Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization
I attended a meeting today (the West Texas Regional Technology Conference, or WTRTC) for a few hours at the
Texas Tech Merket Alumni Center (it always reminds me of the
meerkat). The general overview was on the State of
Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF) which Governator Rick Perry signed into law. This meeting was specifically about the establishment of a
Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization (RCIC) which "will consist of partnerships between universities, companies, and nonprofit groups." Mark Ellison, the governor's rep for EFT stopped in to edumicate the rest of us. I was expecting to be bored.
I arrived a few minutes late (had to make some decisions on a sorting algorithm), and showed up 3rd to last, just in time to grab the last available seat right next to the door. I managed to catch a glimpse of all the "who's who" of Lubbock, including some VC's, some angel investors, some business owners, some Tech management, some Tech / SPC professors, and a plethora of people who had little to add to the RCIC other than to siphon some money into their pockets.
Mark Ellison wasted no time in dispensing with formalities and explained that all deals would have to be universally approved by the appointed board of 17 members. Who are these 17? They have to be nominated. And they won't be on the board unless they have
SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE MAKING MONEY. And that was wonderful. I almost clapped. Seriously. Has anyone stopped and checked out the local groups (in Lubbock or elsewhere) where someone happens to have their own fiefdom? Lubbock is no different.
[It's quite amazing to me that Lubbock continues to have issues with property taxes, and the mayor of the town is a real estate mogul. And/or that eminent domain has been used for some scrupulous reasons ... supposedly for the growth of Lubbock?]
Anyway, I was told that I should be in attendance, since I fit into one of the following:
- Technology companies and their trade associations.
- Service providers such as law firms, accounting firms, etc.
- Venture capital firms, angel investors, banks, and other financial institutions.
- Existing incubators or accelerators.
- Local work force boards
- Local and regional economic development entities.
- Universities, community colleges, and technical schools.
- High school superintendents
- Other interested groups and individuals.
Mark also made a point to explain that funding would be unavailable to anyone who was not being supportive of the RCIC's purpose (everyone gets access) and that the RCIC in the region (or more than one) must be collaborative. In this case, the word refers to "multiple commercial and university interests". I saw some very un-happy faces, people who were hoping to create some junk company, filter money to non-existent ideas, and amazingly keep the money, and the people involved, still in the loop.
Sorry. Keep tapping those shoes together.
Wonderful, wonderful job Mark!
Mr. Cliff Boro
I had a phone call with Cliff Boro today, from
CVT Ventures /
CVT Technologies. My Uncle Dan met him recently, on the East Coast at a Celebration of Life for a family member (of mine).
Cliff is a very interesting guy ... he ran
InfoGate /
Pointcast for a number of years. You can do some reading about
him here. Needless to say, I'm always excited to get to talk to someone who's "
been there, done that" -- rather than what I usually get in this [local] area ... ie,
give us your company and your technology, and we'll take you to stardom. Hopefully. We've never done that before, but we think we can.Keep clicking those shoes together.
He had a wonderful analogy that I'm going to continue to use (I hope you don't mind) about our two potential products. "
One is a vitamin, and one is a painkiller" His view is that vitamin's are easier to sell / market ... and I'm sure he's right. I've found that same view to be true in the past with consulting services (how many people are happy and excited to be working towards Sarbanes-Oxley compliance?).
Hopefully, we can continue to have these type of "ad-hoc" meetings -- as it would seem, sometimes, that I'm surrounded by a sea of people who don't understand my vision and the growth possibilities for 2 years, 5 years, 10 years.
Open Table
One of the companies we stopped by and talked with on Monday was
OpenTable. I view our technology as complementary to what they're doing.
Open Table caters to many different users, including concierge, caterers, restaurant owners / operators, and people wanting to eat at restaurants. The general gist of the program is that users log onto their website and book a table at one of their "high end" restaurants. Typically, food ranges between $40 and $50 per plate at their establishments (though they do have lower priced restaurants also). The system then looks up free times, and allows the user to make a reservation in a time-slot. The reservation is stored in their ASP database.
Restaurants have a touch-screen provided by OpenTable which links in with their ASP. Restaurants are able to view existing reservations, make new ones (which are updated on the ASP), and seat guests based on the software.
It's very neat -- but it's old technology. Judging by the whole host of venture backing that they have, it would appear to me that the company has managed to survive the Dot-Com bust. The strength of their product, in this case, is not necessarily their technology (which is fine), but the fact that they have some very key partners -- including Expedia and The Washington Post.
The issue I have with their product is that it caters to very high end restaurants, and that usually means very high end customers. What about the average restaurant ... the average restaurant operator is a $750,000 / year and less 20 employee operation?
Kanoodle
We just went live with some new advertising on
Kanoodle ... and I'm very impressed. Within half an hour we managed to generate 3 or 4 leads. Though the number is "small", over any given day [if these numbers keep up], that's equivalent to what we receive on Google or Overture. Quite a feat, to say the least.
TRA Show
Got back last night from a trip to the
Texas Restaurant Association's trade show, which was quite interesting. It's a bit smaller than the
National Restaurant Association's show (the OTHER NRA), but that's by design. In fact, the TRA's show is more of an exercise of actually talking with customers, rather than the NRA's show, which is mostly branding and showing-off of the latest and greatest products.
Erik was in town for the weekend, and we decided to take all of our employee's down (which is 4 at the moment), and let them walk the floor. Probably was little business value in taking them, but they had a good time, the alcohol was free, and the guys had a great time. Marco (resident graphic artist) was having a great time looking at the failed attempts at marketing and graphic design (which abounded), and the three programmer-types (Saurabh, Karan, Gurkan) all managed to badger (politely) the various technology vendors about what they sold, how they sold it, how or why it worked like it did, etc...
I managed to pick up a goody bag full of various technology odds-and-ends, and I'll be going back through the bag and putting some information up here about the items I've found. Some was very interesting technology, and some was very mundane.
More Online Advertising...
I have managed to get the CPL campaigns up and going with
ValueClick. I also managed to get my client's CPM campaigns up and going with them as well. Yesterday, I re-visited
AdSonar, which appears to be producing SOME leads, and I also signed up for
Kanoodle, after hearing lots of good things about them over at
WebMasterWorld.
After some initial headaches with
Pheedo, I'm up and going with them also. Initially I had two or three issues with their online registration system (ie, the form didn't work with the credit card I use for advertising), then the contact email bounced, and then the phone number was disconnected. Ouch! As
Bill Flitter exclaimed ... if it were baseball, they'd be out. However, I was greatly impressed by the phone call I got, from
Adam Kalsey, the moment he got an email from me. He gave me his cell phone (I'll keep from re-publishing it here), and a few minutes later, the phone number was fixed, the email was working, and the form was accepting my credit card. I haven't had time to tune the advertising there, but it's progressing along.
Also, in a previous post, I had blogged about
Feedster, and how we might be interested in advertising on their network. I got a comment from Chris, an employee of Feedster, with some information and requesting that I emailed him. So I did. It's been a week ... and nothing. No word from Chris. No word from Feedster.
Table Saw
I'm the owner of a table saw; I have been since two Christmas's ago, when Stephanie decided that I'd said "I wish I had a table saw" too many times. It was used quite often for about three weeks, and then our
Eclectus parrots started having babies in the garage. Which means, if I want to use the saw, I have to pull it out of the garage (without disturbing the proud parents), and power it up elsewhere. Needless to say, I don't use it much right now. However, we're planning (sometime after December) to move our primary residence more towards Abernathy. Doing so will allow us more room, and I will be able to have a larger garage / barn to work in.
However, as I was reading my "travel rags", including
Fast Company,
Inc, and
Fortune Small Business, I managed to run across not one story, but TWO, of Stephen Gass. One of the articles is in
FSB, and the other in Inc (apparently NOT on their site yet).
Stephen is the inventor, developer, and owner of a
SawStop. SawStop is [apparently] an awesome invention by an inventor who has managed to apply simple high-school physics to a dangerous tool and the result is a relatively minor cut, not a severed finger. The stories detail the issues he is having with building a better mouse trap, including the fact that the existing mouse trap owners / inventors have NO desire to license his technology, as it could cost them more than if they didn't.
Though I disagree with the industry's philosophy, I think they'll have a hard time arguing their point in court. It would appear that their biggest fears are likely to become reality, as a few cases are pending that may make light of the fact that the SawStop technology was rejected by all of the major manufacturer's, but appears to work. The assumption is that mass adoption would lead to fewer injuries. And by not adopting Stephen's technology, the industry has facilitated more indjuries.
It also struck me as quite odd that he managed to get his story into both magazines, in the same month. I doubt he paid for the articles (but he may have), but it's more likely that he's got a nice PR machine running and he's just flexing it's muscles.
Packing Day...
Friday was packing day, and then I put the $23 I had, plus $9 from Stephanie's earnings, and put them on 1st twelve, 28, 32, 36, and odd. Odd's of winning: 12 out of 38 (first 12) + 3 out of 38 (28, 32, 36) + 18 out of 38 (odd). But combined together that's: 12 out of 38 (first 12) + 3 out of 38 (28, 32, 36) + 12 out of 38 (odd's not in the first 12). That's 27 out of 38. I think. Been a while since I did any serious stats. The dealer said ÂGood LuckÂ, and proceeded to throw an 18. Which is not odd, not in the 1st twelve, and not any of the 3 I explicitly picked out. Oops.
So, I headed out to the car, and went to the new office, where I proceeded to setup a new eMachines box for the yet-to-be-hired secretary. I also spent a large chunk of time working on the finalization of some advertising for the client. I hadn't previously done a CPL campaign with ValueClick, and it took quite a bit to pull it together (more than a CPM/CPC/CPA campaign). Talk about a headache.
The rest of the day was spent in meetings, which were interesting, but not relevant to these posts. Mostly about the client's internal workflow changes, and more advertising / marketing issues, which I'll be implementing and writing about here.
The day ended on a good note, and I made the flight just fine. Never amazes me how horrible security actually is. I had shown my ID and boarding pass to a nice TSA employee, and the next round of TSA employee's watched me walk towards them, including being signaled by one of the employees to walk into their line. They then double-checked my boarding pass. Huh? He watched me get my ID and boarding pass verified, motioned where I needed to walk, and then re-checked me. What an absolute waste of tax dollars.
Third Time Is A Charm. Vegas?
Thursday morning we got up earlier, and I took everyone into the airport, and dropped them off. No problems on the way, and nothing to special to report.
I went over to the client's office, and helped the rep from Mpower setup the leased AdTran router. We also got a date on the voice T1, and the long / local distance services. I then shut down the servers in the old office, moved everyone over to direct to the T1 (no firewall for a few days), and managed to move over the firewall and main server to the new location. Luckily, I had done enough prep work that the install was as easy as plugging it all back in and powering it up. Total installation time was under 2 hours.
I spent some time with my client discussing issues with advertising, and with contracts [and automating various aspects of it]. I had planned to take my client to dinner at Rosemary's, apparently a great dinner spot, but was so tired by 7pm, that I canceled and went back to the hotel and went to bed.
Vegas. Round Two.
I was up around 8:30am local time, and we got dressed and headed out the door after I touched up an email for a re-marketing campaign. I wrestled Asa out of bed from the next room over, and he stumbled with us down to the car. We headed over to the Palms, and walked the Casino until we found out that every restaurant had the same issue – no gas. Hard to cook us breakfast with no gas.
So, we put the top down, and enjoyed some ridiculously hot weather on the way over to the Mandalay Bay, and had breakfast there. The food wasn't bad (not great either), and managed to get it all ordered before I was called by the client (NY office) about a fax server being down. News to me. Apparently, it had locked up, but was still responding to network requests (which is bad). They bounced it for me, and let me finish my lunch.
Asa, Stephanie, and I walked over to the Shark Reef, and ponied up the $16 to see the 20 wild life exhibits. That's almost $1 per exhibit. And though the technology was cool (a self-guided tour with wireless audio wands), the actual exhibit felt like a knock off of a well conceived Sea World. Save your money on this trip, since for 3X the cost, Sea World or Disney Land will give you better scenery.
I dropped everyone back off at the Gold Coast, and sped into work to solve another problem with the fax server.
A few hours later, we were all dressed to the T, and we were off to the Mirage to stop by Samba, the best (only?) Brazilian steak house I've been too. At least, until the wedding party of 25 showed up next to me, and the waiters / hostess / manager forgot us for more than 30 minutes. I'd be forgiving, if we didn't ask more than once for the ticket. No tip.
We walked around the Mirage, Treasure Island, down to Caesar's, and then over to the Bellagio (and I'm too lazy for links). About then, Stephanie informed us that none of the shoes she brought were comfortable in the world of Las Vegas. So, we stopped and took in the water show at the Bellagio. The water show was set to a Celine Dion number, and the guy next to us proclaimed “Yes, it's Celine. Thank God. There IS a God!” He smiled at us ... and we were at a loss on how to respond.
Walking back, we went to the other side of the street, which is a pretty drastic change. We managed to keep from getting too many hooker (dancer?) solicitations, and stopped in the Venetian. Anyone know, are those hooker hander-outers hourly, salary, or commissioned employees?
We ended the night (Stephanie and I) by playing some roulette. She really enjoyed the game, and was having a blast with it. We managed to hit “17” pretty nicely, considering we had a single chip on it, on “black”, and on “odd”. Which was great. We spent the next hour losing a bunch of money that we won. I cashed out with 3 dollars more than I started with – not a bad deal considering the good times (and free booze) we had.
Las Vegas Day One
It was a great trip! Sorry I'm writing this backwards, but I was either too busy to blog, or too tired to blog. So I'm writing this at 25,000 feet, since they won't let me (nor SHOULD they) use my cell phone / Internet connection.
Off the bat, Asa's (my enterprising brother) jaw dropped. Slot machines in the airport! We didn't walk 30 feet before we hit the cocktail bar in the middle of
Southwest's C terminal at
McCarran airport. I do have to admit, if you've never before been to Vegas, the baggage claim area can be quite daunting. Some 18 (or so) baggage carousels, and moving billboards, televisions, and people begin to assault you as soon round the corner from the escalator. I picked up a car from
Avis, which was unusually expensive, and they talked Stephanie into upgrading to a Convertible (remember, it's 104 outside).
We road the bus, dropped the top, and were off. I don't have a picture, but Asa was quite the guy in the back seat, lounging along the entire backseat, staring at the people passing by as we zipped up Las Vegas Boulevard. We stopped at the light on
Flamingo, and everyone stared at the
Bellagio before we turned down and flew by the
Rio. Asa marveled at their scale (which is QUITE impressive, and a great use of the word ....
Brad). And then, the bubble was deflated when we “ripped” into the
Gold Coast and parked to see if our rooms were ready.
Walking in, we let our eyes adjust to the light differences, and we all coughed in unison to the smoke. And immediately, the old jokes started. One has to agree, great video poker or not, the place looks like a care home for the dejected citizens of the early ages of Vegas. Do they stop everything during nap time? Does each floor have a defibrilator and hip replacement kit? Do the rooms have complimentary chocolates, wine, and Depends? I mean – a business HAS to cater to its customers needs.
In all seriousness, the place isn't a bad stay, considering it's across from the
Palms and the Rio, and it's 1/5
th of the cost. I'll walk 1000 feet for $200 a night! I don't much care for the never-ending halls, and if you've stayed there, you know what I'm talking about.
Business sideline .... I wondered seriously about how the Gold Coast keeps and attracts their younger clientele. I saw, maybe, ten people under the age of 40, the entire trip. I know they also own the
Barbary Coast, and the new
Sun Coast (which has plasma TV's, etc... trying to keep up with the Jones's ... or the Wynn's and the Mandalay Bays). But what happens when your core group of clients, who remember when you were “the thing”, die? They'll have to change and market to the newer, hipper crowd. I don't think the 20 and 30 something's will care about the 70 lane bowling alley. Or, will there always be the “older” crowd that will prefer the Gold Coast over the other properties? How many “yuppies” will stay there (or do they opt for the Bellagio and others?) Where do you stay when you go?
Day one finished with a stop at the office, where I introduced everyone, and found out that Sprint decided to install only one of the two T1's. Thanks. So we had data at the new client location, but no voice. Or vice-versa. Yuck. Makes my job hard for the client.
Stephanie and I went with Asa to eat lunch at
PF Changs (why doesn't Lubbock have one?), off the strip, since I happen to know a crowd of people who recommend great places off the beaten path and where I don't have to spend $30 to see all the pretty people. Asa spent the rest of the day training to do sales work as an employee of my Vegas client, and I took Stephanie back to the hotel and worked on advertising.
Around 5pm, we met up with the client's head of finance, and my brother, and tore up the Bellagio's buffet. Oooofaa! Talk about great food.
We crawled out of there and headed to the
Tropicana for some comedy at the
Comedy Stop at the Trop. We laughed, we cried, I tried to fall out of my chair. I try and see stand up whenever I can (except in Lubbock, its comedy club is pretty bad), but the performers were just hilarious. If you have never head
Greg Morton's one-man
Star Wars rendition, I HIGHLY recommend it. I just wish the video was there also, because it's more humorous than the actual audio.
The night was young (2am CST) when we headed back for some well-deserved sleep.
Vegas
Looks like I'm headed to Vegas tomorrow AM. I was anticipating going sometime next week, but it would appear that the T1's will be installed by Wednesday, and dial tone will be available on Thursday (Friday at the latest). Or so, I've been told by Sprint.
I'll be taking Stephanie with me, to spend a few days having fun in Vegas (Tuesday / Wednesday), and then will be helping my client move systems and setup the routing / phones on Thursday / Friday.
Hopefully, we'll get a chance to stop by the
Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, see
Penn & Teller, and probably go eat at
N9nes at the Palms.
Blue Man Group is a possibility also.
We're staying at the
Gold Coast ... which doesn't quite have the flair of the Palms or even of the
Wynn Las Vegas (from Mark Pincus). However, for $50 per night, it's really hard to go wrong at that place. Besides, I'm cheap -- and I don't anticipate being at the hotel for more than a few minutes every night.
Classic Humor...
Pretty funny. And quite accurate, from the way I've seen things done.
More Patent Work
I haven't finished the patent work needed for the PPA ... so that needs to get done this weekend. Hopefully, then, I can post about some of the work that we've been doing.
We were looking at CLP to solve some of the problems we were having with our algorithms, but one of our developers (Saurabh Bhatla) managed to locate a redundancy in some of the Prolog routines, which led to a severe optimization: small data sets went from 5 minutes of traversal to under 1 second. Hopefully, on Monday, we can see the fruits of his labor, and combine it with the GUI, to have a alpha stage prototype (then do we have a beta stage prototype, then a prototype, then an alpha, beta, and final product?).
We're excited. It would be best if our target audience didn't need a grid or cluster of machines to run our software on.
More Ads
After some work with
ValueClick, and some discussion with my client, it looks like we're going to try a few new campaigns:
1. The first, a CPL campaign with ValueClick. This should provide some interesting results, but I'm a bit leary of the results. We've tried "co-registration" campaigns in the past (with Advertising.com), but they were mostly junk, or "window shoppers", or "coupon hunters".
2. The second, an affiliate campaign with
ClickXchange. This started up today, we'll see how it goes.
3. I'd like to look at more RSS advertising. This would include Google (which already does RSS feeds), and possibly something like
Feedster. I recently got an interesting article / case study about
Pheedo, though I haven't finished reading it.
4. A CPM campaign, probably with ValueClick. Their network just seems to perform pretty well. Not outstanding (Google), but consistent.
Of course, my initial contact with ValueClick required calling all three offices, sending four emails, waiting two weeks, and then calling back the New York office and demanding a manager. I assume business is really good, when they ignore potential customers.
Inane
I'll try and shy away from politics, where possible, unless it absolutely directly affects me or my employees. Which would include immigration law (and the entirety of the H-1B Visa mess / scandals), health care, and taxation as larger topics. However, I fly
fairly frequently, and
this article is not only inane, but ridiculous, and offensive.
At what point does it become "
totally unacceptable, nearly four years after 9/11, for a passenger to come to the airport and present themselves for screening with a 5-inch steak knife"? What if they eat at their favorite steak house at their destination, and they take their steak knife with them? What if it's an expensive gift for someone? What if they like to comb their hair with it? This item is only a
weapon when one thing happens: someone uses it as one.
It reminds me of a trip I took to Vegas about a year ago. I live in Texas. I carry a pocket knife. Specifically, the kind I can use to cut off those
VERY annoying zip cords that toy manufacturer's love to put on the back of children's toys.
It also works well on boxes, unopened mail, and the absolutely frickin' ridiculous plastics that manufacturer's love to seal up DVD's, batteries, etc... with. Ever try opening a stick of RAM from Sam's Club with your bare hands? I guarantee three or four cuts and scrapes.
Now, could my knife be used as a
weapon? You betcha.
Do I know how to use it as a
weapon? Sure.
Would I unless my life was threatened?
No way.So, I boarded the flight to Vegas out of Lubbock International Airport (yes,
International), and notice about half way through that I have my knife on me. No biggie -- as I'm
NOT a criminal. I land in Vegas, grab my stuff, and do what I need to do in Vegas.
On the flight back, I forgot again -- and I managed to get stopped by security. Why? For my knife? Nope. They stopped me because I placed my shoes on TOP of my laptop (which has to be in a separate bin to go through the X Ray machine .... can
SOMEONE PLEASE explain to me WHY an X Ray machine cannot see through rubber?). This mis-placement of my footwear (birkenstock sandals), upsets everyone behind me, especially the seasoned travelers, "
That guy placed his shoes on his laptop ... sheesh". On my second run through security, they notice that I have a pocket knife on me. The end result of my fifteen minute dealing with the local TSA specialist is that I have to exit security and mail it back to myself.
Did the possession of a pocket knife make me a deadly person climbing onto the airplane? I don't think so ... but then, they don't know me. But, why would it be "unacceptable" (as the article implies) for me to bring my knife to the airport? Quite frankly, it's
not.
I find it offensive, actually.
Which places the TSA's attitude right up there with the standard that I MUST lock the doors to my home. Why should it be a standard feature that new homes have security alarms? I understand that it's a reality of life today ... but it should not be that way.
Shouldn't people just 'know' that my house has my belongings in it, and not theirs? Isn't it a moral / ethical / reasonable expectation to insist that other's not take my stuff, even if it's laying in front of my house, not locked down, and ripe for stealing?
But this has me wondering again .... do X Ray machines see inside of laptop batteries? I would tend to doubt it. Does that mean that a terrorist could board the plane with a laptop "bomb", and go completely undetected? I imagine that's likely the case, especially if they coat the laptop in rubber, or hide it in a bag of shoes!
Crystal Reports and Databases
We've been spending some time working on using Open Source database reporting tools. Tools like
Jasper Reports (and
iReport),
Data Vision, and Agata Reports. For clients we typically have used a combination of Jasper Reports, and whatever their database engine comes with (ie,
Informix 4GL). Internally for our own software packages, we have been using Jasper Reports. However,
Business Objects recently released Crystal Reports XI, and the developer edition has a free runtime license (royalty free). For $595, the pricing can't be beat. Or can it?
From what we've found out, there are two ways to generate a report in Crystal Reports (for usage inside a Java container). Only one of them works. The "first" way is to store [inside the report], the actual connection requirements for the database. This includes the JNDI name, server, host, username, password, etc... And once they are stored, there's no way to change them at run time (so your development and production environments BETTER be the same). Using this method, one can (supposedly) embed sub reports as needed, graphics, etc... The caveat is that no one at Crystal Reports Technical Support group has seen it work with any "mainstream" OS database. Like Postgres. McKoi. Cloudscape. HSQL. The "second" way to generate a report in Crystal Reports (for usage inside a Java container) is to pass in a ResultSet, and let the reporting engine iterate over the ResultSet. Sounds fine ... but you now can't use sub reports.
So, we have a few trouble tickets open with Business Objects to see if it can be solved. I'm doubtful at the moment.
But this brings up a few other questions ....
1. To reduce the number of sub reports, we could use an ETL tool and a "mini" data mart, and pre-compute much of what our sub reports do. Should we do this? What's the cost / benefit ratio?
2. Should we look at a "better" reporting solution? I'm told Impromptu is a pretty good product, and I've worked with JReport (but wasn't impressed). I've also tried Windward Reports ... again, not impressed.
Pricing of Consulting
In reading my daily Sage Blog feeds, I ran across two of possible interest:
1. Tom Evslin had a wonderful blog on pricing of consulting services. In addition to being a great writer, he has managed to nail down some of the "issues" with pricing services. He's 100% correct in the idea that companies which have consultants from multiple contractors, he who is paid the most has the most stature. However, his post seemed very timely with a recent Inc article, this month, on raising the pricing of your products (whatever that might be). These two concepts together provide a good one-two punch except in one case. What happens if you have a limited number of clients? Perhaps one, or two? I think the concepts can still be applied, but one has to be careful to not end up losing an existing client because of the price hikes (symbiosis is a good thing here?). In such a situation, it's probably a bad idea to be the highest paid consultant (and/or raising your prices) ... it's a hard lesson to learn that almost everyone is replaceable.
2. I love Firefox. More importantly, I really, really dislike IE. Since my primary operating system (at work) is Linux, and Windows (at home), I used to use Mozilla or Netscape to ensure compatibility. Firefox came around, and it's the love of my life in browsing. So, when Brad Feld mentioned Pipelining in Firefox, I immediately set it up and it's off and running. Very, very cool hack.
New Ads
It's that time again, to look at new and expanded advertising possibilities for one of our clients. So, I'm back on the phone with Advertising.com, ValueClick, and Return Path, amongst others. We may stray out of our "normal" constraints and do a trial with Tribal Fusion. I'm told they produce some excellent results for some advertisers. This is, of course, in addition to all of our existing advertising for our client on Google and Yahoo! (previously Overture).
While churning through some of the literature in our quest, I showed up at a semi-random site, the Subservient Chicken. Needless to say, Burger King is doing some very neat things with this website. I'm just not 100% sure what to do with it. IE, how does one justify the cost of the bandwidth (and the development time / resources) required to run the site, and compare it with the number of people who will eat Whoppers next week because of their exposure? Which usually leads me down the road of ... how in the world does a company track that? How would they know if it was effective at sending people TO their stores?
Patent Attorney
Had a nice discussion yesterday w/ "our" patent attorney (though, I haven't yet paid them a dime) about filing two provisional patents. His name is
Mike O' Neil, and I ran into him and one of his assistants (Cynthia Dashiell) at a local trade show in downtown Lubbock several weeks ago. One of the local organizations,
LEDA, helps put on the trade show, and also held an open forum on medical devices (which I'm not currently involved in) and IP issues. Although I couldn't stay for the whole forum, it was rather interesting to hear from some of the local medical companies:
Mike O' Neil needs some more detail from me ... but it looks like we have the beginnings of two complete PPA's, and the likely ending could be as many as four individual patents. Not too shabby. Now, to locate the $5,000 required to get the work done.
Informix Update
I spent the better part of Thursday and Friday, and a bit of today, working on testing the "latest" Informix 7.31.UD8 (an upgrade for a customer's 7.31.UC7 system). I was told I could just drop it in, but thought I'd double-check (been burned before by that one).
With the exception of one configuration file change (shared memory location, SHMBASE), the upgrade went on without a hitch. Was able to test backup (ontape), restore (ontape), dropping / loading tables and data, database validation (oncheck -cDI), and the dropping / recreation of table distribution (onStats script from Art Kagel, downloadable at
IIUG). Flawless.
Transferred the binaries to the client side location, double-checked my commands, and brought down the production system, upgraded, and back up it went. Flawless. Even the reports (4GL statically compiled) work fine.
It will be very interesting to see how the Informix development (and community) continue to work with IBM as IBM wrestles with Informix, DB2, and Cloudscape (now open sourced to
Derby). I have a feeling that DB2 and Informix will be merged over the next few years, but that's just conjecture.
Book Review: Good To Great
I just finished
Good To Great, by Jim Collins. I realize it's been out a while, but having heard quite a few people rave and rant about it, I picked it up a few weeks back at Barnes & Nobles here in town.
Needless to say, I was impressed. Both by the volumes of research that Jim did and by the massive amounts of statistics that he used to back up his hypothesis and his findings. It's not necessarily a "light" read, and about 1/4 of the pages are appendixes and explanations of how he and his team of researchers arrived at the end-result of the 11 "Good To Great" companies.
I was quite impressed with the fact that his research turned up companies you wouldn't normally associate with being "great". Nucor, Gillette, and Fannie Mae aren't usually on my list of Top 10 greatest companies ever. Some companies are absent from the list (you won't find Intel, IBM, or even GE in the pages) ... but that's apparent once you look at the criteria a company has to match to fit the "Good To Great" mold. Fifteen years of "so-so" performance, and then fifteen years of "great" performance ... and more than one "leader" during these time periods. Sustained growth by one leader may just mean the company has a great leader (Berkshire Hathaway?) ... not necessarily a great company.
Needless to say, I'd recommend the book to anyone aspiring to own a company, or work for a company (yes, that's all of you).
