Truth, Justice and a little random discussion

4 Cores and 7 Gigs ago...

2012-01-12T18:42:00.000-08:00

Whereas the title of the this blog is a little misleading, it's both a nod to my Junior High history class and having to learn the Gettysburg address, and a "celebration" of sorts because I'm finally running a virtual machine on an Intel based Mac the way it apparently it should be run. For those of you who read my blog when I first went on this bi-polar journey, thinking Mac, working Windows, you know I went this direction because I needed some specific workplace tools that are not available purely on the Mac OS. So, I simply went to the nearest Apple store and selected an off the shelf 15" MacBook Pro, discussed my options for running Windows on it with one of the Geniuses (VM, Parallels, or the easiest, Boot Camp), and then decided that VM Ware would do the trick. I installed both the virtual machine, and Windows Vista with all of the "fun" Microsoft Office applications I use on a weekly basis. Exciting titles like Outlook, PowerPoint, Visio...well, you get the idea.

At first, the laptop seemed to handle MicrosoftVista without issues. I was able to do my work in the Windows world and running the virtual machine in unity mode, switch over to the Mac side of the laptop and use it for Safari, Mail, ichat, Skype, etc. But, about two months into running it this way, I started to encounter significant issues in the way the laptop responded. It would take up to a minute to start a Microsoft application, emails with attachments would crash Outlook, and in some cases, the laptop would just freeze. Needless to say, after losing work countless times and feeling like I was booting up my old Commodore 128 in terms of processing speed (I'm using a Mac right!?), I needed to make some changes. It wasn't apparent at the time which OS (Snow Leopard or Vista) was causing the majority of the pain, but I decided to do a little research.

Amongst the myriad of blogs and tech journals I reviewed, I stumbled upon a few that provided details on what the virtual machine settings should be to perform best with the combination I was using. Things like suggested Memory allocations, how you partition the hard drive, how you tweak the core processor, etc. And of course, this other nugget "without a minimum of 4GB of RAM available for memory, just for the virtual machine, we suggest turning off the thumbnail view feature and other graphics intensive Vista features". Aka, my poor little Mac with the 4GB of RAM total, allocated across both environments wasn't going to cut it. So I could either decrease the capabilities of Vista (oxymoron, I know), or go get some more memory installed. Which in my mind, at the time, was too much of a hassle.

So I followed the helpful suggestions and VOILA! I had resolved most of the performance, albeit creating a watered down version of Vista along the way. Imagine running Windows 2000 on your home computer and remember what limitations in terms of "graphics" I'm talking about. Mind you, I was now trying to work this way in 2010. And then came Windows 7 about six months later. In my mind, and from what I read, this was the panacea. All of my issues were Vista related (obviously) and with the improvements that both Microsoft and VM Ware had made to their respective software, I would be able to run a more modern implementation of a Windows OS. Wrong. Same issues, same problems. Fast forward to the end of 2011, it's time for me to replace my Mac and I decided to ask people who know about these things; the same Geniuses at the Apple store. They laughed when I told the story and told me to beef up to 8GB of memory and that would do the trick. Not to mention the 4 cores in the new model could be allocated as I wished. The new Mac Book core wasn't available the first time, but I'm not sure why they RAM discussion wasn't made more clear in 2009.

From the moment I started up this new machine, I've been astonished. It's like I stepped into 2012 or something. Remarkably faster on both the Lion OS and Windows 7, except for a few items caused by the transfer of data from the old to the new, this thing flies! I know, does it really matter how fast I can switch between Visio and PowerPoint...well, maybe not. But I'm still elated at the fact that 4 cores and 4 more GB of RAM did the trick. Again, maybe it's not 4 additional cores and 7 more gig than before, but a person can dream big, right?

Keep your friends close and your emoticons closer <:->

2011-12-17T11:53:00.001-08:00

I was reading an article about brewing tensions between two tech titans in the LA times last weekend , and I was captivated as I tried to determine what the heck Samsung thought they would get out of suing Apple over emoticons. Then I read an additional Reuters article about how Samsung reportedly makes the advanced A5 chip that keeps the iPhone/iPad money train running. These two current articles display the devilish land grabs that are going on within the wireless, mobile and smartphone industries. And I realized, this is just the beginning of contrary behaviors likely to be displayed by Apple and Samsung. As well as their tech peers, Sony, Google, Microsoft.

Though seemingly irrational to sue a business partner while your short term interests, e.g., continuing to push products that end consumers clamor for, both sides are pushing to establish their own beachheads. Areas of the tech space they can own, either through software, hardware or more likely the integration of the two. On one hand, you can see how both companies discussed in the article are advancing their own agenda and protecting their strategic opportunities. On the other, they both are strategically partnering with a direct competitor in one or more of those key business markets. I guess Michael Corleone was right...keep your friends close, and your "enemies" closer.

Streaming Apathy

2011-12-16T10:53:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, I would have been truly excited about this news about the new Netflix iPad app. But now I'm apathetic to the news about a new iPad "toy" that my wife sent me via email. And this from a person who went on and on about how great Netflix was as a service. And who spent the better part of 8 blogs in the last two years, writing about the service.

The simple fact is that since we switched to be Netflix streaming only customers (for $7.99), our use of Netflix has plummeted. Cyndey and I are using Redbox far more frequently as a substitute for what used to be a weekly red envelope surprise from Netflix. We discussed recently how the fact that we're not actually seeing an envelope arrive and that dictates to some extent our viewing habits. I'm sure Netflix did a ton of analysis about this phenomena before making the change. Or maybe they didn't. The simple fact is that without the red envelope, I'm much less likely to access the service and in the long run, Netflix has probably lost me as a streaming customer. Maybe as a customer in general.

Routing Irony

2011-12-09T06:52:00.001-08:00

There's been quite a few articles recently about Huawei, the Chinese maker of networking and infrastructure hardware (think Cisco of the East), and its efforts to improve its image with US companies. In fact, one of their recent hires, a US based executive who previously served in high ranking capacities at large telecoms like British Telecom, is basically a full time lobbyist and part time executive tasked with bringing AT&T, Verizon and other US based carriers into the fold. To date, the biggest telecom carriers have resisted adding Huawei to their preferred vendor status because of security concerns. And US government reservations as well...the same company tried to buy Sprint a few years back and the acquisition was blocked by the FTC and other government agencies. Now comes the announcement that Huawei is actually pulling back on sales of network equipment to Iran because of concerns that its products might be used to ferret out insurgents.

When I read this article my first thought was that this was done completely for sales and image reasons in the US, but then reflecting back to the other articles I had read, I realized there is some irony that Huawei which itself is closely aligned to the Chinese government, made this decision. There's something to be said for a company like Huawei who most likely helps support the Chinese "Great Firewall" and probably helps with similar insurgent activities in the mainland, pulling back from similar activities in other countries. Maybe they looked in the mirror and realized that there's definitely a conflict of interest. And/or maybe they really are trying to get rid of any global stigma about selling into Iran. Regardless, there are numerous reasons to watch and see if Huawei continues to distance itself from other deals with government entities in the future.

IE?? What the fox?

2011-12-01T16:51:00.001-08:00

I noticed a link to this graphic today and to be honest, the fact that Chrome recently pushed past FireFox didn't surprise me as much as:

Chrome usage grew by 5.5x in the last two years. I myself use Chrome on the Mac (courtesy of a client friend), so I know it's quality. But hell, that's rocket ship type growth in terms of users.
IE, though plummeting since 2009, still leads the pack by a solid 15%. That just shows how as much as Microsoft professed their OS quasi-monopoly DIDN'T influence which browser consumers would use, was a complete lie. A lot of people who buy Windows machine just don't download new browsers...whether it's because of lack of knowledge for other choices or merely "laziness", IE remains the default browser. Anyone who's used Chrome or Firefox can tell you the quality compared to IE traditionally. Only IE 9 begins to close that gap. The other sneaky part here is that SharePoint's growth and uber-compatability with IE buoys IE's corporate usage.
I expected Safari usage to be higher, especially with Safari's presence on the iOS platform. I wouldn't say it's a monopoly, but it's the default browser sold on in excess of 200 million devices sold.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

Flash's Death Spiral

2011-11-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

Last year, I wrote a blog about Apple's design to exclude Flash from it's iOS plans and how this action would basically dictate Adobe's mobile development future. "Apple has leveled an early blow to Adobe's attempts to increase iPod/iPhone/iPad business opportunities." 19 months later, Apple's bold move has indeed left a mark in Adobe's product roadmap with HTML5 stepping further into the forefront of Adobe's plans and Flash on a death spiral.

Though Adobe's management is downplaying the significance of this move, I personally can't remember the last time that I went to a website via my iPhone or iPad where not having the ability to use Flash bothered me. i.e., there's probably a significant correlation between the 2010 iOS decision and most large websites starting to phase out Flash in their main technology development stack. Another example of Steve Jobs impact on technology and how it will undoubtedly be felt beyond the grave for many years to come.

Do the Bobs care?

2011-11-04T06:58:00.000-07:00

Anyone whose career has drifted into the world of consulting/contracting has experienced being one of the Bobs. Maybe you weren't actually a "Bob", but there's an almost 100% chance, that just one person at your client perceives your presence to be as bad as the Bob characters from the classic movie Office Space. And what happens when that particular person is involved in an interview or workshop setting? Well, they could be overly nervous like the character in this particular video below. They could be combative and ask questions like "why are you here? and what value do you bring?". Or they project an attitude somewhere in the middle, ready to participate but guarded to some degree. When I worked in industry, I would say I probably fit in the latter column, though I could definitely see myself acting a little combative if the Bob was telling me I didn't know how to do my job.

And that's the quandary for the Bobs. It's very difficult to effectively engage a client because the range of personalities and interactions you may encounter. I personally like to know any landmines that I might encounter when I travel for onsite meetings and I rely on my client liaison to prep me accordingly. But, that doesn't always happen so you take what you get and try to push forward. The interesting part to me is that I still have a job to do. No matter the way you interact with me, version 1, 2 or 3 above...I was hired and "promised" to complete a set of tasks that aren't always supposed to be fun. I know people aren't always comfortable participating in consulting projects. I'm the outsider. The one who points things out and questions items that may have never been questioned. Again, that's why I was hired. It's my role in the process.

For me, that reality dictates that I try to show more compassion and understanding than other Bob's might. I care about what my clients tell me over email and in person. I try to sympathize and empathize, and I share my own experiences that parallel what I'm hearing in their anecdotal explanations of what occurs in their organization. In short, I'm trying to show my clients I care. I care not only about the success of the project, about what I'm trying to help them achieve as an organization, but I also care about the people I'm talking to. Projecting this allows me to build trust and in the end, I believe it allows me to build a better client-Bob relationship. Or at least as good as it can be when I'm asking "tell me exactly what you do here".

Talking to the Bobs

Office Space

— MOVIECLIPS.com

Tape it up

2011-10-20T12:38:00.000-07:00

After watching this video, I'm reminded of my first Sony Walkman cassette player. Quite the advanced piece of electronics for it's time. I had no idea that Sony even made tapes still, but the news that they plan to stop making them permanently, and the fact that the dictionary is scrubbing the word "cassette player" shocks me. WOW. MP3s didn't become popular till the late 90's. In about a generation, digital music has already killed what was just a nascent industry, about a decade earlier.

Staggering rate of change. Another WOW moment. I feel really old now. I think it's time to relax and take an afternoon nap while I stream music on my iPad through Apple TV and my TV speakers.

And then there was two

2011-09-28T19:36:00.001-07:00

Great little blog post about Amazon's mega announcement today.

It's going to be an interesting Holiday buying season. Those who buy Amazon for the convenience and price. And those who buy Apple because well, it's an Apple. Not to mention the Apple special event scheduled for October 4 which may introduce another inflection point to both the smartphone and Mobile OS market.

Why cultural fit matters when hiring: real world example

2011-09-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

I first read about Carol Bartz in a Business Week, four or so years ago. At the time, she was the highly successful CEO of AutoCad. During her leadership AutoCad had become the largest software company in the design and engineering space, earning both the company and Carol tremendous accolades in the technology industry. The article didn't focus a great deal on her straightforward and at times colorful language, but it did characterize her as no nonsense.

Fast forward a few years and she was hired on to Yahoo as the CEO. A CEO who the board hoped would do what she had done for AutoCad; complete a successful technology business turn around. At the time, Yahoo was an ailing internet visage of the dot.com era. Stuck between its role as a search engine vs. its destination portal and marketing advertising business. Though she reportedly had success on both the cost and margin part of her initial goals, revenue growth still eludes Yahoo three years after she was hired. As Yahoo struggled to completely revitalize itself, some of Carol's greatest hits became well chronicled and fodder for anti- Carol advocates. And this week she was fired, abruptly, by mostly the same board of directors that hired her three years earlier.

If you read through the myriad of articles telling the behind the scenes information of what happened and even Carol's own recounting of the events, you can put together a picture what happens when you don't hire for a cultural fit. Although Carol is from all accounts as talented as any technology executive in her era, both male and female, she has a no nonsense personality sprinkled with instances of using off color comments that make some people uncomfortable. Part of that same personality, which undoubtedly allowed her to succeed in her career (especially in an industry dominated by sometimes confident to the point of arrogant males, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd to name a few) appears to have led to her downfall at Yahoo. I'm not taking sides on who is "right" in this situation, or even if this is due to other inequalities between male and female executives, but the contention that such behavior at Yahoo was somewhat unexpected or took people aback, means one of three things to me:

Yahoo ignored the potential cultural and personality conflicts when they hired her
Yahoo thought it could change Carol's behavior
Yahoo did not do enough background research to find out such thing

In my mind, option 3 speaks to a different problem. But if it's either option 1 or 2, or some combination of the two, then the same board that hired her should be looking in the mirror over the next few weeks as they fight the firestorm they in part caused. Culture matters.

By the way Carol, your brand of "culture" is completely fine with me. I don't like a--holes either.

Organizational Realignment---Big 12, er 10 style

2011-09-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

If you're a college football fan, you've probably heard the rumblings about realignment and the rise of super conferences. And if you live in Texas, you're stuck in the middle of a 100+ year Hatfield and McCoy war between UT and A&M. With A&M's decision to bolt the Big 12, taking the league down to 9 members in mid 2012, there's little doubt that the landscape of college football is about to go through some severe reorganizational pain. Such a tremendous shift in what were seemingly stable organizations 5+ years ago, shows how quick organizational dynamics can be poisoned. If tradition and home state rivalry can't save the Big 12 from self serving behavior, what can.

The Big 12 shakeup provides a lesson that can be applied to a host of other sports related situations (BCS anyone? Or even major league baseball). In addition, I continue to think about how similar the Big 12 situation is to corporate reorganizations that I participated in or assisted as a consultant. Specifically, I've thought of the companies that struggle with the very concept of reorganization. I'm not talking about small realignments where a new person takes over a group or you reallocate resources to a different client account. Rather, I would prefer to examine impactful reorganization that makes for a better situation in the long term for an entire division. Either in terms of performance, productivity, revenue, culture...whatever the metric is to evaluate the impact. This type of reorganization is often met with resistance, panic or even apathy do to the frequency of previous reorgs.

In the Big 12 case, the parties are making decisions to improve what they see as an untenable situation. Modern corporations should do the same when considering consolidating management levels, shifting resource allocation, offshoring, etc. But, at the same time, I don't think the end result of A&M's decision and the resulting realignment will be bad for the majority of the participants. Sometimes things are broken, and they must be fixed. If analyzed effectively, planned out and executed, they can lead to the same beneficial outcome I see for most of the Big 12, er 9, er 8...in the long run.

Prioritization paralysis

2011-08-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

It's that kind of week. The kind where it's Thursday, but it feels like it's a Friday. But, I still have at least enough work to make me "wish" that it was only Tuesday. Does that make sense? Client work, company responsibilities and even normal life tasks are starting to slip through the cracks. And that bothers me. It really does. I'm a checklist, priority driven type of person who likes to check things off when I complete work. I loathe piles of work that start to build up which is why the first day or two returning from a lengthy vacation is painful for me.

But in a conversation yesterday, a former colleague reminded me of an important reality. The inability to prioritize is often one of the biggest issues that businesses and more specifically, the IT organizations that I work with, struggle to overcome. And that "reality" is even more complex because it occurs at all levels. Not just staff employees, rather many C- level executives and executive steering committees fail to do even the most basic prioritization. Which obviously leads to a daunting situation: What do you do when time is limited, resources are cramped and work is seemingly unlimited?? Then layer on top of it mis-matched expectations of what should be tackled on a daily basis, from top to bottom.

In most instances that I've seen, you get what I'll call prioritization paralysis. That same off feeling I get in my stomach when I don't get to the end of my list is what organizations who are bad at setting their priorities, "feel" on a daily and yearly basis. They don't know where to start. Or for that matter, what to finish. Such an experience impacts the workflow of all involved. From the PMO who can't get a grip on a stable governance process because of business stakeholders constantly changing strategic direction. Or to a tester who wants only to finish testing an emergency fix to a key production software application so that he/she can get back to their main project list of tasks.

Regardless, I'm a huge proponent of trying to prioritize your pile of work, however big. Either based on criticality to others, or importance to my own task, 1, 2, 3a, 3b, etc. Priority can definitely change as quickly as new tasks come up, but I strive to assign a value and then to execute on that plan to finish things on a daily basis. Whereas I don't always finish my list, or I only finish a smaller part of a bigger deliverable, I'm trying to push things to a final state and hold myself accountable for driving things to completion. My self imposed rigor allows me to be flexible and respond to unexpected requests. I don't panic when someone adds a task to my list, rather I reset both my own and other's expectations of the remaining items on my checklist. Part of that process is obviously the ability to communicate a change in priority effectively, but it is by no means, a special skill that only I possess. You would be surprised how open people can be to reseting expectations if you just ask. In my opinion, that's where many organizations fail. They don't push their employees or groups to set their own priorities. Then they fail to continue to reset and communicate changes. There's no perfect way to prioritize, but just starting down the path is important and it adds critical accountability to any organization.

Evolution of a (killer) slide

2011-08-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

In a previous blog, I referenced the fact that PowerPoint is one of my tools of choice. To a consultant, it's often the first and last thing that clients see when working with me. From pre-proposal decks during the initial sales stage to executive steering committee slides completed at the end of a 12 week project. And when used well, PowerPoint has a powerful ability to merge basic text, insightful data and visually appealing graphics. But like any tool, it can definitely be overused...anyone sat through a 200 page slide show presentation before?

During a strategy project, we often spend hours working on slides that make up 90% of the deliverable, but it's the other 10% that actually pay the bills. These are the killer slides; that name coming from the Dean of my graduate business school (Thanks Dean Bradford!). They are the key items that clients remember and serve as a calling card of sorts for that particular project. I'm not saying the other slides are superfluous, because they often provide the depth or background for the killer slides. However, it's the killer slides that make C level executives sit up and say "that's what I am trying to say" or produce that "a ha" moment during a steering committee meeting. They're insightful and complicated, yet intuitive and informative all at the same time.

The beginnings- I start with a blank slide or maybe with a reference slide from a previous work project, but what I'm really focused on is how to convey a thought to a particular audience. Many clients prefer simple slides with a lot of white space, while I typically stray to a heftier fill of content. Like I said, you must be aware of your audience. I often use a white board to brainstorm or call a colleague to spark thoughts. But at the beginning, I'm looking for something that captures my client's interest visually and defines the problem, solution, etc. in a way that everyone can understand. i.e., the page or slide stands alone.

Refining what you have- Now comes the tough part. I've spent an hour or hours coming up with content to fill my supposed killer slide and I realize, it's time to refocus. I got a little crazy with SmartArt and I loaded up the slide with content galore. Quotes, charts, tables, graphics clipped from Gartner. Whatever, it could be anything. This is a common occurrence with almost anyone who creates strategy decks or executive presentations. You want to throw everything and the kitchen sink into a great slide and you proceed down an ambitious path but end up on a tangent of content, charts, ancillary points that don't really tie back to what the original plan intended. So I try to reflect back...am I close to what I was saying? Has my point changed?...and if a piece doesn't work or needs to be cut, I'm ruthless. It's my content, and it's sent to the boneyard.

The "so what" test- One of my colleagues would say, "Does it tie to the Pyramid? (that being a reference to Barbara Minto and her lovely book on writing) for determining if it's a good slide. But a killer slide is beyond good. I think the best advice I ever received for creating killers slides was, "so what"? Basically, does the killer slide really hit the mark. And for that I came up with my own simple rules

What was the slide intended to say?
Does it really tie back to that point?
Does it catch everyone's attention?
Is there something in it that an executive/manager would use as his one page answer if someone asked "what is happening with XYZ?"
And finally, does it look different that everything else in the deck in terms of design or presentation of information?

There's no perfect killer slide or even presentation for that matter. And believe me, in some cases the slide template/format that my colleagues and I use at Thought Ensemble can overwhelm our clients with details. But what we're always trying to build are those killer slides that endure. Sometimes they take numerous brainstorming sessions to create and others, well, they just fall out on to the paper. But in both cases, a killer slide should be the goal when creating high end executive presentations.

Copy of a Copi of a kop-EE

2011-08-05T14:48:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago, I was fairly certain that the acquisition of Palm by HP would be a boon for new products that HP could use to match the success of Apple's iOS and the explosion of Android. My own extensive Palm experience combined with my friends' experience with WebOS products and anecdotal accounts in the media seemed to indicate that 1 + 1 in this case, could indeed equal 4. You had the #1 PC maker in the world (by market share- albeit showing some age), minting cash via its lucrative print cartridge sales, but deciding to go all-in on a software company acquisition that could if not reinvigorate, possibly spur revolutionary new HP products.

Then this: HP's TouchPad to provide second rebate offer in a week. OUCH! First $50 off, now $100. When you read review terms like "buggy, slow, lack of apps" and you're competing against something like the Apple tablet experience, that's never a good thing. I recently tried the TouchPad at a big box office supply retailer, and I admit, I wasn't wow'ed. But I wasn't completely let down either. I thought the TouchPad was like a decent facsimile of something else I had used before. It appeared to have the basic look and feel I was used to, with slightly different icons, etc.

Maybe that's the problem. Apple's initial tablet product and the close second version iPad 2 have spoiled people to the point where, it almost doesn't matter what HP does. If the product doesn't have the wow factor of a slick iPad device or provide something extraordinarily different, then maybe the best other tablet PC makers can do is hope for a consumer response that isn't too "degraded" from that of the original iPad.

How to sink lower than Blockbuster in two weeks or less

2011-07-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

After my own negative reaction to Netflix's rate increase, I discovered a fascinating graphic by BrandIndex.com. Apparently, BrandIndex is estimating that they're customer rating has fallen further than I would have imagined. And I surmise, farther than Netflix strategic decision makers foretold when they decided to travel this path.

It's a Thursday. Pigs are flying, Google is down

2011-07-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

I don't think I've ever had an issue with Google. Not Search, not Maps, not Blogger, not YouTube, not even Apps. I mean, in terms of web services, this is one of the gold standard companies in terms of my experience and I dare say the trillions of web hits that Google services daily. But today, in my rush to log in for my company's weekly meetings, I encountered this "sad" message:

To be honest, I thought it was a joke. I refreshed over and over and over again. Yet, I'm not disappointed in Google, just a little frustrated because I couldn't view an important spreadsheet. I think it's yet another sign of how dependent I've become on various and assorted web tools! That and how spreadsheet nerdy I can get on a Thursday afternoon.

Is that a 2?

2011-07-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

The other day, I had the strangest encounter. Well, strange in that 15 months ago, it wouldn't have been even a conversation.

While waiting to get a haircut, I was wasting time on my iPad that I went on and on about in several blogs last year. The first of those blogs discussed how interesting it was to me to watch as the iPad phenomenon exploded. The device completely changed the landscape of the computing market both in design and portability, and in an instant, kicked off what has been a torrent of tablet based products being brought to market. Since that point, Samsung, Dell, Blackberry and now HP with its webOS powered tablet have flooded the market with challengers to Apple's tablet supremacy. And from what market analysts continue to report, their very distant challengers at best.

Fast forward to this weekend and my interesting encounter. A young child and his mom waiting patiently while sitting next to me. And out of the blue, I hear "is that a 2?" At first, I'm not even sure as to what that means. I don't even know if the woman is talking to me. I look up, notice she is indeed talking to me and then I realize...she's talking about my iPad. Again, a year ago, I would have thought she was talking about my hair cut which most people laugh when I tell them that yes, I do consider it a hair cut even though it's really shaved to a zero! However, she was talking about the iPad. A device and brand that has so radically changed the technology world that just a year later, Apple has provided an even better one, in the iPad 2 to capitalize on the first one's success. To my dismay, I informed her that it was only an iPad 1, but that I'm hoping Christmas will come early. A guy can dream, can't he?

Netflix lowers the boom while raising their prices

2011-07-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

If you are a Netflix user, you received a lovely Tuesday morning email that went something like this:

Dear John,

We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.

Your current $11.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs (including Blu-ray access) will be split into 2 distinct plans:

Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month

Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs (including Blu-ray), 1 out at-a-time (no streaming)

for $9.99 a month

Your price for getting both of these plans will be $17.98 a month ($7.99 + $9.99). You don't need to do anything to continue your memberships for both unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs.

These prices will start for charges on or after September 1, 2011.

Ouch! As some of my Facebook friends are pointing out and revolting about, that's almost a 50% increase (some plans have an even higher percentage increase!) to maintain the same service. I had previously been a loyal $9.99/month customer, receiving my 1 DVD at a time. This included unlimited streaming of Netflix's instant access library. And earlier this week, I decided to splurge to the Blu-Ray upgrade. Now that $2 increase that I was ok with in January, will become an $8 increase barely less than a half a year later.

In some of my previous blogs, I espoused my love for all things Netflix. I mean, I'm even nice enough to respond to their "did XYZ movie arrive today?" emails. But in a specific blog, I wrote a comment that seems to be more dead on than I had hoped,

"Now USPS's plans are forcing Netflix to make a decision. Stick with USPS and risk decreasing customer satisfaction or explore delivery alternatives which may increase their service costs and potentially pricing."

Obviously, Netflix's strategic decisions are impacted by more than the USPS' issues (Redbox growth, increased upfront costs for content from movie studios/providers, increasing overhead and cost of operations, etc.). For a company with a fairly positive customer service track record, this move will definitely tatter their image. I personally am a little disappointed in the scale of the price increase. As I consider which plan to choose or how to proceed, I've decided that whenever I want access to titles like Gigli might not be worth a 50% more per month.

Were you being funny or just bored...when bidding $3.14159 billion

2011-07-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

A little over a week ago, a consortium of companies including Apple, RIM, Microsoft, EMC, etc. outbid Google for a chunk of Nortel's patent assets. This asset auction was part of Nortel's bankruptcy proceedings and generated a winning bid $4.5 billion to be collected by creditors. Google was said to be the frontrunner going in, with a cash hoard north of $35 billion that they brought to the party. Check out these bids by Google:

$1,902,160,540
$2,614,972,128
$3.14159 billion

I recognize the last one as pi, but the other two didn't click for me. Both are mathematical constants (Brun's and Messiel- Mertens) that the talented engineers that Google employs, would definitely know about. Apparently I wasn't a math major in school.

There's a few theories being tossed around, either Google was indeed being tongue-in-cheek. Alternatively, they were simply bored. It appears their sense of humor potentially contributed to their undoing. Typically there's a time and place to be funny, but I'm not sure if it's when there's a $3-4 billion deal in motion.

Analogous to what now?

2011-07-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm always looking for learning opportunities as a technology consultant. Either from my Thought Ensemble colleagues, my clients or through professional networking. That learning could involve theories, concept, methodologies, or even new phrases to add to my consulting tool kit. About a year ago, I wrote a blog about My New Lingo and how I consistently hear the phrase "to your point" in client meetings. I continue to hear this one in meetings, though maybe as much lately. However, I think I've found another one that's intriguing: well that's analogous to...

This was uttered in a recent executive meeting I attended. When I first heard it used, I thought, where did that come from? Analogous to what now?! But then I laughed and realized. I typically skip prefacing any comparisons I make during conversations with the word "analogous", but for this particular person, they were using it as comfortable refrain to compare a few items in our discussion to something he understands is his work world.

Often times in technology consulting, we're either talking to a business person who doesn't completely grasp the technology lingo that IT group employs. Alternatively, we're working with an IT group, where a specific developer, DBA or PM doesn't understand the complexities of their business or business processes. It helps to be able to take difficult concepts and compare them to something your audience has heard in the past. Or more intuitively understands. Sure, you could break the concept down to the smallest possible detail, but that's often not the most efficient way to make your point. And with the rapid changes that occur in technology, it doesn't hurt to use analogies to streamline the explanation of more difficult concepts.

I don't think I'm a nerd, but I play one during the week

2011-07-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

My wife calls me a nerd about once a day. Maybe twice. She even uttered a comment, "I deal with this (nerd) stuff everyday" last week to a college friend of hers. In fairness, he and I were discussing the current status of the economy and specifically, the IT consulting business atmosphere.

Then I stumbled upon this article by LZ Granderson. In the brief article, the author walks the reader through his thinking of what it means to geek out. As he sees his own kid grow up and achieve at the highest level both athletically AND more important academically, he indicated that his own understanding has evolved. He's finally started to crystalize in his mind how essential the traditional nerdy pursuits of science, math, etc. can be in terms of a person's opportunities for success. He reminds his son of that fact, frequently with comments about the growing competitiveness of the job market.

As an adolescent, being called a nerd would have scarred me. Especially by my dad! In truth, it probably doesn't help that Revenge of the Nerds was a popular movie series during that time. But, based on what you see in the modern business world, the fact of the matter is that nerds all over the place are doing pretty well. Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg. And if you're from Dallas, Mark Cuban looks like a decent example these days. With articles like that and other positive examples of nerdiness, I think I'll grin and embrace it the next time my wife busts my chops.

My hair's on fire before the Summer Swoon

2011-06-23T11:58:00.000-07:00

I've had a slow blogging month during June. This is in large part due to a lengthy vacation for my wife and I, but also to the fact that work has been quite busy. Crazy busy projects, chasing business leads, working on proposals, and trying to grow a business, etc. A friend of mine who's also in the technology business made the comment that he's pleasantly surprised at the extraordinary number of sales opportunities he's tracking right now. So what gives?

My initial thought is that it's due to a still strong technology growth swing. I know economists and business folks alike are predicting some instability (or worse!) in the overall economy recovery, but at least in the technology sector, things seem to be clicking along. As I consider what I've seen in the last few years thought, I think part of it may be the build up before the "IT Summer Swoon".

For most businesses, the traditional slow period occurs somewhere near Christmas and continuing into the first quarter of the following year. This makes complete sense as it's timed to the holidays, vacations and in many cases, companies spending cycles that are linked to annual budgeting activities. However, I've also noticed a significant trend in the Summer for the last few years as companies who were free spending for IT projects during the end of Q1 and into Q2, kicking off this initiative or that program, start to tap the brakes before the months of July - August. This is often to accomodate resource scheduling (aka vacation for themselves or team members) or to avoid interrupting seasonal business, but also to level set their budget expectations. Executives are hesitant to promise delivery during periods of time where their strongest team members are out of the office.

Consulting services companies in particular, are impacted by this as they've staffed up for the peak work and possibly brought on new college graduates to meet their pipeline demand. And then...a lull. CIOs and IT VPs who were flush with cash and needed to push new projects through for the business begin to postpone start dates and other milestones. Decisions that used to take days or weeks, take months. Obviously if their fiscal year ends with the month of June, that makes it even more likely that they will re-plan for the remaining of the calendar year. There's no clear cut way to avoid it as a company, you just have to ride out the swoon. And if history is any guide in the technology, the pace of work and deals will ramp up with the onset of Fall. If not, I will definitely have more time to blog!

I'd like seconds on my bandwidth order. Please.

2011-06-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

For lack of a better expression, the graphic below and short article that accompanied it about internet traffic growth shocked me. I've read some interesting statistics recently about where and when the actual internet usage is occurring. By device type, by time period, etc. Most articles point to the increased use of smart phones, other always on devices like tablets connecting to the internet, and then the continued online gaming and other streaming of videos/movies/music as the main "culprits". An example is the explosive effect that Netflix stream has on primetime nightly internet traffic. But reading that Cisco is expecting a quadrupling in internet traffic over the next 4 years still floors me.

The cloud ate my blog...Cloudy with a chance of pitfalls

2011-05-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

By now, most people heard about Amazon's cloud computing disaster which left countless websites and companies with tools supported by Amazon's ....scrambling to get reconnected. Amazon's (business unit) data center outage on the East coast caused the company the flex its crisis management capabilities. As people move more of their operations outside the perceived "safety

My colleague Jim recently wrote about the potential "risk and failure" for early adopters of any technology platform. Needless to say, other SaaS-like services have struggled with similar situations.

What you see above are the remnants of a really early draft of my thoughts for my blog from last week: Cloudy with a chance of pitfalls. Really early and rough. My trusty blog tool Blogger decided to allow me to both save and post a final draft of this blog, without apparent issue. And I even posted a link to Facebook which I tested, so I know it worked. That blog can currently be seen here. i.e., not at all. I've actually decided not to rewrite the blog, because apparently, even my friends didn't want to tell me that my Facebook link was broken. Alternatively, people have tired of my rants...

The irony in all of this for me is that the premise of my blog was about recent outages/issues with significant players in the online world. First Amazon's cloud takes down online retailers and sites like Foursquare, then Sony's Playstation network security breach leaks millions of users' personal data, and now a widespread outage at Google's Blogger site erases prescient words from a technology consultant. (Obviously I'm still sensitive about the cloud eating my blog homework) I'm being facetious, but none of the aforementioned sites are engrained in my daily life. However, for some people they are.

As we become more reliant on internet services, and cloud base tools become more prevalent, consumers simply trust that these wonderful new services will work. I as a consumer would expect nothing less. Barring something like an act of God, or possibly war. Even a free service like Blogger is essential for some people to run a business. While Blogger starts to rebuild my trust, for the time being I plan to take a double secret back up of my blog before posting. And for those brave enough to rely on cloud based services to run your business, make sure you plan for those potential pitfalls.

I feel more Mac this morning, but maybe PC in the afternoon

2011-04-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across an interesting infographic the other day. I've capture the media section for those that don't want to click through.

I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but it definitely contains some eye opening Mac vs. PC nuggets. I would never consider myself a vespa fan or someone interested in Indie films, but I do live in a city and I oddly enough, I enjoyed Moby Dick when I read it in high school. The truth is probably somewhere in between on what a hip Mac user wants to do with their time or likes and dislikes as compared to someone who prefers PCs.

But what interested me most is how you could potentially carry this concept forward to something like smart phones. Or even tablets! In other words, how would someone with a Android OS phone compare with an iPhone aficionado. To make it more fun, mix in some Blackberry and Windows user smart phone users. My sense is that the iPhone users might stay roughly the same in terms of likes and dislikes, but where would the percentage that favors Android's more open stance come from...would it be the PC users who are not the hummus or Hot Toddy type or people on the Mac side who are straying from the Cupertino cult. Food and drink for thought, I guess.

Does brain candy fill you up...always?

2011-04-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

For the last few weeks, my colleagues and I have talked extensively about employee motivation and a particular book that details this discussion, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. One of those colleagues actually beat me to the punch on part of this blog, but as we've talked as a group, one area that I keep coming back to was the hypothesis that many people are driven intrinsically by the "brain candy" they derive from their daily job.

Such a phenomenon occurs with IT start ups. Brain "food" is often more critical to the people who work for such companies than the potential for stock options and even personal wealth creation. Late night and long hours are not filled with dread, rather the opportunity to work on something exciting and to contribute to a grander vision. Employees are energized by the work. Galvanized to push on regardless of any short term sacrifices and often, loyal to the core. Google is frequently used as an example of such an environment (though maybe not as much, recently, if you read some of the exit reports of departed employees). Not uncommonly, most start ups skew towards a more twenty something demographic. This youthful workforce, often fueled by Red Bull and Starbucks during long hours, invests emotionally in what they're building which motivates them to push on. But what happens to that passion or motivation as personal goals become more important for our career? And what about the change that occurs once you hit your mid 30's?

My personal caveat to the theory presented in Drive is that it's age sensitive, especially as you hit your mid 30's. This is the stage of your career where most people hit their stride. Whether that's in a big company, a non profit, an artistic endeavor or even as a small business owner/entrepreneur, by the time most of us reach this critical inflection point in life, we have a decent understanding of our career path. And those that don't feel fulfilled, they start to evaluate other new opportunities. At that stage, another thing occurs: the rewarding elements of your life begin to diversify. Family relationships, marriage, children, financial stability, long term opportunity, etc. become equally or more important that the pure excitement of conquering the world at your company.

I'm not doubting the theory presented in Drive at all. And it's definitely not a theory specific in that book. However, what interests me is the way this changes depending what career stage you're in and other personal items influence your career choices. Not because the people are substantially different, but in many cases, because people progressed to a new life stage and the brain candy just doesn't fill them up.

My Commodore 64 is better than your iPad

2011-04-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling a little nostalgic this morning. The WSJ included an article about the rebirth of an 80's classic, the Commodore 64 computer. This 2011 reincarnation of that classic computer is definitely light years more robust. It was never cosmetically sexy, but during its time the Commodore 64 was a great little PC. It could do math programs to help with school, you could use it to study Spanish or even play Magic vs. Larry basketball video games. And for me, it was the first computer I ever owned.

As opposed to some of my colleagues that grew up with the Apple II/Macintosh or other IBM products, I was a Commodore 64 kid. I can thank my aerospace engineering father for providing such a great gift. Though he often used it for his own work, he encouraged me to spend time tinkering on the Commodore and learning about technology. And when they launched the Commodore 128 a few years later I was lucky enough to "upgrade" to that one as well.

Like my friends who entertain me with stories of how they let their young kids play on iPads and iPhones in 2011, I too learned through those early interactions with my Commodores as a kid. This device is what originally captured my interest in technology gadgets and probably fueled my pursuit of a career in this field. Here's to hoping that the same will happen for the next generation of technologists.

Behind the Windows

2011-03-31T12:21:00.000-07:00

This article about Paul Allen's new book was in the Wall Street journal yesterday and I found it an interesting read. Not only does the article introduce some of the more inflammatory ideas Allen conveys in the book, but it really draws the curtain back one of the most key relationships in the modern realm of software technology. There's always been a little speculation on why Paul Allen really left Microsoft, but if this book and Allen's comments are even 50% correct, it's much closer to Apple's "Steve situation" (Jobs and Woz) than previously discussed. And maybe even Facebook according to the information present in the The Accidental Billionaire's.

When I find some time, I definitely plan to check out this book.

The plane doesn't know about the manual

2011-03-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog is a phrase I heard from my father-in-law over the weekend. As a pilot and check airman, he's spent a large portion of his career teaching himself and others about flight. And how to operate some of the biggest planes in the American Airlines fleet.

The aforementioned phrase is something he uses as an instructor when people wonder aloud why he's asked about a specific scenario or problem, that's a little out of the norm for either verbal or written exams. And in many cases, the test takers have prepped for the exam by memorizing known questions to be asked or via rote memory of the plane's manual. Such a phenomenon is prevalent in almost every educational system in the world where students often learn just for the test. My father-in-law's point, which is of extreme importance in his field, is you need to understand the big picture. Not all of the answers are in the manual. During any given flight, the human portion, the hardware or technology components or even the weather can conspire to go outside the bounds presented in any manual. He needs his students to process what he's asking, think through the problem, and attack the potential solutions using the tools and the knowledge at their disposal. This enables the pilots that are flying me and other passengers to Omaha, No Cal, etc. with a more a repeatable approach to seeking answers, rather than just reacting to the answer they recalled in the manual.

It's very similar to strategy case interview or review board like situation. Although the presence of the interviewers adds to the stress (like being 30K in the air!), at its core, it's a thinking exercise. The process leans heavily on taking the information presented, digesting it, and then applying your real world understanding of the big picture to create a suitable solution. Interviewers are trying to understand how you think. What details do you use and what do you discard to create a solution. A perfect answer would great, but a well though out analytical approach is even better. Because it's repeatable.

In my consulting career, whether that has been in process, strategy or even technology development work, I encounter similar situations where I'm working with clients who are actually paralyzed by their own thinking. And possibly paralyzed in part by the very processes designed to help. Governance and SDLC processes are good examples of how the process itself can become an impediment to truly new thinking. When I ask the question, "Why?", a typical response might be "because it's always been done that way". Or more tersely, "because". Such clients are stuck in a rut of only thinking through what's in the manual. Their processes have become that manual. If it's not in the manual, it's not part of the solution.

And that's the issue. For the most part, the most difficult situations require what's learned for just the test COMBINED with creative and analytical thinking. There are rarely perfect answers, but often many workable solutions. But you have to be able to take a step back, consider the big picture and work through the situation methodically. It's not an easy process for many companies, but those companies that can go beyond strictly relying on the comfort of the manual for answers are the most likely to come up with big hairy audacious game changing products, services and/or processes.

Much ado about Google

2011-03-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

Here we go again...last year on this exact date, I wrote my first in a pair of articles about the issues between Google and China. I didn't realize it was the exact day until I went back on my blog history, but I guess that goes to show Google and China are still playing games. This time over access to Gmail. Of all the sources I read today, this Reuters video seemed the most impartial.

Do we need a meeting intervention?

2011-03-10T08:40:00.001-08:00

7:30-4:30, 8-2:30, 10-3, 11-4:30...these are some of the meeting schedules I've had in the last few weeks. I guess there's generally some breaks included for walking around, checking an email or two and grabbing a bite to eat, but not always. But, in most cases, the meetings are back to back to back. That means between my 8-9 and my 9-10 meeting, for example, that I need to find time to finish up with the post meeting niceties, walk to a different location (most likely), figure out how to take a bio break. For people who work remotely, most of that scenario still holds except maybe you give you dog or kid a pat on the head. Or you could be commuting from one remote site to another. Try baking in two or three hour long commutes into a 9 hour work day and see how productive you can actually be.

Regardless of the realized pain, such meeting schedules are extremely prevalent in modern office situations. Several of my clients have commented recently that it feels like "all they do is sit in meetings". They feel less productive, worn out and generally disconnected from what they consider their full time work. As a good consultant, I typically try to maximize the use of my client's time by consolidating meetings into one block of time, because in turn that maximizes the value they get out of me and often leads to more expedient projects. But how do I do that when I am actually adding to the meeting insanity?

I've come up with my own rules to help...

No early meetings on Monday or late Friday unless there's no other choice. People are typically protective of those times and disgruntled when a meeting is plopped down in the middle.
When I look at someone's calendar, I try avoid scheduling back to back to back meetings. Three meetings of one hour plus in length in a row can be a beating. And since Outlook doesn't automatically give you that between meeting buffer (come on Stevie B), I use my own judgement to add buffer time so that meetings don't start late. As the third meeting in a back to back to back, people are still racing from their second meeting which undoubtedly started late. Email, phone calls, bio, etc need to be handled at some point. Why not give 15 min reprieve if possible. Thirty minutes if you can.
No blind scheduling. If I'm not on the same Exchange (email server) environment and can't see a person's availability, I try to reach out and ask what a person/group has in terms of availability.
I always try to give people at least 30 minutes to go to lunch midday. I prefer to go outside of the office, others want to sit at their desk. Whichever way works, people need a midday mental recharge. See the Spanish siesta as an ideal emedy to the situation.
Finally, I don't schedule hour long meetings to discuss other meetings. Or invite the whole world. It doesn't take every chief in the village to make a decision.

There's no perfect answer here, I realize that. It's par for the course in 2011 business and especially with the number of companies with a globally distributed workforce. But as a consultant hired to help companies be smarter about how they conduct business, I want to make sure I'm part of the solution not the meeting insanity problem.

I'll be your hero, I'll play that game

2011-03-03T05:14:00.000-08:00

I found an interesting interview/article in CIO magazine discussing the hero culture that often develops in IT departments. The basic idea is that IT which are trying to be the most responsive for their respective business often go beyond what would normally be expected of any person to achieve deadlines and make sure the client is happy. Everyone loves a hero, right?? External consulting organizations are just as guilty of this and in many cases, use it to earn significant follow on work. Symptoms like frequent all nighters, extended work on weekends, and scope/cost overruns on projects are all most common indicators of an IT group or individuals in IT that have taken on the hero culture. And the "fun" part is that is that it's self repeating.

Since the business love having these rockstars at their disposal, IT executives will search for the highest horsepower individuals available in the marketplace (maybe supplemented by key external consultants) to strengthen their hero responsiveness. And as it continues, both IT and the business often reward the behavior through raises, bonuses, promotions, new sales, etc. to reinforce the ideas that this is business as usual. Often times, it leads to internal IT personnel earning new jobs and transitioning over to the business due to their high profile success stories.

While I don't agree with all of the points stated by the interviewees, I do profess to having seen this phenomenon quite frequently in my 12 years in IT. On my strategy projects, many times we ask IT executives what they want and what their counterparts in the business want them to be in terms of an organization: Innovative, Cost Efficient, or Customer Intimate. After hearing these options, many clients struggle to clearly define where they are positioned. And when you contrast a CIO's opinion, for example, to the opinions of the business, there can be significant disparity between perception and reality as well. The truth is each option carries with it different levels of resource commitment, processes and organizational realities.

Customer intimate is the closet to what the CIO magazine is characterizing as the main strength of the hero culture; responsiveness to your clients needs. n reality, some IT organizations straddle the line between two. But it becomes particularly problematic when a group that has become customer intimate/hero focused is effective is also trying to be cost effective which as the author says "Managing business user expectations, adhering to process, and proactively managing problems is contradictory to this (hero) culture." Such is the source of tension that can develop between IT and the business its trying to support. Adding a BPO organization to the mix doesn't solve the hero issue either. Business executives who think they can just outsource and maintain the same level of responsiveness are surprised when their former rockstars are now replaced by a faceless ticketing system that focuses on controls and process.

So, the next time you notice IT groups that are willing to burn the candle at both end to deliver a project on time, remember the pattern it can produce. Once in awhile is ok to achieve a critical business goal or initiative, but a better way to achieve a sustainable relationship between business and IT is through ongoing management and consistency of process, transparency/communication and repeated expectation setting.

Honesty is appreciated

2011-02-25T05:14:00.000-08:00

I really appreciate this short video interview by the CEO of Allstate. His comments about evaluating employee performance and feedback are directly in line with how we try to manage at Thought Ensemble.

To RFP or not RFP?

2011-02-24T14:05:00.000-08:00

One of the items that has come up numerous times recently with my clients recently is the desire to RFP (Request for Proposal) for big IT projects. With company budgets starting to open up, and a strong pent up demand for IT groups wanting to implement new hardware and business applications, it's a tool that IT executives could use for comparing vendor options. I'm of the opinion that the idea itself has value but the implementation of such a process should be carefully weighed against the greater benefit.

RFPs are often done under the notion that it's the best and fairest way to survey the capabilities of potential vendors available in the marketplace and compare them against each other. And level the playing field and limit "favors" that often occur amongst vendors and customers. Many of my clients often think it's a good way to put vendors in direct competition and drive the best final price.

However, for those of you who have participated in an RFP, you know how it can be a huge consumer of time/resources both on the respondents AND the company sending it out. RFP's require a fairly high level of management and overhead. It becomes a labyrinth of odd requests, tight timelines, and dog and pony shows with endless questions. Then back and forth follow up items which someone has to manage. Maybe one full time person in charge per three vendors to prepare the RFP itself, coordinate meetings, coach respondents, log receipt of the vendors, etc. This doesn't include the laborious task of reviewing 30-50 pages of documentation and in the end, scoring and making a recommendation.

To make it even trickier, there's almost always a vendor in the process who actually helps write the RFP document for the distributor. Imagine if you got to choose the winning lottery numbers before you even went to buy a ticket. That's right, a process designed to increase fairness is often rigged from the start. Even Google recently cried foul over a recent RFP process to help the Department of the Interior select a web based email and collaboration tool to replace 13 older systems.

With budgets squeezed across most organizations, any way to drive price lower and take some "skin" from vendors is ideal. An RFP is a suitable tool for many situations and often times can be the right choice for companies who have a lot of data analysis to perform about vendors. But my advice to clients... be careful what you wish for with an RFP. It can definitely be the right tool for the wrong situation.

Even billionaires have bad days

2011-02-09T20:31:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy week for me and I need something entertaining to relax a little.

I found this video of a young Steve Jobs, long before the iPod and iPhone. I'm not sure which is better, his hair, or the comment about his needing to visit the restroom at the end.

Jobs' overall nervousness reminded me a little of the infamous Mark Zuckerberg interview I'd seen in the past.

Two takeaways for me...even billionaire's have bad days. Avoid goofy haircuts or hoodies if you plan to give an interview to a large audience.

Striking Social Juxtaposition

2011-01-31T19:26:00.000-08:00

While taking a break for lunch on Friday, I stumbled upon an almost shocking juxtaposition of what I will call "social technology freedom".

On the left, you have reports of the fevered unrest that Egypt is going through now. Many of the reports are peppered with comments about the government severing both internet activity as well as traditional mobile device communication. Social sites hosted outside of the country that often provide "windows" into what's going on, such as Facebook, are reportedly blocked by the 4 big internet providers in the country. And citizens are having trouble getting in touch with family and friends.

Whereas, on the right, you have LivingSocial touting the growth of their business model. Similar to Groupon's business model and their almost $6 Billion Google deal), LivingSocial is built squareley on the success of social media sites in the US like Facebook and Twitter. They are predicting substantial growth maybe even to the point of passing Groupon in business in the near future. The lifeblood of such socially focused companies is openness and internet access.

In previous blogs, I mentioned the way China throttles back access to the internet for its residents, but this wholesale break in contact with the outside world, combined with decreased social connectivity is still pretty unprecedented stuff. And these two reports on the CNET news homepage really illustrate how unfettered access to such social technology is for people in more moderate, open societies compared to their counterparts in the East.

Apple's pushing the corporate buttons

2011-01-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

A little over a year ago, I wrote an article called thinking Mac, working Windows in which I discussed my learning curve with Mac computers. It's been a wild ride, but I'm definitely an Apple aficionado now. With multiple iPods, Macs, Apple TVs and other Apple toys, my house is a living Apple store.

Then in reading some of my old RSS feeds (again I'm still catching up on my December days), I noticed this article about the expansion of Apple's corporate business. In this case, it's not the "tail that wags the dog", rather executives are frequently the reason Macs become a technology option at many companies. They are requesting if not demanding that Apple devices be supported. Everything from iPhones to iPads, and even MacBooks with desired synchronization to corporate email servers and VPN access. I've seen numerous examples at my clients of this influential Mac device explosion. And most executives typically get what they want in terms of smartphone's and now even iPads vs. laptops.

With the impending launch of Verizon iPhone 4 mania and the 90 million potential customers, I don't expect Apple's corporate penetration to slow.

When fuzzy is bad

2011-01-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

Fuzzy is good when,

-Someone books you for a meeting you had no idea about, didn't have time to prepare for and decide to wing because it might actually be the best approach
-It relates to a 10 week old puppy
-You normally sport a bald look, but it's Winter, so you try to add some "coverage"
-You use your iPad to draft something brilliant with your client
-The goal is to think beyond the square (outside of the box for you consulting nerds) for something like redesigning a software application

However, the concept of fuzzy is bad when

-It relates to space travel, military directives, remembering honey do's, taxes, construction of buildings, cars, bridges, planes, etc
-People leave an important meeting nodding their heads but have no idea who captured the most salient and critical items to go address, nor who is tasked with completing them
-Next years' financial plan for a billion dollar company hinges on projects deemed critical, but that have no defined plan or even milestones to occur in the next 12 months
-You have a profound fear of muppets

Disappearing December

2011-01-26T13:14:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if everyone agrees with me on this, but it's difficult to believe that 2010 is gone. And before January 2011 evaporates and I get swamped in new adventures, I at least wanted to reflect on how quickly the weeks between Thanksgiving and the end of the year holidays go by.

Towards the last few weeks of the year, 2010 moved at warp speed for me. I was trying to juggle work for three clients in three cities, traveling for onsite client meetings and finalizing important projects and deliverables. Plus, I "needed" to attend a myriad of company, colleague and other holiday events (including my own holiday party) and still find time to shop, wrap and get ready for the holidays. Truth be told, I actually started this blog in the remaining days of the year, and then before I could finish the Holidays swallowed me up. My assumption is that many people deal with this similar situation. You and maybe even your boss/client are left to wonder, where did December go?! I've come to the conclusion that December is just disappearing.

Although the month of December hasn't changed in length, the actual productive weeks of work time available seem to have decreased. Don't get me wrong, the period between these traditional holidays, roughly the Monday after Thanksgiving till New Years eve, has always been a mad rush to the finish. Frantic would be a great word to describe everyone's demeanor. People are closing out projects or Q4 sales pipelines, trying to push through the always fun financial closing activities that anyone in a finance/accounting role loathes. But, over the last few years, I've witnessed the interesting phenomenon at my clients, my employers and the employers of my close friends/family.

Most technology projects that I see still estimate at least 10 days of potential duration or work time during the last month of the year. But even that's a generous these days. I'm not saying that the calendar is dropping days or that people are skipping work, it just seems to me that true productivity of people in this period has been impacted. Nor am I saying that this is a good or bad thing, it's simply an observation. The holiday season is busy enough to navigate in terms of family and other social events without December work getting in our way.

My Mac loving co workers might get jealous

2010-11-25T03:20:00.000-08:00

Techcrunch provided me with what will likely be one of many Turkey Day treats. Earlier this week, Google launched a plug in for Microsoft Office programs which allows for better integration with Google Docs. Since my company is using the real time collaboration and document syncing that Google Docs provides, this is definitely an enhancement that we'll look to leverage in the near future. As a small business, we're trying to leverage the best of the "cloud type" apps to maintain operating efficiency. Dropbox is probably the best example of this with my colleague writing several blogs professing her appreciation for it's simplicity.

The article mentions a phased roll out of the new plug in with the Apps for Business customers first in line, but as soon as it's available, I will download and give it a whirl. Of course, the devil is in the details on this great news...apparently the API availability for Office for Mac is not as robust so this plug in will not work with Macs. Who would have thunk it? Microsoft keeps most of the fun for traditional Windows users! Since I'm a huge dork running a Virtual Machine with Windows 7, I'm good to go. Unfortunately, for two of my colleagues this will prevent them from joining the party in the near future because of their previous decision to use Mac for Office instead. Jim, Lisa...you guys ready to live in a dual world?!

You know what really grinds my thumb?

2010-11-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

If you've read some of my other blogs, you know I like techie things. And I appreciate when new technology can be applied to make things more efficient or achieve improvement in business or personal performance. It's one of things that makes me enjoy my career and chosen profession. On the other hand, I'm also equally frustrated when technology is applied or introduced under the guise of "it's better for you" when it's most definitely not a benefit to me.

When I first moved to Dallas, a good example of this in my mind was a toll tag. I used the toll road maybe once a month and for that limited use, I didn't see the value in paying the toll authority $40 up front of my money for a shiny new tag so they could earn interest on it. Maybe that's stubbornness, but I just didn't see how that tag helped me much considering I could just as easily deposit coins. Others must have felt the same way because over the last 4 years, the same toll authority has made tag usage substantially cheaper vs. coins or even the other EZ tag camera they deployed. So they have effectively mandated an improvement (that actually penalizes some consumers) to decrease labor overhead at toll stops and help their own bottom line, not that of their consumers.

Recently, the gym that I belong to started a similarly asinine process and tried to pawn it off as a benefit to me. Let's call the gym 48dayworkout. For years, they required that to enter the facility you needed to bring an ID card with at least a xerox copy of your driver's license to prove it was you. This didn't seem to be that big of an issue for me and I adapted my behavior. Though occasionally I forgot my ID card and/or my license copy and had to resort to my actual Texas drivers' license. So once in a blue moon it annoyed the heck out of me. I would say an equal amount of times, no one was at the desk rendering the card almost useless. Fast forward to about 3 weeks ago and my gym rolls out a new finger print scanner and keypad tool to gain access to their club. Let me write that again. My gym has decided that a creating/remembering a 10 digit code AND placing my thumb on a keypad is a simpler solution to determining if I am a valid club member or not. More simple than a carrying a piece of plastic with a scannable bar code. A technology that has been around for decades and is seemingly suitable for such a use. The same card based technology that if I lost my card a month ago, they would have charged me $25 in processing fees to replace the plastic.

When the gym attendant presented me with the opportunity to break free from the constraints of that "horrible card" three weeks ago, my first response was no. A little stunned, he responded "Well, we're phasing out the card entry system and moving to the scanner. This actually helps you". My terse response was something like, "How does this provide me any value? and Why would I want to give you my finger print?" After going back and forth with him for several minutes, and the poor guy trying to convince me that the scanner is not really a finger print scanner rather a device that captures 10 distinct points on your finger (UM, what does he think any biometric device does?!) he finally relented and said that yes, I could continue to use my regular driver's license but I would have to bring the real one, not the xerox. I might have even dropped in the "I work in IT line". I can't completely recall.

To clarify, I don't fear big brother and I'm generally supportive of biometric solutions when they make sense. But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why providing a biometric marker to a gym who already has my banking information, birthday, Social Security number, address, phone number etc is really necessary. Maybe to get a loan approved, but not to work out. This seems like a completely inappropriate use of technology in fact. Do I really want all of that data and my thumb markers stored on the servers of 48dayworkout? And how does it help me at all? I don't get a discount because you can staff one less person at the front desk per shift, do I? I understand that labor rates are increasing but it appears to me, that's your staffing problem. In addition, I can't imagine that the variable cost of one extra person, who borrows his friend's ID to work out, causes any issues whatsoever. I don't see a tremendous security risk with the card either. What I see is that your organization has become bloated (work force, high overhead, debt load, etc.) and some slick sales person/operations/consultant sold you on a way to market this as a good thing for your customers. Oh, and save a few bucks per location. I ask again, how does this thumb solution help me?

Needless to say, I continue to gain entry using my driver's license. I've noticed I'm not the only one, but I'm sure they'll continue to try and phase us all out of the habit. Maybe they'll raise my rates just because I refuse to use the scanner and keypad. Two thumbs up for this Family Guy clip, but at least one down for my gym's poor use of technology.

Just when you thought you made a bad decision today...

2010-10-18T12:34:00.000-07:00

If you've ever regretted a work related/business decision, and your boss "yelled" at you and you thought you better start getting your resume in order...don't fret. Most people don't ever get the chance to make million dollar mistakes. Let alone Billion.

The Oracle of Omaha just revealed that his worst decision ever was the acquisition of Berkshire Hathaway itself back in the 60's. Marinate on that one. BH's market cap is north of $200 Billion. Warren Buffett is thought to be one of the best investors of all time, if not the best. And his worst mistake is investing in a company that would become the vehicle for most of his future success.

The interesting piece of the interview is that he thinks his desire to get back at BH execs cost him approximately $200 more Billion in net Berkshire worth. That's $200 Bill, XXXXXL because of ego.

A more in depth version of the story he tells is captured in his autobiography, Snowball. If you haven't read it and want to sound smart next time at a networking party, check it out. But this video sums it all up.

Refreshing Self Critique

2010-10-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

I found this blog via a CNN article about the rise of Mint and the fall of another early company in the online financial management space. The company, Wesabe, was not one that I'd heard of previously, but I was definitely late to the Mint game. And unlike my colleague Lisa, I'm not a Mint zealot either.

The interesting part of the the blog was the matter of fact retelling of the way Wesabe missed the mark by the former founder/CEO/visionary of the company, Marc Hedlund. His company was an early mover in offering financial management functionality out in the cloud. Many banks and products like Quicken had previously tried in the early 2000s, but the advent of Web 2.0 technologies allowed better results and more customer friendly options. And Wesabe stepped into that fold. They began to grow using VC funding and were even self funding for a period of about a year before succumbing to their strategic missteps.

Maybe it was cathartic for Marc, and maybe it was a little self serving as he wanted to make sure his once growing company wasn't forgotten for its influence in the financial management world. But, his thoroughly described anecdotes of where Wesabe went wrong are very admirable to me. You don't see many executives step up and call out the critical errors that they made, which caused precipitous falls in their companies. Often times, you can't even get a C level executive to admit to any error at all, rather it's easier to blame their results on the hyper competitive marketplace, sluggish economy or an ineffective/unsupportive board.

Marc's honest self critique is a quality I consider essential in leadership. And something I wish we would see more of in modern corporate America.

Uncertain E-book economics

2010-09-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

Check out this article in the WSJ today about authors/publishers "struggling" to adjust to the new economics e-book. E-books look poised to completely disrupt the publishing industry, like digital music and movies started to do 10 years ago, if it already hasn't. This is great for inexperienced authors who are trying to get into the business. There's more options and channels to pursue in terms of the publishing process (smaller publishers, self publishing, etc.) and possibly even more long opportunity just to enter the industry. It's just more open than in the past. However, the financial opportunity may be far less at least in the beginning.

Since I have a few friends in the process of writing books, including my business colleagues, the particular graphic below really caught my eye. In the traditional publishing world, publishers were keeping roughly 50% but publishers in the e-book realm are now taking closer to 75% to cover their embedded costs and overhead to the process. I had read previous articles that described similar margin squeezing concepts, resulting in less return for authors, but this graphic made it resonate.

Another area I would love to see more data on is the impact of e-books and e-readers on college textbooks. The article focuses more on fiction or non fiction type books (from what I could tell) but I've spoken to several parents of college age kids who say $500-1K for textbooks per semester is still about the norm. And in some cases, $200+ per book. So what are the margins there? College kids are resorting to buying the European versions of text books to avoid what appears to be price gouging. If colleges really didn't have skin in the game, why wouldn't e-readers or iPads be standard issue? It makes me wonder if margins in that type of publishing are not artificially propped up. If so, I hope the textbook authors are getting a bigger piece of the pie because their brethren don't appear to be on the same economic footing.

Game changer

2010-09-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

If you've downloaded any apps lately, you have probably noticed some game-like component to it. Whether, you're using a geo app like Foursquare or Gowalla that lets you check in for discounts and to obtain titles (Mayor, etc) or an app provided by a consumer product company like Coca Cola (Coke Magic Bottle, Sprite Music Mixer), there's probably something that resembles a game. Even my American Airlines app has a Sudoku game preloaded!

This is all part of a concerted effort by companies, their advertisers and development shops to follow the one of the main drivers of app success to date, something called "game mechanics". The game like features make apps add a sense of competition, engage people across cultural and generational boundaries as well as translate into more time spent using the apps. For advertisers this is nirvana as they hope to obtain more feedback in terms of preferences, activities that user's tend to participate in and locations that they visit. Target Marketing 101.

Even fairly simple gaming concepts added can be the difference between app developers breaking through to success or just being lost amongst thousands of other available apps. Translation, it's been one of the consistent threads for all of the money making apps in the marketplace today. I read an article that commented that VC shops will basically ignore potential investment opportunities unless there is some game concept embedded in the application they are reviewing. Think about that...upstart apps that provide even a good business opportunity may possibly be ignored unless they have a game added to their design. There are even companies and consulting groups that consult strictly on the game mechanics concept. So in essence, people are making money off of telling others that games are a good thing and providing games that 4th graders would enjoy.

I'm starting to wonder if I need a game or two on my blog.

Palm Branding

2010-09-07T07:44:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of the power of branding on a flight this weekend. But it wasn't the typical American Airlines, Coca Cola or other popular brands you might see during a flight. And it wasn't the ever popular iPhone or iPods sprinkled throughout the fuselage. No, this was a brand reference that only a IT dork would analyze...

During the pre flight check with all of the announcements and requests, the flight attendant dropped in this gem. "The aircraft door is now closed so at this time, we ask you to turn of all iPhones, Blackberrys, PDAs or Palm Pilots...basically, any electronic device that can send texts." I chuckled, then made a comment to my wife about what she had said. Apparently, I was the only one reveling in the fact that she called the group of devices PDAs instead of smartphones, and that she also referenced Palm Pilot as a device that someone might be using to send texts. That really shows you the power of the brand that Palm built. Though it's popularity waned, their Palm Pilot brand and products were trendsetters at the time.

What it really shows is that HP's acquisition is far greater than just a slick OS to operate smart phones. If HP plays it's cards right and pushes the Palm technology to rumored iPad like devices and new smartphones, they too can leverage a still relative brand that is synonymous with what many people think of when they think, mobile communication technology.

Process Improvement: The final frontier

2010-09-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest areas of interest I hear about from clients is their interest in improving processes to boost efficiency and save money. In the past, many of my clients used a combination of technology system upgrades, or personnel cuts/reorganization to realize real hard savings. Optimizing business processes was not at the top of the list. However, many companies have not upgraded core IT applications since the mid 2000s and they've already delivered as much efficiency as possible. In addition, most companies have cut personnel totals to the bone through off shoring or downsizing. Since companies are still in a cash saving mode ($1.86 Trillion in cash currently hoarded by US corporations according to a late July Bloomberg BW article), processes are really the final option to squeeze out savings.

I previously posted a blog about Lost Processes where I introduced a subset of processes that get ignored in the hectic running of business. More disaster recovery or business continuity type processes. But in this blog, I'm thinking more about the most visible of processes, such as payroll processes that occur with SAP/Peoplesoft or billing processes related to a customer information system that call center agents employ. These are the sexier set. Let's call them the "The ones that business analysts and consultants alike spend hours coming up with, tweaking and implementing as part of technology projects." This set of core processes is really what drives most businesses on a daily basis. And for the most part, the ones that executives are reviewing and pushing for improvements.

So what are the basic steps in process improvement project, you might ask?

Put simply, the first step is often identifying what the process currently looks like. When I ask the question "Do you have any documentation for process ABC?", I'm often pointed in the direction of a SharePoint site or a person like Johnnie Cornersitter who serves as the librarian of such processes. Again, these documented processes are supposed to be at the core of the business and used by stakeholders, technology resources, and even outsiders (auditors, consultants) to evaluate the current environment under which the business functions. But with the aforementioned response, I know instantly that the best source of process information will actually come from the people who do the work on a daily basis.

After reviewing and analyzing such documentation (if available), I often look to validate what I perceive as possible issues with the actual doers via interviews or workshops. Again, I'm trying to understand to the best of my ability the actual process, not what a consultant created in Visio for a technology project and left on the shelf years back. The actual mechanics of the process, warts and all. Besides, actively engaging and working with such process owners lends credibility to the work you're doing and provides insight into the pains they feel in the current state. It's worth it to spend the time soliciting such feedback and building a consensus on those pains (though often a struggle).

Next, I start to look for recommended fixes. This could be industry best practice, from previous experience, or even from internal suggestions. Often the suggested improvements are identified by those same doers. Employees might have seen best practices at previous employers or through second hand knowledge provided by others at their company. In many cases, those recommendations have never been elevated or defined at a level where executives can take notice. i.e., the cost and efficiency gains have never been quantified in dollar signs.

Finally, I work with my clients to create a future state that balances the need for efficiency as well as practical for daily use by the people involved. The worst thing I could do would be create a process that is academic in nature and sets the doers up for failure. To be perfectly honest, much of this effort is simply driven by straightforward communication and framing of the tangible benefits provided by recommended enhancements.

None of this is revolutionary work. Many industries (manufacturing, transportation) and companies (3M, Wal-Mart) are fantastic at such this. They apply frameworks like Six Sigma and ITIL to squeeze out improvements. It's in their DNA. But many other industries (Healthcare, Media, Financial, Energy and Advertising) are looking to process improvement projects to provide tangible results in a still uncertain economic time. And for those industries, process improvement is really the final frontier of optimizing their economic models.

Healthcare in China

2010-09-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

There's a very interesting article in yesterday's WSJ about the Chinese government's aggressive push to revolutionize their medical records processes/technology. Many of the biggest technology hitters like IBM, Microsoft, and Dell are already engaged with local and provincial governments, trying to penetrate the growing market. It's not apparent whether these organizations are working together to develop standards upfront, but if I was guessing I would say it's not likely. Each organization is pursuing it's own slice and self interest, working with their own contacts.

As with many opportunities in China, scale drives much of the interest from these mammoth IT shops. If you simply do the population math, there's at least 3-4x the market size in China, not to mention the fact that Chinese medical industry is not nearly as mature as the Western world. Plus, China's one child policy has accelerated an overall aging of China's citizenry. But, the fascinating aspect to me is that the business requirements and the medical records solutions these companies will create, will have a uniquely Chinese feel.

This is not porting an existing medical records processing application over from the US marketplace. Rather, China's unique environment will require careful upfront planning to make new medical records solutions practical, maybe even more so than other industries like telecom or manufacturing. The "combination of Western and Chinese treatments" is something not seen in most of the medical records applications built in the West. Additionally, the Chinese market is not homogeneous. Unless the end goal is only to improve the hospital technology in larger Eastern cities, other facts will need consideration. When doing the initial analysis and requirements gathering, the ability to deal with differences in language (Cantonese, Mandarin), character sets (Traditional Chinese, pinyin, etc), and cultural understanding (Han vs. Manchu vs. Uighur) could be included as part of the any design.

However, the most important factor required for success in modernizing Chinese healthcare might simply be standardization. The kind of clear guidelines and collaboration by players like IBM, et al to help guide industry as it grows. If not, technology silos lacking ideal interoperability will inevitably grow from the current "gold rush". Even with the talent that the aforementioned technology companies bring to the table, China may feel the same fragmentation pain in digital solutions that the US is experiencing. It's a potentially lucrative market for the biggest players in healthcare records management software, but there appears to be a great benefit to a unified approach now. Unfortunately, the Chinese government may already be in a catch up mode to make that happen.

The benefits of Agile Project Management...on my house

2010-08-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

Prior to my wife and I purchasing our first house, we talked extensively about our individual appetite for remodeling. If you rated us on a scale of 1-10, I would have been in the 1-2 area with her being closer to an 7-8. Whereas we both wanted to avoid it if all possible, I was hoping for a nice paint refresh, maybe an easy floor wax or other seemingly minimal effort. Against our better judgement, we found a house we really, really liked...with the potential for a lovely bathroom remodel. We both knew what it might entail, but we really liked this house. And since we were already 45 houses into our search...that's 45 we actually went to and physically examined...we decided to take the plunge. I mean, how bad could it get, right? Famous last words.

Now that our remodel is over, I can easily tell why everyone warned me about the slippery slope that is a house remodel. I had heard horror stories and was familiar with the 80's classic Money Pit with Tom Hanks where two weeks becomes not only a familiar refrain from the contractor, but also brings the protagonist in the movie closer to insanity. Two weeks at a time. But through this process, I was reminded of the benefits that I typically remind my client's about during software development methodology projects.

Two specific areas that resonated as similar to my frequent software project management role were 1) financial and 2) scope management. These areas of concern for software projects managers can often be a source of great pain. In a typical Waterfall style software project, these tasks include initial budgeting and scope definition, ongoing cost management, change requests and tracking tasks to completion. In each of these, a more traditional Waterfall approach prevents complete visibility into what's complete, what's in flight, and what are the real consequences of adding a "third light sconce" to the bathroom. There's a distance that project managers start to feel as their insight and knowledge is only as strong as the data provided by the actual doers of the work. Project plans, time tracking systems, status reports, etc.

But by staying close to the project in a more Agile approach on my house and through incremental reveals of actual progress, I was able to guide my contractors along the way. I could track the budget in more discrete chunks and understand from a scope perspective, where we needed to adjust or change tact. As in a more Agile software engagement, I could make quick decisions and re-prioritize in conjunction with my wife, the de facto customer in this analogy. Finally, I was able to iteratively facilitate such discussions with the contractors, and manage at a level of detail that benefited the whole process and increased the level of trust amongst all of the stakeholders. These are benefits that any software project manager who is used to a Waterfall approach can definitely appreciate.

8 billion on red

2010-08-23T14:33:00.000-07:00

I've had a few days to digest the acquisition of McAfee by Intel...and I still can't figure out the "why" behind this acquisition. I've read several articles that state it's for higher margins (which I get) and potentially faster chip performance (which I don't). Maybe I'm missing something, but this looks simply like Intel grasping for a high margin leading edge software company. But unlike IBM, or even HP, Intel has always been a hardware company. No services organization to speak of. And these companies have little in common in terms of how their products are produced or even their location in the life cycle of a computer. Chips are more start up stream and McAfee is applied as part of the imaging process for some PCs or after market, as part of a consumer's retail purchase.

I'm not saying this is a complete gamble, but I really can't see clearly how they make any integrated value appear. Unless you embed more security code in the chip itself...which I'm sure is very likely for the bargain basement price of $7.7 billion for McAfee's red. This reminds me more of the promised synergies during previous acquisition booms. Not nearly as complimentary as something like Dell with Perot or HP and EDS.

Can anyone else explain this to me?

New Release for Netflix = More USPS fallout

2010-08-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

This is not good news for the USPS...but it's good news for Netflix users. Netflix just signed a deal with a consortium of movie studios that increases Netflix's access to 46% of newly released movies. And with that, the USPS will start to see a fairly significant chunk of their $600 million cash cow decrease.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, Netflix management has tried to use this large chunk of cash currently paid to the USPS for awhile now. Apparently, the studios finally understand that the 3D/IMAX hysteria which has ballooned Hollywood revenues will not continue indefinitely.

53 man roster

2010-08-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

For any of you that are football fans, the opening of training camp and the beginning of preseason is most likely earning some of your attention. Football teams are engaged in the annual event of evaluating talent, pushing themselves during grueling workouts and making plans for the upcoming regular season. Unproven players are engaged in a battle to not only make the 53 man roster, but hopefully earn some playing time and the most talented of these newbies often serve to push older veterans to step up their game. Star performers or not. And if you're lucky, the young upstarts serve to deepen your ongoing bench for the long grueling season.

A similar phenomena often occurs when companies begin to hire new talent (new college grads, experienced professionals) coming out of an economic downturn. This is especially important for those companies that begin to hire for roles in technology, since management is constantly looking for technology and process improvement to squeeze out more profits. With stable employment at a premium, a significant number of talented technology professionals have been patient and tried not to rock the boat in the last 24 months. But as the recovery gains legs, young labor movement will most likely become more fluid.

Although my Thought Ensemble teammate Jim Smelley blogged that global IT spend will not recover as quickly as it dropped, it's interesting to wonder how the continued recovery will begin to play out with corporate IT hiring. Will companies choose to hire less experienced, cheaper talent to keep costs down as they ramp up resources on any new work/projects? Furthermore, will there be a significant movement of folks in the 4-7 year range that have been dissatisfied with their current employers, but are talented enough to pursue other opportunities? These are the people that often serve to deepen your young management bench.

To date, I've personally seen a lot of movement at the more senior levels of IT management (VPs, CTOs, CIOs)in the last 2 months. This might be something of a predecessor for new strategic planning activities within IT departments. Similar to a coach being hired by an NFL team, new IT executives bring new energy and new philosophies, and possibly, their favored "players" from previous teams. If the analogy holds, this might indicate that technology hiring would start to tick up as these newly established IT executives settle into their roles and begin to finalize their new playbook. Another interesting part will be how these executives ramp up their spending on offshoring and contractor/consulting services, often used as a way to maximize results with a lower fixed cost. And how this will all of this impact incumbent staffers? Will they get on board and step up their game or look for their own opportunities to move upwards and out?

I'm not willing to go against the analysts predictions in terms of the speed of the recovery, but it does appear from what I've seen that their could be some significant 53 man roster shuffling in the next 12 months or so.

Data usage iceberg

2010-08-02T14:42:00.000-07:00

In previous blog, I rambled on about smartphone data plans and the movement of big providers to more tiered pricing services.

And then while dorking out today, I read an article about the exponential rise in data consumption in the NY Times technology section. For folks who want more clarity as to the realities for carriers, network hardware providers and the inventors working furiously to create new smartphone technology, this article is a good place to start. The two quotes that got my attention were as follows:

the monthly data flow will increase about sixteenfold by 2014
software that lets operators screen out 75 percent of the digital pulses, or “heartbeats,”

When listed separately in other articles about smartphones and data usage, they don't mean as much. But when you start to understand the totality of what has been created since the first iPhone rolled out in 2007, it becomes a tremendous challenge going forward. All of the stuff (think apps, features/functionality) that is currently on your smartphone is running in the background and sending signals to the provider of the software. Most of us only interpret the data usage from the most obvious things that we use. Web browsers, email, etc. The stuff at the tip of the iceberg. But, the stuff occurring below the surface is likely more substantial. Mobile apps are often "free" because the provider, let's say Urbanspoon is collecting data about your usage and location. Even native apps like the iPhone camera are now asking for permission to collect location data and sending it back to Apple whenever it gets a chance.

If you have a iPhone 4, try double clicking the circular button on the front. You will be shocked at how many apps that you used once in the last week continue to run under the covers. All of the communication activities, pings, data transmissions that are occurring add to the data needs that providers are forced to accommodate. As apps on both smartphones and tablets/iPad type devices become even more prevalent and fundamental to how people use smartphones, you realize it's not going to get better. I'm afraid it's going to get worse in the near future till the carriers can re architect the backbone of their networks with more powerful and flexible technology.

Early christmas gift idea, if you're wondering

2010-07-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

Since I bought my iPad in May, one of "killer" apps that I had looked for is one that allows the iPad to become a universal remote. See, I'm like every other guy in America that ends up with a myriad of remotes sitting on my living room table or end tables and the couch. I have remotes for the DVR and Cable box, the TV, the DVD, and the stereo receiver, etc. My wife hates the clutter and to be honest, so do I. Although I've used the fancy digital touch screen remotes, I've always struggled with the real benefit to buying something that cost $250 plus just to be an uber remote. Even the guy that installed my TV suggested a nice brand that I should check out as he noticed the remotes piling up in my living room.

Prior to get the iPad one of my clients said about his iPad, "it's the coolest gadget in my living room". With that in mind, I hoped one of the first apps that installed would be able to fix my remote control quandary. I searched extensively on the app store and on the internet, but alas, all I could find were apps provided in connection with a service contract and another piece of hardware in my living room. Again, it's a nice to have and I don't need it that much.

But now Christmas may come early according to this Journal article. If one of these companies can figure it out and resolve the glitches noted in the review, shopping for me will be easy. And the iPad will really become the coolest gadget in MY living room.

IKEA's Beauty and its Beast

2010-07-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

I appreciate the utility of IKEA. It's a great business model, the products are solid, if not above average in terms of quality and customer's appreciate the "beauty" it provides. Its products are an epiphany for people who want utility at a reasonable price point. The easiest products range from baskets, to curtains, to other low tech storage items that require little if no assembly with price points that are reasonable when compared to other retailers. And there's the overall experience. Who wouldn't want to cruise through some of the largest retail stores in the world on a Saturday afternoon and then be rewarded with Swedish meatballs? I mean come on, there's even homemade cinnamon rolls.

But there's another side of IKEA, that if you've never experienced it, could decrease your overall assessment of IKEA's utility. It's the insidious larger furniture items that take hours and personal stress to assemble. You know, the ones with more pieces that can be a beast to deal with. The ones that look almost too good to be true. Not bed frames with limited assembly or parts, rather things like larger armoires, funky desks and other kitchen storage units.

Case in point was when I assembled a kitchen cart for the new house. It has wheels, a large cutting surface and even hooks to hang our new pans. After spending about an hour and a half assembling, and almost completing the task, I realized the wooden side pieces were not going to fit. I tried several different methods of loosening and adjusting, even asking my wife to help. Still no success. After spending at least another hour + trying to solve the issue, I finally called IKEA. Their advice was to bring it back to the store and have their customer service staff do a quality review of the product. I packed up a half finished product and returned for my second cinnamon roll of the weekend.

Back at the store, they determined the same thing that I had figured out...the parts didn't fit. However, they couldn't guarantee that it wasn't simply a design flaw in the item itself. Their new offer: take another one home and try again. If it works, great. If not, bring it back for a refund. At this point, I've spent almost 8 hours dealing with IKEA and it's products over the weekend. I decided to try it again. Maybe my Irish luck would pan out. WRONG. Same issue with the second one indicated it was a design flaw and not my construction ineptitude at play. Now I have an 90% finished kitchen cart with two options. Take it back or make it work. Luckily my contractor was at the house this time. A short cut (literally) with the circular saw and the pieces now fit.

Again, the prices on such items are typically below market and appear at least from what you see at the store, to be of above average quality materials and construction. And IKEA's brilliance is to convince you that yes, you get this amazingly quality at a low price, with the tradeoff being your time and resources required to assemble such items. I've assembled several decent size furniture products from IKEA as as well as ones from Best Buy, West Elm, Target, etc. So though my friends would tell you, I am not handy nor really enjoy building things, I can follow directions and typically complete these types of furniture exercises. However, my recent experience with IKEA products led me to this conclusion: Those sneaky Swedes have figured out how to sell us products that if not perfect, we are the ones that adapt and adjust. Try that one in your chosen profession!

My new IKEA utility equation will be something like this...

IKEA Price + (my hourly cost * (assembly time + travel time) ) + additional labor/tools required to make it work - adapted and adjusted expectations + cinnamon roll cost (i.e., monetary cost, workout time needed to burn off additional calories) < = Price at any pre assembled furniture store

And apparently I'm not alone.

Facebook is my friend

2010-07-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

I created a Facebook profile almost 7 years ago while in grad school. And I would have to say, my usage patterns have definitely changed over time as the site has added more features and real time capabilities to keep users connected. I use it to post updates and pictures, send birthday messages, plus keep up to date on the comings/goings of all of my closest 1000+ friends. I even use it to communicate updates to my blog. So yeah, Facebook is part of my daily life.

But I spotted two articles recently that made me ponder how others perceive Facebook:

The first was an older article in the WSJ Technology section. From this author's perspective, Facebook is NOT her friend anymore. I know it's an old article but Facebook's recent privacy changes and hiccups that in the last 6 months bring this author's point into focus. And while attending a wedding two weekends ago, I thought of a forward looking situation where I think the article is even more pertinent. The increase in the number of infants with photos, images and even full profiles that have been created. Talk about invasion of privacy! I'm not against the activity, I just don't think we fully understand the societal implications of posting John Smith Jr's pictures starting at the age of 2 days. These kids will have digital profiles right out of the womb, and Facebook will inevitably begin to utilize that data for advertising revenue. Which leads me to the second article I noticed.

The article discussed Facebook's status in the bottom 5% of companies surveyed for overall customer satisfaction. Though Facebook is about to cross 500 million users, the article notes that "privacy concerns" caused it to score much lower than researchers would have suspected. To be honest, Facebook has shown itself to be different than we all would have suspected 5+ years ago. Personal data and user activity that can be sold to their advertising partners is the key to its existence. And I'm not sure if we can do anything about that...it's the price to play Farmville I'm afraid.

But regardless of your Facebook usage, it definitely should be something to consider as you post pithy one line statuses. Someone else is reviewing your comments, analyzing your usage and uploads, digitizing their importance and inevitably creating a digital profile of you that can be monetized. For some Facebook participants, it just starts earlier than we ever thought possible.

Back in the blog saddle, with my iPhone 3GS

2010-07-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Starting back with my blogs, post a well deserved vacation. I found this gem in regards to a fix it for the Apple iPhone 4 metal frame and antenna issue.

http://www.cultofmac.com/pr-experts-iphone-4-hardware-recall-is-inevitable/50565

During my week plus away from the blogosphere, I talked to quite a few iPhone users while on my vacation. All of them asked the same things: Have you installed the new software and do you like it? And are you going to buy them new iphone? My respective answers were yes and not yet. I haven't heard one release from Apple that I believe, yet, about this signal strength issue.

I'm starting to think that a recall might be necessary...

On a brighter note, who would have thought that my AT&T service would have been superior to Sprint and Verizon in Cape Ann, MA!

Check yourself, in

2010-07-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

In a previous blog or two, I ranted about Twitter (still don't get the intrigue!!) and it's eminent demise. Then the World Cup came and made me look like a fool...well, even more of one. And I've also mentioned the rise of geo location apps (Foursquare, Gowalla, EchoEcho) and that I really haven't been hooked to those either. I would say I'm more low tech using Facebook and maybe text to communicate my whereabouts.

But yesterday, I came across a great article about the motivations for people to use check in. The main conclusions indicated that tracking one's own personal history, tracking friends, and finally the game aspect to most of the apps available, carried the majority of people's reasons for participation. However, the best part of the article was a graphic provided by BitsyBot Labs that I wanted to share. The results are pretty interesting yet also confirm what I've seen on my friend's Facebook postings; folks advertise where they eat and drink the most.

It's a community thing. It's the neighborhood, or familial closeness of the experience. You want to be with your friends when you share in the satisfaction of a great burger or a better after-work cocktail. That's why Cheers resonated with 95% of America. If you've seen the YouTube videos of scenes at American bars immediately after Landon's 91st minute goal last week, you know what I'm talking about. And now, the internet box, mobile app, etc has provided all of us the opportunity to broaden our immediate "neighborhood" to include long lost friends or work colleagues wouldn't traditionally get in touch with us to see where we are going to dinner or drinks

So maybe I will never embrace the geo app phenomena, but after the week I'm having, I promise to do a low tech check in.

When Updates happen and Auto Recovery Goes Awry

2010-06-24T03:28:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I blogged about my split personality of using a Mac to run Windows. Whereas I've become more accustomed to the nuances that this introduces to my work day over the last 9 months, I'm still adjusting to some of the more annoying aspects. One of those that I've recently experienced is when both OSs want to do an upgrade. In both situations, I always get the feeling that things start to slowdown and get quirky if you postpone the updates for too long a period.

In Win 7, the folks in Redmond have provided a nice little utility which constantly pops up warning you that there are updates that need to be installed. As anyone with Windows OS running (so 90%+ of the world's PC users) can attest to, the frequency can be anywhere from once a week to once a month. The update tool informs me that an upgrade is required and then prompts me to either accept or postpone. Don't get me wrong, I definitely want to make sure my Windows machine is running effectively and securely, but inevitably the reminder pops up just about the time I'm trying to finalize a client deliverable or send that critical email before I run off to a meeting.

However, because of my unique situation, I get the "benefit" of having to watch as both Mr. Gates AND Mr. Jobs' inventions hold me hostage. And sometimes within the same time period. The Mac updates are definitely less frequent, though not much less annoying. I'm prompted via the bouncing system icon that something needs to be updated. If it's iTunes, I might wait...but if it's my Java Run time environment, well by god, I'm going to update it.

This brings me to my recent experience...earlier this week, the perfect storm of OS upgrades happened. I was prompted by both my Windows and Mac OS that I needed to install significant updates. Unfortunately I was knee deep in client PowerPoint slides and decided to wait. Several hours and reminders later, I decided to save my current drafts and restart Windows. At which point, PowerPoint hung...and hung....and hung...as my MacBook strained to save the most recent copy of my important deliverable. 3-4 minutes later, with PowerPoint stuck in an endless loop, I decided to do a hard close. In my mind, I thought, "oh, Auto Recovery will save me". Famous last words I suppose. Once restarted, PowerPoint did auto recover a draft of my document...from four hours earlier. Or approximately the time the first Win 7 OS update warning popped up. After cursing my luck (PG version of the events, for sure), I shutdown Windows and my Virtual Machine, then allowed Mac to update as well. Around 20 minutes later, I started to recreate my work. Frustration seething.

Now, is it my "fault"? Maybe. Am I running a non standard OS setup? Most definitely. But the key to me is what I learned. I can't really depend on Auto Recovery. No matter how many times it has worked in the past. Especially when I might encounter updates from both parts of my split PC personality. Nor should I ignore the update warnings. Because when I do, inevitably, something goes awry.

Besides, it's probably a good thing to disconnect, get up and go for a walk.

Twittering, Tweeting, and Scoring some downtime

2010-06-17T07:35:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that I think that the popularity has waned...just based on what I hear, read and have seen from friends, I don't see it being the end all be all Social Networking tool that others might think. In fact, I went ahead and stated that on a previous blog questioning it's long term viability.

Well, maybe I need to put my foot in my mouth on this one. Apparently the rest of the world is "disagreeing" with me on a scale that Twitter can't keep up with, at least on the mass amount of usage that the quadrennial World Cup in South Africa is producing. Twitter has been down for an extended period of time recently and their engineers are all chalking it up to the spike in traffic and difficulties in troubleshooting their infrastructure.

It appears that for now, I might have exaggerated Twitter's demise...I'll check back AFTER the World Cup.

Skills that Pay the IT bills

2010-06-17T06:09:00.000-07:00

While reading an IT related website, I found an article that intrigued me. The author provided a list of 10 what he called "must have" IT skills for IT professionals in their day to day jobs. The list:

1. Troubleshooting

2. PowerShell and Scripting

3. Networking and Interoperability

4. Virtualization

5. Wireless

6. Disaster Recovery

7. Security

8. Database Administration

9. Desktop Imaging

10. Helpdesk (People Skills)

What struck me about this list is it's basically everything and the kitchen sink in terms of IT skills, processes and practices. And for someone who's worked with people across this spectrum of roles, I would be hard pressed to name any one person I've ever met that knew more than a little about all of these things. #1 and #10 (Troubleshooting and Help Desk/People skills) seem to have the most potential for a common attribute. Although, you could argue that IT professionals often struggle with people skills.

But for the other eight items, it just seems like an odd collection of different skill sets and knowledge bases. It would be unusual to find a person who is a Networking expert who also can talk eloquently about Database administration. True, it might be great to have this rare combination available for projects. However, uber technical generalists are rare. For those of you not in IT, think about a career like Finance where you have everything from Investment Banking, to VC, to Private Equity, to Commercial Finance, Trading, Risk, etc. Although many of the concepts can carry across, each specialty really takes a different set of knowledge or skills.

If you think back to my blog on shims, IT generalists typically evolve because they go 10 miles wide and 2 feet deep in terms of their organization and IT systems knowledge, plus they have a very strong people/org skill anchor to help solidify their unique role. Often times, a shim departed from a technical track earlier in their career (maybe into an analyst or Project Management role). But in most IT organizations, the most technically apt workers are ofter split into a IT specialty early in their career. Or it could be based on their educational background, e.g., electrical engineers become networking experts. IT consulting might be the only place where you can learn a little bit of everything. Even then, consulting companies would prefer you have one specialty so you can be always be staff-able.

I'm not saying people would NOT want to have a "must have" uber generalist like the author describes, I'm just not convinced that it's even close to a realistic goal.

How to avoid the Yips when WiFi fails

2010-06-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

I'm sure everyone's seen news breaking about the iPhone 4 today. In what can described as the Apple "show and tell", June has become Steve Jobs favorite month to launch new products. The past several years have seen each generation of iPhone launch with the beginning of Summer. And Mr. Jobs is at it again with what looks like a great product.

The annual events have become coveted experiences, with eager journalists and technorati clamoring for early gossip and seats to witness greatness. The presentations are rehearsed and practiced for everything down to the order of apps and features that will be reviewed each time. Steve Jobs typically serves as master of ceremonies with his standard, black turtle neck, blue jeans and tennis shoes look. But today, the seemingly always prepared Apple had a little blip...actually, a fairly significant blip in Mr. Jobs' keynote. It was a failure not of the product being demo'ed but the WiFi that was being used to support it. Imagine your WebEx session crashing. Or better yet, your iPhone hanging up on a conference call (AT&T Call Failed anyone??!!). Instead of 10 people, however, the WiFi failure was witnessed by hundreds on location and millions more via the social networking media.

In my blog last week on the odd occurrence of the yips, I pondered what a similar situation might be for more knowledge type work. And I used the scenario of a salesman presenting to a client audience. At what is basically a huge sales opportunity for the iPhone 4, the legendarily anal retentive Jobs seemed to shake it off. He overcame what could be considered his most basic flaw or professional achilles heel: hating to NOT have control. If I was in the audience, I would have thought he would blow a gasket and lose his tempter. At least some caustic comments to his tech support team. But overall, he showed humility and a decent sense of humor. You still sense the awkwardness in the crowd though instead of succumbing to his own case of the yips, Jobs merely redirected and lived to fight at another demo.

Have you ever had the yips?

2010-06-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

This story has been making the rounds in local Dallas media (radio/TV/print) for the last few weeks, but now many national outfits are tagging on.

A highly touted Texas Ranger is stuck back in the minors but as opposed to most minor leaguers, it's not his bat keeping him out of the majors (He's hitting .339). No, this former superstar catching prospect with the Texas Rangers (Jarrod Saltalamacchia) is struggling with a seemingly simple part of his work...throwing the ball back to the pitcher. Most catchers would characterize this as second nature and something that is so repetitive, you could do it with your eyes closed. But Salty is struggling with errant throws to the point where people are calling it a case of the yips. In an effort to overcome his struggles, he sought out a sports psychologist and even changed his throwing mechanics.

I was struck by this unusual situation for two reasons:

1) What is the corollary for a more white collar job or someone in the Information Age? Yips are typically associated with golfers or baseball players who begin to struggle with the simplest actions in their respective sports. Think of a golfer who can't make a two foot putt. But what about for a sales person? Or a banker or even a consultant? Is there a similar affliction?
2) Not only does Jarrod have to go through this odd mental/physical obstacle, but he also has to do it in front of thousands of people on a nightly basis. The strain of focusing NOT to have the yips has to be exhausting. Especially for a guy who was highly touted coming up and is polished in so many other ways in terms of his craft. If you apply the same logic to a job like auditing, how would an auditor handle being observed by 10-15 people at a time while he/she struggled to perform a simple inventory count.

There's some very interesting psychological concepts at play here. And even if Jarrod wants to break free from the yips, he is under so much external weight that it would seem to build upon itself and never relent.

Here's hoping that this hugely talented individual snaps out of it and he settles back into his chosen career of catching. Lucky for him, there's almost always room for a .340 hitter in baseball.

Data sipping vs. Data chugging

2010-06-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

Are you in favor of tiered pricing for data plans with the iPhone? Apparently AT&T is.

AT&T plans Data caps

If you're a power user of your iPhone's 3G data capabilities, get ready for some changes to your service. And be aware that it could cost you if you don't understand how much data you use. That's right, not just emails and attachments, think more clearly about the times you open Facebook, YouTube, ESPN, WSJ and anything else with dynamic content. All of that adds up to data usage and in turn network strain for AT&T. In some situations, it also means an additional revenue opportunity that they're currently passing up.

I read this rumor a few months ago, but AT&T claimed they were not ready to change their data terms as of yet. They were building additional capacity in big markets (NYC, SF, etc) to deal with the dropped calls and poor data performance frequently referenced in my blog and others. And with the launch of the iPad's unlimited data for $30, I figured there would be a moratorium on any specific changes for at least the first 6 months. Apparently, that thought was wrong. The changes will not effect WiFi usage, but even the new $30 iPad 3G plans have the potential to be tweaked. Overall, the company hopes to stratify there data users and I'm assuming, also get someone to "pay" for the additional infrastructure cost that Apple's products are forcing.

So check out your next AT&T statement for your data usage. Here's praying your a sipper and not a chugger. For those that know me, I bet you can wager a guess to which group I belong...

Apple takes a bite out of the competition

2010-05-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

I know things have changed dramatically in the world of technology over the last 10 + years. As a consultant in the industry, I see those changes both in the actual technologies available today versus the early 2000's and the former big boy technology companies struggling to survive in the ever growing space (e.g. Sony). But, I noticed an article in the Journal yesterday that really made me consider the gravity of some of the shifts.

Apple recently passed Microsoft as the most valuable technology company in the world. This may seem more a by product of a soaring stock valuation and consumer paranoia about iPhones/iPads/Apps, etc. But, it also says something about a company and desire to innovate new products that consistently amaze consumers. Maybe I'm not a typical consumer, but as of 1999, I had less than 10 friends who consistently used Apple products. Now, they're everywhere. And I would have never bought a Mac...now I use a Mac for work, an iPhone for chat, and several iPods for play. Microsoft is still a titan its own regard with the Win-opoly and Office suite products, but since Apple was almost bankrupt just over a decade ago, it's a much more interesting story in terms of a reborn technology giant.

It will be interesting to see what the next 10 years bring...

Taking a Census of your Requirements

2010-05-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

As many of you may know, the 2010 US Census is in full effect. The first round of mail in submissions was due in late April, but since then, a small army of census workers (around 650k from what I read) has been tasked with walking home-to-home and delivering the census firsthand to residents. Whether you live in a more urban setting in the NE or a more Sunbelt Suburban sprawl, you've likely seen the census army patrolling your neighborhood as they gather population data. And you might also see them congregate in neighborhood meeting places like Whole Foods or Starbucks to discuss "tactics" and aggregate their results (sorry for the blur...I'm apparently not good at being a super spy with my iPhone camera).

Of course this process is a good thing and is a necessary task (at least in my mind) to effectively understand the makeup of your citizenry in a democracy. Everything from counting the total number of people in a given city or state and the cultural breakdown of those people, to allocating federal funds. What you might not know is that the cost of this particular effort approaches $15 billion. Think about the total cost for a second...this is a massive undertaking not to mention that the estimated cost is a 70% increase over 2000's. In an effort to keep the costs down, the government was hoping to match or exceed the 2000 mail in response rate of 72%. Every percentage point above that threshold amount decreases the tax payer cost by approximately $85 million.

There is some irony in this low tech, mail in and army approach though. And its a relatively unpublicized story that resonates with my IT consulting mind. The government tried without success to implement a more automated approach with an outside agency. It was supposed to involve advanced hand held devices, automated data uploads and basically increase the overall productivity for the effort. But the project cratered and plans were significantly scaled back. There's been a lot of finger pointing as to the reason for the failure, but it appears to boil down to three things that I see frequently in large IT projects:

Poorly defined and understood requirements
Untested technology
Organizational resistance or inability to deal with change

The government and their outside partner (Harris Corp) 10 years to pull off a new "high tech" counting process for the 2nd census of the new millennium. That's a long time in terms of project months and man hours. If I told my client they had 10 years to bring a product to market, I think they would give me a medal. If not planned or scoped correctly though, that timeframe gives organizations a false sense of security. Weeks and months spent bickering about requirements turn into years. Then your timeline looks more aggressive and not only do technical obstacles look big, but the scope of organizational change and training/ramp up time starts to get scary. This is one of the reasons that many of my clients are using Agile iterative processes for product development and to set initial requirements. They want to start doing something productive, rather than spinning cycles on bureaucracy and bickering about very vague requirements. Of course their might be 400+ more requirements that are unknown on day 1, but Agile methods allow organizations to inevitably learn more about what they are building and adjust accordingly. Such fluidity is why someone like a Google and Facebook can roll products out in a quicker fashion than someone,...let's say the Government. Again, for every % point of increased efficiency via newer technology or mail in, and the government could have saved $85 million.

Although the census army will be using some new tech means (handhelds with GPS, etc), for now the low tech approach will still dominate the 2010 Census effort. So when you are at Starbucks, Panera or Whole Foods, don't be surprised if you see a group of people counting and sorting census what appear to be scantron forms. It may be 2010, but this census effort feels a little like 1985 to me.

Fortune 500 Websites

2010-05-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

If you've ever gone to a company's website and been undewhelmed by it's performance and the slowness of the webpages, graphics or animated flash loading, you'll enjoy this recently released report by Aptimizer. Aptimizer tested the load times for Fortune 500 websites and found out some interesting things...check out some of the big names on the first page. Past page 1, you start getting into some very "close" results. In general though, there's a lot of big names on that first section of results that you would think test/tweak this sort of thing regularly.

But, I still think it shows one of that even BIG companies with potentially big IT budgets, don't always actively test their website's performance. Or they add every AJAX, Flash or other Net 2.0 widget imaginable. And I know, the argument could be made that their performance suffers BECAUSE they are well known and frequently used company websites. However, if you were Coca Cola, Southwest Airlines or JP Morgan, regardless of your transaction volume, you would want to be where you belong with the best performers.

Jumping Innovation

2010-05-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

While waiting for some car repairs to be finished recently, I read an old Sports Illustrated from Fall 2009 in the waiting room of the dealership. It had a great article about Dick Fosbury. The article was actually an excerpt from a book called Something in the Air, by Richard Hoffer. For those of you who don't know who Dick Fosbury is or can't place a familiar name, I've attached the short video below.

Dick Fosbury basically reinvented modern high jumping. And although I was familiar with the basic history of the "Fosbury Flop", prior to reading this book excerpt I had no idea how mind blowing his achievement was in terms of completely changing a formal convention of the time. I mean, we hear about impactful people in science, politics, media, etc., but this guy's "flop" as it would come to be know is a complete inflection point in track and field.

The part of the article that struck me as most important is that he didn't just stumble upon the flop. He actually achieved it through innovation of his own actions. Improvement to the point where he could achieve more than he had before. In fact, the book basically calls him at best a C grade high jumper using the more accepted scissors or straddle style prior to changing his form. But in one afternoon of tinkering, in a formal track meet no less, he had increased his high jump height by 6 inches using what would become the modern flop. Think about that for a minute...that's half a foot. That's an extraordinary increase in terms of percentages in one day. We're talking years of training for people to increase performance outcomes to that extent. The equivalent to sprinter running a full 2- 3 seconds faster over a 100M race by just changing his method. And in one afternoon, through creativeness, grit and maybe a little luck, Dick Fosbury started to tear down an old way of thinking. Did I mention he was 15 when this occurred?!

It goes to show you where innovation can occur. It's simplest origins are based on an in depth understanding or yourself or a problem, perceiving the limits and constraints of that situation and searching for ways to get outside of those constraints and do things better. It took years for Fosbury's innovative high jump method to be more than a fad or an oddity in the track and field world. It actually took an Olympic gold medal for him to be more than a flop.

I can Palm an HP

2010-05-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

I'm fascinated with HP's acquisition of Palm. The Palm organization has truly been a roller coaster ride for the last 15 years. From early handheld hardware and OS darling, to trend setter in the world of wireless connectivity with their Palm Pilot series, to a "small" $1.2B acquisition almost as an afterthought for one of the largest technology hardware companies in the world. I was a big Palm believer until RIM stole my heart. I remember receiving my first Palm device, a Palm VII I believe, that was able to connect to a wireless network in 2000. The darn thing wasn't pretty with an extendable antenna and a monochrome screen, plus a bullet gray case, but the net speed wasn't bad at a time when most homes still had dial up. Many of my co workers and colleagues also were part of the Palm Army that served as early adopters of a technological advancement in calendaring and contact management.

Then my first smart phones were of the Palm variety. They were easy to use with basic productivity applications, and with a touch screen, keyboard and a stylus. So for multiple personality people like myself who can't decide which is better, it was a perfect compromise. Until of course, I lost that darn stylus. Plus the replacement. Up until a few months ago, my mom still carried a Palm phone device to keep track of her contacts.

The irony is, their technology is still damn good. If anyone has actually used a Palm Pre, their Web OS is slick and quite fast. Plus, they were generations before the iPhone OS in providing multi tasking and contact integration. A good friend of mine claimed last year that he had no use for an iPhone because a Pre did everything he needed and more from a smartphone perspective. That's big talk for a phone, that although was handicapped initially by it's launch on the third place Sprint network, nevertheless, still failed to gain additional traction when it finally made its way to the Verizon network.

But, for whatever reason this a technology company that could never find its way. Disregard the split between Handspring and Palm several years back, and then Palm's struggling business strategy. This company was always about building a quality OS for portable devices and integrating that with cutting edge hardware. It's in their DNA. However, the market has changed. Mobile Apps are the king now. A freakish combination of simplicity, content and lightweight social interaction which provides consumers a compelling experience. Plus, anytime connectivity and GPS enabled functionality. Though Palm's OS seemed to be a unique place for developers to target, the lack of market share discouraged app developers from spending too much of their resources on such a small potential market. Why do something for the WebOS when you can do Apple or Droid?

I read recently that Verizon was planning to drop the Palm OS phones from it's lineup due to lower than expected sales. So if one of your biggest potential markets goes bye-bye, I understand the desire for an exit strategy. Prior to HP snatching them up, there were also rampant rumors about Motorola or Dell bringing them in house because of their lack of successful phone options. Dell seemed to make sense as they don't have an in-house capability nor a presence in mobile phones. Hopefully as a part of the HP flock, Palm technology can bring back some of it's brilliance. I really did love that Palm VII.

iPads in the wild

2010-04-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

If you haven't been to an Apple store since the release of the iPad, you should definitely make the trip so you can experience these things in the "wild". Assuming of course, you have reasonable driving access to a store. If not you're missing out...on a trip to the Genius Bar to fix my MacBook Pro this past Monday, I was able to finally touch the revolutionary tablet and get a better idea of what the hysteria is all about. And my first impressions, Johnnie wants one. Seriously, I was already pretty amped up about it but after spending 5 minutes going between apps and different features, I realized I need to order mine now. I had decided to wait for the 3G release, but actually testing one wanted me to forego restraint and pull the trigger. Luckily I'm buying a house this month, so other things come first.

Seriously though, I will order my 3G iPad this week. I probably will not go for the 64GB, as that's just overkill. The 32GB is most likely sufficient. One of the Apple guys shared with me that they've actually sold quite a few of the 64GB WiFi capable, but his thought is that those early adopters just wanted to buy the best and the baddest. And the price point isn't bad. But on the 3G, now you're talking almost $900 for gadget that you don't even know how to use yet. I tend to agree, most people, unless they are the same type that dropped $999 on the most expensive app in the App store (since removed), will avoid the highest end because they just don't need the extra data storage. Or chose to use that money on a new flat screen TV.

Since my enticing trip to the Apple store, I've had two encounters with iPads in the wild: one a good friend of mine who bought a car last week at a local Dallas dealer. He commented that the finance guy was carrying around an iPad and using it to help the final Finance discussions. Using a combination of his spreadsheet based tools on his desktop and the Numbers software from the iPad, he was basically walking my friend through financing options. Remember, the iPad has been out less three weeks at this point. And people are already being creative about commercial applications of the product.

My second encounter was a more personal one. I was attending a networking luncheon that included Jerry Jones (Owner of the Dallas Cowboys, NFL) as the guest speaker. About 3 minutes into Jerry's speech, I noticed a person one table over using his iPad to check email. I realized that I was basically salivating and having a moment of iPad envy. The best part of it was that the guy next to me hit me on the shoulder and said "check it out". Several other people in the immediate area of that guys table were also drawn to the device. All with iPad envy. Let me be clear, the owner of maybe the most famous sports franchise in America is speaking at a luncheon that was not cheap to attend, talking about the lure of sports and how that allowed him to build a billion dollar stadium. And I bet 10-15 people's heads were on a swivel staring at this random guy's iPad. I'm sure the guy appreciated the attention, but we all were acting like the darn thing is a "rock star".

So when you see on the in the wild, show some constraint, but feel free to buy whichever model you want. In fact, I recant my previous statement. I'm going big baller 64GB rockstar model when I finally order mine. Why not, at least I showed some restraint the other day. I'll call it a housewarming gift to myself.

VS.

Adobe and the power of an Apple

2010-04-21T14:31:00.002-07:00

There's been another interesting technology spat in the news recently. Not China vs. Google, not even AT&T vs. Verizon. It's the Adobe software company (builds tools like Flash and Photoshop) versus Apple with its iPod/iPad product line. I noticed a few articles about this topic last week, but the rhetoric between the two techie giants is definitely increasing. And web developers are beginning to take sides. I found one internet article about the situation with 250 comments, plus several hundred Tweets and Facebook posts. Did I mention that article was posted today? Informative read at CNET for those interested.

Apple's announcement of the iPod v4 OS seemed to be a significant step forward for smart phone enthusiasts who love the all inclusive design of the Apple OS. People were happy about the inclusion of multitasking, thrilled with the creation of folder capabilities and generally intrigued by all of the bells an whistles included for the iPad (Books, iAd, etc) But, its release and accompanying new restrictions, are effectively sticking it to the Adobe Flash franchise.

Previously Apple had resisted supporting Flash as a web surfing technology via it's Safari browser. Now they basically included legal verbiage which appeared to consolidate their control and reinforce their rather closed operating environment. Apple's changes to the terms of service for the iPod SDK will preclude Adobe's Flash technology from being used to build Apps, web tools, etc, stating "only code written in C, C++ and Objective C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs". This locks Adobe out of a portion of the new mobile app game. Web and mobile developers that are anti Apple or more open source focused are up in arms because of this new ruling.

Obviously there are still opportunities in the Google Android, Symbian and Blackberry arena for those that want a more open environment, but Apple has leveled an early blow to Adobe's attempts to increase iPod/iPhone/iPad business opportunities. And it shows how far Apple has risen on the technology hierarchy in the last decade plus. From being pushed to the fringes and almost frozen out by Microsoft, open source communities and business or retail consumers alike, to making the rules in the new hardware and software world.

Masters-ing Sports and Technology

2010-04-07T10:10:00.001-07:00

The last few weeks have reminded me why I love technology.

On a daily basis, I deal with tough questions about technology processes, methodologies, strategies or even application decisions. Such questions are often analyzed, possibly over analyzed, and evaluated for their specific merits. Most times, these questions will have a direct impact to the success or failure of my clients' long term outlook. These are tough technology situations which can stretch your patience and when mixed with corporate bureaucracy, drain you personally.

But in my spare time, I use sports and technology to re-charge. A few adult beverages combined with a solid sporting event on TV and I'm set for several hours. Recently during those instances, I've really noticed more and more the impact that internet and TV technology has had on sports in the last few years.

Three weeks ago it was the start of March Madness with basketball games on non stop Thursday- Sunday. I remember 10+ years ago when I used to fill out a paper bracket, printed from the local paper to track my teams. Alternatively, an energetic colleague at work would create one in Word or Excel that I could use to participate in his March Madness pool. AKA he wanted me to "invest" some money. For the most part, I would fill out my one bracket, maybe two at most and I would often just copy the same content if I wanted to participate in another group.

A wealth of March Madness tools and real time updates at websites like ESPN or CBS Sportsline, etc, now provides me the ability to fill out numerous brackets, participate in multiple pools, and track my results on my iPhone. Facebook or Foursquare lets me know whether my friends are checking out the games at home, a bar or actually in Las Vegas at a sportsbook (which has become a popular Madness mecca). Plus, Facebook or other similar tools with news feeds provide me some insight into the elation and frustration my friends' are feeling (the KU loss was a perfect example of this) courtesy of an application on my phone. There's also streaming games on the CBS site which if you have a few minutes at work, can be found in just a few clicks. These advances may seem trivial, but the reality is that the newest web and even TV technologies have exponentially grown a person's ability to interact with March Madness. Even those with partial interest can create one bracket and put $5 into a pool. Then check a score between meetings.

Another event pushing internet and TV technology advances is the Masters golf tournament. In past years, if you wanted to see any of the tournament, your only option was a live TV feed from CBS on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. ESPN did open up the coverage a few years back with the the advent of Thursday and Friday coverage, but it was only available on TV. The basic premise is that it wasn't always easy to check real time scores for the tournament. Not to mention their website which had become cluttered and ill conceived. Now, the rapid advances in streaming web technologies and web tools is pushing what the Masters tournament can bring to its fans online. This year the Masters is rolling out a newer, slick and easy to use webpage. The new website provides real time video streaming of 4 rounds of action on the course, while making scores and players' information that people want to find, far more accessible. In addition, the Masters is taking a dip into 3D offerings. The tournament and its partners CBS, ESPN and Comcast introduced their plan for 3D broadcasts today. Both of these improvements bring traditional audiences closer into the action. It enlivens the mildly interested golf fan too. If a fan wants to see the undulations of Amen Corner, well heck, you can from the comfort of your couch.

Re-reading this blog, I realize that management type folks might think I'm introducing more potential time killing options at the workplace. In fairness, I'm not prescribing time killing behavior. I am only introducing my opinions about the new fangled technology used by these two sporting events. Again, advances like these are the ones that make remember why I love technology.

See legalese below.

ATTN: The writer of this blog neither supports nor condones wagering of any kind on March Madness, the Masters, or other like sporting event in states where gambling is prohibited. This includes participation in off shore, online sports betting technologies. In addition, the workplace is for work, not gambling and TV/internet watching. However, if you can make it to Vegas for the Masters this weekend, gamble on my friend. And check out the Wynn, I hear the accommodations are fantastic and they serve great adult beverages.

Why would you pay for it if you are not going to use it?

2010-04-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

In this Guardian UK article, there's some really interesting comments about happenings with 2010 World Cup online advertising. For some reason, the official sponsors who paid for exclusive advertising rights haven't taken advantage of their unique position to sell to online constituents.

The World Cup typically rivals the Super Bowl as the two most watched sporting events globally. You would think that official sponsors would try to leverage their position and utilize ad search terms to increase their brand presence and hit rate in connection with this quadrennial global event. But they are not, at least in the way modern advertising expects.

Are they playing the online ad game in a new way via social networking based ads? Or are they dedicating more to traditional advertising mediums. Whatever the case, their search term strategy is different than other big sponsors for events like the Super Bowl, March Madness and even the Masters have been pushing recently.

Netflix + iPad= Time Wasting Nirvana

2010-04-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

I didn't stop to think about all of the possible combinations. Maybe I've been too busy with work. Or just didn't devote the brain cells to what new Apps I hoped for when I ordered my new iPad. Or maybe I didn't think that it would be available so quickly.

With all of the articles over the last few weeks about the iPad and the potential for new Apps that exploit the combination of the larger, HD screen and the WiFi capabilities, it makes perfect sense. And the timing was even more fortuitous. I write a blog last week about Netflix and my extreme appreciation for the quality of their service. Voila! There's a fantastic new Netflix App available only to iPad users that's drawing rave reviews.

This could seriously reduce my coffee shop productivity once I pick up my new iPad. I also noticed a few online comment by iPad users combining inflight WiFi with the Netflix application. That's travel time wasting Nirvana as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, and please don't tell my colleagues or my clients. iPad pinky swear.

I just parked my car at the TOT, time to check in

2010-03-31T13:45:00.001-07:00

Can someone explain to me the Foursquare phenomenon? Or any of the other "location based" social networking applications that are gaining popularity. I know there's something to their ease of use and the pure sense of exhilaration that I'm missing. Don't get me wrong, I'm being a little sarcastic, but I'm actually intrigued by these services. Normally things like this annoy me. Just like Twitter, and Facebook and MySpace before that though, I want to be part of the fun times in Web 2.0.

More specifically, I'm really interested in how these applications pair GPS capabilities with smart phone features and I do think the location based utilities provide an interesting window on people's lives. You can gleam a tremendous amount of insight into the habits of people in larger cities. Marketing and sales organizations are jumping all over themselves for such consumer behavior information. And I see the game aspect too, in that everyone is clamoring to be the mayor or sheriff of a destination. That competitive notion is the same reason my wife is now playing Words with Friends consistently instead of watching the next house improvement show or I'm forced to hide countless Facebook feeds about Farmville and MafiaWars. People enjoy games even more when they are relatively free. But still, is that it for me personally? I get to be the feudal overlord of an online farm? At least tell me that I will make some cyber credits or get some discount coupons if I sign up.

I still haven't convinced myself of the personal value for signing in when I park my car at the mall to go to PinkBerry or stop for an adult beverage at the TOT. For those of you from Dallas, you know where the TOT is...so it's not the location part of it, rather is it so you know to join me for Happy Hour? I guess my friends might want to know when I stop at 24 Fitness to work on the guns, too.

I admit it, I'm a slow follower. Once I decide to do it and understand the personal benefits, I will be on it. And you shall call me Sheriff of the TOT.

But what if I want to watch Gigli on a Saturday?

2010-03-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite examples of a company that actually provides superb service is Netflix. It's a fantastic service, simplistic in both basic concept and execution. In terms of services that hit the mark, this is one that for the $10 dollars I spend per month, couldn't be better. I'm not completely sure I when I became aware of the little red envelopes that my friends had at their apartments, but I believe it was sometime in the early 2000's. It wasn't till a few years later in 2007 when I finally was "forced" to sign up. And I've enjoyed it ever since.

Today, I read several articles that indicated that the Postal Service's "5 day plan" to save their own operations, may actually cause serious strategic decisions for Netflix. This plan basically suspends operations on Saturday for the USPS and in turn, could put a big kink in the fluidity of Netflix's quick delivery model. If you've read my blog before, you know I am not a big fan of the USPS and it's declining service capabilities. Post "Office Space" is a good example of my sentiments.

Previous articles I've read point out that Netflix actually contributes up to $600 million in revenue to the Postal Service. That makes Netflix one of the Postal Service's best revenue sources. Some irony about this same $600 million is that the CEO of Netflix has previously used this as a carrot with the movie industry to prompt video streaming deals. Netflix hoped to diversify their delivery model by offering a large portion of its USPS postage fees, straight to the studios in terms of movie licensing revenue. Unfortunately, most movie companies have resisted and Netflix stuck it out with the USPS.

Now USPS's plans are forcing Netflix to make a decision. Stick with USPS and risk decreasing customer satisfaction or explore delivery alternatives which may increase their service costs and potentially pricing.

I'm just hoping that the USPS's issues don't impact the results of a good service company.

Showdown at the Google.cn Corral-Follow up

2010-03-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

Like I said...HK-ese open their arms. Beijing tries to shut it down.

"Welcome to Google Search in China's new home."...now stop trying to get around our filters. This will be a fascinating power struggle for months to come.

Showdown at the Google.cn Corral

2010-03-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

I planned to talk about iPads today or maybe even some technology strategy based on articles I read this weekend, but Google's recent news is too big to pass up at least commenting on.

It appears that Google is saying simultaneously "ni hao", plus "xie xie" and "zai jian" to different segments of it's Asian strategy and in fact, it's long term global vision. That's hello, thank you and goodbye in Mandarin. And Google will need a strong response to the market pundits and financial market to spin this as something other than an organizational stare-down gone awry.

By moving its Google.cn site to Hong Kong to escape the filtering firewalls and hacking perpetrated by Chinese authorities, Google has certainly drawn the ire of the communist machine in Beijing. Although Google.cn is a really small piece of current revenues, search revenue, mobile platform expansion and future access to the massive Chinese market is the bigger question left unanswered. How does this effect their future profitability? Google might get a small bump from global anti censorship and anti communist critics, but where do the go with this strategically? And how did the situation get so bad?

First the Communist government backlash. Let's be clear, these are people that don't like to be publicly humiliated. Chinese culture deeply values guanxi or connections and relationships as well as "face". Google has shattered both of these in their recent dealings with the Chinese government. When everything was first announced in January, I wondered if Google had already pushed the Chinese government into an untenable position with its citizenship. Now, it's clear the government will do something to take back "face" in the global community.

As for the move of the Google China webpage to the more moderate location of Hong Kong, this is even more interesting. After living in Hong Kong while in B School, I saw first hand the dichotomy of thinking that occurs for the Hong Kong-ese people. Although ethnically Chinese, they've grown accustomed to the freedoms granted by a century of British rule. Hong Kong will appreciate the additional prominence of being the alternate to mainland China where Google.cn can settle for a time. Hong Kong enjoys being a forward thinking, independent spirit in an otherwise closed People's Republic society. Nevertheless, if mainland politicos come in and try to squelch their internet independence and censor Hong Kong's internet filtering in reaction to Google's action, Hong Kong-ese will subtly push Google from their borders as well.

Maybe there's something else going on here. Google is managed by tremendously smart, experienced people. Though you have to wonder, is this Google's hubris at play? China's response will most definitely be an interesting read.

Can you shim like I shim?

2010-03-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

Perfect last week. Absolutely fantastic week as a consultant. I couldn't have asked for more in terms of productivity and effort, as well as fully engaged clients and high quality meetings.

And with all good meetings, there's something that pops out that I'm hooked on. In this case, it was a comment by one of my clients. During a conversation about organizational change and process changes, the word shim was introduced to define folks who serve an important organizational purpose.

M-W.com describes a shim as:

Main Entry: 1shim

Pronunciation: \ˈshim\

Function: noun

Etymology: origin unknown

Date: 1860

: a thin often tapered piece of material (as wood, metal, or stone) used to fill in space between things (as for support, leveling, or adjustment of fit)

In companies, such a role is often informally described as the utility infielder, special ops, or a jack of all trades. That person or persons that brings a unique skill set often combined with a personality or demeanor which allows them to float between teams/groups/projects, adding immediate value. There's no perfectly defined organizational role that describes the spectrum of what they do. He/she acts as a sort of glue that keeps the team and processes together. This teammate does all of the dirty stuff, plays a multitude of positions and does so without question AND at a high level of competency.

In technology shops, business analysts (BAs) are good examples of a role that might become a shim. Other real world examples might include Tony Phillips (MLB) from the 80's-90s with teams like the Tigers and A's. My colleague Lisa Breytspraak also mentioned a similar role in her blog about Michael Lewis' article, the No Stats All Star, Shane Battier being the example. This role's value is often difficult to quantify but you know it's there. Even more complex is how to position this essential role for long term success in the landscape of Corporate America.

Often times organizations deal with it in the short term, by putting the shim on the highest profile and most mentally stimulating projects. But how does this work in the long term? Better yet, how do you scale this kind of person? There's probably no perfect answer for these question(s). From a consulting perspective, we often play the role of shim for hire in the short term. We provide insight and objective opinion, bring a unique basket of skills to our client and generally try to serve as glue during projects (if we're doing our job effectively). However, we have no where near the organizational capital or knowledge of an internal shim.

There is an organizational design and role/responsibilities question that's interesting to consider. Do you create a team of shims and put this person in charge, do you attempt to train others in the art of shimming, or is that even possible? If not, do you risk losing your shim to another organization because of money or career opportunity? And how would you replace that mystery skill set? Every company loves their shims, but they don't always know how to keep them happy or engaged in the long term.

So definitely pay attention to shims. Show them some love. You don't want to lose them.

Is Twitter's bird slipping?

2010-03-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

I'm assuming most of my friends (techie or otherwise) have at least seen a Twitter account. This phenomenon grew faster than Facebook and was a media darling for most of 2009. I definitely frequented a few tweets 9-12 months ago when Twitter was heralded as the next big thing and every politician, athlete, news commentator or Hollywood type was creating daily posts. I just wanted to see what the hype was all about. And maybe become a participant myself. Plus, I know a few of my Thought Ensemble have Twitter accounts, but I have to be honest, I don't typically check those.

Yet in all of the Twitter build up, I never got over the hump and created my own. It just wasn't my thing; 140 characters of text limits my wordiness as anyone who has read my blog before can attest. Although the ease of posting via other tools (integrated web applications) definitely pushed me to strongly consider it, I didn't pulled the trigger. Now comes the announcement of the Twitter @anywhere initiative and the company's next attempt to capture a strong user following.

For those who haven't heard about it, this functionality was introduced as part of the South by Southwest Interactive conference recently held in Austin. It allows Twitter posts to be posted on mainstream websites (think CNN and Amazon) without ever going to the user's actual Twitter page. So I'm on Amazon, buying a book about Beating the House in Vegas Blackjack and I can tweet about it within Amazon. I sort of get that. However, I'm struggling to figure out what the heck it would help with. Or simply how Twitter hopes to remain viable with this seemingly tactical functionality?

I suppose Twitter is reacting to the fact that its users' average daily Tweet rate has dropped substantially. The @anywhere product might help stop that slide. And maybe they see it as a way to ensure their unique position as a data aggregation agent. Possibly working with large web retailers and news sources to create targeted marketing. Shared advertising revenue can be extremely profitable. Think a baby Google.

But I just can't see how this strategically allows what Twitter is today, or more to the point, what it became during 2009 to survive long term. The only thing I really can see as logical is that Twitter is losing it's clutch on users. Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social sites have integrated similar functionality and in some cases better "tweeting like features" in a very rapid succession. Not to mention the new breed of Foursquare and Gowalla which are starting to make noise in the social app environment. Unlike those sites, the degree of customer lock in is not nearly as present for Twitter accounts. It's a throw away 140 character sentiment, almost like a disposable tissue.

If I were Twitter investors and zealots, I would definitely not be happy about such a lame response to the industry shift. I'm afraid the bird's been caught by its VC brethren and it may not get away. The best Twitter fans might hope for is the lasting addition of tweet to the technology lexicon.

Pandora's spirit

2010-03-08T19:22:00.000-08:00

If you haven't heard the history of Pandora internet radio, you should check out this article in the NY Times. This is a fantastic short story about an enduring entrepreneurial spirit and a seemingly simple business model.

I can't imagine what the all-hands meetings were like, every two weeks. I would love to have been a fly on the wall as the founder (Tim Westergren) begged that his folks just hold out a litte longer to even get paid. It shows the unbelievable sense of trust that the founder's employees have in him. Of course, the original Angel investors and the first major VC guy should also be commended for believing in someone's dream.

And the ultimate "reward"... truffle infused kobe beef burgers. Not too shabby.

Two things

2010-03-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

My wife has this theory. She thinks that every time I want to make a point, I use the refrain, "two things". It's definitely a subconscious rhetorical device, but I can't lie, it's yet another convention I find myself using frequently. It applies primarily when I talk, but also many times when I write. In certain situations I may refer to it as "two parts", in some, a "few concepts". But in each situation, I use it to structure my argument. And believe me, there are many consistent devices that people use in consulting (re: my new lingo blog) to structure arguments. Especially in business strategy consulting. Enough to to sell millions of books, in fact.

I mentioned the Two Things concept to my Thought Ensemble colleagues the other day and they got a kick out of it. They indicated it's something they do as well and evaluated how prevalent it really was with our other friends and interactions. We discussed a few options as to why this happened:

1) Two is better than 1- There's something lonely about one point. It's either a loner bullet in written form or an A or #1 without a friend
2) Two is less troublesome than 3- When you are attempting to make a solid argument, it's really hard to come up with an option 3 and even 4

But I introduced another concept.

3) It's simply hard to remember anything more than two concepts when you're trying to make a point. And that's true for both the audience and the speaker. You may even have a problem processing that third item. Basic math, I guess. Three takes 50% more brainpower to remember when you're trying to make those points to your spouse.

Wait, what did you just say?

Post "Office Space"

2010-03-02T13:40:00.000-08:00

I just laughed out loud. Not a LMAO, but definitely a LOL. I just heard on CNBC that the new plan is to cut service on Saturday. Is it wrong that all I can think about is the gag in Office Space about coming into work on Saturday's?

Lawrence: We still goin' fishin' this weekend?
Peter Gibbons: Nah, Lumbergh's gonna have me come in on Saturday, I just know it.
Lawrence: Well, you can get out of that easily.
Peter Gibbons: Yeah? How?
Lawrence: Well, when a boss wants you to work on Saturday he generally asks you at the end of the day, right?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Lawrence: So, all you gotta do is avoid him... on the last few hours on Friday, duck out early, turn off your answering machine... you should be home free, man.
Peter Gibbons: That's a really good idea.

Some of you may remember my previous diatribe about the USPS (How Not to Run a billion $ business) It's traditionally been a poorly run, pseudo government entity which may or may not be essential in the modern day and age. The problem is it's burdened with legacy costs and filled to the nth degree with labor overhead. 600K employees at last count. Not to mention 4 major unions.

The hope is that moving to a 5 day service plan will help cut a significant piece of operating costs in the next decade. Again, something I covered in my previous blog about NOT providing a high quality service to customers. I understand the "why" in terms of why they need to do this. They are also estimating as part of their congressional planning that they will lose $238Billion over 10 years if they don't do something drastic to their business model. But I don't understand the "how" in terms of how management and the government for that matter, allowed it to get to that point.

Since my previous blog, I read a little more about the constraints that our government imposes on the USPS, that unlike other countries postal services, must stay in their nice little mail delivery box. Japan on the other hand allows their Posts to provide banks. And obviously, when your business model is predicated on a dying form of business (physical mail), I recognize that the inability to explore other revenue producing options creates painful choices. However, who was so asleep at the wheel for the last 50+ years to allow a pseudo government entity to reach almost a quarter of a million employees. That's huge! The number I mentioned above is even after 40K worth of layoffs in the last few years.

It's not like email and for that matter, faxes just snuck up on people. The growth of the internet was predicated on email expansion starting in the early 70's. Add to that the fact that UPS and FedEx have grown from out of relative obscurity in the same time frame to be the 800lb gorillas in shipping. And you're left wondering...how did someone not do some sort of market analysis on future opportunities for the USPS in the 80's/90's/00's?

This is a perfect example of a company that grew too big, too fat and too satisfied. Hundreds of years of corporate culture, cannot be undone quickly I'm afraid. It appears the USPS' executives and Congress were far to wrapped around the axle about TPS reports and spent a few too many Saturday's fishing, without keeping their eyes on business fundamentals for the last 30 plus years.

WiFi straight up, with an iPad twist

2010-02-26T19:00:00.000-08:00

It happened to me just yesterday, I figured out why Steve Jobs is smarter than me. Well, let's be honest. I guess I knew awhile back that he was more than likely smarter, as well as rich, successful and endorsed as one of the most innovative technologists of the last 30 years, but stay with me.

On a recent airline flight, I heard an exchange that made me understand how big the iPad will become. It seemed so easy; a passenger walks up to a flight attendant with an iPhone and asked for the "wireless password". The flight attendant misunderstood and muttered the basic "I'm sorry but you can only use that while we're on the ground, unless you put it in Airplane mode". Obviously, the flight attendant missed the true intent of the question. The passenger was asking about inflight wireless internet service which is being offered for a small fee on many domestic US flights. Unfortunately, it wasn't available on my flight. However, the brief exchange had me thinking. Will the Apple iPad and the growth of inflight WiFi fuel each other?

My colleague Jim Smelley has written multiple times recently about the iPad. He even created a nice comparison table to support his argument that the device will be a huge success. I was already starting to buy in to his perspective. I knew that it would definitely be an intriguing device and maybe even surpass the initial growth rates of the early iPods or even the iTouch. I was less convinced that it would match the growth of the iPhone growth rates for both the 2g and 3g version. But after traveling extensively for work the last two weeks, and seeing the number of people on flights actively using laptops or iPhones open for entertainment/work, I'm convinced Steve Job's new toy will blow the doors off of the previous Apple products. Especially the lower end version when paired with inflight internet.

I mean, it's perfect for airplane travel. Small, compact and a reasonably powerful operating system with a great screen and of course, the intuitive/easy interface that all Apple products posses. Plus it has a predicted battery life that's definitely at the high end of portable devices. Combined with the increasing number of airline carriers adding WiFi service, this will become a hugely popular tool for frequent business travelers.

I'm convinced that it will not just be embraced as a entertainment device for video, music, etc. on planes, but also for basic remote work productivity. It's size and portability, plus it's ease of use will definitely surpass the small netbooks and laptops running Windows that you currently see on the Monday morning and Thursday evening business flights. I was worried what people might do without Office products and the client version of Outlook. However, with the announcement of Office-like apps and the prevalence of the web based version of Outlook in most organizations, I've changed tunes.

In addition, I was especially interested in how it will change how people read books/periodicals while inflight and even the possibility of purchasing new magazines while on long trips. Or how it could help sales persons that want to read the most current internet articles about their target company. For comparisons, I saw one, yes only one, Kindle on my five flights in the last two weeks. I would really be worried if I was a Hudson book store manager at an airport. And even more worried if I was Jeff Bezos. The iPad and airline wireless offerings are coming for you.

So when you see me checking Outlook email on Safari and reading an issue of the Harvard Business Review from my iPad, don't be surprised. Mr. Jobs stirred it up.

AutoStitch my mind

2010-02-17T21:27:00.000-08:00

Ok, so if you're in consulting, you've probably encountered a situation where you spent a lot of time whiteboarding with your clients. Maybe it's some financial analysis, maybe it's the latest, greatest consulting model/framework or maybe you're simply trying to organize a group's thoughts. And in the end, you have a whiteboard full of info that you either need to transcribe to a productivity application (whatever you use, MS Office, Notepad, Memos, etc) or take a few pictures so that you can preserve it for later. The information contained on the whiteboard can represent hours of people's time and definitely a tremendous loss if someone erased it before it was documented.

A typical situation like this often involves the need to do this sooner than later because you are getting kicked out of the room or you're leaving for the day (beware of the nightly cleaning people) or even your team is leaving to catch a flight. With such time restrictions, many consultants now use digital cameras to capture the whiteboard scribbling for later use. I'm a big proponent of taking a picture even if you do have time to capture it via a Word Doc, for example. You never know when it might come in handy.

All of that said, the improvement in cameras available in cell phones has definitely increased the ease of such an action over the last two years. I now only have to pull out my trusty iPhone and snap some shots, then do a Sync when I have some time. For anyone else who's done this, I found a great little tool to help the "reassembly process". It's called AutoStitch and it's available for a few bucks on the App store. In the past, I would print all of the images and then stitch them together manually. AutoStitch allows me to get a head start on this before I even Sync the photos. I not saying it's perfect, but it gets me further with less effort and for $2, I will take back that time for things like Facebook.

Check out a picture from Philly. Three separate images. Stitched via the aforementioned app.

Fantastic Mash up

2010-02-17T08:33:00.000-08:00

If you haven't seen this on the New York Times website, you need to check it out. It's one of the cooler mash ups I've seen recently. Netflix Usage

The map displays the Netflix rental habits of 10 different, large metropolitan areas. Each is subdivided into Zip codes and reveals the top 10 movies rented by residents of those areas. It's fantastic and really insightful. The combination of very basic GIS data and Netflix users' rental frequency really gives you a window to the preferences of each area.

This is by no means a solid scientific analysis, but if you have a second, compare Dallas, 75204 to Chicago, 60611 (These are both areas that I've lived in personally) with NYC, 10003 and Miami, 33169 (both places where close friends live). I mean, I enjoyed Benjamin Button, but wow. It's on every list! That shows you how much draw Mr. Pitt actually has in terms of an audience. And the $$ made from his movies. No wonder they pay him close to $20 million each time he works. What's even more telling is that Chicago and NYC have more in common than my home zip in Dallas. Almost 100% the same. But Dallas only shares 7 with Chicago which surprised me. Are Midwestern and East coast tastes really that different from Dallas? And that Miami/Fort Lauderdale list is the most different of the four codes I reviewed (only 4 matches with my home zip). And Paul Blart is the #1 rental for customers in that area...Not really sure how to explain that one.

Regardless, it's really a great mashup and something you might want to check out. I mean, if you're into movies or Netflix. Or just interesting facts about Paul Blart, etc.

Working remotely during the winter

2010-02-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

I keep having this discussion with friends recently. Can "services work" be effective when done remotely? And if so, why isn't everyone moving quickly to the model? By "services", I mean the part of the economy that's dominated the last 50 years of growth in the US. Finance, Consulting, Technology and Legal services. Some might call this Knowledge work. My colleague, Lisa Breytspraak commented on a similar topic recently, What will be the technology turning point for remote work?. And the weather in recent weeks on the East coast is truly stretching the remote work theory. All of my East coast friends are buried under feet of snow. And many have Facebook, IMed, or even Tweeted that work is cancelled. With pictures to prove why. Several articles are even saying that in excess of 200k+ government employees can't go into work and it's "paralyzing Washington"...um, well, I will leave that comment alone. The point being millions of people and their work lives are being affected, mostly in a negative way because of the weather.

But does work have to be cancelled because you can't go to the office?! A large part of the knowledge economy is un-tethered. Or much less than it used to be. Sure, if you work in shipping, factory work, or even retail services, your work will be impacted by inclement weather. Although, if you're a consultant who works with BofA or a program manager at HP, or even a lawyer tasked with preparing a financial case against AIG, why does it need to be? You have the tools to do almost everything you need to do at work (assuming you are fairly connected).

What strikes me about this phenomenon is how quickly things have changed in the world to promote a remote work-style. Folks such as consultants, pharma reps or other traveling knowledge economy workers were constrained by the technology provided by their employeer to make the situation work. I mean, just 5+ years ago a non office person was provided a pager or mobile phone, a decently portable laptop and maybe a conference call line to facilitate their work day. If you could find a T-Mobile hotspot or had your own home high speed internet access, you were in business. 10 years ago, the pagers and mobile phones were even less functional and internet access points were barely even available. You were lucky if your employer provided some sort of internet connection (dial in, remote connection, etc) and only traveling executives ever sniffed a video teleconference system. And 15 years ago...well, I think you get the point.

But today, there's countless options to make it work and actually allow people to excel at their daily tasks without going far from home. It starts with ample access to broadband internet. And a plentiful supply of WiFi spots, free or otherwise, to make it happen; Free WiFi at Panera is a great example. Add to that a prevalence of 3rd or 4th generation wireless laptops. Plus, the emergence of iPhones, Blackberrys, and other mobile devices that provide almost seemless integration with email and other work resources. Finally, throw in the improvements in the video telepresence model and the more prominent, WedEx and GoTo Meeting, etc. There's some irony in the fact that most of my friends could use the very same technologies that they used to complain about the weather to their remote work advantage!

I'm currently on a long term project, working remotely part time and on the client site the rest of the time. I haven't always worked in this fashion, but I'm getting used to it. Actually, I've been on several other projects where I would drive to an office strictly to have 8 hours of conference calls with people who I never saw and only communicated with via email/phone. i.e., everything was virtual. So the idea of me doing both on this project is perfectly fine. Besides, if the weather looks like this, why leave home?

Professional Scouting goes Techie

2010-02-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine recently commented to me that yes, he does actually read my blog. But then he spewed forth this gem..."It says you write about Sports, but you don't. So I'm not a big fan". And you know, he's right. Now I could toss in some easy quotes or links about the impending Superbowl HDTV sales at Big Box retailers, but why would I take the easy way out...

I found this little gem the other day while reading about soccer online. Yes, that’s a sport (Some USA haters may disagree!). The article talks about professional scouting in Europe, specifically Turkey and how they turned to using more statistical approach to evaluate talent. They actually use an online system provided by a third party to cull through thousands of players. For the scouting group, it limits travel and can even yield some surprises as it provides the sort of relative evaluation tool that levels the field for less known and less reachable, promising players. The system used in the article (Scout7) portrays itself as more efficient and a truly cost effective way to scout 100s of thousands of players without having to deal with travel.

Technology transforms talent scouting in football - Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review

The interesting part to me about the article and tool was that it basically looks like an online player dashboard used for Fantasy leagues. Yes, the same basic premise that helps hordes of Fantasy nuts all over the world draft for their teams!

This convergence is not new I suppose. In the US, there's been a tremendous increase in the level of technology that professional and college scouts use to evaluate talent. Pre game reports and online statistics are widely available for players to decrease the preparation curve. And scouting departments in the NFL and more recently the MLB have applied a numbers first rationale to evaluate players too. Everything from 40 time, to weight, height, standing long jump distance for the “other football”, to on base percentage, slugging percentage and fastball speeds in baseball. Concepts like those covered in Moneyball have also turned players performances into a collection of statistics for scouts in baseball and basketball in particular. Check out this article if you want to see where things are going in the NBA. (No Stats All Star)

One of the keys to this evolution is the increase in available computing power, statistical technology and the ever available presence of a network to exchange such data/information. No longer is this technical modeling reserved for folks in Finance, rather sports scouts now have a set of metrics, served up by a tool over the internet and supported by thousands of hours of digital media to review players' performances.

Why would they ever need to go see a player right? I'm not saying that I agree for this number's first philosophy. I still believe there's something to be said for the truth of meeting a person and working with them. But even Corporate America tries to turn us into a collection of numbers (reviewing college applications and resumes for GPAs, GMATs, Class ranking) performance statistics to assess our potential performance. Met Expectations last year anyone?!

Obviously, it's a little more complicated for more traditional professional jobs that don't grade in Yards after the Catch, but I completely understand using a statistical tool as a screening technique. I hardly ever go to NFL games and I've still been able to put together a decent NFL fantasy draft the last few years. At least two seasons ago...maybe I do need to see more live games.

Monetary Change

2010-01-25T20:32:00.000-08:00

It's two weeks out since I returned from a trip to Down Under. And I've collected less than $3 in metal change total. Let me be clear, this is not something I WANT to do. In fact, I try my hardest to get rid of metal change when I make purchases. I'm the guy in line that appears to be giving weird amounts of money to decrease the pile of coins in my pocket. You know, I will give the clerk a nickel and 2 pennies on top of a purchase of let's say $4.82 just to get a quarter back instead. In my mind, I'm calculating what I can do to "trade up" and reduce the number of coins I have in my possession. It's not always pretty either. Sometimes my brain works a little slower and the people in line behind me probably want to kill me. And some of the clerks that are helping me actually seem to have their own meltdown as the odd totals I've provided them don't seem to add up.

During my time back in the States, I've eaten out at least 10 + times and been to several retail stores. My point being that it's not like I haven't tried to spend money. Again, less than $3 in change in two weeks. However, during my travels in Australia, I would regularly collect as much as $10-15 in change in just a two day period. The picture to the right shows you a sample of my pain.

I understand that part of my pain is a remnant of British influence on the monetary system in that country ($2 and $1 coins are heavily utilized in AU). I guess a part was that I was using cash a little more than I would normally. Of course, in many places in the US and Canada debit cards have made this a moot point.

The "pocket of change" dilemma drove me crazy and I was constantly pulling out the coins, counting them, organizing them and trying to figure out how to use them. (full disclosure, Vending machines seemed to be the best destination). I'm not for getting rid of metal change all together, don't get me wrong. Unlike a friend of mine who thinks that US $ pennies should be eliminated all together, I haven't gone that far off the monetary reservation.

I'm sure someone smart in Australia has done the math and proved that metal coins last longer than bills (specifically the $1 and $2 variety) and therefore decrease the overall cost required for the government to provide monies to the populace. But I can't understand why debit cards haven't caught on as much, at least in the highly populated coastal regions. Many of the shops in the areas we visited actually discouraged the use of credit and debit cards with extra fees and charges. This is obviously a result of merchants not wanting to cover the cost. I'm probably the odd person that was not incentivized to use cash. Either way I was getting hit with a transaction fee: the exchange rate or the transaction fee. I would love for one of these merchants to explain to me how the processing, care and security required to maintain all of that metal money is more cost effective than a debit card transaction. Until that discussion takes place, I'll be at the vending machine.

The Truth in Conan's numbers

2010-01-25T11:05:00.000-08:00

If you've been watching, reading and listening to the NBC late night debacle, this is a nice little NY Times article by Bill Carter. It basically lays out the case as to what viewing statistics should have indicated to NBC execs before they promoted Conan and expected him to maintain Jay's numbers.

O’Brien Undone by His Media-Hopping Fans

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/business/media/25conan.html

Being a Conan supporter myself, the comments and findings referred to in the article are fairly accurate in my household. The myriad of options on TV, Cable, or other media outlets after 10:30PM for people of my age group has never been more extensive. These are the same folks that Conan thanked profusely on his last show, Friday night. And that doesn't even include something like DVDs rented from Netflix or just simply reading. Maybe even a nice Kindle download. Or simply talking to your family members.

Of course, NBC also appears to have shot itself in the foot with making Conan's format redundant with Jay on earlier. It just goes to show, even when you have solids statistics/research and think you understand the market, you can still make dumb mistakes. In this case, mistakes that may cost NBC in excess of $50-100MM in advertising and breakup fees to fix their mess.

My New Lingo

2010-01-21T21:10:00.000-08:00

My professional vocabulary is complete. Or at least augmented to its fullest extent. I’ve discovered the nirvana of all consulting phrases. No, not synergy, not “outside the box” or even organizational alignment. I wouldn’t even put KPI or working session in the same league. We’re talking the most subtle and yet powerful one you can employ, “to your point”. The phrase is everywhere. It’s in user story sessions, facilitated workshops, executive meetings and every type of consulting meeting you can imagine. I would even guarantee it’s in a few government cabinet meetings. I bet Obama drops in “to your point” when addressing Mr. Geitner. It truly has a life of its own.

I started noticing its prevalence in late 2007. I noticed because, well, I’m a huge dork…I constantly think about my diction and the words I use; the frequency of which I apply certain phrases and refrains. I also latch on to my co-workers phraseology. I’m by no means a Scripps spelling bee champ nor English major, but I am a decent reader and can at least write a solid email or PowerPoint slide. Well, that's what my bosses tell me. Regardless, my vocabulary is large enough that I can normally come up with a few different ways to communicate the same thought. And I strive to limit my reuse of my favorite conversational and written devices lest I become repetitive. I even consciously try to avoid phrases like “I digress”, but I love that one too.

People obviously have a pattern to their written and spoken language, one that is developed during High School and continues throughout their lives. Some of the phrases or rhetorical devices are learned from parents, some from classmates and co-workers. Many from reading literature and periodicals. I assume consulting specific ones would fit more in the either the peer or literature type of influencers, but you never know. Maybe your parent(s) are lifetime consultants. I digress…

In 2010, “to your point” is to consulting linguistics what a Swiss Army knife is to a Cub Scout troop. It can be used as a simple convention to change the pace of the conversation. “The team is substantially under performing in terms of goals, but to your point, there have been tremendous organizational obstacles”. Or it can be used to pass the conversation baton. “John and I were talking about that idea yesterday, but to your point, I think you’re on the right track with moving that direction.” And it can even be used as a powerful plug to signal your agreement AND understanding with a peer in a meeting. “To Jim’s point, it’s not only important, but the single most important initiative we have at Company XYZ.”

It’s so flexible, resilient and inclusive that you can’t help but to love it. Without trying, it's become my go-to phrase in almost every meeting, working session or conference call I am on in the last year plus. People are always searching for the best way to include their peers in conversations and at the same time provide the best segue, and I really think I’ve found it. I don’t intend to use it. It just happens. Next thing I know, I’ve “to your point”ed every person in the meeting. They probably don’t even notice. I try to limit it only for those key issues and situations where I can add significant input, but dammit if the phrase just doesn’t slip out.

I don’t remember using it in my early professional career or even in my consulting life, but it’s everywhere in my meetings now. I don’t even intend to drop it in conversation, but it’s there. Without trying. I once thought that “literally” was the de facto phrase for the last few years, but now I’m starting to reconsider. And believe me, I’ve had a few discussions with colleagues who can’t stand when that phrase that catches their ear. I hear literally in meetings and find myself dissecting the statement to ensure that literally was used correctly as intended. But” to your point” is special. It’s effective, non confrontational and collaborative. And when used correctly it’s everything that a consultant needs.

Try it. Use it. Love it. Literally.

I don't need my bags THAT much...

2010-01-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

Back in October, I posted a blog about airlines and their lovely baggage policies. Everything from lost baggage to fees for checked bags to bags that are lost, even if you pay a fee. Well, I think my recent experience in Australia tops it all.

On a holiday trip to Australia, my wife and I visited the Hunter Valley wine region of New South Wales. It's a beautiful area with a great number of vineyards and wineries to explore. After touring one winery and participating in a wine tasting, we decided to purchase one bottle of wine to take as a gift to a friend in Tokyo. It was by no means expensive, simply a tasty wine that we thought would be enjoyed by our friend.

Let me take a step back. As I stated in my earlier blog, I avoid checking bags at all costs. I don't want to even chance it and sure as heck don't want to pay if I don't have to. i.e. I don't have clothing or warm weather apparel that will not reasonably fit in a carry on. When I originally purchased our flight from Australia back to Tokyo, I was given the option to pay extra for bags and at the time, I didn't think it was necessary. I would carry on our bags as always. In this instance though, I now have purchased a bottled gift that CANNOT go through airport security. (This was obviously a oversight by me. DUMBDUMBDUMB) But now, I was confronted with either paying a checked baggage fee or sacrificing the gift.

When we arrived for check in, I casually asked the airline agent for suggestions on how to handle this quandary. Her response to me, "Well, unfortunately Mr. Justice if you want to check a bag at this late stage, it will cost you $140 Australian Dollars (AUD)". EXCUSE ME!!! It was only $40 or 50 when I bought the tickets! Now you're telling me it's going to cost 2-3x as much to check it! Talk about a racket.

Pondering my choices while standing in a airport line in Australia, my wife and I decided that $140 AUD would make a seemingly inexpensive bottle of wine, a very expensive gift. Alternatively, I could give it away to some lucky soul in the airport. We both sighed a little, grinned slyly at the agent...the airline employee who checked us in is probably enjoying a decent bottle of wine right now. I guess our seats were better though.

Format Flashbacks

2010-01-11T08:33:00.000-08:00

At last, there's another entertainment technology format war brewing. If the VHS and Beta Max war of the 80's didn't fill that space nor the Blue Ray DVD vs. HD DVD battle didn't satiate us, now we have the "e-reader wars". Each of them come with a combination of techie features, interesting presentation technologies and even more interesting names: Kindle vs. Nook vs. others like Sony's Reader PRS series.

Over the holidays, I must have read 10 different articles or blogs ranging from tech magazines, to Time, the Wall Street Journal to even an English language business paper in Tokyo about the new wave of "e reading" devices. Most of them have similar features and were given decent reviews.

Amazon's Kindle is the generally the most common and highly rated, with an estimated 2 million units to be sold during for the holidays. But Barnes & Noble's Nook and Sony's newest PRS 700 e Reader are heating up the competition. Of course, each uses a different (sometimes proprietary) format to render text from books and periodicals and has a different content licensing model. And different screen technologies to provide what they consider the best reading experience. This all serves to make them fairly incompatible and limits the ability to share books/newspapers from one device to another device. I mean, why would I want to share a great book or article with a friend?!

The general consensus that the new wave is light years beyond what was available just before the Kindle was launched (in 2008), but I can't imagine how they all plan to compete for market share and actually generate financial returns. The market fragmentation alone would seem to doom at least the bottom third of the devices, right out of the gate. Some of those might actually be the best of the technologies as BetaMax was purported to be back in the 80's.

Alas, sometimes the best technologies don't win the race. I imagine it's all going to come down to a combination of design (color vs. black and white, wireless downloading and sharing capabilities, etc.) and available reading content. I mean, the iPod is a perfect example of that phenomenon. Although, it certainly would be nice to start with more uniformity in terms of format...

Can I afford to Agile?

2009-12-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

Recently, one of the bigger discussions or dilemmas I see IT departments facing is what to do about Agile. They've heard all the rumors, read many of the blogs/whitepapers and might have even dabbled in it themselves. I'm not talking about just a rapid development methodology, rather a slightly more formalized version of Agile based on some of the basic elements described in the Agile manifesto (short iterations, constant customer feedback, partnership with the business, self organizing teams, etc.) to complete software development projects.

For the most part, such software development projects are predicated on a simple theory: The quicker you can produce a piece of functionality for your customers (internal or external) to use, the quicker you can provide "value". Often IT shops have dabbled enough to be hesitant to go much further with implementing a full Agile process. Without diligent focus and dedication to the process, it can often lead to negative results. My colleague talked about this phenomenon in her Scummerfall blog in late September (www.lisabreytspraak.com) and it often discourages formalized adoption of Agile development practices because of the perceived "negative value".

Now imagine a situation where a project includes one release of a greenfield software product and is estimated at a full year for completion. That's 12 months of development resources to provide a required degree of functionality to customers at the end of year 1. This includes the cost of developers, testers, architects, BAs, DBAs, PMs, as well as executive and management overhead, etc. During the planning/requirements phase of this particular project, a group of intelligent people is expected to accurately predict functionality desired at least one year out. Of course, they are ignoring any future requests that may change requirements, in an effort to nail down what is required currently. And praying that any unforeseen changes that stakeholders would add over that period and any other market or real world changes will not add scope. That's a tremendous leap of faith.

If such a process sounds daunting, well it is. This is one of the reasons that the requirements gathering process takes an inordinate amount of time during a traditional waterfall development project. Not only does this group of intelligent people have to come up with the one year functionality plan, they also have to get buy in and sign off from every important stakeholder. You ever tried to get 5 people to agree on a dinner location on Friday night when one person is a Vegan, one lives in the burbs, one hates crowded restaurants, etc.?! This is the same issue that traditional requirements gathering processes entail on waterfall development projects. And in situations like these, time to market = profits, ROI, or some other financial motivation making delays as a result of missed requirements extremely costly.

While having lunch with a close friend the other day, we talked briefly about the way her team runs projects. She mentioned a "parallel waterfall" method. At the time, I thought. Hmmmm. That makes sense. But then after we talked I spent some time pondering what that meant. She indicated one of the reasons they use such a method is to meet her customer's time- to-market demands. They want results sooner than later and can't wait for lengthy waterfall-esuqe projects. The irony is that's exactly the reason you do Agile!

One benefit of formalized, iterative releases is that it gives you the potential to release small pieces of functioning software. This incremental approach can be extremely important in an environment where requirements are vague to begin with but business expectations are extremely high for a product. You also have an increased ability to validate delivered functionality with constant customer feedback. Overall, this will produce much better alignment with business expectations. As some of my colleagues would call, directionally correct. The more knowledgeable the customers/stakeholders that participate during the original requirements process and customer feedback process, the more likely to hit the mark.

Another important benefit is the possibility of quicker time to market and earlier returns. In the example above, the first 12 months of work is nothing but cost. Since the product is not considered complete till all of the requirements are satisfied, perceived value or financial return opportunities do not materialize till production go live. Let's assume for the sake of argument that occurs on schedule, so 12 months +1 day. Or maybe even following a short warranty period. Regardless, it's quite a long time after the original visioning, the lengthy requirements approval process and a software development cycle.

However, through Agile development, organizations can realize that opportunity to release a production ready piece of software earlier and start to recoup value sooner. Utilizing the example above, switch the development timeline to include 4 smaller releases in the same 12 month time frame. These smaller, incremental releases provide an IT organization the opportunity to show value to the business: Working software that fulfills at strong portion of the most important functionality. Whether or not such a release is rolled out to external customers or not, the internal returns and perceived value will greatly increase the payback period. Just as Google does with it's internal "dogfooding" process, or it's early release of software like Gmail and newer advances like Wave, customers are provided an earlier opportunity to derive a sense of value from the product. If such releases are targeted for a small test population of external customers, maybe 5% of the best customers, an organization could reap hard financial returns as well. And the fact that the ROI starts sooner is the icing on the cake for finance types.

I'm not saying that Agile is a panacea in software development. As with any tool, it's use must be modified to fit the environment and product needs. And in some industries like software to run airplanes, they would be hard pressed to fully implement Agile methods. But it's use in situations where time-to-market and increased rate of return are desired, there aren't many better ways to go about developing software.

IT shops are so concerned about introducing Agile for fear of complicating or causing heartburn in their organization, but the real question is can you afford not to Agile?

Food for thought...DONUTS!

2009-12-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

If your a fan of The Simpsons or you once were, I noticed this article on CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/12/14/simpsons.anniversary.end/index.html

The article itself is well written and discusses whether or not The Simpsons TV show has run its course. For those of us in the Gen Y and Gen X groups, this comic sitcom has been a part of our Sunday night TV watching patterns for the majority of our lives. But as the author points out, the series may be losing at little steam.

However, it was the graphic that caught my eye. I have to admit, the use of a donut as the central piece of the graphic is what originally pulled me in. Anyone who knows me, knows that I have a penchant for donuts and their evil pastry brethren. I was also fascinated by the simplicity of the information portrayed in this particular graphic, a comedy tree detailing The Simpson's place in comedy history. It shows the influencers for the The Simpson's series and creators as well as those downstream groups who have been influenced by the series. The list itself is a who's who of comedic history; a combination of print, live action comedy and TV with some comic strips and cartoons thrown into the mix.

I don't like to dork out about charts and graphs, but I just thought this one was both enlightening and interesting to look at. The graphic itself ties it all together in a way that is immediately understandable by an audience. Such a relational way to show such elements is perfect. And it adds in the element of time and duration as well. Really a great effort by the artist/author on this one.

Take a look at the article when you get a chance, especially if you are a Simpsons afficianado. And enjoy the Tuesday treat.

Catch a tiger by the tail

2009-12-09T12:03:00.000-08:00

I read a very interesting article on CNBC about texting and digital communication. (http://www.cnbc.com/id/34344794) Due to the recent revelations about Tiger Woods, the article is focused on the text message/phone combination as being the new age version of the infidelity smoking gun. The author, Laura Holson, interviews a combination of lawyers and integrates feedback and statistics to show how the text explosion is truly changing the bounds of digital privacy. No longer is a physical item like lipstick on a collar or the remnants of perfume required, but spouses and even more pertinent, divorce lawyers, have additional means to track down potential transgressions (to quote Eldrick).

What struck me about the article was the comment about Verizon and AT&T in terms of their storage policies for text messages? AT&T was quoted as less than 72 hours, but Verizon was up to ten days. I pondered the striking difference between the #1 and #2 mobile phone providers in the US and I can't really come up with an answer as to why. I mean, that's a tremendous amount of data to save for up to ten days. Yes, I know, data storage is increasingly cheap but it's the why that's important to me.

If the author's statistic is correct and users text up to almost 600 times a month x the 90 million customers Verizon currently serves, wow! I mean, I just don't understand the disparity. Why would phone users ever need 10 day old text messages that aren't stored on the last 50-100 on the phone itself? I've personally never called into my cell phone provider and asked to recover a text message I sent on October 31, for example. Does their storage policy mean that service is available? Or is Verizon storing these for it's own purposes? Or to satisfy a patriot act or other government requirement(s)?

I would love to hear the justification on this one. I'm not saying AT&T's is perfect, but even if Verizon's in only 6 days, that's still 200% more storage time. It just goes to show you that our digital privacy is rapidly decreasing. Our internet fingerprints are stored everywhere. You have to understand this when using email, text, social networks, Twitter, etc. And for someone like Tiger, it's a hard lesson to learn.

Lost Processes

2009-12-08T18:35:00.000-08:00

Companies always have what I'll call "lost processes". The kind that don't seem important at first glance. They don't appear sexy and they are definitely not the most interesting work. In a lot of cases, these processes are created by a small group (possibly even by consultants) and in some situations, maintained by even fewer people. But in many situations, such processes are fundamental to the daily operation of the business.

In my former life, I actually spent a lot of time reviewing a subset of lost processes. Things like lengthy Disaster Recovery (DR) and/or Business Continuity Planning (BCP) documentation. These were typically 200-300 pages of assorted processes and contact information. Not to mention the additional projects where I spent considerable hours pouring over SAS 70 reviews for clients and my employers to validate another organizations processes. Everything from IT, to finance, to basic operational processes. In other instances, I was the consultant hired to lead a team of analysts and create 600 business processes. Not the sexiest of activities, but nonetheless, I was required to go through every Step 1 through 15c and ensure any Visio documents available made reasonable sense.

And many of my clients' process documentation has been lacking to say the least. Heck, even some of my employers have struggled with documenting their processes. A lot of it is barely in a draft state. Ask anyone who's done a SOX audit in the last 5 years and I'm sure they hear that at least once a week. Again, such processes are not always DR type documentation where the opportunity to employ the documentation is once every few years for testing or in the case of an actual disaster. Rather some of these are critical business processes performed and controlled by one person. If that one person leaves the organization or is "hit by a bus", many times it takes months to recover and replicate what they were doing.

I was reminded of these lost processes a couple of times recently. One instance was the FAA's routing system outage that occurred in November 2009. Another was a discussion with my client about IT processes normally performed by helpdesk staffers. In the former situation, an FAA controlled computer application that aids pilots with their route preparation and fuel calculations was down for an extended period of time at the beginning of the day. The FAA diagnosed the problem and informed the airlines that pilots would be forced to switch to a manual process to complete this task. Many early morning flights on the East Coast were delayed at least 45 minutes, causing a ripple effect through the US airports and departure times. However, pilots successfully switched over to the manual version and by 9AM EST, flights were taking off without issue. This struck me as a perfect instance of falling back on those random, lost processes.

More recently, a client asked that we create a new IT operation process to include resources working from a different location. My first thought was that it's merely an augmented version of the current version. But when I asked what they had to work with, I got the stare. You know, that stare when people realize that they don't have anything documented. I mean, they may have something scribbled down in a training guide somewhere. Nothing formalized for ongoing operations though. And it struck me, when will companies learn? Such a process takes very limited time to draft with a few more hours to get approved. Maybe 1 day in total resource hours.

Obviously the degree of importance for my examples above are drastically different. And there are certain industries where such lost processes can't be forgotten: Financial, transportation, utilities, the military. However, the point is still the same. Lost processes are not "lost" because they are worthless, rather because organizations don't emphasize their importance. Organizations need to actively document these core processes. Set aside time and resources to accomplish this and I promise, you will feel much less pain in the long term than if they're not covered. If you don't have the internal resources, I might know a few to help with the effort.

Below the surface: Technology Plumbing

2009-12-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

New York City (NYC) is in the midst of a 50 year project to add a third fresh water line to provide water to Manhattan island. When completed, this "pipe" that begins in the Catskills will increase both the modernness of the NYC water systems as well as add redundancy to their daily water operations. With no fresh water source on the island, this improvement is necessary to maintain the long term viability of NYC's water system.

A little background on this project: NYC current system includes two main pipes that supply all of the water to Manhattan's permanent residents and those temporary residence who travel to the island for daily work. Both of the other pipes are approaching 100 years of age. In other words, there would be significant risk to Manhattan inhabitants of not being able to use facilities like restrooms or even get potable water if one of the current passages was damaged. The third passage started in the late 50's will hopefully prevent such as issue, but it will not be finished till 2012.

Most New Yorkers probably have no idea that 300 ft below the surface of the city, there's another world of basic infrastructure and utilities lines that keeps the city working. It's another world really. One that is expected to work, without fail. You can see from this image, that the word "complex" does not do it justice. And this seemingly unsexy project was dreamed up, planned and started almost 50 years ago...isn't that interesting.

After I heard about this story, I thought of some basic parallels to the IT industry. Specifically the world of network infrastructure. Similar to the pipes and wiring found beneath the city streets in NYC, network engineers toil in an unseen world. Network engineers and their brethren toil in a world of nated IP addresses, ethernet cables, server racks and data centers with thousands of flashing lights that your average employee could care less about. Their effectiveness and the up time of the world they control are counted on from moving data between core business applications and even for less complex systems such as email (some network engineers would disagree about Exchange's simplicity). Failure is not an option. Delays are hardly tolerated and downtime, well that's something a business executive never wants to hear about a system that generates revenue.

Most people refer to the design and development of such basic technology infrastructure as "Network Architecture". But, I'm not sure it's the most appropriate moniker. I mean, I understand the relationship between design and implementation of a "physical" structure to serve a purpose. However, architecture at it's core is a balance of art and engineering. There's a reason that the prettiest designs in the world have to be validated by engineers. Or something like the Leaning Tower may occur. Network architecture on the other hand is far more analytical and scientific. It's less art and more blocking and tackling. Sure there are new designs and technology advances (think WiFi 5+ years ago) that cause inflection points in the industry, but the basic constructs are the same. How do you plan and implement a system that can handle x amount of traffic that goes through y amount of servers/routers across z number of miles/country? What technology, either software or hardware, will be required to support today's requirements and 2-3 years down the road? True, it's complex, but it's not architecture in the classical sense.

The irony is that the word architecture actually downplays it's essential nature. Just as the new water line is the "plumbing" of NYC, network architecture and it's close relation, application/system architecture, is the below the surface plumbing that can make or break a technology. Extensive planning, build out and consistent analysis are required by business to maintain operational continuity. Because any downtime can cost millions. The traditional work done around network and system architecture can't be the after thought during requirements gathering, rather it should be of at least equal importance. Justifying both time and budget. A former client of mine estimated that they lost an amount approaching $10 million during a outage of their core customer information system. Even if that number is 50% accurate, that's a huge revenue loss. Did I mention the outage was less than 3 hours?

If NYC can spend 50 years building a water pipe, organizations can spend additional resources to ensure their technology operations are on sound below the surface.

Open Source matriculates

2009-11-29T11:01:00.000-08:00

As I'm ramping back up at the office from a nice Thanksgiving break, I found this interesting article about the growing open source movement in hardware in the WSJ technology section. Open source has been ever advancing, competitive alternative on the software side in the last 20 years. The emergence of Linux and it's various flavors as well as newer movements in mobile like Google's Android are pushing OS and application developers to produce better, more efficient products. This is now a similar movement on the hardware side with the development of the Arduino microcontroller board. See the article for further details on the applications. I'm really fascinated at how something like this might impact the hardware arena long term. It's already being used in consumer products like Lily Pads.

(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574559960271468066.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_tech)

Developments in technology, like Arduino, lead to one of the most important aspects of continued innovation: choice. I'm a firm believer that a greater number of choices and in turn, outcomes, rapidly increases the opportunity for innovation. Just as when you considering business strategy, the "best" solution is not always a silver bullet answer. It's a combination of one or more opportunities. Now don't get me wrong, I do recognize the importance of standardization to provide greater efficiency. However, there's more than one way to arrive in Houston when you drive from Dallas.

How not to run a billion $ organization; Billion with a B - Part 2

2009-11-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

For an interesting read on what happens when management doesn't address fundamental flaws in a business, take a gander at this MSNBC link. The USPS is reporting losses of up to $3.8 billion for the current fiscal year (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33972254/ns/business-us_business/). Yes, again, billion with a B.

Despite cutting thousands of day to day job and massive cost out initiatives, the business of shipping mail is in a nose dive because of the internet and online payment services. Well, that's part of it. The other part is the "company" refuses to adapt. For a company that's been around since 1775 and always seemed to be at the forefront of adopting transportation advances, like the railroad and airplanes, they have substantially missed the boat in the last 20 years.

I went to the nearest USPS location last Thursday to buy stamps and mail two bills. Yes I know, who mails bills these days. Let's just say these two particular bills have slipped through my effort to auto draft the heck out of any payment I need to make. Thursday just happened to be the day after Veteran's Day, a day that the USPS rightfully celebrates as a holiday. Since I went at lunch time, I expected a line of patrons like myself, just stopping by while on lunch. And since the USPS close to me normally staffs one person at lunch, I decided to use the automated stamp machine.

It's a great little kiosk product when it works. Unfortunately, on this day it didn't work. After 5 minutes of waiting for my debit charge to go through and the machine to spit out stamps, it finally kicked out a zero dollar receipt and began to display a nice "Out of Order" message on the screen. Of course, back in the day, I could have jumped in line and bought stamps from a nice postal servant. Unfortunately, the one person waiting on customers was overwhelmed with 8 people, many of which appeared to be sending more complicated mail items than I. So what did I do...well, I still needed stamps and this machine appeared to be out of them, prompting me to go to the next closest postal office. It was really only a few miles away, but the round trip between the two locations took almost forty minutes.

That's forty minutes of my time to buy three stamps. My first thought about the situation was to blame the lack of assistance on the traditional lines and USPS staffers. But, something more subtle came to mind. How is it possible for a machine that sits five feet from the postal office operations to be out of stamps?! Well, I suppose if someone didn't think through what might be a different customer behavior on holidays.

Think about it. On any holiday when the USPS is closed, the kiosks are bound to get more volume than normal because no one is staffed to physically help. Either you need to overstock for that day assuming any extra would carry you to the next. Or simply include a check of the stamp kiosk as a priority step on the first open day after a holiday. That's at worst "inventory stocking 101".

And their new idea is to cut even more service while continuing to raise prices. (At least a day of service is predicted). I understand at least partially the desperate tactic. Thinking that this will substantially lower their operating costs, they're proposing to eliminate at least one out of six current days of service. I remembering hearing "neither rain nor snow nor dark of night..." as a kid growing up though. I guess we can now add, not on Tuesdays and every other Thursday. Talk about how to not provide service to your customers at the times they need it? I would definitely pay a little more if I knew that would guarantee appropriate service. In fact, I would venture to say that many people would. Customers will pay for quality service. They may complain about it, but overall if the value provided exceeds the cost, complaining subsides.

I'm starting to wonder how mail actually gets anywhere in the US. Or overseas. Not express mail. UPS and FedEx appear to be examples of billion dollar businesses that have it figured out.