 Hello everyone. Couple of things at the outset. Firstly, I was really hoping I'd have the longest title for any presentation. So once I saw a schedule come out, I had a look equal second by one word. So little disappointing, but something to aim for for next year. Second one is my boss, Marie, as soon as he saw the title of the presentation, he was hoping that I would start off with an intro with the Depeche Mode song, People Are People. I'm not exactly a designer, I didn't really know how to do that, and I thought I don't need copyright infringements along the way, so it was kind of like, let's not bother. But my name's Jim, and most people call me Jim. Sorry I do have references to old movies, that one's Blazing Saddles. It just makes my life a little bit easier. I've got my details up there. I work as a technical project manager for Morft, and it's all funny games. Now, I've worked in IT forever, probably longer than forever. I've got a list of things that I've done there up on the screen, pretty much everything you can think of, and had responsibilities in my statement of duties and so forth. All I see when I look at that is, man, how many mistakes have I made? And how many mistakes have I not made the second time, to which to me is far more important in this particular case. Now, with all that said and done, there's two things I've never done, and one is presented at a conference. I'm hoping to tick that off this afternoon, and I've been told to talk to the microphone. I'm Mediterranean, I walk around, I move my arms. Okay, yeah, so never presented at a conference, so we can tick that off this morning. And the other one is stick to a script on any topic. If you've spoken to me for more than 45 seconds, I just go off on tangents. It always comes back to the core story, but there's always tangents there. Now, what you're going to find when I reviewed the slides a few minutes ago is I've also never done design. So you're going to see one title that overlaps the logo in the top corner, but so be it. This is just a short breakdown of my IT career. Probably 60% of the time I've been stuck with why is this not working, and 40% of the time, why is it working? It's just as frustrating either way, but this is not about IT. This is about support, so I've got something a little bit more appropriate here. And again, you've got the why is it not working, and you've got the why is it working? Now, yes, that looks like Sherlock Holmes, but a lot of the time I feel a bit more like Inspector Clouseau, because you're not really sure what you're looking at here. But I had to throw that last line in. This is my biggest bugbear of everything. My website isn't working. And the reason for that is it covers the whole gamut of everything that can possibly go wrong from the website really isn't working to my SSL's expired, and therefore I get an error on the screen, therefore my website isn't working, all the way through to I've got my password or TFA wrong too many times, I've blocked my IP, I can't see the website, or I can't get in to edit this page, and I've actually had people say my website isn't working because there's a typo on the page. You know, it's just, you know, I absolutely detest that one, so that just makes life difficult, it puts a lot of pressure and stress on everyone, and that's really what we're trying to avoid. So, just thought, ah, start off with the basic water support, did a whole bunch of googling and found a whole bunch of other things, and suddenly realised, well, yeah, they're all very prosaic, they're all very accurate, but it all comes down to as one word, help. You know, somebody needs help. Now for this particular presentation, I started looking at the different types of support available and the different groupings, and I just confused the hell out of myself. It looked like a spider's web, so I'm going to keep it as simple as possible. You've got somebody who needs help and somebody who's there to help. Now, this makes absolutely no difference whatsoever whether they're internal, to your department or organisation, or if it's a third party. It makes absolutely no difference. They're going to need the same information, you've got to react in the same way. You've got to do bits and pieces, so from that perspective, it makes no difference whatsoever. Now, just looking at who are these support people, these people that sit there in the background, and they fix things or stress you out and make you wait and things like that. Primarily one of two groups. The first group is they do it for a living. That's their only role, that's their primary role. That's what they do. Personally, I've found the level of support that I've been given in various implementations to be anywhere between really good and excellent. I've actually had amazing a few times with people who have stayed by after the end of their shift to help out because they didn't want to let me go in the middle of an issue and they've actually hung around past the end of their shift and I can hear them working from home, the wife in the background saying, your dinners have gotten cold. But they're still hanging around and helping, so people take it really seriously. They're there to help. Second group of people, and I don't mean not listing them second because they're not as important or not as good, is really the people that do it as an add-on to their primary role. The simplest example of that is you've got a developer and you've got a bug in your Nissan. It'll get done. I've found people to do the job really, really well. The range can be anywhere between good and excellent. There's a higher probability of tech talk, but that's what they do for a living. It's not their primary role. And a lot of the times when you get through to the first group and it's got to be escalator or it's not their department or it needs to go to somebody else or a different division, you're probably going to end up with somebody who's going to talk a little bit more tech to you. It doesn't matter. Things will get. Now, if you need support, I mean these are all really, really basic, but if you need support, first thing, gather all the information you need to reproduce the issue. Document the page you're on. I'm assuming you're talking websites here and so forth, and you're in a Drupal conference. But you know, document the URL, the page, where the issue is happening. What is the error message? If there is an error message, a lot of times there isn't. The problem occurs when you're trying to do something. You've clicked around a little bit. Just give a step-by-step of what you did to get there. It's great if you can grab some screen captures along the way, and if there's a multi-step, and the issue only happens when I click here, then go there, then go there. Video, awesome. Second video can give anyone everything they need to be able to help you out on. A good trick that I use is I'm pretending it's when I'm writing a support ticket, which I do plenty of as well, and I read it and I look at it and say, does it make sense to me? Could I replicate it based on the information I've given there? Because I've thought people many, many times on phone support and tickets and so forth. You know, if I can't see it, if I can't replicate it, there's no way I'm going to troubleshoot it, and no chance of me fixing it. So, please, help me to help you. Just give us the information we need. So if you can put yourself in the mindset of, does this make sense to somebody who isn't me? You're already one step much closer to getting things done in a nice, efficient manner. This one won't happen all that often, but every now and again, you know, we all make boo-boos and sometimes they're real doozies. You know, I've deleted the homepage of, got site admin access and I've gone through and deleted views. I've changed things where I shouldn't have. I don't know what I'm doing. Bang, something's really gone wrong here. Just be honest, be open. Tell the support person exactly what's going on. Give them the information, what you clicked. They might be able to revert it. They might be able to get the information from a test site or a different site. They might be able to roll things back and back up. But ultimately, they know what they're looking for and they're not going to waste time trying to find it. And ultimately, they're going to figure out, yes, somebody's done a boo-boo, and if they come back to you and you say, no, no, no, nobody touched it, they're going to spend their time gathering evidence in case this turns into a real nasty situation. And while they're gathering evidence, they're not going to be working on your problem. Own it, mod as well. We all make mistakes. We all make mistakes. I shouldn't have used that terminology. Makes life much easier for everyone. Review the support priorities for where are you providing support to? I mean, I've given a link there to the GovCMess priorities, but this is not about GovCMess. This is just, in general, everybody's got those. So I'm going to sort of bypass that slide a little bit. But what it comes down to is everyone's going to have a critical high, medium, low, and that depends on how many people are affected, and all these other little bits and pieces. Select the one that best fits your issue. Now if it turns out that your issue is classified as low, but it's having a huge business impact, put it in a ticket. Put it right up the top. After, hello, I'm having a problem. Can you help me? Yes, this is low priority for you, but this is absolutely drop-dead critical for us. It could be that the CEO is about to announce something or your organisation is going to announce something to ASX, some announcement, and this page is part of that information. Yes, that's low priority, but at that point in time it's critical. Put it up there front and centre and tell people exactly what's going on. Really, these issues are more like, if you think of it like a triage in an emergency department, that's probably the best way to look at it. You see the triage nurse, maybe you're playing football on the weekend, whatever brand of football you like, depending on what state you're in, and you're in for a tackle, if you think you've got a couple broken ribs, you're going to go to an emergency department. The triage nurse is going to ask you a few questions to figure out whether you've got a punctured lung or whether you really have to go into surgery straight away, and then they're going to sit there and say, okay, I know what the resources are, I know who is available, you fit into this group here. You're never going to get on top of the list if somebody's just had a heart attack or this being a multi-card provision, but it's all about triaging the information. But you will get pumped up about somebody with medium if you've got a damn good reason for it. So just be open and honest and stick to what you've got there. Nothing wrong with providing extra information, but they don't need an essay. And the most important thing, when you've done all those bits and pieces, smile. And I don't really, really mean it, smile. And if it's a stupidly stressful situation, which we all get into, then you've got one of those rotating chairs, turn away from your computer. If you've ever learned any breathing exercises, do that for a few seconds. Maybe you can afford to do it for 30 seconds. Maybe you can afford to do it for a few minutes. Don't care. It's just going to take that little bit of stress out of this. I use the word stressor actually, which Julie invented over there, which is stress and pressure. And to me, it defines a lot of what I've had to do in the past. So from that perspective, I've sort of stuck with that word. I don't think it's going to catch on to social media, but we'll give it a go. But ultimately, you want to do something to reduce your heart rate, reduce the stress in the situation. You know, you can not be yourself and when you reread something, it's like, whoa, that was a bit aggressive. You know, let's pull back a little bit. You're not going to see that if you're stressed. Ultimately, do that. Have a smile. It is important. And then just review what you've done. Does it make sense? Can you follow it? You're not being too aggressive, too rude, too short with people. You're not being an argumentative or threatening illegal action, things like that. Submit your request. And that's kind of pretty much it. There's nothing here that's new. It's just amazing how few times it's actually done. That's all people under pressure. Now, from the other side of things, covering if you're providing support. And again, it doesn't matter if it's internal to the organisation or if it's a person that's next to you or if it's a third party, it really doesn't make any difference. It's still going to, you know, have to deal with things in a certain way. And again, the first protocol, there is smile. I mean, I've had so many situations where you deal with people that just, they're always on the phone. They're always complaining, especially when you're doing phone support. Not so bad with the ticket, but it's still important to smile. But, you know, there's been many, many times somebody passed a call through saying, Jim, it's blah. And I don't want to use any names here, but there's a few people here who know I'm referring to. And it comes down to... I don't want to talk to this person. Often I'll stop myself and say, just smile, you idiot. And that's all it takes. It's what it does to your shoulders or what it does to the rest of you. It doesn't have to be earth-shattering or you have to float above the ground. It's just... And I find myself picking up the phone. Gotta use a name here. Ted, how you going? How can I help you, mate? What's wrong? Which is not the way I would have responded had I not told myself to smile. So it does help. It does help to do that. Next one is... And this is a bit tricky. Don't use Ted Thawke or TLA's. And for those who don't order TLA's, it's a three-letter acronym. And I use a TLA to describe a three-letter acronym. So it's a bit of a circular argument here. I mean, the primary reason for that, I've probably got second, but I'll stick with the first point there, which is different words mean different things to different people. It was only about six, seven years ago, and I've been doing this for 300 years now, that a colleague of mine who's been sitting over there turned around and said, now look, when you talk to people about databases, for most people, the databases, they're contact lists. It's not a repository of information that has linkages and runs your website. This is the contact list. So they might be sitting there smiling and nodding at you. It's mean while thinking, what the hell's that got to do with my contact list? Did I send that to Mouching? You're talking different languages. It's best not to do that. And then the other point there is, where am I? I'm over here. People have got a job to do. They're not necessarily tech savvy. They may never have received the training. And I've been in so many situations where a really large, important website has been handed over the management of that to the newest person on the block. They may have only been there two months. The only training they may have received was by the previous person and the job who said click there, there and there, and that's it. They don't even seem to use a manual. They don't care about what the technology is. Yes, Drupal's good technology, but they don't care what it is. They've got a job to do. They've got their own competing deadlines there. Just run through it. Minimize the tech talk. You may not have an issue if it's an incident response. You've got to put something in there, but at least initially stay away from that, if you can. It just makes life a little bit easier and everyone's talking the same way. And just recognize everyone has bad days and stresses. So I'm using that word again. I figure if I do it often enough, it will get picked up. Look, nobody's switching on all the time and anyone tells me they are it's not somebody I want to deal with, because they're lying to themselves. And the other one is you never really know what's happening with anyone at any particular point in time. There's always going to be personal issues, family, health, work. You don't know what's going on. Now that can often mask who that person is, but sometimes it can actually bring out who that person is when they drop their mask. Very simple situations, like even just having a page that's not working, they can't edit. As I've mentioned before, if it's an announcement coming out to ASIC or the minister's just announced that this is coming out and everyone's going to be pointing to that page, it's just got done. Now there's a lot of extra work and pressure. And especially if somebody really hasn't had the training and they don't have the tech know-how to do it. So just try and make life as simple as possible. People are going to have bad days. Doesn't mean you accept abuse or swearing or any of that kind of stuff. Doesn't mean you accept any of that, but anything short of that, just accept it, move on. You don't take it personally. And again, be open and honest. In most cases, people are. There's some kind of companies I've had to deal with in the past that will basically say, no, not us, and always point the finger at someone else. Always think to myself of the clients, they've got three different suppliers doing three different things. Everyone's pointing the finger at somebody else. They don't have the technology. They just need to be able to run the business, put food on the table. And the roof of the kids' heads, it's really simple. You're not, they just need somebody, but don't be that company that just passes himself. Now I've never worked for one of those. But I've run into so many of them. It's just really easy. It saves everyone time. Just be open and honest. And never discount people. I mentioned before about time wasters. Yes, I've had a fair few. The old Frank Sinatra song comes to mind there. Regrets, I've had a few. Yes, and then some. Look, I can be painful, unreasonable, overly demanding, but after having spoken with people a few times, I start to understand some of the pressures. I mean, one gentleman whose springs to mind quite regularly realised being in business for many, many years and never put anything away into super and really didn't have enough left and was only a few years away from retirement and didn't believe they had enough money to buy dog food for the five years to survive. So they had to invest, pull money out, have people by the word side so that therefore the sky was always falling in. The smallest issue, the sky was falling in. They were never rude, but they were never satisfied either. So as long as they weren't rude and they were recently fair at the end of it all, but very demanding, but as long as they're fair, happy to do with it. It doesn't faze me at all. You don't take it personally. You don't know what people are going through. Now, to me, this is probably the only important thing. That was all background information as far as I'm aware. It's kind of stuff you stop and think about it. To me, it's all about why does this... And I didn't think it was quite psychology 101. So just putting the 201 there because you just need a little bit of life experience and listening to people and understanding stuff like that to actually get it. But you'll probably notice that the only technology I've mentioned here, yes, I mentioned Drupal once because it is Drupal South. It had nothing to do with what I was saying. The only technology I've mentioned is screen capture or video. Technology, I couldn't care less about technology. It's there to make your life easier. It's there to do what you need to do. And when it doesn't work, people get stressed. People need assistance there. And to me, that's not about technology. It's all about the people. And basically, people are people. They're not... I'm not really sure how to pronounce that. I should use the word robots. Auto, Maitons, whatever it is. People are not robots. You know, they've got different things happening in their lives at different points in time. They've got different things going on. They're having good days, having bad days. You know, whatever it is, it is. In general, I found people are really proud of what they do. Nobody likes to get put down under any circumstances. But it's been a long time since I ran into somebody who was just going through the motions and didn't really care. People are proud of what they do. And I found that they will help you unless you give them a really solid reason. Why would you do that? You're the one that needs the help. You're not helping yourself. You're not helping anyone with any of that kind of stuff. And then there's the old joke at the bottom about, don't assume. And the old joke there is if you assume you make an ass out of you and me. Very old, and there's probably no one here as old enough to remember that one apart from myself. So that's okay. We can let that one sleep. But all it really comes down to people are people, and that's the most important thing there. Treat people with respect. You get respect in turn. You're polite to people. You get politeness in return. Now, one thing I found, and a lot of people may disagree, but we're not saying before, you know, the standard of support I've received ranges anywhere from good to excellent. And actually I could easily say, stupendous, not just excellent. One of the big things there is, and I've been told that this probably has a bit to do with it, but I always treat people like people. I don't care if you're a barista, or you're a waiter, a bank teller, if there's any of those still left, but anyway. Or you're a help person on the bank, couldn't care less. Try and be friendly, no matter how stressful it is, calm yourself down. You're the one that needs to get something out of this. So do what you need to do to get ahead. And I'm not suggesting that we all link arms and start singing kumbaya together. It's not about that, but if you can put out a little bit of positive energy, it's amazing what you can get in return. I've had amazing, absolutely amazing support from people helping me at the bank. You know, over the things of the transaction when my car's been blocked, for whatever reason, or it hasn't come in time. I've had amazing support from VicRose, because my driver's licence renewal, the driver's licence was four months late. You know, it doesn't have to be IT. It is just really part of life. So if you put it out there, you treat people like people you show respect, and you get respect in return. People will help. Now, one of the tricks that I've often used, and for me it's not a lie, because it's what I do. You know, I can picture an example with NAB not too long ago, when my car had been blocked for some obscure reason, and you know, I just rang up, waited a few minutes, okay, explained what's going on. After about a minute or so, a person on the other end saying, oh, look, I'm really, really sorry. I can see that this has happened. I'm going to try and sort it out. And my response was, hey, I do support to you. I know where you come from. Don't worry about it. Unless you specifically targeted me for some reason, and you made this happen, you've got nothing to apologise for. You haven't been sorted out. I'm really thankful for that. Don't worry about it. You can just feel the tension. Disappear totally of the situation, and you often get a lot more than what you ask for. You can be very surprising where you can get. And ultimately, even if... How long have I got up? No, okay. Ultimately, I mentioned before, it's not about the Kumbaya moments and things like that. What it really comes down to is even if you're this most self-centred person on the planet and the universe was only created to give you something to stand on, while you do your important stuff and nobody else matters, you still might as well be nice to people and given the information they need because then it's not going to waste your time. So you're still going to get something out of it. That's kind of it. I had a few stories and I was really stressing because I thought, I don't know if I can finish this in under 45 minutes and it's telling me here I'm about 50 seconds short. That's it. Oh. Oh, yeah. In summary, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. It's kind of what I was talking about. It's all about the people. It's not about the tech. And... Stephanie, I wasn't... You may have noticed that I did never listed design anywhere amongst my skills. I didn't know how to get that teardrop to come up, you know, the dribble thing. I had no idea how to do it and I wasn't going to have my favourite dog friends sitting there on an angle. So I've crossed off the presenting at a conference. Whether I stuck to the topic or not, well, I'd like to cross it off unless somebody says otherwise. But... If you've got any questions along the way, I can always make up an answer. So go right ahead, please. There's no way I'll cover everything. No way! But anyway. Well, you did. You stuck to time. Well done. Which means... everyone. Thank you. You need to print some of those things out on a little piece of paper so I can give you my marketing manager of two months. Because the website's always broken. But the thing is, it's always going to be broken. I mean, a couple of things I didn't put in here were... because I really thought I was going to break it down.