Techronicity

Metastatic Breast Cancer - I am stage 4

This blog no longer reflects my life’s definition this career. I’d love to give you a glimpse into the last three and a half years of my life. Please visit me at My new life with cancer, poetry, some posts about living with a partner with depression and anxiety, life as a step parent and daughter of a mom who had NPD. Welcome to The Cancer Bus, I’ll be your driver.

Mr. Pickles: A study in marketing basics (and humility)

On the first below-60 degree day of fall 2012 here in San Jose, a traffic-inducing drizzle persisted creating hazardous highway conditions. Subsequently, I tended to local errands.  The quiet roads allowed for introspection, rather than road rage. As I approached the light to turn into an unremarkable strip mall...there he waved.  

For in the drizzle and gloom Mr. Pickles glowed.  Indeed, he looked thrilled about the grand opening of the deli that bares his name.  Mr. Pickles, I thought. How sadly anachronistic.  He doubled over shaking his shoulders in mock mime laughter, a giant, grinning pickle encased in a sandwich board hawking hearty heroes.  At the light I looked back and shrugged, and said to no one in particular that at least Mr. Pickles had a job.  

And then it dawned on me. We, the high and mightly proclaimers of all-things-digital, of social networks and Adwords, of etail and viral videos, have discounted the brick and mortar local marketing as beneath anyone's preciously short attention span. Had we pronounced it dead a bit too soon? Alive and well and waving at you from the corner, behold sandwich board marketing tactics, effective since the dawning of advertising itself.  

Mr. Pickles worked.  Would I have noted that deli otherwise?  Probably not.  Would I have seen the weak stream of tweets or the Facebook page and clicked "like?" Most undoubtedly the answer is a resounding no.

So thanks Mr. Pickles, you ray of sunlight between the clouds, golden as mustard on a hoagy, you reminded me that grass roots are on my front lawn.  As we eat a late dinner of crepes and tea with honey in our wondrously digitized home, my thoughts turn to the Big Grinning Pickle, a one man picket line, a stroke of marketing genius.

 I will eat at Mr. Pickle's Deli in Campbell, CA.  And that's viral marketing.

A Post-PBS Educational Television Landscape | EvoEcoLab, Scientific American Blog Network

The spork’s weird history - Salon.com

Honored to be in such good company - thank you to the Nifty 50!

The Top #Nifty50 Women in Technology on Twitter for 2012

September 10, 2012

A year ago, the #Nifty50 honored 50 remarkable men andwomen on Twitter. This year, colleague Cheryl Burgess and I changed things up a bit, opening the award to nominations but focusing specifically on outstanding men and women who work for technology companies and are active on social media.

These women are executives, thought leaders, bloggers, authors and role models for younger women with an interest in technology. Not only leaders in their professional lives, nearly all these women use their social profiles to express their passions outside the workplace, which range from NASCAR, art, travel, billiards, wine and music to community service, politics and, of course, family.

Among the women profiled below, Emily Gonzales notes that “women in tech are doing really cool things,” while Padmasree Warrior is “passionate about helping women in tech.” True, and important, which is why this year’s #Nifty50 is focused on the technology field.

Ilene Kaminsky
@ilenealizah

Ilene is a “content creationist” whose background includes stints as Director of Marketing and Director of Strategic Development at IBM, Alliance Director at eGain Communications, and Managing Director at Lumina Consulting. She also writes the Techronicity blog.

 

Happy 5773 - Atone, reflect, then oy vey, eat something.

Reflecting on the holiday, I am in San Jose feeling like the lone Jewess transplanted from the place where I never knew there were people who had never SEEN a Jew and had never experienced antisemitism.  And, as with all reflection, I took a look at a letter I'd written my stepson last year for his birthday.  Please feel free to comment - it's vanity (as all is vanity and striving after wind...) but you'll get the point.  I think he did, too.  Happy New Year.  Have a little food.  Give someone a hug.

Wise (up)

Letter to you on your birthday, my special friend:

10 years old - think about what the world was like back when you were born...  One whole decade of your life makes up your history, and your future waits to unfold for you like a story in the decades still to come.   Can you imagine yourself another decade older?  20 years old, just 10 years from now.  That’s a huge leap from here if you think about how much you’ll do in the next 10 years.  

I thought back to when I turned 10.  I wished somebody would have told me some things that might happen or just stuff in general that only comes with being old like me.  So, I thought I’d write those things down for you. Some of the things are just what I wish I’d done differently, some are things I am really glad I did, and some are things that have helped me get through some tough times:

1. You are only as good as your word.  You are born with it (it’s the cry you make when you come out of your mom’s tummy) and you die with it (everyone’s got something to say before they die, and some even put it on their gravestone.)  There’s no clothing on your back when you come into the world and none when you leave it, but you scream at everyone when you’re born and whisper when you exit. So, keep your word and the world will come back to you because you’re a trusted soul.
2. Travel.  
3. Do one thing REALLY well.  Like skateboarding.  Or playing guitar.  Or even knitting.  But practice and become an expert.  I wish I had stuck with one thing long enough to be considered an “expert.”  But, there’s always time.
4. Treat others how you want to be treated, even if you don’t think they deserve it.
5. Go for long walks alone and think.
6. Write in a journal.  Look back after some time and reflect on how you felt. Quite often, the things that made us mad or happy or sad a year or two ago, don’t make use feel like that when we look back.
7. Try everything within reason - I mean food, and sports, and walking around naked in the snow, or seeing how long you can go without taking a shower (oh, right you tried that last week ;)
8. Tell people who you love how you feel.  Affection helps everyone.
9. Be sincere.
10. Love what you do for a living.  You must.  You’ll come to define yourself by what you do. So you better love it.
11. Make peace with your brother.  (I wish I did this - but you have to make peace with yourself first as to why you’re angry with him.  I wasn’t angry at my brother, I was angry at my mom and my dad for messing up our family. 
12. Hygiene matters and practice it whenever and where ever you get the opportunity because you never know what might keep you from getting that next shower or who you might meet walking down the street. And if you travel this is extra important.  Ask me about Hurricane Wilma - I didn’t get a shower for 10 days.  Ew.
13. Volunteer regularly.  Giving to people in need will make you humble.
14. Love yourself.  That’s the hardest thing to do.  You may not know what I mean now, but you will.  We do things in our life that we look back on and we don’t like the people we were when we did them.  But forgive yourself.  Because when people don’t forgive themselves they become ugly and bitter. 
15. Save your money but don’t be stingy.
16. Think about something good when you get up in the morning and it will take away any bad feelings that might ruin a perfectly good morning.
17. Allow yourself to make mistakes.
18. Allow yourself to be competitive.  Victory dances are good in moderation.
19. Learn to tell jokes.
20. Don't be racist or sexist
21. And, last but not least, to yourself be true.

THINKing » Top 50 Creativity Posts

via www.my-creativeteam.com

Compendium for getting the creative motor running and some good advice...

Cool Infographics - Blog - A Woman's Place: Best and Worst Places To Be A Woman

via www.coolinfographics.com

Shopping towards Bethlehem

After re-reading a few sections of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" circa 1998, its relevancy  describes one of the daily challenges facing software scientists, developers, and programmers as well as the companies that love them.  They know all too well that the addition of people to a problem in writing code only expands the problem and timeline exponentially.  If we suppose for a moment this still holds true, what then becomes of our economy and our workforce when cloud-based, crowd-sourced (to a greater or lesser degree) application and software development (if we can still call it software) using open source code takes over the world?  

The delivery of software by the box being replaced with software by the drink, a drop at a time, and the economy based on an "end" of a project or the delivery of a "version" will sound like a dial tone to those born after 2000 - never heard it before.  What does that spreadsheet look like if the platform must not operate with an OS but with browser-like shells to take what we need and leave what we don't.  It's not how money is made today.  

As we watch with horror as another retailer closes all or some of its doors, we witness the very underpinnings of our economy begin to shape shift.  The movement from large to small, many to one - perhaps towards outlets and kiosks as a replacement for big brick and mortar establishments .  We may be witnessing the beginning of the end: the decline of the mall and big box stores.  Even now our "shopping" experience including the ever shifting act of browsing goes wider and farther than ever and the store is just the place you might touch and feel something but you don't buy it there necessarily.  The trend towards picking up locally your new or used goods after a browse around the web will become one of the ways to get your wares.  Big hardware stores better become customer service centers really quickly or they will become extinct, too. Anyone look for wallpaper paste lately?

 Maybe you stumble upon the beloved item that will soothe the vestigial "immediate gratification" craving - filling you with joy and flooding your body with endorphins, which expire upon the weak strain of the unhappy let down that comes after you unwrap your goodie, as though you're laying on the carpet of a party of which the guests have left and only the streamers and ribbon and booze-stench remain…ah shopping. But I digress.

So, assuming the economics shift what happens to the distribution of wealth?  Perhaps Engels correctly, communistically blurted - from each according to his skill, to each according to his need, or something close to that.  Now combine the global pressures placed on the distribution of population to the small percentage of people with and the sliver of distributed wealth.  Now ask where technology gets "manufactured"  and where development of the skilled workers takes place today.  Maybe not though.

 Let's for a moment take a page from Louis C.K.'s distribution of comedy, pardon my weak pun, which allowed him complete creative control mind you when he produced then distributed via his website a $5.00 DRM-free download of a live one hour show.  It took him roughly six weeks start to finish and it would have taken at least six months to work with HBO or ComedyCentral to do much of the same, and they'd have ultimate power over his personal IP.  While he took in, purportedly over a million dollars, to say that perhaps he is onto something - the convergence of the diametrically opposed classic distribution model to the initial stated problem of crowd-contributed software development at the edge by, egads...the madding crowds, the unwashed masses... 

 Then it's fair for everyone perhaps to say that:

1.  Not everyone will develop software because they lack the skills, and those who can will.

2.  The feared skill diaspora risk factors will cause the wealth to gather the skills where ever they exist.

3.  Consumption, like water, will take on the form of the container it's given, and in this case it's bigger and more expansive and full of choices influenced by individuals (socially influenced.)

4.  Those who possess non-technical skills will use the tools those cleverer than us developed and perhaps even ask for new tools to distribute wares more effectively - LCK may not be funny to everyone but he's putting the business of content distribution where it needs to be, at least I believe so.

5. And finally, as always, it's the economy, stupid. Or as Navin R. Johnson said in The Jerk, "ah, it's a profit deal!"

 

Experts among us...

People love to talk about what they know.  Just ask them.  Experts sit in every cube, office, desk, remote work space, on every customer service call, and within virtually every business.

Generally, employees remain in their respective roles doing their respective jobs, only using their respective silo of knowledge to please their respective supervisor.  They  are hired and someday leave without achieving the maximum potential and delivering the maximum value. Calculating the employer's  loss isn't possible if the knowledge and wisdom of that employee's experience remained undiscovered and untapped.  The cost benefit seems higher than the risk, if indeed there's any real risk at all. 

Luckily we live in social times with virtual whiteboards like blogs allow us to harness all that untapped knowledge.  Some of the best blogs in my opinion deliver amazing insights from nearly every department and from all levels of seniority (not just from the CEO's or CMO's office).  Great blogs allow organizations to literally tap and test this vast human knowledge base.  

Allowing employee experts to speak instills confidence and loyalty.  Many people leave their jobs because they feel their contributions go unnoticed and aren't appreciated.  Theoretically then, allowing employee experts to speak and be heard would only show positive outcomes.  You may also see measurable results such as higher employee retention, more productivity, faster innovation velocity, and a diversity of content and data to add to your knowledge base.  

Forrester's  IDEA (Identify target audience, Develop thought leadership, Engage audiences, Assess the impact) framework for thought leadership strategy and provides a good guideline for executives to agree on how to create a foundation for good content and also channel your employee's personal knowledge base in the right direction.  Establish corporate guidelines so employees understand the constraints and the process by which they can publish.  Common sense rules and best practices exist everywhere.  It's a matter of establishing your own and encouraging employees to get involved.

Results may vary and you won't always mine a diamond in the rough.  And I'm certainly not suggesting taking time away from critical tasks or projects.   Some forward-thinking companies mandate people spend time on projects outside of their day to day activities resulting in outcomes like retention and innovation using the same theoretical practice I am suggesting here.   Anyway, more than likely most of your folks engage in activities like writing personal blogs, or tweeting on a daily basis, or posting to LinkedIn and Facebook,  or creating interest boards on Pinterest.  Why not harness some of that for the benefit of your company as well as to the benefit of your customers and employees.  What's the risk?