Tom's blog

You are out there...are you ready for that?

Have you ever Googled yourself? The results are often not quite what you are looking for depending upon your point of view. One thing is pretty certain however, as time goes by, you are more and more likely to start appearing in that voluminous resource of information.

Part of the challenge with that reference of information will be in the correction of mistakes, or improper in some regard (see my comments on that problem here).

Now that access to all of this "stuff" is so readily available, one of the challenges will be that of exposure. Everything you do is exposed, your web sites are out there, your public forum comments are out there, Opinion posts (fortunately I am not that opinionated), Blog comments are out there, photos (my Flickr account), videos, and sometimes some pretty personal stuff too. So for those with multiple identities (you know what I mean, one for business, one social, one historical etc.), how does your online bio stack up?

Now that everything is so widely published and especially with the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Networking (see former comment here), it is very easy to check up on people. You can see if they worked at blah blah inc. or you can see if they did win that silver medal for Ju Jitsu, if they really were under sniper fire in Tuzla or more importantly, you can see if they didn't. Authenticity is now a pre-requisite for everything and anything that you put out there, or it will come back to bite you in the backside.

Gary Vanerchuck produced this little social comment on the topic...

Remember...it is watching you!

business, collaboration, commercial, consulting, creativity, data, database, Decisions, facebook, google, Politics, social networking, youtube

How much "Stuff" do you have?

Watch this video, The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard, it's 20 minutes long and talks about the Materials Economy Production System. [Click here if you don't see it below]

Interesting stuff huh? I found a some of facts from this short film pretty interesting, the fact that only 1% of products are in use after 6 months, the fact that for every single trash-can of household waste, something like 70 times that amount is produced in the production process.

There is an interesting blog at this site too. Check it out here.

Spread the word!

Databases and why you SHOULD NOT trust the data

Let me open by stating, I am not a terrorist, it's official and you can all relax now, Homeland Security says so.

We have all been the victim of incorrect information in a computer, but when you take a government department, multiple databases from other government departments and private industry, munge it all together, who knows what you will end up with. But I bet it's not right...I present my case your honor:

About a year ago, I notice that I started having problems getting on flights. Couldn't use the automated booths any more, couldn't check in on-line etc. After a couple of flights of this I asked one of the airline staff "Why?" and he said "Oh...your on the Homeland Security Watchlist...have a great flight!".

I made a couple of calls and was directed to the DHS TRIP Web Site, filled in the on-line TRIP form, sent digital scans of my various ID's, Passports, Licenses etc. and waited. The problems on the flights still occurred, some even had to make phone calls to let me fly.

After about 3 months, a letter appears in the mail, "sorry you didn't sign the form please start over"...interesting...it was a WEB BASED FORM. Next step, I found the form you normally mail, filled it out (on-screen), printed it, signed it, scanned it and e-mailed it back to them with the other documents.

Another 4 months pass, a letter appears in the mail, "sorry your form was illegible please start over"...but it was typed?...I gave up, resigned to a more irritating travel process at the airports.

Then, just a few days ago, and almost a full year after the first problems, a new letter. "We have reviewed your information and found that some of the data we used warranted an update. We are sorry for the inconvenience".

There apparently was a data issue, compounded with government inefficiency and incompetence. I wish I knew what was in their database about me, perhaps I'll file a Freedom if Information request...but I may be dead by the time I get a response.

On a separate topic, but still data related. I bought a product called "Neat Receipts" in the airport last week. It's a little software application and a small scanner that scans and reads store receipts. It also does business cards and stores the users information. Very neat piece of technology, pretty darned accurate too. If you are on the road a lot and you need to document expenses and such, get this it will save you a mountain of time.

Email abuse?

I am sure like me, that you get a large number of emails that come from people who think you need to be cheered up. These emails will contain that latest joke, urban myth or funny picture and most likely will contain a huge amount of garbage text where they have been forwarded at least 3 or 4 times.

Most of the time, it's ok because you know the people who are sending these emails to you and because of your relationship with them, they have your permission (implied or otherwise) to send you this stuff. But what happens when a company sends you one of these things? This very thing happened to me just a couple of days ago and I was really quite surprised and left feeling somewhat abused by this uninvited extension of a purely business oriented relationship.

I know that I have given these folks my email address and I did agree to receive the occasional email from them, in fact, I really DO want to know about their new products in this area. But surely these emails should have to be related to their products and not the latest mix of funny urban myths? Or is it that, because I am interested in VoIP telephony, I must have with no life and thus need some comic relief?

Seth Godin writes about this sort of thing a lot and has a name calls this style of communication Permission Marketing and writes here about something similar he experienced with Amazon, i.e. I have given these folks permission to send me their latest marketing information. But this appears to be that permission marketing idea taken way too far.

I have written to these folks to see if I can get a response...I will let you know what they say.

Update: I got a nice note from Erin today who noted that I got this email by mistake. Apparently they have a 'tom' in the shipping department...anyway, my trust has been restored in the system over there.

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Here is the first few segments of the email:

Time once again to review the winners of the Annual "Stella Awards". The Stella Awards are named after 81 year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's USA. That case inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the United States.

Here are this year's winners from 5th to 1st place:

5th Place (tie): Kathleen Robertson of Austin, TX, was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.

5th Place (tie): 19-year-old Carl Truman...

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You get the general idea.

Technorati Tags: business, commercial, email, permission marketing, quality, seth godin, voipsupply

NO! I don't want to be your friend.

Here is an interesting phenomenon that, if you have used any of the social networking sites ( Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or similar ) you may well have experienced.

Being "Friended" by someone that you don't want to be "Friended" by.

Most of these sites are quite polite in the way in which this happens, which is sort of the problem. Someone discovers your FaceBook profile and hit's the add friend button. Boom! you have an email asking you for authorization, for most of these requests the reply is easy.

Now the dilemma, there are some people who you just don't want in your friend network, or that you have to interact with on a daily basis that just shouldn't see the picture of you and your you and your drunken friend in Canada...you know the picture I'm talking about. But I digress, suppose your boss tries to "friend" you. You could accept, and your whole social networking alter ego is now open to your new friend granting some intimacy never meant for office consumption. Or you could decline, and they get a polite email telling them that do don't want them in your circle, possibly damaging your working relationship from there on out.

I guess part of the problem is that you can't really separate your online life between personal and professional. At some point it all ends up in that great big melt pot called Google (Have you ever googled yourself?) and then everything is open for public consumption.

This leads to another question, if you are an aspiring college student or advancing in your career, would you want this sort of "social" information to be seen, read and used to judge your potential by a prospective employer? A lot of people seem to sanitize their profiles when they go through these sorts of life changes, which doesn't say much for their authenticity or moral character I suppose.

I imagine it's going to be sometime before the real implications of having so much personal, unsanitary information out on the information superhighway are evident. Unfortunately the event that causes awareness of that state might not be a good one for some of us.

Technorati Tags: creativity, facebook, getting things done, google, gtd, happiness, life, linkedin, list, mac, myspace, pc, social networking, youtube

What happened to the golden rule?

Sprint just let some customers go. MSNBC covered it here.

Apparently, these 1000-1200 customers were "needy" and probably caused more expense than provided revenue. They collectively called the customer service organization 40,000 times a month to complain on average.

In this blog post, Seth Godin suggests that Sprint did the right thing for the benefit of the customers who are "pleaseable" instead of trying to please the entire customer base, including the "unpleaseable".

I don't know that I totally agree with the viewpoint, I think the adage "The Customer is always right" still holds true. These folks were after all keeping up with their end of the bargain and paying their bills. If the shoe were on the other foot, things would be different I am sure. Have you ever tried to get released from a cell carriers contract, even for legitimate reasons?

I believe that as business people, if we enter into a contract with a customer, that the essence of that contract is to provide them with remarkable service, for an agreed price. If a customer complains, then as business people that complaint is an opportunity for us to learn more about our customers, or how we should perhaps be doing business differently and ultimately provide better service for the customer base as a whole.

If we all decided to fire the difficult customers, over time the social obligation would change, it would start to become the customers privilege to do business with us, not our privilege to serve them.

That seems like a very dangerous attitude change to me.

The letter sent to Sprint Customers.

Technorati Tags: commercial, getting things done, gtd, happiness, life, productivity, sprint, quality, seth godin

Some interesting facts and figures

Check this video out. It's called Shift Happens and it brings some interesting facts and figures into relief with some contrasting ideas.

It makes you think.

Technorati Tags: happiness, life, presentation, youtube

Any fool can do complex.

E. F. Schumacher is quoted as saying "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

Technology people fall into this trap way to often, we like to add "one more feature" or make a user interface just a little more functional. Sometimes these changes result in a level of complexity that is never utilized by our end users simply because they can't figure out how to get to it.

I have long believed that people will learn just enough about a piece of software so they achieve a task repeatably, even if it's not the best way to complete that task. For example, how often have you selected File, then Save or Print from the menu with a mouse despite having a perfectly good keyboard shortcut and toolbar button?

One of the side effects of adding all of these do-hickys is that the amount of moving parts or the amount of software that needs to be generated, grows massively. In fact, a man named McCabe has invented the Measure of Cyclomatic Complexity to measure just how complex a piece of software is.

An interesting statistic from the software development world revolves around the number of defects that are present in software at the point of release. It is widely held that for every 100 lines of code, 2 defects are introduced. It is also held that a good quality process in the software shop will prevent 80% of the defects from being released into the user community. We invent entire processes and create entire departments around the detection and management of just these defects. The costs are staggering.

Perhaps is reason enough to take a little advice from Herr Schumacher and keep the feature base limited to the core functions. The implementations of these functions should be so intuitive, that I should not have to refer to a help file or manual to figure out the operation.

Heres a final thought; If help files and user guides were banned, I bet we would see software products with much more tightly focussed feature sets and wildly intuitive design. Further, these products would be way better for the users and much more profitable for the authors too.

Technorati Tags: commercial, creativity, Cyclomatic Complexity, design, E.F. Schumacher, good enough, innovation, mac, pc, quality, software, software development

Stupid idea...or is it?

In this interview with Scott Berkun, Guy Kawasaki posed an interesting question about innovative ideas. He asked simply, "How do you know if you have a seemingly stupid idea according to the “experts” that will succeed or a stupid idea that is truly stupid?"

Berkun started his answer with "We can't know" and then qualified with a fairly lengthy statement. But I guess that's the real point, when do we ever really know which ideas are good one and which ideas are bad?

I suspect the trick is to develop every idea far enough that you can see the major potential and the major challenges and also to look at that idea with a combination of others that may well produce something really remarkable. At that point decisions can be made about the next steps (if any).

A little research shows that as innovators we have a very hit and miss track record of spotting that special idea. Rank Xerox for example were the first people to come up with the idea of a graphical user interface and a mouse for a computer, yet they didn't spot the potential for it commercially. DEC were a huge provider of Mainframe and Mini computers, yet they couldn't see the obvious potential for personal computers in the home. In fact, in 1977, Ken Olson said "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home". Here are some fun statistics, according to the US Census Bureau, 62% of US households have a personal computer. 18% have two or more. How silly does he feel now?

Is there any way to improve that track record? I believe so...and it seems like the folks over at Google are doing pretty well on that front. They do, however, spend huge amounts of money on R+D and they promote innovation internally and give their creative professionals the opportunity to develop their own ideas without question for 20% of their working week. Business Week wrote this Article about their creative process.

Guy Kawasaki was on the original development team for the Apple Macintosh and now owns his own venture capital firm. He writes an interesting blog called How to Change the World. Scott Burken was on the original development team for Microsofts Internet Explorer and has authored two books The Art of Project Management and The Myths of Innovation.

Technorati Tags: creativity, design, guy kawasaki, mac, pc, google, DEC, scott burken, software, software development

"Perfect" or "Good enough"?

So much of the time, so many of us are engaged in trying to attain a level of quality in our work product that is perfect. I wonder, however, if the level we should be trying for in most things is simply "good enough"?

For example, my chosen trade (for want of something better), is software engineering. We spend countless hours arguing over the most trivial things. Should a button be put here or there? Should this be an icon or piece of text? How big should this window be? Is any of this written down anywhere, even, how should it be written down?

This is all well and good, but at some point, you have to step back, look at the overall result of the work and make a judgment call. Is it good enough?

Most of the time it probably is. Sure, everything can be improved, made more elegant, made a little smaller or a little lighter, but ultimately, if the product answers the design need and seems to do it pretty well, then ship it, you can always do a version 1.1

Technorati Tags: commercial, creativity, good enough, happiness, mac, pc, productivity, quality, software, software development, tom demarco