism, writing, web design and development, training and copywriting are some of the sectors that use freelancers on a regular basis. Infact, many freelancers I know don’t simply work in one area. For example, my working month is a mixture of web development, writing and training and this is not uncommon among my peers as well.

There are numerous other considerations. Freelancers can, when the market is buoyant, choose their contract location and duration. They can also decide the length of their holidays (although this isn’t always the case). This greater freedom brings a major responsibility; you have to find work. This can be easy when many projects are underway, but can be difficult at other times. Furthermore, you will have to manage your own finances, which may perhaps involve dealing with an accountant, filling in payroll, tax and VAT forms etcetera.

In this four-part series, I share some thoughts on what you may want to consider when setting up and ‘going it alone’. The detail is UK-centric, but much of what I say is transferable to other regions.

The first in the series is setting up a business.

Register a Company

To be a serious freelancer, you can’t simply do work ‘cash-in-hand’. Instead you will need to set up a company through which you will work. This is not a complicated task and there are a number of companies out there who will do all the hard work for you, albeit for a small fee.

You can check Companies House for the availability of your company name and submit the company formation directly through them if you wish.

Get an Accountant

If you’re like me and can’t be bothered (or indeed don’t have the time) to sit down every month to compile accounts, process payroll and submit VAT returns, it is a good idea to get yourself a trustworthy accountant who specialises in freelancing matters. Ask friends for recommendations, since it can be daunting task finding someone who will work for you.

The Inland Revenue in the UK and the Internal Revenue Service in the US will always want their money and on time, so it is important that you manage submissions correctly.

Join the PCG

The Professional Contractors Group (PCG) is an organisation set up to support contractors and freelancers. For a small fee per year, you can gain access to a huge knowledge base of articles on your chosen topic and they also provide support if the Inland Revenue come calling.

Get Insurance

Many companies oblige their freelancers to get Professional Indemnity (PI) insurance, which may, in some instances, also include equipment, Public Liability and Employer’s Liability insurance.

You can get away without having this insurance, especially if the company you work for has a dedicated QA team, which will soon catch any shoddy work before it is released live. However, it is always best to cover your back.

If you’re a member of the PCG, they can offer advice and discounts on PI insurance. This is quite good since the insurance can be relatively pricey!

What’s Next

The next post in the series will focus on publicising you and your company. This involves creating a brand, blogging and using 3rd-party services.

But is it right for an all-boys choir and orchaestra to be performing Carmina Burana?

Why the hesitance you may ask. Well read on…

The BBCs h2g2 has a great write up on Carmina Burana, which begins:

It is not often that the little old ladies of the choral society scream since Fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me!, or when they are in a more cheerful mood, My virginity makes me frisky, my simplicity holds me back. Oh, Oh, Oh, I am completely coming to life. All this while the men strain their dinner jackets singing a bawdy drinking song. However, this is Carmina Burana, one of the most popular works for choir and orchestra of the 20th Century.

But Carmina Burana is not all dramatic chanting – there is plenty of lyrical and gentle playing and singing, merry dances and of course the aforementioned drink and sex. The work lasts about an hour in performance and requires baritone, tenor and soprano solo singers as well as a boys’ chorus, an adult chorus and a massive orchestra.

UK residents will be familiar with the opening and closing music of Carmina Burana. The ‘O Fortuna’ chorus with its dramatic chanting against orchestral backing was used for many years in television advertising for a well-known brand of aftershave lotion (Old Spice). And, since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, there is more than a hint of the same chorus in the sound track of the film The Fellowship of the Ring, particularly to accompany the Black Riders.

You can read more about Carmina Burana on the BBC website.

About h2g2

h2g2 is an unconventional guide to life, the universe and everything, an encyclopaedic project where entries are written by people from all over the world. h2g2 was launched in April 1999, and the BBC took over the running of the site in February 2001 as part of our drive to develop new and innovative online services.

The Guide is written by visitors to the website and already it has thousands of entries on all sorts of subjects. The result is a living, breathing guide that’s constantly being updated and revised, driven forward by the very people who use it.

The Goal

Allow the user to type a few characters into a standard form text input field and to automatically provide suggestions from which the user can select.

Prerequisites

1. The latest copy of jQuery
2. A basic understanding of JavaScript
3. A server-side script that can respond to the AJAX request, in our case ColdFusion

Demo

The demo will specifically look at a simple form text input field, which takes a country name.

See the demo, and others, in action

How It Works

Once the user begins to type into the form text input field, the jQuery autocomplete is activated. After a set time interval, a list of items is displayed below the input field. The user can select these with either the arrow keys or mouse.

The Code

There are three parts to this demo:

1. The page’s HTML.
2. The server-side code to produce the dynamic page (i.e. to load the autocomplete div when the user types something into the input field).
3. The jQuery & JavaScript.

HTML Form

<h3>Example 1.: Country Lookup</h3>
<p>Using <abbr title="Asynchronous JavaScript and XML">AJAX</abbr> to interrogate the database.</p>
<p>Example data: Australia, Bulgaria, United Kingdom</p>
<form name="frmAutoCompleteCountry" id="frmAutoCompleteCountry" action="#" method="post">
<p>
<label for="country">Country</label>
<input type="text" name="country" id="country" />
</p>
</form>
<p>NB. If you have <a href="http://getfirebug.com/" title="Get Firebug">Firebug</a> installed you will be able to view the <abbr title="Asynchronous JavaScript and XML">AJAX</abbr> call.</p>

ColdFusion

This is a simple example, using a database to return a list of country names that match the characters the user has input. You could expand this and return a JSON data structure.

<cfsetting enablecfoutputonly="true">
<cfquery name="qryGetCountry" datasource="myDatasource">
SELECT countryName
FROM Country
WHERE countryName LIKE <cfqueryparam value="#URL.q#%" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" />
</cfquery>
<cfoutput query="qryGetCountry">
#qryGetCountry.countryName##chr(10)#
</cfoutput>

JavaScript

The JavaScript will attach itself after the document is ready, i.e. after the page has loaded. Each time the text input field, with the ID of country, is changed, the autocomplete event is fired. This makes a call to the ColdFusion page, which returns a list of matched items.

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.2.6.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.autocomplete.js"></script>
<link type="text/css" href="autocomplete.css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen" />
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
	$("#country").autocomplete(
		"country.cfm",
		{
			minChars:2,
			delay:200,
			autoFill:false,
			matchSubset:false,
			matchContains:1,
			cacheLength:10,
			selectOnly:1
		}
	);
);
</script>

Where To Take It Next

JSON

The above example only shows a simple text list, separated by carriage returns. It is more preferable to use JSON.

Unobtrusive JavaScript

As with any page that is loaded with JavaScript and AJAX functionality, it should work without JavaScript.

To achieve this with the above tutorial, you will need to replace the jQuery autocomplete functionality with an ‘interim’ page that allows a user to select from a list of items, effectively turning the input field into a simple search interface. Of course, all other form field information would need to be retained between pages.

Download The Code

The example code can be downloaded from the demo page. Included are ColdFusion and PHP examples.

But the landscape is changing and the UK is challenging for its share of the scene. 2008 is seeing a renaissance in the ColdFusion world following on from the buzz created around the release of ColdFusion 8 in 2007 and the eagerly anticipated future release of ColdFusion, codenamed Centaur. This buzz has resulted in not one but three conferences for 2008: CFUnited Europe was held in London in March, Scotch-on-the-Rocks was held in Edinburgh in June and soon we will see the return of CFDevCon.

The inaugural CFDevCon one-day-conference was held back in 2006, in Croydon, but in September 2008 it is heading down to what is arguably one of the creative capitals in the south of England, Brighton. The conference has not only become a two-day conference, but its scope has moved beyond simply Adobe-based products, with the introduction of Microsoft-based technologies, specifically IIS7.0, Silverlight and SQL Server 2008 and technology-agnostic topics such as Regular Expressions, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Accessibility.

As with all great conferences, CFDevCon has a great line-up of speakers with the likes of Sean Corfield, Hal Helms, Peter Elst, Peter Bell, Aral Balkan and Simon Bailey, to name a few, all presenting sessions.

So, lets get excited people, support the conferences and user groups and evangelise ColdFusion.

You can read the full release here:

http://www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/open_source/faq.cfm

Will Adobe follow suit with their ColdFusion server technology? They have done similar things with the BlazeDS, so it stands to reason that ColdFusion could follow the same route.

Terrence Ryan sees things differently, however, and has a good article here:

Yawn, BlueDragon Goes Open Source.

The ColdFusion, Flex and Flash User Groups represent a central information resource for all UK Adobe developers. With the increasing importance of Rich Internet Applications, Rapid Application Development, the popularity Adobe software and industry recognition of the ColdFusion, Flex, Flash and AIR products, these user groups assist developers in defining their role within the Adobe and wider community. These groups aim to provide information resources and a chance to meet fellow developers and network within the community.

To join the groups and start networking, simply click on the appropriate link below:

UK ColdFusion User Group:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/27811/79F5911ECBBE

UK Flex User Group:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/27255/6343D73C42C2

UK Flash User Group:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/27401/0E94A97A7DD4

The Flex and Flash User Group websites are still being designed/developed, but you can email them at

info [at] ukfxug [dot] org

info [at] ukflug [dot] org

respectively with ideas on what you would like to see on each site.