A Data Center Thought Leadership Social, built on quality of friends

Management and other marketing recognize using the words thought leadership are good, but mistake claiming thought leadership doesn't you a thought leader.

January 09, 2009 

...
January 09, 2009
 
Monday night we had a data center social with thought leaders.  Thought leadership is not how we market what the event is. Thought leaders are the type of people we are looking to invite.  So, why do the thought leaders we invited make time in their  busy schedule and some flying in from Chicago, Atlanta, Austin, NY, and Seattle?  The event works because it is about friends being able to chat in a comfortable environment.  Spending 10 minutes, 20 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes just chatting about whatever they want.  There is no hurry, there is hovering salesman looking to interject.  In fact some of the vendors who we let come in because they wanted to meet with some others who were in town recognized that they need to tread softly as the slightest hint of someone to sell a product, get a business card could set you in a bad light in front of influentials.  
 
People catching up what's up with their kids, their latest vacation or hunting trip, funny data center stories, doesn't fit in with someone who is trying to explain the value of their product/service.
 
So, what is the value of people attending? It's about friends catching up who haven't caught up in months, maybe years, and making new friends in the data center industry.  The #1 type of people we almost always welcome are data center operations people.  These are the people who many times who are so busy running the data centers, they don't go to many conferences.  Also, there are some of the people who make the data center circuit, but want some downtime to just catch up with friends.
 
How valuable are data center friends?  Oprah.com has a post that will help explain the value.
Why do you want authentic, deep friendships? Friends touch your heart, challenge your mind, inspire you to pursue your passions, double the good times, halve the bad times and make your life a happier and more fulfilling place to be.

And that's not just my opinion! Here are the researched facts from Tom Rath, a researcher at Gallup:

  • If you feel close to other people, you are four times more likely to feel good about yourself and life.
  • People who claim to have five or more true friends with whom they can discuss important problems are 60 percent more likely to say that they are "very happy."
  • People with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their work! However, only 30 percent of employees report having a best friend at work!

"Friendships are among the most fundamental of human needs," Rath says. "When we asked people if they would rather have a best friend at work or a 10 percent pay raise, having a friend clearly won."

It is a little corny to read the "friends who touch your heart." In thinking  though, the one friend who touched all our hearts is our departed Olivier Sanche.  One of the best qualities of Olivier is we all remember the first time we met him, and how everyone can recall that first conversation.  Olivier is a true friend and one we all miss so much in the industry.

And a great lesson is the quality of your friends can make life so much better.
NewImage
NewImage
 
 
 

Squarespace API back down again, so need to change my writing style

When you get used to a certain way of creating content, many times there is an overall flow to your work.  Whether you are using Word, Photoshop, or Excel, a person creating content gets used to a way to work.  When your favorite tool is gone, changing can be hard.

Since last Thursday, SquareSpace 5’s API has been down.  This means I can’t publish from MarsEdit or Windows Live Writer to the blog.  I could use the browser posting feature, but I am so used to working in an editor that I can easily cut and paste reference urls, images, or video, it slows me down.  It feels like it is so slow it stops me from writing.

Given it has been 4 days now with the feature down, I am going to change what I write until it is up, and hope the API is fixed soon.

Thinking different about an education, then work

I really enjoy learning.  And thinking about how to think.  For college I went to UC Berkeley to study Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.  35 years ago i started my education there and some of the silly things I did still stick with me.

One of the things I did is if I didn’t think the class was worthwhile even though it was a requirement, I didn’t put much effort into it and didn’t’ really care about the grade.  One of there classes I think i got a B in.  Then I figured out for some of these classes I could go to the Junior College at home during the summer get whatever grades, then transfer the credits without the grades.  

On the other hand there was Differential Calculus that I really liked.

In mathematics, differential calculus is a subfield of calculus concerned with the study of the rates at which quantities change. It is one of the two traditional divisions of calculus, the other being integral calculus.

The primary objects of study in differential calculus are the derivative of a function, related notions such as the differential, and their applications. The derivative of a function at a chosen input value describes the rate of change of the function near that input value. The process of finding a derivative is called differentiation. Geometrically, the derivative at a point equals the slope of the tangent line to the graph of the function at that point. For a real-valued function of a single real variable, the derivative of a function at a point generally determines the best linear approximation to the function at that point.

Differential Calculus i got an A+ in and was in the Zone.  I don’t even know how I could do the math, but it just all worked.  And, I think that part of what I really loved was the way it can be used to describe the real world.

There was an electrical engineering course I could take as an elective, but I knew my hopes of getting an A were low given I would be competing against students who were planning on being electrical engineers and they would be amongst the people who already got an A in the prerequisite Physics course that focused on electricity and magnetic forces.

Physics for Scientists and Engineers. (4)   Three hours of lecture and four hours of laboratory/workshop per week. Prerequisites: 7A, Math 1A-1B, Math 53 (may be taken concurrently). Heat, electricity, and magnetism.

 So I took the Electrical Engineer class first that had the Physics class as a requirement, got a B+, then took the Physics class after for electricity and magnetism and got an A.

Lesson, sometimes it is better to do things in a different order than everyone else.

What has this got to do with me now?  I worked for a company when i thought it was worthwhile.  My order of past employment was HP, Apple, and Microsoft.  If a company isn’t worthwhile for me to learn, then I leave.  Same applies to clients I work with.  It’s not about the money, it is about whether I am learning.  And, many times it is better to take a different order to get things done than others.

I’ll be 53 next month, and I am still learning which I think keeps me younger than I am.  Although the gray hair is really making it harder to look like I am 35.  I figured I’ve got a good 20 more years of learning before I may want to retire.  10 years ago when I hit 43 I thought about what it would be like to retire.  Working for 11 years at Microsoft in 2003 had treated me well financially, but retirement is not the goal.  Learning is my goal.

And, part of what I always liked is hanging out with really smart people.  What is a really smart person to me?  A person who knows how to ask a really hard question.  What type of question?  My latest is how to do product lifecycle management in the data center.  I’ve been thinking about this one for 2 years, and almost have it solved.  The nice thing the way the problem is solved it is not just data centers.  It is how do you do product lifecycle management in a social, mobile, and cloud approach.  Hint: the different way i am using is an Epistemology approach.

Knowledge -> Epistemology -> Information Infrastructure

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2012 AT 5:28PM

My wife has said I like to think about thinking.  And, recently at a girl’s get away during charades one of the hints was a person spending a lot of time thinking, and then typing.  Thinking more, then typing.  And, they guessed Dave Ohara. :-)  So, outside of work even in social neighbor time, I have the reputation of thinking a lot and writing a lot.

One of the interesting problems I have been working on is what can change the data center industry.  Information architectures is what I have been study lately.

Then yesterday, I saw a talk by John Leslie King Titled - Knowledge Infrastructure: Mechanism and Transformation in the Information.  One of the slides that got my attention was this one.

NewImage

The role of the Academy in a systematic collecting of information for a crowd-sourced knowledge.

A great point was the knowledge in a perspective of reason for existence, and how what’s obvious leads to thinking what’s hidden.

NewImage

The other big concept John discussed was Epistemology.

Epistemology Listeni/ɨˌpɪstɨˈmɒlədʒi/ (from Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistēmē), meaning “knowledge, science”, and λόγος(logos), meaning “study of”) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge.[1][2] It addresses the questions:

  • What is knowledge?
  • How is knowledge acquired?
  • To what extent is it possible for a given subject or entity to be known?

MarsEdit was not working with Squarespace 5 API, fixed

Part of what slowed my blogging was I couldn't post from MarsEdit the editor I use to post to Squarespace.  I then needed to go to the Squarespace and use their web UI.  I really like working in an editor.  Before MarsEdit, I used Windows Live Writer on Windows, but now on the Mac I use MarsEdit.

  1. 24 Apr

    Thanks to for restoring API service to their Squarespace 5 blogs. Let us know if you are still having trouble connecting.

     Retweeted by 
    Expand 
  2. 24 Apr

    It seems has disabled the API endpoint for Squarespace 5, rendering sites unusable with . Not sure yet if intentional.

     Retweeted by 

Now that Squarespace 5 is back with its API service, it is so much easier to post.  Yeh!!!

Off to a bit of Kids Activities and the LV

I’ll be blogging a bit slow as I have a bit of kids activities through Sunday.  On Monday I head to LV to attend IBM’s Impact conference and hang out with some of my data center friends who ar ein town.

Also, I am so damn busy I don’t have time I used to write.  I need to get back in the groove.