Readers: Good Decision To Upgrade City’s Email To Gmail

In the poll last week readers supported the city’s move to Gmail, after emailing with the person in charge, I agree. Here were the results:

Q: St. Louis spent $275,000 to upgrade city email to Gmail, good or bad move?

1. Good: the old system had no tracking which isn’t good for government transparency 50 [64.94%]
2. Bad: talking about laying off police/fire and wasting money on email 12 [15.58%]
3. Neutral 7 [9.09%]
4. Unsure/no opinion 5 [6.49%]
5. Other: 3 [3.9%]

And the three “other” answers:

1. Overpaid. As usual, PD won’t follow the money.
2. Tracking doesn’t concern me. Saving money and improving service is a good move
3. Why is this really a question? Use an archaic system or a modern upgrade?

So why do I agree? I learned the city had their own physical servers located in city hall to run the old email system. Servers wear out, take personnel and electricity to keep them running. Before the rise of cloud computing large organizations had little choice but to maintain their own physical servers. For over six years now I’ve leased server space for this blog, I think it’s located in California.

The city’s old system was a Novell GroupWise setup. I’ve never worked at a big enough company to use such a system. One city employee said they’ve been taking about trying to change the system for the past 11 years. Things apparently began to change when Robbyn Wahby took over the city’s Information Technology Services Agency (ITSA) in November 2010.

First step was to increase the bandwidth and firewall protection which “added to stability of the network” says Wahby. However, problems remained.

March 2011, contracted with SLMPD for tech advice and support. Dele Oredugba is the director of technology and is a consultant to the department. Part of his contract was to help analyse our network. We contracted with REJIS [Regional Justice Information Services] to diagram the network. Discovered a core switch was long in the tooth. Replaced Nortel with a Cisco last month (no small measure!). Put in change management program. Network manager resign June 2011; interim put in place, until a new manager hired in March 2012. Determined that GroupWise was too expensive to continue with (lack support, dying product, servers required too much maintenance, expertise in this product declining, few employee’s liked it, etc.)

Wahby continues…

Formed ITSA advisory board and ITSA Focus Group in late spring/early summer 2011. ITSA advisory board is made up of City employees from various departments who have some level of responsibility and expertise in IT. They advise ITSA (Dele and Robbyn) on what they thought needed to happen with the department. Review RFP for email services for technical needs. ITSA Focus Group was formed to provide input from users (non-technical) about what they wanted from IT and from the applications they use every day. General consensus that GW was lacking (mobility issues, problems with stability, archiving, etc) and lack collaborative features.

This group crafted the key elements of the RFP.

Both groups, along with directors and anyone who wanted to attend, were invited to attend presentations by the top 3 vendors. We had two Gmail vendors and 1 MS vendor present. They were chosen based on a) full completion/compliance with the RFP b) price point

The RFP can be read here.

— Steve Patterson

St. Louis’ Beer Garden History Goes Back 189 Years, Continues Today

It’s still warm out but nothing like the heat we had in the last week. In the hot summer weather the last thing I want to think about doing is leaving my air conditioned loft and drink beer outside. But in the early 19th century modern air conditioning didn’t exist. In 1823 shade, a breeze, and a cold brew were the best ways to beat the heat:

June 10, 1823: St. Louisans avoided the heat by visiting the city’s first beer garden, the Vauxhall Garden on Fourth between Plum and Poplar. St. Louis is credited with being the first city in America to develop outdoor restaurants and theaters. But it wasn’t until 1854 that the beer garden came into it’s own, when Franz Joseph Uhrig built a garden restaurant and theater in a wooded tract containing a cave for the natural cooling of beer. 

The garden, known as Uhrig’s Cave, was at Washington and Jefferson avenues, a site later occupied by the Coliseum and still later by Jefferson Bank. First-run entertainment for all ages was provided, with some of the earliest American performances of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and more serious dramatic pieces. Schnaider’s Garden was another  popular spot, providing opera and the music of a grand promenade orchestra. Kuhn’s Brewery, the Lemp Brewery, Cherokee Cave, and Winkelmeyer’s were similar, and all gave the city a pleasant air during the hot summer months.  (From the book St. Louis Day by Day by Francis Hurd Stadler)

See my posts on the Coliseum here and Jefferson Bank here.  For more info on Vauxhall Garden click here. These old beer gardens may be gone but the tradition continues today.

What was once a parking lot is now a beer garden. Urban Chestnut leased the parking lot next door to their brewery at 3229 Washington Ave. Rather than use the parking lot to provide places for free customer parking the asphalt was ripped up and the beer garden was created. The owner of the former parking lot and building to the east, a high tech firm, will create parking for their employees on the vacant lot across the alley to the north.

I’d like to see more parking lots ripped up and put to better use than in storing cars. Our streets are wide, use the space for on-street parking rather than the land between our buildings. More spaces like Urban Chestnut and we can connect downtown to midtown without interruption.

— Steve Patterson

Free Water, Not Free Gas

For the last month or so KMOV Channel 4 has been running a free gas promotion to get viewers to watch their Awake show at 6:20am. Watch the show, figure out the clue where the gas will be given away, and then try to be one of the lucky ones that gets a full take of gas for freeI. Those of us without a car must not be in their target demographic.   The giveaway has been promoted endlessly.

Every time I see a promo I think about the cost of car ownership and how disappointed KMOV must be since gas prices have dropped. If gas prices were still near $4/gallon the promotion would have greater value. Why not transit passes to those of us helping reduce air pollution by taking public transit? Then on June 28th local radio station came to the rescue of many in the intense heat.

Nobody got interviewed, no microphone stuck in their face to use to promote the good deed. They were just helping out.  Thank you Hot 104.1.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Support the Planned $14 Million Renovation of Soulard Market?

Over the years there has been talk of giving Soulard Market a top to bottom facelift but it hasn’t happened. Such talk is happening again:

The master plan for Soulard Market proposes spending as much as $14 million on improvements over the next several years. The report suggests that funding could come from grants and donations, a parks bond issue or a future parks tax. (see stltoday for plan details)

Some are excited by the idea and others say the charm will be designed out in the process. You can view the full plan here.

Share your comments below and vote in the poll in the right sidebar. Poll closes a week from today and results will be published on Friday July 20th.

— Steve Patterson

New Coffeehouse Opening Soon on Page Blvd Just East of Grand Ave

The other day I was delighted to see “coming soon” signs in the first floor retail space at in the St. Louis Housing Authority’s headquarters built in 2009. PNC Bank is in the west end of the building.

Chronicle Coffee bills itself on Twitter (@ChronicleCoffee ) as “A St. Louis-based coffee company dedicated to helping the community control their narrative one cup at a time…”

Believe it or not, people that live and work in north St. Louis also drink coffee. I know this may come as a shock to some of you but it’s true. I’ll certainly patronize them once they open.

— Steve Patterson