Time flies regardless of whether or not you blog, but it’s fun to see the subject matter posted over the past two years.
Monthly Archives: November 2005
I’m related to a Photoshop genius
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While I’m a proud registered licensee of Photoshop CS2, I’m no match for my younger brother. We’re both architects–he sketches in AutoCAD (i.e. traditional architect) and I sketch in UML (i.e. software architect). He’s never turned me away when I ask for his creative support; in fact, he typically goes beyond the call of duty. Tonight is just one profound example of what I’m talking about.
Witness the following before and after images:
Enough said. Thanks, Brent!
P.S. Wait until you see what he cooked up for me come Christmas time. 
Krypton, the toolkit
[Via Wes] A new MicroISV, ComponentFactory, has just released its first product, Krypton Toolkit. Krypton Toolkit provides user interface controls for Windows Forms, targets the just-released Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework 2.0, and is free for commercial use. Check it out here.
Disclaimer: This post is participating in ComponentFactory’s viral marketing effort outlined here.
Too abstract for my own good
It’s clear from reading some of my recent posts why I get a lot of “you’re an abstract thinker” comments–I’m a bit all over the map. Frankly, it’s a struggle I’ve had for awhile, but especially since I started blogging almost two years ago.
How can I effectively capture something of value? How is value to be measured? What is the right balance between the protection abstraction can provide (e.g. no IP or otherwise competitive leaks) and the bewilderness (at best and dismissal at worst) that the same abstractions can generate?
In order to trend toward more measurable value in terms of concrete thinking, I am giving some thought to how to re-categorize my posts, what to focus my posts upon (e.g. series on various subjects of expertise and curiousity) and how to better engage my readers–assuming they all haven’t bailed of late.
While I may still blog primarily as a personal outlet, those that know me, especially professionally, know that I prefer a conversation–the more interactive the better. How can I change the current void of comments without incurring the disease of comment spam? What subjects do you want to hear me address?
These are all still very open questions for me personally. If you have some thoughts on this, I’d love to hear from you.
Consequences of over-serving average customers
Another colleague of mine was kind enough to share with me an article from her required course reading during leadership training, “Skate to Where the Money Will Be.” One of the points the authors make that got my attention was the following statement: “Product performance almost always improves beyond the needs of the general consumer, as companies stretch to meet the needs of the most demanding (and most profitable) customers.” The article goes on to talk about the opportunity that an overserved market presents to those with agile, niche and solutions-oriented product portfolios. It emphasizes the value of modularity and the standardization process that often results from the coalescing of modular interfaces. It also warns about a changing tide that ebbs away from integration and flows toward componentization (i.e. dis-integration). Promote integration after this tide change only to your competitive disadvantage in terms of speed, flexibility and price.
This was an especially timely read for me as the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) industry is pursuing SOA and standards activities like iECM and JSR-170. To be clear, interoperability and integration are not the same thing, but I still see wisdom in article written four years ago for HBR.