If you follow me on Twitter, you might have an idea that my son is currently without one of his rides (i.e. a Razor Cruiser kick scooter). My son is big and tall for his age, and this scooter is perfect for him.

Like most boys his age, though, he doesn’t understand “cruiser” in the face of a neighborhood of boys who all like to jump all manner of wheeled vehicle. As a result of this lack of appreciation (er, love of both scooter and jumping), what looked like

now looks like

Do you see the opportunity?

Razor makes a quality product–one the is easy to use and maintain. Ease of maintenance is largely facilitated by modularity of design.

So when my son came to me with the disappointment of pushing his ride too hard, my first thought was to simply disassemble the scooter to isolate the failed part (deck). Easily accomplished.

Except that apparently Razor and its authorized parts retailers doesn’t stock replacement decks for the Cruiser kick scooter.

So…Razor built a modular kick scooter but doesn’t stock a critical module (deck).

What’s the point of modularity, if there are no modules (i.e. ability to swap module instances that fulfill necessary interfaces)?

My son’s predicament is clearly of his own making, but herein is opportunity for Razor. Beyond already clearly stating what their product is designed to perform, Razor can anticipate that boys will be boys and provide timely relief in the form of complete replacement parts, including readily available decks.

Within earshot of my son are more than a dozen boys of similar age, and they’re always outside planning their next jump. Many already own their own Razor, too. What if he could turn around an accident with word that Razor saved the day? Talk about brand advocacy and social media!

What’s your Razor-like story? What’s your Razor-like opportunity?

I hope that you enjoy a safe and warm holiday season. There is so much to be thankful for, so many to be merry with and plenty of hope for the coming new year!

Earlier this week, my wife and I finally got to see U2 in concert after purchasing tickets more than two years ago due to a mid-concert accident by Bono in 2010. I recall having a better time at the U2 concert in San Jose (Vertigo tour), but it was a good time nonetheless–could have been due, in part, to enjoying good seats…

This first video–all were taken with my Flip video recorder and uploaded directly to YouTube in HD–is Lenny Kravitz opening his act as the main opening band for U2 with “Come On Get It.”

The second video is Lenny Kravitz performing “Let Love Rule.”

The third video is U2 performing “Elevation.”

The third video is U2 performing “City of Blinding Lights.”

Several years ago, I blogged about how I winnowed atom-based content at that time. When I consider my increasingly digital life now, I smile at how out-dated that post seems.

Maybe some day I’ll let go of my hardcopy altogether and go 100% digital.

Almost two years after my winnowing (paper-based) content post, I briefly waxed sentimental about personal content management. Judging by that post’s imagery, I’m not sure how much “evolution” had actually occurred. I do know that the binders of paper were eventually tosed outright, but even a quick glance at my current technical library at home tells me that I have far from reached any “evolved” state.

As a visual person, I tend to value what I can see and tangibly interact with. Books present a particular challenge to me. A good book, in hard cover format especially, is immediately available to give to someone else as a loan or a gift (e.g. from one generation to the next). The same book in electronic format is more subject to the winds of technology (e.g. will there be a reader for this format? what all is required to actually read the book in terms of supporting hardware and software? etc.). On the other hand, if I took the time to bookmark or otherwise annotate paper, this could distract subsequent reading by others–electronic metadata should be more distinctly layered and separable from original content.

Given the choice between hunter or gatherer in a shopping context, I’m definitely a hunter. Put me in the middle of a men’s department or clothing store and I’ll happily panoramically scan the selection, deciding in mere seconds whether there is something for me (to killpurchase), or not. (Thankfully, my wife is my primary wardrobe consultant; so, my hunter instincts are necessarily balanced and muted. ) However, as much as I may be a hunter over clothes, I am a serious gatherer of books and music. Places like Barnes & Noble and Borders love guys like me.

So, you might think that my struggle over books (i.e. physical or digital) is a struggle I have with music, too. Perhaps, but I think that my music-as-content evolution is a bit more “advanced” and, therefore, may be informative.

Although I still buy physical CDs more than digital downloads, all of my music is immediately rendered in digital format and almost entirely consumed digitally thereafter. Going “essentially digital” has enabled me to take full advantage of classification software (e.g. MusicBrainz, freedb, etc.), playback software (e.g. Apple iTunes, Microsoft Zune, etc.), recommendation engines like Pandora, etc. and also various playback hardware (e.g. an Apple iDevice, laptop, PC, etc.). If I read the liner notes for an album, I do so once (typically after unwrapping the CD). From then on, interaction with music is based on bits rather than atoms (the occasional CD play through my high fidelity entertainment system notwithstanding).

Perhaps with the advent of The Undesigned Web, software like Instapaper, and hardware like iPad, etc., my interaction with reading material will tip to become predominantly digital. Certainly, as I use the Read Later feature of Instapaper, I find it to be a digital equivalent to my paper-based content winnowing approach from years ago. (Tapping into familiar workstreams is always an effective catalyst to change my behavior.)

…if I did go digital my office would be too Spartan.

Actually, I think another contributing factor to my attempt at balancing the gathering of atoms with gathering bits instead is the fact that there is limited physical space to house either. Today, it’s not really a concern over becoming Spartan, it’s about using limited wall and desktop space to display physical items of the greatest value (e.g. family photos, art, sculpture, etc.).

Just like I’m able to visualize the “height” (or “depth”) of, say, my iPod (i.e. the number of digitized albums stored in terms of a stack of CD cases), I’m beginning to visualize my iPad in a similar manner (i.e. in terms of the stack of print magazines and books available electronically instead). Virtually speaking, such devices “fill a room.”

Who knows, I may just have to invest in my own book scanner to help free up some shelf space…

The closing event for Day Ignite Chicago 2010 was a real treat: a private concert by the Bernard Allison Group at House of Blues® Chicago.

The band, left to right:

• Jose James (sax, backing vocals, percussion)
• Bernard Allison (guitar, vocals, keyboards)
• Erick Ballard (drums)
• George Moye (bass guitar)
• Toby Marshall (keyboards)

This first video–all were taken with my iPhone and uploaded directly to YouTube; so, the quality isn’t the best–is the group opening without Bernard, playing the first track off their latest album The Otherside: “Send It In” (2:42).

The second video above is “The Otherside”–track #5 off their latest album of the same name (6:01). At the beginning of the video, Bernard introduces the band.

The third video above is the group going Hendrix, playing the Jimi Hendrix classic, “Fire”–also the 11th track on The Otherside. Around the 5:57 mark, Bernard introduces Erick Ballard for a substantial drum solo that earned him the evening nickname of “The Energizer Bunny” (12:34).

The fourth video above is a two-song medley that highlights various band members (8:39).

The fifth video above is a bass solo by George Moye (4:10).

I recorded another video that occurred in between the fourth and fifth videos above; however, it was 15:40 in duration and YouTube doesn’t accept videos longer than 15 minutes currently.

This week has been Adobe Community Action Week for Adobe employees globally. On Monday, I mentioned that I was looking forward to my particular action choice: RAFT. Today I had the privilege of serving local teachers with members of my team (LiveCycle) along with others from Adobe by investing time and energy into RAFT (Resource Area for Teachers).

RAFT provides thousands of Bay Area teachers and community groups with a wide range of interactive learning materials, enhancing math, science, technology and art programs. Materials are surplus items donated by over 1,000 local businesses and range from cardboard tubes to computers!

My Mom was a middle-school teacher for 16 years; so I know firsthand how great an impact teachers have on the lives of their students, yet how underappreciated teachers often are in broader society. So, it felt especially good to “give back” to such important individuals in the local community.

There were about 50 volunteers altogether and together, in just a few hours, we were able to make a significant contribution in the assembly of various kits that will be used by local teachers (e.g. glove-a-phone packs, sticker packs, etc.).

I was drawn, along with my project-teammates, to the adhesive paper station. Basically our task was to unroll, about 12 feet at a time, lengths of two foot wide adhesive backed white butcher paper, rolled up and rubber-banded for individual application by teachers. A full roll of this paper weighs about 350 pounds, and we proved this by finishing the better part of one roll and starting on a second, new roll before our time ran out. The photo above captures the state of the receiving bin for these individual rolls before we started with our contribution.

There were roughly four distinct tasks involved, although some of us on the team (ahem) were a bit more creative about “tasks.” Unrolling was easily the most strenuous; cutting; re-rolling and rubber-banding; binning.

It may not seem like much, but when you compare the previous two images with the first bin capture, above, I’d say that we accomplished a fair bit of work. It’s fun to think about all the classroom projects that were enabled in the process, too!

Acts of service are always more rewarding to those who serve, and today’s experience at RAFT was no exception.

If you’re a teacher and can make your way to Sunnyvale, you should really check out RAFT. If you’re a parent of a student whose teacher can get to RAFT, consider giving a RAFT gift card. If you want to make an impact on Bay Area teachers, volunteer your time and energy at RAFT. You’ll be glad that you did!

Tomorrow will be my last day with EMC after developing an 11-year career that began at Documentum.

I will always remember the Documentum of 1998. We were right in the middle of “Project Piper,” which released as Documentum 4i. My team was focused on delivering the first version of the Documentum Desktop (aka Desktop Client), the successor to Workspace. 4i saw the dawn of our commitment to Java in the middle tier, centered within the first version of DFC also released with 4i. Our first software acquisition (Relevance), also occurred around the same time. Some of my closest friends and colleagues since that time came from Relevance.

At roughly 650 employees when I joined back on 6/1/1998, Documentum had been public for awhile but hadn’t yet lost the startup ethos. It was the era of Jeff Miller at the helm. Perhaps our CEO’s most repeated statement was “we may not always be right, but at least we aren’t confused.” Jeff was a strong leader, who knew how to stay connected with employees and cared about people.

Every week featured the roach coach, which meant free breakfast, courtesy of Howard Shao. Eventually Howard became aware that certain engineers had decided to use the roach coach for their entire daily allowance of food; so, free breakfast became free espresso beverage and the need to rush to the food line to vy for that certain scone became moot.

There were food drives that literally involved flatbed trucks, palettes, and wiping out the local food stores of rices, flour, beans and other food stuffs that weighed a lot. You see, engineering was on a mission to keep Howard (one of our co-founders along with John Newton) at the top of the annual executive/department contests to provide the most food for area shelters. And trust me, we were all very motivated as some of the contests meant that those executives who didn’t “win” had to sing to everyone else at the Christmas party. You brought your significant other to these parties. You dressed up for these parties. You didn’t want Howard to sing at these parties. (Who let the dogs out?)

No long after 4i, it was clear that applications were moving to the web. Web Development Kit (WDK) was born to usher in the shift from client-server to web-based applications. Initially targeting application servers and browsers, WDK matured to become the basis for portal servers and integrations, as well as integrations into prevailing authoring environments. Application Connectors development during D5.x was all about changing the conversation with providers of content authoring environments.

Prior to D5.x, Documentum moved from its offices on Gibraltar into its current digs in Koll Center. While the new offices were much nicer, they never had the same feel as building 3. Never underestimate the value of good building layout, particularly how it can encourage or impact collaboration. There was an (unsuccessful) effort to erect a basketball court and/or a sand volleyball court. (We got a fountain and courtyard instead.)

Soon Documentum celebrated its 10th anniversary as a public company. Prior to that, Documentum stock saw a high (factoring in splits, etc.) of $120. I recall rebuking colleagues that sold at 40, 50 and 60. Clearly, they were the smart ones as the bubble burst and eventually the stock dipped below $12. However the company was growing both organically and by acquisition, and it largely led the charge to define and redefine what ECM meant. (Arguably there is still much activity and debate about how ECM should be defined to this day.)

It was the era of the rockstar. It was an era that I wish hadn’t occurred. Give me a rockstar company, not a company of rockstars, any day! (You can keep your Dirk de Wow campaign; thanks.)

Documentum had grown to 1150 employees and had grown accustomed to being the acquirer, most notably acquiring eRoom. Then EMC acquired Documentum.

Personally this meant working in violation to one of my career principles: always work at headquarters to have the best sense of business’s pulse and buzz.

However, I came to appreciate the broader EMC culture and its remarkable technology portfolio. Since Documentum’s acquisition, EMC has continued to develop a culture and a model of acquisition and integration that is the rightful envy of industry. Great people.

Perhaps the area most noticeable to me involves social media and collaboration both internal and external with the wider community. If it’s a secret how well EMC “gets” this stuff, it won’t be for much longer.

I had the benefit of a 5-year sabbatical from Documentum prior to EMC’s acquisition. During this great refreshment, I decided to delve into the emerging world of feeds, blogs, etc. Looking back on the beginning of this blog, I laugh aloud. I must have bored very few people. But I developed my voice and I began to migrate from tacit to tangible, establishing a concrete online reputation.

The vast majority of my experience online has been incredibly positive. Being able to interact with you my reader, to more personally support my partners and customers, to stay connected with colleagues, etc. has benefited me every bit it may have benefited you. I’m a far richer person for engaging.

Community is the thing I most cherish about how Documentum Foundation Services (DFS), Documentum RESTful Services, and Documentum Interoperability Services (aka platform CMIS support) have taken shape. Integration and composition have never been more relevant to today’s software solutions, and these technologies are well-positioned to deliver significant business value. You’ve partnered with the team through early access programs, and the software is better for it. Service-oriented development and support is in good hands as I depart, and I’m very optimistic about the team and these offerings.

So, why then am I leaving EMC?

Simply put, I’m due for a change. I never thought I’d be at one company for as long as I’ve been with EMC. EMC is, indeed, a good company with great people. However, a unique opportunity has found me, and I’m compelled to pursue it.

This post will probably be “it” for awhile from me, as I’ll be heads down, ramping up on my role and responsibilities. Once I’m settled in my new gig, though, you’ll know.

Thanks again for engaging with me, sharing your ideas, asking questions, providing constructive criticism, etc.

Until next time…
-Craig
 

Back on 7/30/2005, I marked time by reporting a new tree plant. Until now, I hadn’t followed with how time has “grown” since.

When you compare the first original picture to the one above, it’s clear that the tree has grown quite nicely. In addition, you can see why this particular variety of tree was planted–for its beautiful color.

I’m fortunate to have the same type of trees directly outside my office windows at work (three stories up).

Yes, you have to sweep up after the tree when its blooms fall to the ground. However, they’re not sticky, which puts the “downside” way above the downside of the rest of the sap-dropping city plants lining the rest of the street.

There are other interesting aspects about the time between the original picture of the newly planted tree and the more recent picture, which are not as obvious:

• The neighbors widened their driveway with more concrete.
• The neighbors painted the outside of their house.
• We replaced the car in the full-size original picture.
• We replaced the entire fence around our property, including the shared segment in view of both pictures.
• Just as I had to repair the surrounding sprinkler system while originally planting the tree, I recently had to go underground to repair a node on the same line.

Last month I revealed that I suffered a basketball injury (i.e. a high rupture of my right Achilles tendon, requiring surgical repair). Yesterday marked the six-week point since surgery. Today I completed my third week of physical therapy and being out of a cast and in a walking boot. This afternoon was my three-week follow-up with my surgeon.

Those professionally helping me in my recovery say that I’m making excellent progress. Given where I am calendar-wise since the injury, my range of motion is great and my strength is good, too. Perhaps next week, I’ll be able to spend time out of my walking boot in a regular shoe assisted by a crutch. This will allow me to work on re-establishing my normal gait.

Already this experience has been rich in life lessons for me:

• When you listen to your care givers, good things can and do happen! (Wish I’d learned this in my twenties.)
• I still have a ways to go until I’m a consistently patient person. (Sometimes, I’m not a patient patient!)
• I value my independence, and I have a hard time asking for help.
• Handicapping injuries offer a great opportunity to slow down and experience the subtler, finer points of life (e.g. wonderful family moments).
• When operating on a single crutch, the crutch goes on the strong side, not alongside the injury. (My physical therapist had a good laugh–and said that it’s not uncommon to see patients operate incorrectly.)
• I thrive on communication (e.g. interacting with colleagues at work). While I’m grateful to be able to work regularly from home–even more so since my injury–there is simply no substitute for face-to-face communication.
• Be conservative in your recovery goals, allowing more opportunity to be pleasantly surprised. Don’t confuse this with owning your recovery, being confident and taking initiative.
• The human walk is truly elegant. It seems so simple, but there’s a lot to it when you have to deconstruct and re-learn it. Coordination requires more effort and focus than strength requires.

You may have noticed that I’ve been light on blogging this month, after starting the year off at a better pace (for me, anyway). Needless to say, I’ve been focusing my spare (and non-spare) time on my recovery. Let’s see…post a blog…regain ability to walk…blog…walk…hmmm…

Suffice it to say, for now, that plenty of good things are happening where my professional life is concerned, too (e.g. cool new software features and products forthcoming from EMC). More on that later.

In the meantime, thanks for all the well-wishes and support. Cheers…

“What happened to you?”

Since my return to the office this week, it’s pretty obvious that something did, indeed, happen to me.

No, I didn’t work on “Red Dog” (i.e. Windows Azure)—for those of you were attended last year’s PDC and saw the bright red shoes worn proudly by those on the main stage during keynotes.

What you see in the picture above, unfortunately, is a cast—my second cast in a series of casts, too. Red is the color chosen by my son, who I empowered to be my “awkward restraint device” designer. Currently the leading color for my next cast is maroon—although camouflage is a close second.

While playing a league basketball game on Sunday 2/8 I ruptured my Achilles tendon, as per the ER doctor’s opinion. This diagnosis was confirmed when I saw an orthopedic doctor on Tuesday 2/10. I had a successful surgery to repair my tendon on Wednesday 2/11.

By the way, if you have a ruptured Achilles tendon, you don’t want the kind I apparently have. My rupture involves my calf muscle, too (i.e. more where the tendon and muscle connect than just the tendon alone). So, my recovery time will be extended.

Yesterday I had my stitches removed—I look like Frankenstein where my incision exists—and received my second cast. Boy, did it feel good not to have anything touching my skin for that brief period of time!

Basically I’ll be in a series of casts for the next several weeks, being put into a new cast roughly every week. The goal of this process is to stretch the repaired tendon so that my foot is perpendicular to my lower leg (i.e. bent at a 90 degree angle). So, with each new cast, my foot will be positioned with more tension/stretch toward that goal. Yesterday I began at 50 degrees.

Achieving 90 degrees will allow me to proceed into my next phase of recovery: physical therapy. It will also mean the end of casts and the start of a wearing a walking boot instead.

At the outside, it will be about six months until I fully recover (i.e. I can run and play basketball again).

Fun, eh?

But I’m thankful for a very loving and supportive wife and family. My employer, EMC, and my work colleagues are great, too. I’m fortunate to have a job that doesn’t require me to be on my feet or to perform heavy physical labor—especially during these tough economic times.

Besides, this will all pass before you know it. I certainly won’t take my ability to walk unassisted let alone run anytime soon…

P.S. I wasn’t fouled while playing basketball either, although I thought that someone took a bat to my leg right above my heel at the time. I understand through teammates that I was actually alone while making a defensive rebound. Regardless of playing the incident over and over in my mind, I can’t recall if the “pop” I heard (internally) was before or after landing—just recall landing like a bag of rocks on the hardwood floor.

Since reading Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking and The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, I’ve been looking forward to Malcolm Gladwell‘s next book. Outliers: The Story of Success didn’t disappoint, and I recommend reading it yourself.

As the book’s title suggests, Gladwell’s text is about success and outliers; however, he engages the reader from the get-go by starting with a definition of outlier expressly to follow-up by quickly suggesting a concrete redefinition of what is truly an outlier and what determines success. Gladwell challenges the reader to think in less-conventional terms (e.g. thinking about health in terms of community–beyond just the individual): “…there is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success.”

Outliers has two parts, focused on opportunity and legacy, respectively. Part one emphasizes “from-ness” (i.e. from where (e.g. birthplace), from when (e.g. time, era, norms), from how (e.g. culture, legacy), etc.). In doing so, part one indicates by one example after another why merely personal explanations of success don’t work.

     Where are you from?

Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of the those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play–and by ‘we’ I mean society–in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.

Gladwell states, “Achievement is talent plus preparation.” He then goes on to uncover patterns of achievement and underachievement as well as patterns of encouragement and discouragement. He focuses on the work ethic of those who are purposeful, single-minded, intentional–who achieve success by working much, much harder.

• Adversity presenting itself as opportunity
• Developing skills amidst obscurity
• Meaningful – complexity, autonomy and a relationship between effort and reward in doing creative work
• “Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.”

For example, the “10,000 hour rule” is discussed (i.e. its typically takes 10K hours of deliberate practice to develop true expertise and world-class mastery). The point of the discussion is not to admire those who earn such mastery as much as it is to understand the kinds of obstacles most of us encounter in the pursuit of such commitment. Furthermore, it concerns the creation of (more) equal opportunities for practicing in order to reach greater common potential: “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

     Are you regularly practicing what your core profession requires
     (e.g. modeling, design, coding, testing, writing)?

“Success arises out of a steady accumulation of advantages.”
“Extraordinary achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity.”
     Talent: intellect, “general intelligence,” innate ability
     Opportunity: imagination, savvy, “practical intelligence,” surrounding
     community, family background, demographics, virtues and values
     (e.g. frugality, initiative, sacrifice)

“General intelligence” and “practical intelligence” are orthogonal (i.e. presence of one doesn’t imply the presence of the other); therefore, keep clear and separate (i.e. don’t confuse one for the other).

Part two, moves from opportunity to legacy and starts by focusing on cultural legacies (e.g. a culture of honor, where reputation is of foremost concern). The focus becomes about teamwork and communication (e.g. “mitigated speech”). For example, understanding cultural legacy as a way to effectively combat mitigation (i.e. developing clearer and more assertive communication where both transmitter and receiver are not a afraid to speak up or to speak straight).

To bring cultural legacy into better focus, Gladwell leverages the Cultural Dimensions work of Geert Hofstede (e.g. IDV – Individualism (i.e. what Gladwell refers to as the individualism-collectivism scale), UAI – Uncertainty Avoidance Index, PDI – Power Distance Index). For example, the United States has the highest IDV score and the fifth-lowest PDI score.

Mitigated speech and high PDI influence communication, especially when the person speaking (transmitter) and the person listening (receiver) have different orientation. In Western cultures, communication tends to be transmitter-oriented (i.e. speaker is responsible to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously). However, in Asian cultures, communication tends to be receiver-oriented (i.e. listener is responsible to make sense of what is being said). For this reason, I believe that communication is both my responsibility and also a two-way discipline (i.e. if you don’t understand something speak up–I’m trying my best to be clear). It’s why I prefer more interactive sessions at conferences, etc.

As a mathematician by training, I was fascinated to learn that, as human beings, we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. When you compare the fairly transparent Asian number system with the highly irregular number system in English, it starts to become clearer how English-speaking (English-thinking) student accumulate a disadvantage. Stowe Boyd goes into more detail of Gladwell’s treatment of this cultural legacy. (I need to start thinking si instead of four, qi instead of seven, etc. )

Cultural legacy suggests to me that it would be naive to apply an American timeline to the future development of, for example, China. Rice paddies aren’t fields of corn or wheat (i.e. skill-oriented versus mechanically-oriented farming tradition). So why should it take the Chinese the same amount of time to “modernize” as it did take Americans?

You’ve likely heard or seen the business cliché “Your attitude determines your altitude.” Well, Outliers posits that success is not much about ability as it is about attitude. That is, success is a function of persistence, doggedness and willingness to work hard. Success is more about out-learning than it is about being smarter. School works, but there just isn’t enough of it (e.g. 180 days versus 243 days–American versus Japanese school year). Or said another way, school isn’t the problem as much as summer vacation may be.

In closing:

• “Outliers are those who have been given opportunities–and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”
• Success is a gift.
• “To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success–the fortunate birth date and the happy accidents of history–with a society that provides opportunities for all.”

P.S. I recently began a major revision of my Books page. You can now more easily see other book reviews I’ve posted herein. Soon you’ll be able to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein). Why? Well, if you’re nearby and you see something of interest, please ask to borrow books of interest. If you’re not (i.e. regardless of your location to me), I’m hoping that opening up my library will help to solicit feedback as to what the especially good reads are (and why). I typically have multiple books queued up to read; so, knowing what should be top-of-list from my readers would be welcome feedback. Cheers…

Update 12/26/2008: Today I was able to get to watching the second part of Charlie Rose’s show on performance where, after interviewing Malcolm Gladwell in the first half, he interviewed the author of Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, Geoff Colvin. Mr. Colvin referenced the little known body of scientific work concerning deliberate practice, much like Mr. Gladwell drew upon it in Outliers. I appreciated Mr. Colvin’s belief, based on conversation with this scientific community, that the research frontier here is parenting.

Kids are the best. This evening at the dinner table my six year old son offered an outstanding definition for imagination without actually saying the word:

“When you close your eyes, you can see pictures. When you open your eyes, they go poof.”

To this I might add that vision is the ability to see the pictures with your eyes open.

This has been a light blogging month thus far; however, I suspect this is about to change due to the following events I’ll be traveling to during the rest of October:

• EMC’s 2nd annual Innovation Conference (e.g. sample coverage of last year’s inaugural event: [1], [2], [3])
• A follow-on EMC summit on next-generation collaboration
• Microsoft PDC

I’ll do my best to blog what I can. Cheers…

Not to forget that today is Earth Day, I’m reminded of being exposed to Chris Jordan‘s photographic art during a flight I took, I think, last year. His images stuck with me, and several seem very fitting to draw your attention to today:

• Plastic Cups, 2008 (60×90″, depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail
• Plastic Bottles, 2007 (60×120″, depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail
• Toothpicks, 2007 (60×99″, depicts 8 million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees harvested in the US every month to make the paper for mail order catalogs): fit image
• Cell Phones, 2007 (60×100″, depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail
• Paper Bags, 2007 (60×80″, depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail
• Plastic Bags, 2007 (60×72″, depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.): fit image, partial zoom and actual print detail

Of course, there are many more works by Mr. Jordan, and I encourage you to experience them–at least online, if not in person.

Last weekend–before the Sierra’s were dumped on–my family and a friend’s family went up past Sonora for a few days to play in the snow. On the first day while driving to Pine Crest, we came across of hillside perfect for sledding. In fact a whole army of families had and continued to make the same conclusion.

My son, the daredevil, kept asking me to position his sled runs wherever he could find a way to “catch air.” Eventually, the question arose as to why I wasn’t doing the same. So, with my son looking on…

Upon landing in my paper-thin plastic saucer an idea occurred to my tail bone and I: there has to be a way to apply durable, cost-effective, lightweight cushioning to typical sledding gear.

Immediately the name “cushy” came to mind for the business of providing such comfort. (Alas, an XYZ 2.0 company has already claimed the .com address.)

Anyway, if I ever change jobs for the material sciences and manufacturing, I wanted to capture the moment inspiring such change.

Happy New Year!

Well, actually it’s a give away (as in free).

Recently I took my family to a “Deacon Dave’s” to see his Christmas light spectacular. (One of his assistants said the power line to serve draws 400 amps!) I took several pictures without flash just after dark, trying to capture the effect of all of the (250,000+) lights, especially in the trees.

Anyway, I’ve been using the Cutline theme for my blog for awhile now. Cutline works with 770 by 140 pixel images. So, for those of my fellow Cutline users, here are some banner-sized images of Christmas lights you can use in the future.

As Daffy Duck said to Speedy Gonzales in Bah-Humduck!, “Fleas and eggnog!”

Update: I see that Cutline 2.0 has increased its header image size from 770×140 to 896×163. So, the above images are natively sized for Cutline 1.1. If you want me to produce 2.0-native images, please let me know (via a comment). Thanks.

Alas, the green colored streaks and lines are not Photoshop artifacts–my daughter thought she’d learn what green tastes like.

Blue eyes, too

Time to brag about my brother again…

The new campus for the Mission Valley Regional Occupation Program is ready for its grand opening next month! Brent Randall was the senior designer and project architect on project from Loving & Campos Architects.

This looks like a great space in which to prepare for business, medical and technical careers!

To appreciate more of what this project produced for MVROP, please visit photographer Jay Graham online:

• http://jaygraham.com/lca_mission_valley/content/index.html
• http://jaygraham.com/lca_mission_valley_2/content/index.html

You can also see more of the conceptual work by visiting LCA online.

Over the years, I’ve slowly collected a set of Flash-based games. Thanks to Phil Haack (and his brother), I’m now happily wasting time on vacation playing Line Rider. So far I have my sledder/rider successfully performing a loop, an inverted flip and a forward “1800″ (five tight flips in a row)…except that a complete wipe-out ensues immediately after touching down from the attempted 1800.

Given that Line Rider is a Flash application, I wonder if there is a way to leverage a vector graphics tool like Illustrator to make building a spectacular, amusement park like “roller coaster” ride more feasible. Line Rider does allow you to save and load named course; so, there may be a way…

…is filled with Schnecken’s and Downtowner’s from Gayle’s Bakery & Rosticceria (Italian deli) in Capitola. (They make good espresso, too.)

Paul Graham’s essay last month, “Stuff,” really resonates with me. I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes and go read it. Good, isn’t it?!

Stuff appears to be a key contributing factor to the commoditization–er, evaporation–of my time. In fact, I can effectively replace “stuff” with “information” in Paul’s essay and feel equally downtrodden. I’m overwhelmed with information, probably just like you are.

To paraphrase and personalize some of Paul’s points:

• Information has gotten a lot cheaper, but my attitude toward it hasn’t changed correspondingly. I overvalue information.
• Once I’ve accumulated a certain amount of information, it starts to own me rather than the other way around.
• A cluttered room [or computer file system or feed aggregator or ...] is literally exhausting.
• Another way to resist acquiring information is to think of the overall cost of owning [or even just managing] it. The purchase price [or initial download, even free] is just the beginning. I’m going to have to think about the thing for years–perhaps even for the rest of your life. Every thing you own takes energy away from you. Some give more than they take. Those are the only things worth having.

I’m known to be a packrat, which has certainly saved me and others in the past. However, the burden that comes with this mountain of information (stuff) is wearing. Techniques I’ve described before end up involved more about paying in time lost than in real value gained (i.e. organization for no apparent long-term benefit).

Earlier this week I was meeting with several EMC colleagues to discuss the whole REST/POX/SOAP/RPC/SOA/ROA(/DOA) thing. During this candid discussion–a good subject for another post–someone remarked, and I’m paraphrasing, “Forget about organization; focus on good search. Organization is an intractable problem, and one that no one is willing to pay for to solve properly.” This gave me pause…so, how do I leverage search on the web and on my desktop? Has search truly replaced navigation for me? If not, why?

Back to Paul’s essay and the realization that I may overvalue information, I got to thinking about physical books, digital books and links to books online. Paper is pleasant to hold and read, but it can burn and consumes shelf space. PDFs are fine on a big display, but they require software to read (albeit free) and additional electronic storage themselves–not to mention that they’re fixed/frozen, not dynamic/living, in nature. Links consume far less storage then documents on my hard drive–even nothing when placed into del.icio.us–but they can break or become useful when my ISP decides to disappear. When I go offline, how do I access a particular document given only a link? When I’m away from my computer, PDA, smart phone, etc. how do I read my softcopy document? When I’m away from my home library and a nearby book seller, how do I thumb through a certain chapter for that particular key phrase or figure?

Given all my questions, I need something empirical to help me to change my ways. Ironically, it seems like more data could help my information overload.

The kind of data I’m currently envisioning represents the number of browse, read and write related actions upon sets of electronic documents. For example, if I navigate to a folder that contains two documents but do nothing more, then each document gets a +1 in the browse column. If I navigate here again and open one of the documents, both documents get another +1 for browse and the opened document gets a +1 in the read column, too. If I edit the open document and save my changes, then that document also receives a +1 in the write column.

I say “columns” to represent this metadata due to my leverage of a useful Windows Explorer add-in (i.e. shell namespace extension), Folder Size for Windows, which presents a new Folder Size column within the main file system navigator:

On the other hand, I’m not sure that adding three columns of numbers would be terribly useful.

Fortunately there are lots of ways to project this kind of information. I circulated Visual Literacy’s A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods amongst my colleagues at work back in May and it garnered a fair bit of praise and admiration. More recently, Jeff Atwood blogged more generally about catalogs of data visualization. For example, maybe I could apply Crazy Egg‘s ”heat map” concept.

Perhaps I’m simply over-engineering the whole thing.

Taking a step back and returning to Paul’s essay, the following paragraph may represent the simplest way to my information tranquility:

A friend of mine cured herself of a clothes buying habit by asking herself before she bought anything “Am I going to wear this all the time?” If she couldn’t convince herself that something she was thinking of buying would become one of those few things she wore all the time, she wouldn’t buy it. I think that would work for any kind of purchase. Before you buy anything, ask yourself: will this be something I use constantly? Or is it just something nice? Or worse still, a mere bargain?

I’ve successfully applied this practice to physical books and music CD’s–I’m a sucker for both–but I’ve got a long way to go where general downloading and filing is concerned.

Update 8/24/2007: Not that TreeMaps are necessarily ideal, but I ran across a TreeMap-based disk drive content visualization software for Windows and MacOS recently: SequoiaView (Windows) and Disk Inventory X (MacOS).

A few months back I posted my review of The Starbucks Experience. At the time I raised a concern to Starbucks: when you “outsource your experience” to someone else (e.g. to grocery stores such as Safeway or Albertsons), you run the risk of damaging your brand. The people running the Starbucks kiosk are employees of the grocery chain, not Starbucks. They don’t buy into the brand from an experience stand point, and apparently are not encouraged (e.g. via incentives) to do so by their employer (or indirectly by Starbucks).

Well, I recently had an awkward moment at a “true” Starbucks location. However, the customer service I received was quite positive. You see, I was without cash and without my wallet–except I came to realize this only after placing my order. The barista simply asked for my name so that she could correlate my transaction with my return, credit card in hand. Trust was emphasized: “I know you’ll come back. No worries.” Impressions like this are long-lasting.

Thanks, Starbucks and especially to the kind barista on Santa Rita Road!

Update 8/2/2007: I see that Marc Farley picked up this post. Who knew of the connection between Starbucks and iSCSI.

While I’m on the subject of MVP’s, I have to mention my brother. Brent is the epitome of community service to me–always generous with his time and talents.

Over the years, my brother has made it a priority to give back globally when it comes to the application of his licensed architectural skills. (There’s a running joke between the two of us about who is really an architect, since he builds buildings and I build…well, I built this.) Case in point is one of the featured projects on the eMI home page: a training center and dormitory in Camaragibe, Brazil.

In the spirit of “think globally, act locally,” Brent hosted my son at his place yesterday for an afternoon of building and swimming.

Not a bad result, especially when you consider that it went from a paper sketch to an assembled, painted result in only two and a half hours.

Kudos to you, bro!

This morning I received official word from Microsoft that I will continue for another year (7/1-6/30) as a “Visual Developer – Solutions Architect” MVP. I am grateful to receive this community involvement-based recognition, and I look forward to the coming year’s worth of interactions (e.g. Acropolis, Visual Studio 2008, .NET 3.5 with WCF, WF, etc., Windows Server 2008, and so on). As I said before, this award is about community service; so, please let me know how I can help you, my reader. Cheers!

From “Lessons from the Anti-Mentor” (via my folks):

• People are essentially reliable; therefore, their actions should be understood with that consistency in mind (e.g. always generous, always selfish, always doing, always (just) talking, etc.). Trust your instincts here.
• “You spend too much time at work to spend it around people you don’t like or trust. If you’re not having fun, it’s time to move on.”

Some of you noticed that not too long ago I changed my site layout and theme. Among the stylistic changes were new header graphics. “What exactly am I looking at?” you might be wondering. Well, I’m a fan of Dr. Seuss (e.g. see this). I’m also a fan of John Mayer, thanks to my brother and DirecTV’s free playback of his Continuum launch concert in New York’s Webster Hall.

When I listen to Continuum’s first track, “Waiting on the World to Change,” it reminds me of both The Waiting Place in Dr. Seuss’es Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and the irony of the Lorax taking his leave of the Once-ler in Dr. Seuss’es The Lorax.

So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
It’s hard to beat the system
When we’re standing at a distance
So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

The new header graphics mostly showcase the Truffula Trees from The Lorax: “And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.” It’s my subtle reminder to be engaged rather than waiting for someone or something else to act. Recall the words of the Once-ler:

Now that you’re here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.
UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.

(Here’s another subtle reminder I display in my office.)

I recently came across the following quote from Abraham Lincoln: “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.“

Considering how the passing of the sun, for example, causes a tree’s shadow to change shape (and finally disappear), the President’s statement gives me pause. How much time do I devote to “shadow observation” rather than observing the tree itself? How much time do I attend to my “personal tree” instead of worrying about shadows currently cast by it (i.e. others’ perceptions)?

For the past 15 and a half years, Amber was a great dog.

She will be missed.

Clearly the following images reveal that I have yet to fundamentally change my behavior when it comes to organizing and retaining content:

 

This begs the question, “Why?” Why take the time to keep columns, paragraphs, articles, magazines, etc. in physical form?

The truth is that I prefer softcopy to hardcopy, if for no other reason than it’s much easier to find what I’m looking for…usually. I also prefer organization over clutter; electronic documents take up far less of my physical office desktop, too!

However, I’m also a visual person who thrives on structure. This used to be true of my life in general and is less so, thanks to being married, having kids, and being older (if not wiser). It certainly still applies to knowledge, information, data, content, etc. While you may see a pile of unrelated pages, I see a stack of ”thought bookmarks” and “work-in-progress favorites.” 

This bias toward structure can be both strength and weakness. As a source of strength, I’m often called upon to unearth an important decision or discussion from the past that has new found relevance. The opposite side of the same coin rears its ugly head whenever external events render the structure non-optimal or even inaccessible given this new context at hand.

The more detailed the folder hierarchy in question, the more tedious its restructuring becomes–and I’m fairly detailed when it comes to use of my file systems (e.g. I avoid flat lists of documents such as ‘My Documents’ in Windows). Change context enough, and “being structured” becomes more a liability as I have to engage in the tedious exercise of reorganizing folder hierarchies.

Obviously, I have other choices. For example, I could simplify my file system to become (just) date based (e.g. 2007, 2006, …). Above this rather flat hierarchy I could more regularly employ desktop search to realize transcient views above a particular set of content.

So, I return back to the question of “Why?” and wonder what exactly causes me to rely on manual work and essentially distrust more automated techniques.

Perhaps my behavior is predicated on past performance of desktop search. Perhaps I believe that I can drill into a folder hierarchy of my creation and find the document of interest faster than I can launch a desktop search for the same piece of content. Perhaps it’s more a matter of if it’s not broke (most of the time), don’t fix it; however, I sense that my content interests and therefore my content itself is becoming more dynamic like the rest of my life and certainly my work.

I see that Windows Vista promotes the notion of tags on folders and documents now. Perhaps a combination of tags, fewer folders and more frequent searches will become my new approach to content organization and retrieval. Sounds like I need to go on a “diet” here to see what results…

How do you organize your local content? How to you find what you need?

Update 1/24/2007 (via Scott Abel): Looks like I can make my virtual world just as cluttered now with BumpTop.

While I’ve never been a prolific blogger, I managed to find time to post at least once every month last year. However, total posts this year (64) were down from 2005 (74). I believe this was due to two primary factors: having a family with two kids now and having a high, sustained workload as a software architect.

I started last year off intending to write more from my gut (i.e. what I’m passionate about). I faired decently but not spectacularly in this regard.

Easily the most significant post I made in 2006 was one of my shortest: Beautiful evidence.

Other posting highlights include the following (in chronological order–most recent is last):

• Content attractors
• Get out of context (i.e. my review of Dealing with Darwin)
• Content islands and dominoes
• The Success of Open Source (i.e. my review of this book)
• Free content now!
• An idea to set content free
• The Long Tail (i.e. my review of this book)
• Round-trip content engineering
• WS-*? Stop. Think. REST
• I’m starting to see red (i.e. Ruby)
• Open source Omea!

Since becoming SOA architect for the Content Management & Archiving business unit within EMC, I’ve been focused on SOA, web services and ECM service standardization. Since I realized this role on 1/1, 2006 has been about services, services, services; so the third to the last post above was made both seriously and as an attempt at humor.

The last two posts above hold perhaps the most promise entering 2007. Ruby is a language on the rise, and I’m interested in seeing how dynamic languages in general and Ruby in particular can well-serve content management needs (among other uses).

Omea is a unique resource aggregator that includes support for feeds, newsgroups, email, bookmarks and files, and is also accessible. It also happens to be my feed reader of choice. Given the business I’m in, I’m anxious to understand Omea at the source level to see how it can become integrated into content management solutions.

Looking back on 2006, I am reminded that the best laid plans can dissolve with little notice. WinFS, for example, was going strong until Microsoft decided (wisely) to remove it from what will publicly launch soon as Windows Vista. I’m also reminded that opportunity can knock without expectation (e.g. becoming a Microsoft MVP as a Solutions Architect).

Looking ahead to 2007… Happy New Year!