song: the parting glass

Of all the money e'er I had, I spent it in good company;
And all the harm I've ever done, alas was done to none but me;
And all I've done for want of wit, to memory now I can't recall,
So fill me to the parting glass, goodnight and joy be with you all.

If I had money enough to spend and leisure time to sit awhile,
There is a fair maid in this town who sorely has my heart beguiled.
Her rosy cheeks and ruby lips, I own she has my heart in thrall,
So fill me to the parting glass, goodnight and joy be with you all.

Of all the comrades e'er I had, they're sorry for my going away,
And all the sweethearts e'er I had , they wish me one more day to stay,
But since it falls unto my lot that I should go and you should not,
I'll gently rise and softly call, goodnight and joy be with you all.

(pour AB, a la prochaine fois)

late: after everyone has gone to sleep

Today avoided, dodged, weaved, jooked and rope-a-doped. It made every attempt to slip by unobserved. After a contemplative beginning, it did what most days do - accelerate into sameness - until late afternoon.

We went to visit with my son's teacher, dodging rain into and out of his "portable" classroom. Portable not because its predecessor was swept away by a vengeful g-d, but because the school is too damned crowded and the district won't expand. Which is another expression of a vengeful g-d, I think. A more subtle, vengeful g-d.

And now it's done.

early: before anyone wakes up

I don't generally wake up in the four o'clock hour unless I need to fly somewhere. Today, the eyes shot open at 4:40am and stayed open, my mind turning over at a clip more reminiscent of 10am.

I've never been a morning person. But I'm beginning to sense that there's a lot that you can do in the morning that doesn't get done quite as well later in the day.

As the sky started waking up to my left, I read Cory Doctorow's "I, Row-Boat" on Flurb. I don't read as much as I used to, so some extra time becomes an opportunity to fall into a story and waddle around like the old days. I used to be able to keep my "book queue" down to a small pile, but of late it's tottering around four feet tall, filled with books I should read (the rest of the Jonathan Lethem oeuvre), work books (Good to Great, anyone?) and so forth. The stack tends to be a LIFO queue, which means next up is Charles Stross' Glasshouse. Samuel Johnson will have to wait a little longer. Sorry Sam.

There was time to add to a project I've started in a Writely document. It's a remarkable tool for tracking your more durable, private thoughts. I think of it as my "unterwiki".

There was time to plan the day, not just react to the day.

When the clock rolled to the bottom of the six o'clock hour and the first vague stirrings started sounding from upstairs I knew my private time was almost over; I'll make some coffee, dash outside to get the paper, pull a few weeds on my way back in. Another day will start turning its gears to propel me in the blink of an eye toward night.

All good reasons to get up early - so I can see where I'm going first. Have a good one.

kitsch: old vending machines & content hacks

In an age when every vending machine you find bleeps and boops and makes change and flickers with LEDs, do you ever find yourself remembering that cranky old vendo at the town pool that would occasionally spew dimes for no reason or dispense not one but two boxes of Good-n-Plenty? The same one that would eat your last quarter in an act of karmic equivalency with equal regularity? Yes, that one.

If new machines are equal parts art (or at least design) and commerce, old ones are definitely kitschy by comparison. Imagine Hermann Broch wailing in frustration banging on the front of a machine, watching his mini-bag of Fritos dangle tantalizingly out of reach and declaiming that old machines are an "evil within the value system of vending art."

And he'd be right. Because for those folks who make their all-cash living in the vending (sorry, automatic merchandising) business, old and antiquated vending machines aren't just inconvenient, they are evil - plagued by bad coin mechanisms or insecure enclosures or storage inefficiency. Old machines threaten their way of life and deserve to be expunged.

But for the rest of us. . .truly old machines offer a certain irresistable charm, especially in denominations of a penny or a nickel.

The nice folks at Art-o-Mat have taken old vending kitsch to its logical extreme by converting old pull-knob cigarette machines into proletarian dispensoria of various art-ish objects. At five clams a pull, however, they've got a business model that'd make the eyes of a vending pro water were it not for the fact that they've not mass-marketed the concept into every jazz bar and indy coffee joint nationwide. Yet.

There are simpler ways to bring old machines back to life - transform them from serving commodities to serving entertainment. The Art-o-Mat is a great start - but what if you stocked a Mills Automatic Merchandising gum vendo with. . .something new? What if you offered something new and novel to stock in a F.E. Erickson / Shipman "Ask Swami" dispenser? Remember those old nut dispensers? They're just waiting to be hacked. You could take a note from the so-called "collectible card games" and drop some "chase products" in a stack of merch. Guitar picks? Clove gum? Mystery scratch-n-sniff cards? Software trial extension keys? Coupons for MMORPG schwag? The possibities are endless.

The ultimate expression of this would be to make these machines the central draw to a store front destination - add coffee, music, art, periodicals and franchise both the refurb of the kitschy vending machines and their avant-garde hacked contents. Now that sounds like fun.

(edit1: The masters of high-tech modern kitsch vending are, hands-down, the Japanese.)

(edit2: Ron's comment below is a cool idea. More fodder for my eville plan!)

moratoriums: interrogation interviews and tip lists

I've got two moratoriums I'd like to declare today. The first is a call to end the interrogation-style interview.

Me, I've got a wacky interview style. Having read the candidate's interview ahead of time, I like to walk into the interview, turn the resume upside down, and say, "you know, interviews are the most unnatural interaction you'll ever have with someone. I'd like to know what sort of things you're interested in about me, about the company, our market. What's on your mind?"

You'd be surprised what you hear.

I use the back of the resume to draw pictures illustrating my responses, then I offer the interviewee the pen and let them draw if they want to as well.

Ultimately, you find out what you want to hear, but you learn it through the questions they ask, the follow-up questions they pursue, their level of ease associated with a non-standard interview. And you learn how well they'd work with you in what approximates a normal work setting.

I don't recommend that everyone on the interview team adopt this approach, but one member should.

Which leads me to my second moratorium: death to blog tip lists.

Unfortunately, most celebrity software bloggers love their tip lists, which has translated into broad adoption of the tip list as a "favored" approach to business blogging. Top 10 Questions for The Notorious Mr. Foo! My Tips for Nailing Your Interview with MagnaMech! How to Name your Software!

Sigh.

Why do we blog in the first place, we proud few, we software marketing types?

Do we blog to demonstrate our deep and profound knowledge of a particular discipline? To illustrate our connection to the "playas" associated with a popular new technology? To establish our thought leadership in a marketplace crowded with other erstwhile thought leaders?

I'd like to think we write because we're interested in sustaining a dialog. We write because we'd actually like to read - and we know that we need to posit a few thoughts first in order to attract a) interest and b) feedback.

So in the interest of doing just that - of writing to sustain a dialog - I declare a moratorium on publishing lists of tips that serve only to demonstrate "what I know that you don't". Because as I discovered in the interview I did yesterday, what's important to me isn't what I know, it's what you can teach me. The light that shines into the dark places is what creates opportunity, not the one that re-illuminates the known.

A few examples of what I think are good marketing blogs that rise up to the standard of illuminating without pontificating: HorsePigCow (even though I'll never be cool, I can become cool-er by reading it), Presentation Zen, Stephen Brown (the patron saint of ack/nak), Seth Palmer (not strictly speaking a marketing blog, but it wins on the illumination front).

And how could I list blogs worth reading without noting Fluffy Stuffin' and Perfect Blue Buildings.

(edited for spelling, thanks Jim)

oxymoron: an abundance of sensitivity

I'm not going to climb up on any high horse regarding the RIAA's recent decision (reported here) to "temporarily suspend the productive settlement discussions we were having with the family" of a recently-deceased man.

What I am going to stand up in the saddle and crow about is their use of the following phrase:

"an abundance of sensitivity"

This is, my friends, perhaps the most spectacularly ironic oxymoron to find its way into the lexicon of modern culture in a very, very long while.

As a public service, I will offer a few other doozies examples for your consideration and potential use:

"a surfeit of poverty"

"a crapload of humility"

"a smattering of standardization"

Try to create your own! Then try to sneak them into a press release or other public document and watch the fireworks!

megabrands: computers ranked 9

In a study of top megabrand ad categories ranked by total U.S. measured media, Advertising Age recently ranked the computer industry at #9 with a spend of $2.22 billion in 2005, a 10.5% increase over 2004.

How does this compare to the rest of the top 10 megabrand ad categories in 2005?

#1 - Automotive ($10.46B)
#2 - Retail ($6.51B)
#3 - Telecom ($5.81B)
#4 - Financial ($4.35B)
#5 - Restaurants ($3.27B)
#6 - Pharmaceuticals ($2.68B)
#7 - Food ($2.52B)
#8 - Personal care ($2.46B)
#10 - Media ($2.18B)

(Measured media from TNS Media Intelligence)
(Source: Advertising Age 7/17/06)

shakespeare+basho: love's labour's lost+persistence

Moth. [Aside to COSTARD.] They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

Costard: O! they have lived long on the almsbasket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus.

Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Scene I
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

+

Koe ni mina
naki-shimaute ya
semi-no-kara

[Did it yell
till it became all voice?
Cicada-shell!]

"Persistence"
Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)

travel: ice=solid=TSA approved?

By now you know you need to stow your various and sundry lotions, unguents, salves, perfumes, balms, unctions, emollients and creams in your checked luggage. The same with your chapsticks, lipsticks and other assorted curative sticks.

You are, as our government requires, utterly-liquid free as you seek permission to enter the airport and subsequently board your flight.

But in a feat of genius, you've brought a bag of ice. Perhaps a large bag. Definitely a well-insulated bag free of any liquid-phase H2O.

When challenged by the thick-wristed TSA agent, you may produce this and smile sweetly. For you, brave soul, are in possession of a solid. Not a liquid. Solids are OK, right?

Unless. . .you've wrapped your ice in a prayer rug and you need to brush your keffiyeh out of your eyes to see the thick-wristed TSA agent in the first place. In that case, give him your ice. You have enough troubles. Gosh knows I wish you didn't.

irony: invisible marketing

There's something remarkable about a product that behaves exactly the way you hoped it would, or a service that meets both your expressed requirements and your unexpressed wishes.

We've all had experiences with products and services like that. They feel complete, somehow, as if they were designed with our unique needs in mind.

They don't have to be mass-market products or national services. There was a bookstore in Ann Arbor where I once lived (and where good friends still do) that always seemed to have just what I was looking for. Another record store (Schoolkids Records, now defunct, alas) featured artists on their store-wide speaker I'd never heard before but instantly admired.

My new ride (2006 VW GTI) is full of pleasant surprises, each of which makes me feel even more comfortable with a car that feels like it was made with me in mind.

I won't opine on how this applies to software. You all know how to build software that meets user requirements.

But the marketing associated with these products. . .now there's an odd bird. Software marketing to the consumer that "fits" delivers exactly the supporting information - in exactly the right way - to make the consumer feel perfectly satisfied with their decision to license the software. Whether it's web content, white papers, references, road shows, alliances, the quality and accessibility of your support, whatever, marketing wraps software with context.

The best software marketing (from a marcom perspective) is this way - it anticipates, it's understated, it gets to the point. It eschews obfuscation. It moves the querent through a process of inquiry. It does not deign to draw premature conclusions, but it does reveal the success of others.

The kicker is that the best software marketing depends on having good software. The best marketing applied to crappy software is instantly suspect. The worst marketing applied to the best software. . .generally doesn't get noticed, since the best software speaks for itself.

Or does it?

The best software speaks partially through its functions, but mostly through its value proposition. It's here where marketing becomes truly invisible. A value proposition is a promise of value in anticipation of validiation. This value proposition can be a few words, it can be a short paragraph.

But is a value proposition really marketing? You betcha. It's the marketer's art as glass - it reveals the product, not its own artfulness or cleverness. It's invisible.

And that's ironic.

travel: big mess at philly airport

Turns out some plane blew a tire landing here tonight, locking up the airport and, curiously, making it difficult to get to the gate.

We've been on the ground now for 40 minutes...no end in sight.

But we're lucky compared to all those poor schlubs - 35 planes at last count - in line to take off.

More pretzels!

review: tuscan whole milk

Sold by: Amazon.com
Reviewed by: Erich C. Holthaus

If you receive an (sic) package containing "Tuscan Whole Milk", discard it immediately. Do not open it. Keep it away from small children and the elderly.

It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer.

It demagnetizes the stripes on ALL of your credit cards. It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you attempt to play.

It will re-calibrate your refrigerator's coolness settings so all your ice cream goes all melty. It will program your phone autodial to call only your ex-spouses' mother.

This milk will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will drink all your beer. It will leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company.

Its radioactive emissions will cause your bellybutton fuzz (be honest, you have some) to migrate behind your ears. It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, all while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing their hotel rendezvous to your Visa card.

It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye.

It will give you Dutch Elm Disease and Psitticosis.

It will cause your dog to meow and your cat to bark.

Tuscan Whole Milk is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of white.

It will cause you to have nightmares involving circus midgets, cheez curls and an early 60's model Rambler.

It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretations of key sentences.

It will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub.

Tuscan Whole Milk will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, but it will also refill your Grey Poupon with French's. It will replace all your luncheon meat with Spam and then fill your salt shaker with sugar.

It will molecularly rearrange your cologne or perfume, causing it to smell like dill pickles.

Please take this warning seriously. Many have been affected by Tuscan Whole Milk. Don't become yet another statistic.

(other reviews)

And don't forget to "vote" for the "usefulness" of my review (from August 5, 2006).

"tuscan whole milk haiku"

my old speak and say
sprayed me with tuscan whole milk
when the cow said moo

(update: the bright minds at Amazon took my haiku revieu down in a bald-faced affront to Japanese culture, childrens' toys and lactating bovines! Arrrrr...)

story: in the documentation scriptorum

Core engineer Brother Novice Claude Giroux, Ordo Praedicatorum Ordinatralis, was not happy. He poked the chipped return key on his VT100's keyboard more roughly than was prudent, dislodging his four WASPs from their interface perch; they circled his terminal, stacks empty and confused, flashing their red (error) beacons repeatedly. Across the aisle of the scriptorum a few old monks looked up, faces bathed in lined flickers of light, then looked down again. The white noise of clattering keyboards obscured some of their whispered comments of disapproval, but not all; Brother Claude, chastened, returned to his typing as his cadre of WASPs settled back to their perch, green (ready) and quieted.

He was beginning the extra four hours of documentation duty he had received as penance for his error that morning at Magnamech. After eight hours of transcribing Monsignor Vitello's scrawled JCL patch notes and second-guessing what was and wasn't a comment ( his /* and //* looked painfully similar), Claude's legs and back were cramping, a fine sheen of stress sweat causing him to shiver involuntarily.

He knew that even after eight hours he was probably only half-done and the four hours of extra duty would turn into eight, or more. Having formed a mental model of the old priest's code and with another forty pages to go, he was loath to abandon the task before it was completely finished; penance for sins of omission were curiously always more dire than those for sins of commission. Such as the one he made that morning.

Deep in the basement of Magnamech, as he melted wax over the last of the access panel screws, he had protested, a risky, prideful gambit at any time. But in the presence of proof, he felt justified, perhaps even compelled, to speak.

"He gave a valid priority code, father," he explained. "Everything was in order. Are we not taught 'knock, and the door will be opened'?"

His senior monk, Father Wax-in-Two, was not impressed.

"We were under, hmm, an idle state, Novice Giroux," he clucked, fluttering his long thin fingers on the back of the accordioned greenbar trace log he held up to his failing eyes . "Did you consider your two brother novices deep within the main? Your, hmm, decision was, hmm, discomfiting. Requiring a recalibration, a restore, a restart, before our renewal of the filters. Hmm. Unknown exchanges most certainly occurred. Most discomfiting."

Brother Claude smiled with pride as he watched the old Nigerian walk away, still studying the trace log. He was right to obey a priority access command. He was still smiling when a few moments later his face was slammed from behind into the metal grill of the access panel. His fellow brother monks might have been deafened by the emergency access klaxon, but they were no longer stunned, it seemed.

Still nursing his face with an ice pack when he returned to the monastery, any hope of moral victory faded when he saw his name on the top of the flip-board duty roster with the two suffix panels "FOUR HOURS SUPPLEMENTAL" and "ERGO TE ABSOLVO" revealed. Wax-in-Two must have called it in from the train, damn him. There was no end to documentation. No end.

There were only a few monks left in the scriptorum after midnight when Brother Claude finished transcribing and unit-testing the last of the monsignor's JCL . The air was still and very dry, the humidity kept purposefully low to prevent the WASP's delicate carbon-lattice wings from fouling and shorting. With the background keyboard chatter absent, he could actually hear the gentle hum of one of his WASPs on its interface perch as it flashed orange (transferring) before flitting up and away (sending), vanishing down a brass pipe conduit at the center of the room. When the remaining WASPs on their perch flashed orange twice (transferring) then green (transmission complete), he pushed himself back from his station and stumbled toward the door.

Wide-Area Synchronization Protocol was one of those wonders of the Order he didn't even pretend to understand, but he knew why it mattered. It was one of the first rules they taught you in your novitiate year, right after you signed your NDA and took your vows. Silence, they taught, was the best form of security. The guaranteed physical transmission of large packets of public-key encrypted data was a close second.

Third, the brother novices joked darkly, was making sure the only people who could still maintain a Core were monks who worked in agile pair teams. Which explained why Brother Novice Claude Giroux was so unhappy; with his partner missing, he was trapped in documentation.

disclosure: how my new beetle got totalled

It's been flashing through my head often enough over the last week or so I figured I might as well write it down to see if that helps. And Ron and CPM asked for it, so here you go.

Two Friday's ago, armed with a medium-sized sealed round of DD coffee in the cup holder and idly contemplating the day to come, I sat at a light on the exit ramp from US53 North preparing to take a left onto Higgins Road west.

Nice weather, good and early, conference call in 20 minutes, plenty of time.

Light turns green, everything looks good, I start into the intersection when

SCREEEEEEEEEEE

a car heading eastbound on Higgins at full speed appeared between two stopped cars and locked its brakes up about twenty feet or so from me.

My autonomic nervous system didn't let me down, and I hit the breaks instantly at the first sound of the brakes.

The stories are true: everything does go into slow motion. In less than a second, the front right quarter of the skidding car slammed at around 20 miles per hour into the slightly angled left front quarter of my car, accordioning the hood, sending bits of plastic spinning in all directions, and tossing me around in my seat with one huge violent shake.

Then silence.

Then. . .the sound of cars pulling around the accident scene in the center of the intersection. No one stopped. Not a single soul. This didn't bother me until much later.

I sat in the car in a dazed state for a moment then everything seemed to happen at once.

I called my wife: "Honey, been in an accident, I'm OK, I think, what's the number for our insurance company?" (Shows you where my head is at. Don't bother checking for injuries, Bob, make sure you get coverage). The police rolled up and check in on me - I'm starting to shake a bit, and report that I think I'm OK, they tell me to stay put. The driver of the other car is seen talking to the police.

A co-worker calls and reports he was two cars behind, saw the whole thing, couldn't stop, do I need anything? No, I think I'll just be swell, I reported.

(I learn later he called all manner of folks at my company looking for my phone number, in the process spreading the news that I had "been in a serious accident". When the police dropped me off at work I had some esplainin' to do, since I didn't look like I'd been in a serious accident.)

Flatbed comes, tows my car away, drives off. Thankfully I get a card so I know where it went.

But before it left, I remembered something. My coffee.

Unspilled. Now that's industrial packaging, I thought at time. It wasn't until yesterday when I went to Gerber to claim by plates and "personal effects" that I finally got a good look at the car. The whole front left end was caved in, twisting the frame and doing untold serious mischief to the engine. It was a scary-looking mess.

The Black 1999 Volkswagen New Beetle GLS TDI had been damaged beyond repair, according to the insurance company. But it did its job. It crumpled where it had to and when it had to, leaving the passenger compartment isolated and untouched. No shattered glass, no airbags deployed.

I've reflected since then that had I been another 18 inches further into the intersection the other car would have t-boned me. With no side-curtain airbags, it would have been a much more serious accident. As it was, I enjoyed the company of painkillers that Friday and for part of Saturday, but that was it. No, I wasn't going to pretend I had whiplash like that Brady Bunch episode.

As I smeared "goodbye old friend" into the dusty passenger side door before I left the car yesterday, I felt - and still feel - lucky to be alive.

It has reminded me of just how important it is to live in the right now, since tomorrow can be easily and arbitrarily taken away in an instant - as life continues to roll around you on all sides without stopping.

bubbe: saint ann^H^H^Hhannah

I always thought of her as the patron saint of Brittany, but I just realized that she was Jesus' bubbe. Apocrypha schmocrypha, you can only imagine what our world would be like if some of her bubbe meise made it into the Bible. For that matter, maybe they did.

rant: the process/chaos standing wave

Being a PM/PMM is no easy task - I hear from other PMs/PMMs who share with me their tales of woe and (occasional) triumph. One such communique I received yesterday spoke of an impression I thought I'd share with you.

I can sum the writer's thoughts like this - "consensus-driven organizations typically lack process".

To which I'll add the corollary "in equal proportion to how much they crave process". But that's a discussion for another day. Back on topic.

"Process" in my way of thinking doesn't mean breaking down every task into prime numbers - it just means an agreed-upon way of getting things done as a team. It means that in order for you to get from A to C, you need to pass through B. Unless you explicitly agree to bypass B. . .which opens the door to other shortcuts. . .more on that later.

Organizations without process suffer the same way individuals without direction suffer. I won't say that processes are non-existent in organizations that are consensus-driven, it's just that the ones that emerge share a lot in common with a William Golding novel. Archetypes are assigned, and the play begins - with predictably tragic results.

Process, ultimately, is structured repetition (in other news, I will declare that morning is a period of increasing light). Processes create organizational "muscle memory". They codify transitions and promote multi-player competency. A team executing at the peak of its powers cannot do so consistently, repeatedly and with quality without processes to guide them.

That said, process that exists for the sake of the process reminds me of a cargo cult - a hideous waste of time and damaging to all involved. With all respect to any Melanesian readers, of course. I appreciate working toward goals using processes that make sense, with outcomes that are pre-determined as desirable, not merely "required".

Me, I like systems, I like knowing what to expect and what is expected of me. I appreciate some fluidity in those I work with, and I like being able to work toward goals shared by myself and others.

And that's the one final ingredient required, the subtle "wa" that fuels all processes, that drives its participants to improve them and that draws newcomers into its rhythms.

The Goal. Why. The. $%&. Are. We. Doing. This. In. The. First. Place.

Articulate it, understand it, embrace it, share it, love it.

The goal makes it all worthwhile. Lose the goal, and you lose the desire to play nicely together. Lose that desire, and the decent into the tyranny of consensus begins. And because not everyone can participate in the consensus, players who are told what to do fail to understand the why, and often feel put-upon. Ergo my use of the word tyranny, QED.

But everyone can participate in process. If we agree on how we can achieve excellent results repeatedly in pursuit of a shared goal, everyone gets in the car. Until. . .someone decides that short cuts work, that "they know better", that "there's not enough time". Or someone has an entrepreneurial spasm that catches fire. Or. . .or. . .

I think all organizations experience the process/chaos standing wave continuum. How frequently, and how pervasively, depends on the quality of management, the desirability of their goals to the workforce, and their ability to articulate the goal clearly to everyone, inside and outside the company.

For my next act, I shall draw a comparison between software development and the first law of thermodynamics. But first, to sleep, perchance to dream.