Category Archives: Work Stuff

Running on Empty

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I apologize ahead of time for the whining.  This time of year is usually tough for me because there’s too much work and lots of stuff going on with the kids, like baseball, soccer, tennis and such.  Truth be told this year feels worse than the last few because, truth be told, I’m not getting any younger.  Right now I’m sitting at the computer trying to wind up my day after getting up at 4:45-ish, heading to the airport for a 6:30 flight to DC, heading straight to SCIP‘s (my client’s) office and I’m still here at 8:30 (that’s PM) with another hour of work to do.  I know there are lots of people who have it worse, but I’m telling you my tank’s about dry.

I’m hoping to sleep hard tonight, but I’m one of those people who can’t sleep well in a hotel so I don’t hold out much hope.  The worst part is that this is the first day of an eight day trip.  The last four will be brutal as we put on SCIP’s largest event of the year.  Everyone here will be on the clock from 6:00 a.m. until some time after dark, and everyone in SCIP’s office has had it as bad (actually worse) than I’ve had it for the last few weeks.  I wouldn’t want to be trapped in a closed room with any of us come Wednesday of next week. The upside is that these are a great group of people to work with and I seriously don’t think I’d be doing it if they weren’t. 

BTW, if you’re in New York next week you should drop by the Marriott Marquis and check out the conference, especially if you happen to be in the competitive intelligence business.  It ain’t free, but it’s a great conference.  If you’re not in CI then maybe you can just drop by and check out the elevators in the place; they’re fast and they go way-high (49 floors).

Yep, I’m exhausted because even as I write this I know it’s one of the dumbest, most self serving things I’ve written yet.  I know it’s self serving because I’ve yet to mention what Celeste has to deal with while I’m gone: games that overlap and necessitate scheduling gyrations and begging for carpools, single-handed homework checking, and dealing with two teenagers and one tween for eight days solid.  It’ll be a miracle if I don’t come home to find her in AA.

But, it beats the alternative of unemployment and everything that comes with it.  With that I declare this whine-fest over.  Everyone have a great week.

Nothing Like Timing

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It’s my busiest time of year.  My client’s big annual conference is in two weeks and I’m responsible for all the exhibitors and sponsors.  This is the week that I get scores of calls and dozens of email every day with questions about the conference.  So of course this is exactly when I lose power and cable (i.e. internet and IP phone) for days on end.

Thank goodness for Panera and my wife’s old laptop.  This experience also highlights the severe limitations of my PocketPC, which is great from updating documents and doing light email but is not suited for hardcore work.

Stress now at Defcon 5.

Jon

Fried Router and Google Desktop on Today’s Menu

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There are lots of pluses to self employment and/or working from home.  Not having to shave for days on end, wearing sweats and a t-shirt on a daily basis, showers-optional, etc.  On the other hand there are some definite negatives like bad-smell-syndrome and anything related to technology.

This morning my router was fried (me thinks it had something to do with the crackling I heard emanating from my power strip) so without the convenience of tech support it was off to the store to buy a new router.  The router that was fried was a Linksys Wireless G router that I purchased when the G standard had just been produced, I think around four years ago, and this morning as I was driving to Circuit City I had a vivid recall of the decidedly non-automated set up procedure for the old router.  In other words I remembered how painful an experience it was for your average non-tech-geek to install a wireless network.

I bought the next version Wireless G router (with speed and signal booster!) and ran back home.  I popped open the box and saw these magic words on a big red sticker: "RUN CD FIRST: Do not unplug any existing PC or Networking Equipment".  For once I followed instructions and two minutes later the router was up and running, the security settings were set up automatically without me having to re-learn all that crazy lingo (WEP, WAP, whatever) and my computer, which is the only one cabled to the router, had a nice internet connection. 

Next I was asked by the install program if I wanted to install other computers on the network.  When I clicked yes it asked if it was wired or wireless.  I clicked wireless and then it asked me if I could temporarily attach it by cable to the router for the install.  I said no and it then asked me if I had a USB flash drive.  I said yes and it prompted me to plug in the drive and then it installed a setup program and said all I needed to do was plug the drive into any other computer I wanted to install on the network and the program would automatically configure the computers for the network (assuming they’re all running Windows XP).  SWEET!

I went downstairs to Celeste’s office and kicked her off her computer so I could get it back on the network.  I plugged the flash drive into her USB port and then waited, and waited, and waited.  What the hell? So I pulled up Task Manager and saw her CPU at 100% usage.  I looked at what was running and noticed a butt-load of memory being chewed by Google Desktop and other Google Pack goodies.  I shut them off and she instantly went to 23% usage.  Hmm.

As soon as I turned off Google the Linksys install program launched and we had her online in about 60 seconds. When it was done loading and I’d confirmed her connection was good, and that she had a much stronger connection than she’d ever had with our old router, I uninstalled all of her Google stuff. 

All told my tech support job cost me about an 1 1/2 today, but the result is we seem to have a much stronger wireless network and I’m coming to believe that Google really wants to be like Microsoft.

Meeting an Apprentice

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Okay, meeting doesn’t quite describe it.  I was in the audience at the annual American Society of Association Executives SpringTime event to hear Kwame Jackson’s keynote speech.  Mr. Jackson came in second place on "The Apprentice" (first season), and hasn’t looked back since.

His speech was better than I expected, and it’s nice to see that he’s doing a lot more than just riding his "Apprentice" fame on the speaker’s circuit.  His Legacy Holdings LLC venture looks interesting, and I think Prince Georges County, Maryland (just outside D.C.) where they are building the Rosewood mixed-use development can really use a lot of the energy and promise that Kwame exudes.

One interesting thing he talked about was how his buddy, and current business partner, David J. Smith actually called him, told him about the show, and talked him into applying for "The Apprentice."  And he convinced Mr. Jackson that this would be their ticket to a successful future, even though they both already had lucrative positions on Wall Street.

Instead of just going through the normal channels Mr. Smith picked up the phone and called the casting director for the show.  He convinced the casting director to come to New York and meet with the two of them, and from that point on they had an inside track. They still had to send in a videotape and application, but basically one of them was pretty much a sure bet to be one of the 50 called to Hollywood to audition for one of the 16 spots on the show.

Now it looks like Mr. Smith was prophetic, and things are going just as he and Mr. Jackson planned.  Actually I think it would be just as interesting, if not more, to meet Mr. Smith as it would be to meet Mr. Jackson.  I think we’ll be hearing a lot more from both of them in the future.

Blogging for Associations

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Rex Hammock, one of the leading bloggers out there, is doing some guest blogging for American Business Media (ABM), a trade association of which he is a member.  In his introductory post on the ABM blog he shared this nugget:

As a note of transparency, my company works with several large national
associations in publishing their member magazines and providing online
editorial services to them. (ABM is not one of these.) And
so, in addition to my willingness to serve in another voluntary role
for ABM, I also have a professional interest in trying to understand
the role of participatory media (I call it conversational media) in the
context of associations. I believe associations have a unique
opportunity to serve as neutral platforms for conversations — they
certainly do so when they host meetings. I’ve spent the past decade
trying to encourage clients and other publishers to embrace ways to
amplify the voices of those they serve, rather than view those voices
as threats or competition. I hope the blogging committee and this blog
can help me keep ranting on discussing that topic.

Okay, I’m the Dumbest Person in the Room

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I’m currently in D.C. working at the International Conference on Intelligence Analysis.  Because of my work with Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals I’m used to working with some very smart people, but this crowd is, well, special.

Last night they had a poster session, which is basically a bunch of people standing at a table with a little three panel posterboard on it (imagine an elementary school science fair and you begin to get the picture) and then explaining their hypotheses to the attendees.  Oh, and it doubled as a networking reception.  Like I said, this is a special crowd.

Walking around this thing, listening to the assorted PhD.s talk about their newest algorithm that will allow intelligence analysts to more easily identify the meaning in some terrorist cell’s gazilion email messages caused me to really regret not paying more attention during my high school trig class.  I doubt it would have helped though; these people were way out of my league.  Which, when you think about it, is probably damning them with faint praise!

More on this event later.

Intelligence Analsyis 05

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My current "big" work project is marketing and managing the exhibit hall for the 2005 International Conference on Intelligence Analysis.  This is definitely an interesting gig, if for no other reason than the fact that I’m dealing with a lot of people involved with the government intelligence community rather than the private sector competitive intelligence people I normally deal with.

The conference is in two weeks, and it ought to be pretty interesting. Will update later.

People I Met in Chicago

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Okay, if you aren’t interested in business information, competitive intelligence, market research, etc. then I suggest you skip this post.  But if you are interested, read on.

My main responsibility at the SCIP conference in Chicago was working with the exhibitors and sponsors.  Since there were about 60 of them I didn’t get to talk to them all in-depth, but I did get to spend some time with many of them.  Here’s some of the more interesting (to me) services and products I came across:

Traction Software — These guys provide an "enterprise blog", which is essentially a blog on steroids. Jordan Frank is one of the "funner" guys to talk to in the business. 

auroraWDC – Partners (and brothers) Arik & Derek Johnson have a consultancy in Wisconsin and even better (for my purposes) a blog.  Arik’s also a SCIP Board Member, and did me a huge favor by moderating our CI Buyers Panel this year.

ZoomInfo – This firm provides a business person search engine. Just type in a person’s name and all of the relevant web-based info tied to that person comes up.  Great tool if you want to get some basic background on someone you are going to meet, or someone you’re doing a deal with.  Rest assured, however, that there isn’t anything personal about it.  Since it only pulls information from the public web it’s mostly bios, press releases, etc. They had the benefit of having two speakers mention their product, causing a flood of traffic to their booth, but Leah Kirlis, a product manager for the company seemed to handle all the attention without breaking too much of a sweat!

Alot of the big-boys in the industry were present too.  Here’s a quick list:

Thomson Scientific – Had the pleasure of speaking with Todd Cohen for a while and I was happy to learn some of the new developments for them.  Surprise: acquisitions!

Thomson Dialog – We just inked an annual marketing agreement with them, and they had a good presence at the conference.  Definitely a tool that any researcher would love to have.

Standard & Poors – Had a very interesting conversation with James Postell about the need for basic financial education in the business realm, especially with researchers, corporate librarians, etc.  Hopefully something fruitful will come out of it.

Finally, I can’t forget the guys at Proactive Worldwide.  They had the biggest presence at the conference.  Big booth, oxygen bar, water giveaway, two $500 raffles at the general session and an army of staffers on site.  Top it off with David Kalinowski receiving a Catalyst award and I think you could say they hit a home run.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.  Very impressive people from very impressive companies were at the SCIP conference.  I couldn’t list them all, but it was definitely a privilege getting to work with them.  Hopefully I’ll see them all, and many more next April in Orlando.

Sales Intelligence Summit with SCIP Members

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MemberpicMe and SCIP members Rob Sidrow (Microsoft, in the middle) and Rob Jeppsen (Primary Intelligence, right) at the Sales Intelligence Summit. 

Microsoft won the Sales Intelligence award, and Rob Sidrow gave a great presentation based on their case submission. 

I don’t know if copies of the various summit presentations are available, but if you’re interested in any of it let me know and I’ll check it out.  I think that any one of my four readers who are running their own business, or are in any way involved in sales should take a look at this stuff.

Rob Jeppsen was largely responsible for putting the summit together, so if you have any interest in incorporating competitive intelligence into your sales program then I suggest you contact him for more information.  I think he knows EVERYBODY in the business.