Posts

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Managing Lifestyle: Time-Shifting Using Blogs

I’m a little late to contribute to Seth Godin’s call for National Tell-A-Friend-About-Blogs Week, but I thought I’d post something based on a discussion I had with a friend last week.

The basic problem my friend is having is this (a very common problem): How can one better manage or create a fast-track, dual-career family with kids?

No easy answers here I’m afraid. The problem is exacerbated if either one of the parents wants to stay home with the kids during a good portion of the day.

A neat thing about blogging, however, is that one can take advantage of time-shifting one’s day … blog whenever you want (e.g., when the kids are asleep, after your normal workday, when you can’t sleep during the night), and you can get some networking, marketing, and communicating done too. Sure, online networking isn’t the same as pressing the flesh during local community events, but it’s not always possible for those with families to head out to those 7:00pm drinking fests during the week.

Online networking (e.g., through blogs) has advanced quite a bit. May want to give it a shot. It takes time, but the having the ability to allocate your time more flexibly may be golden. If anything, perhaps there’s additional hope for managing our lives better.

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Interesting Analogy Between ESBs and Human Body

In a prior life, I followed the enterprise service bus (ESB) and messaging markets pretty closely. Graham Glass (CTO of webMethods) has an interesting post that draws an analogy between the ESB and mechanisms of the human body (bold type added by me to highlight two key underlying capabilities):

The equivalent of an ESB in animals is the nervous system combined with
the circulatory system. When an organ needs to communicate with another
specific organ, it uses the nervous system to send a point-to-point
message. When an organ needs to broadcast a message to other organs
that might be interested, it releases a hormone into the bloodstream to
send a multicast message.

Update (5/9/05): As additional background, an ESB is often used to connect software services (e.g., coarsely-grained software components, for lack of a better word) in a such a way that they can communicate with one another via the backbone network provided by the ESB.

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Good Post On Backpack As A Productivity Tool

Here’s a good post on Backpack, a personal information manager which has been getting a lot of blog attention this week. I tend not to be an early adopter when it comes to productivity tools (Post It Notes are still my primary drivers along with Outlook mail and my Palm Vx), but Backpack sounds promising. Steve Rubel also had a post on Backpack earlier this week where he demonstrated sharing blog links with his client. It’s pretty rare I see Rubel write something is "freakin’ awesome", so it seems it is worth a closer look.

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Some Challenges Of Bridging Business Blogging And Emerging Internet Technology Knowledge

Charlie O’Donnell has a post on the spin-up challenges for his business blogging course at the Fordham business school. The post, and the referenced BusinessWeek commentary on its recent magazine issue on business blogging, reflect the challenges in explaining business blogging to those new to the subject. On the surface, blogging technology seems extremely trivial. Yet there are actually multiple technologies and cultural phenomena in play related to blogging. The measures of business blogging success also vary widely by different people’s standards. Hard to discern fact from opinion at times. In any case, the layers of the subject material make succinct yet rich tutorials on business blogging more difficult.

As a side interest and as a form of giving back to the education system, I am currently exploring development of a blogging mini-course in conjunction with one of the business schools. Would like to explore more b-schools if I can find the time and proper entry point, partners, and twist for other universities. I just despise all of the recent press about business schools falling behind so I want to help. In my wildest fantasy, I would like to tie hypothetical blogging courses to helping non-profits through marshalling the skills and energy of business school students. So far for the school I’m working on the blogging mini-course idea has gotten a warm reception by key student body liason and university staff. Most b-schools are either well into their second semester or last quarter, however. This poses some tactical timing issues for introducing the subject matter and keeping the momentum going.

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Anyone Want To Call France From The US Free From Landline To Landline?

I had a prior post about some international calling rates (landline to landline) that I suspect are VoIP calls on the trunking part of the call. I think I have about 2.5 hours left on the card (only works for calls from the United States to France [not reverse]). If anyone wants to check it out, feel free to send me an email. I’ll forward to you (for free) the dial-in number and pin. You might be hooked forever. My offer is only for the first person to contact me (sorry – I only have one card number), and my offer expires May 31, 2005.

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Acknowledgement of Paul Petersen at Liberty Consulting

I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge Paul Petersen, President of Liberty Consulting, who focuses on projects geared as an assistant to the CIO. I consider Paul a valuable business partner, and we met shortly after I landed ground in Dallas, Texas. Paul gets credit for referring me at the end of last year to both the CIO and COO of a client in the insurance space. He also gets the hat tip so that I could land my first Texas-based client. It’s tough developing a customer base in a new geography, and I sincerely appreciate Paul’s introduction.

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Things That Make You Go Hmmm …

Little late to post on the CNN article on Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger this past weekend. I was pretty much floored by Buffet’s comment …

Buffett: My job is to think absolutely in terms of the worst
case and to know enough about what’s going on in both [Berkshire’s]
investments and operations that I don’t lose sleep. Everything that can
happen will happen…. It’s Berkshire job to be prepared absolutely for
the very worst. A few years ago we did not have NBCs [nuclear,
biological and chemical attacks] excluded from our exposure, but we do
now….

Financial hedges against terrorism? Now I learned about constructing portfolios of investments in business school, applying betas, buying gold or stock in military companies, etc. That said, stepping back from math and theory for a moment, Buffet’s comment just strikes as one of those impossible things to do like stockpiling sleep.

Buffet and Munger are two *really* smart guys, and I believe them if they say it can be done. In France I was reminded of this by read one of Munger’s talks (given at the business school at UCLA) covering managerial decision making, and the importance of keeping in mind lots of frameworks and models for understanding the health of businesses and sectors. Part of the main message was that one should not rely on single models for understanding complex problems. Need diversity.

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Interest Peaked On Cuban’s Enron Movie

Although this post is not going to help the rant in my immediately prior post on ethics courses in business schools, ever since seeing Mark Cuban’s post on the new movie,  "Enron – The Smartest Guys in the Room," I’ve really wanted to check it out. I was thinking about picking up the book while I was out in France, but it seemed too big for me to lug home. Om Malik looks like he gives the movie high marks too. For those hot on the Enron topic, MBA bashing, or management consulting bashing, this might be a good chance to re-read Malcolm Gladwell’s detailed dig on Enron, MBAs, McKinsey, etc. in the article "The Talent Myth: Are Smart People Overrated?"

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