I needed to let someone know how many posts I had written, and realized this post is #800.  Which has created a small writing block as i think what it means to reach post #800.  Thinking on what to write about, I was recently asked the opening question “how are things going?” Quite well, having fun and learning a lot.

Next good question.  Given you worked for HP, Apple, and Microsoft which company did you learn the most from?

I worked at Microsoft for 14 years vs. 7 years at Apple, and 5 years at HP, so it is easy to say Microsoft given the length of time. But, that isn’t really the right answer. The most important thing I learned is an accumulation of the three companies, learning to think different ways.

HP, Apple, and Microsoft each have a different way it views its customers, develops its products, and measures success. You can argue which is right and wrong, but out of context almost every method can be proven wrong.

Apple was the brilliant one in marketing “think different” in 1997. But, i am taking a different take on this video than the marketing message of changing things.  The text used in the ad :

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.

The one-minute commercial featured black and white video footage of significant historical people of the past, including (in order) Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon, R. Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson (with Kermit the Frog), Frank Lloyd Wright, and Picasso. The commercial ends with a young girl opening her closed eyes, as if to see the possibilities before her.

What all these people had was a view to integrated their actions.  It may have seem random and hard to understand, but over time their methods worked for their purpose.

Think From Different Views

I was just in the bay area for the week. One of the places and friends I always thing about when I am down there is my Aikido dojo (Aikido of San Jose), my training friends, and teachers. After coming back I decided to try and look up a bunch of Aikido friends online.

I like Aikido because it taught me a lot of things that have made a lasting impression and made great friends who think the same way.

A surprise discovery is my sensei, Jack Wada has this post 3 days ago while I was in SJ on the green martial art.

The Green Martial Art

We are trying a new marketing approach, that of aikido as the Green Martial Art. You may have seen it on some of our new literature and our new posters. For me green means environmentally safe, connected to the earth, preserving our planet in going ahead with advances in technology. It has become quite a catch word recently.

In the above picture taking the fall for Jack is a good friend Harry Concepcion.  Harry was my partner for my black belt test, and one of the best training partners.  Here is a picture of Harry demonstrating his throwing technique in his 4th degree (yon-dan) black belt test.

Another great teacher with a practical and spiritual approach is Peter Ralls.

Peter Ralls Sensei
Rokudan (6th degree black belt)

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Born in 1959, Ralls Sensei began Aikido in 1975 at the age of 15, with Frank Doran Sensei at Stanford Aikido club, in Palo Alto, California. After receiving his Shodan (first-degree black belt) just before his nineteenth birthday, he moved to Tokyo, Japan to study Aikido at the world headquarters in Shinjuku ward. Peter remained in Tokyo for a year, practicing Aikido daily.

An interesting story Peter tells that opens your eye to how things can work is from the day Peter went to Tokyo to the day he left he was in pain every day.  Why was he in pain? Because, he was the cocky tall white boy gaijin who thought he knew Aikido with his black belt, and every day there was at least one person who would teach Peter there were new levels of pain as he was slammed, thrown, twisted and blocked. The good thing is Peter was 19, and could recover physically, but when he came back to SJ, he quit Aikido because he was mad and frustrated with one year of being beat up by little Japanese men and women.  After a year, Peter started to train again, and he discovered that his Aikido skills were now much better than most people.  All those painful hours of ukemi taught him how to work with energy.  There are multiple lessons in this story.

Peter has a good perspective on Aikido he shares in this discussion forum where Peter responds to the question here.

I started aikido when I was a teenager also, but it was along time ago, when doing both traditional martials arts, and spiritual practises were "cool".

Unfortunately it seems like that is not the case now. These days when I talk to people who think poorly of aikido, which tends to be people doing certain more competitive martial arts, I don't try to convince them of aikido's effectiveness. One, because I have used aikido in self defense situations, and I know it can work. Two, because I really don't care what they think about aikido. And three, because I'm not going to change their minds anyway.

So when they diss aikido to me, I simply tell them that I enjoy doing it and I get a lot out of it, and don't get in any debate about it's effectiveness as a martial art. I think that the thing to remember is that you are doing it because YOU like it.

The other thing you can do if you feel like it is cross train in some other martial arts that would allow you to be more effective in a sparring type situation. Aikido isn't really very good for sparring, it isn't designed for it.

Peter’s comments fit well with Sensei Wada’s blog entry.

Way before it became important and even trendy, we were helping people to recycle their own energy. When we are in our shoulders, head spinning, caught in a fight/flight/freeze response we are taught to settle, ground, and allow the energy that is there to flow through us. Its major reason for being is to help us deal with whatever is in front of us. This can be an attack or a technique in class, or a situation outside. When caught in something like gridlock, you get the energy to deal with that. Relax and settle with it. It can then have a meditative quality.

I use my Aikido mentally every day, and it works well to have green data center discussions. Understanding the energy from people and where there are attacks and defensive moves in concepts and conversations.

Now, as much as I like Aikido don’t think all dojos have teachers like Jack, Peter, and Harry, but if you are in the Bay Area try to check out these to judge how other dojos compare.

http://www.aikidosj.com/

http://www.suginamisf.com/index.html

If you think you know someone who has an interest in Aikido or a green martial art in the San Jose area, please forward on this post, as my old dojo is attempting to reach new members.

And you can help us by getting behind the concept. In the dojo we have new flyers and new schedules with the green concept. Feel free to take a poster to put up at a workplace, laundromat, bookstore, or coffee shop. There are posters on our display table as you enter the dojo.

For a video that gives you a movie version of Jack’s ideas see this one, his favorite comic book hero.

Thanks to Deborah Grove, there was panel discussion at Uptime Institute with Rich Miller (datacenterknowledge), Kevin Heslin (Mission Critical), Matt Stansberry (Searchdatacenter) and me to discuss blogs and the environment.

We each have different approaches.  One thing I research is how blogs work to discuss ideas. I spent a long time being a technical evangelist which required lots of travelling and presentations.

Here is a blog post I found that has some interesting data.

Social Strategy for Exciting (and Boring) Brands

By Josh Bernoff

(From my Marketing News column.)

There are two kinds of brands in the world. If you are a marketer, you know what I mean. There are brands people like to talk about, and brands they don’t.

Brands of the first kind – the brands that marketing thinker Rohit Bhargava calls “talkable” – are uncommon. Apple’s iPhone is a talkable brand. So is Harley-Davidson. If you market a talkable brand, you have the luxury of tapping into customers who love you, but you’ll have to be careful – those customers have already decided what the brand stands for, and woe unto you if you go against their wishes.

Brands that people don’t like to talk about – I’ll call them “boring” brands – are everywhere. If, like most marketers, you market a boring brand, then you’re really earning your living as a marketer. That’s because you are trying to get people interested in something they don’t really care about.

I’ve been analyzing social strategies for both kinds of brands, and they form an interesting contrast.

Most of the data center vendors are boring brands. I was lucky to work at Apple and Microsoft two exciting brands.  I can’t think of a brand that people are excited the way they are about their ipod, iphone, and macs.

The boring brands have different problem, but social applications can help them, too. [Forrester Report: "Social Technology Strategies for 'Boring' Consumer Brands".] The key with boring brands is to get people talking about their problems, since they won’t talk about your brand. In advertising, you can force messages on people watching other things. In a social context, this fails miserably.

So, what do you do?

Applications that talk about customers problems create “borrowed relevance,” since you generate talk they care about, then make yourself a part of it. American Express (credit cards are boring, face it) created the Members’ Project, a contest to choose deserving charities, since it realized that charity would generate more passion than credit cards. And in perhaps the most dramatic example, Procter & Gamble knew girls wouldn’t talk about tampons, but would talk about music, cliques, and school, so it created beinggirl.com as a vehicle to deliver (very quietly) the occasional feminine care products message.

Borrowed relevance is a versatile strategy. Liberty Mutual (in another boring category, insurance) wrapped itself in relevance by creating The Responsibility Project, a community about moral decisions. Johnson & Johnson built a Facebook page for mothers of ADHD kids – because, as with all medications, its ADHD drug is boring but its sufferers generate interesting problems. Doritos invited its customers to make ads in the 2007 Superbowl, since an ad contest is more exciting – and more social – than a corn chip.

and  why?

If your brand is talkable, your social efforts will surface the brand enthusiasts who have the most influence. If it’s boring, your social applications will help you find your rare but valuable brand enthusiasts, or even generate a few. Pay attention to these people. Because as advertising clutter rises and word of mouth becomes more important, they’re about to become some of your most important corporate assets.

I’ve had the pleasure of leveraging two great people at TechNet Magazine, Joshua Hoffman, ex-editor in chief and Matthew Graven, ex -senior editor to publish on green IT and data centers.  I use the term “ex-“ because both of these people were hit in latest rounds of cuts at Microsoft as Microsoft shut down the TechNet staff in the NY office.

Joshua and Matthew were both helpful in crafting content that would work for the IT pro audience and providing valuable input as I tried to write content that would make sense and resonate with their audience of IT pros. It was a huge difference to have people who cared about the Green IT topic and think about what to publish vs. most of the vendor sponsored content published in other areas.

I’ll miss the brainstorming of new content as i would throw out many ideas, and Joshua and Matthew would help prioritize.

If you aren’t familiar with TechNet Magazine here is the site with 480,000 unique visitors per month.

Why would Microsoft shut down the NY TechNet Staff?  Probably because they want to outsource the work and reduce costs.

But, I think Microsoft just gave up being the leader of the Windows IT pro tribe.  For an explanation of the tribe, see this blog post by Seth Godin.

Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world.

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.

And of course, since this is so important, product development and manufacturing and the CFO work for the tribal manager. Everything the organization does is to feed and grow and satisfy the tribe.

Instead of looking for customers for your products, you seek out products (and services) for the tribe. Jerry Garcia understood this. Do you?

If you look at TechNet mag as a traditional publication it is expensive.  If you look at as leader of a tribe of 480,000 IT pros, how much is that worth?

If anyone is looking for people who know how to publish to the technical audience, send me e-mail and I can connect you with Joshua and Matthew.

Today is May 1, 2009, and 3 years ago after 14 years at Microsoft I decided it was time to leave.  Having spent my whole working career at big companies (HP 5 yrs and Apple 7yrs), it was a big leap to be on my own.

But after 3 years I don’t regret the move at all.  I still keep in touch with many Microsoft people who are working on Green IT/Data Centers, and have met many more people who want to solve sustainability IT problems.  In 15 min, I have a series of conference calls with a construction company and then intel to discuss its Data Center Efficiency Challenge.

The weather is nice today in Seattle, and I am going to work my dock for as long as the laptop battery will last. Wifi to my house gives me high speed internet, so I can even write this blog entry.  The only problem I have is if a sea plane takes off, and I won’t be able to talk on my cel phone.

I am lucky to talk and work with some of the brightest people in the industry who want to build and operate green data centers.

And, my blog are my notes for what I discover and part of my research on topics.

Thanks for reading my blog.

-Dave Ohara