When Geeks are Your Early Adopters, You Inherit their Sharing of its Use

Apple is rumored to be buying Beats.  Beats has focused on its image from the beginning getting the influentials in music, sports and other areas to be seen wearing Beats.

Google Glass has hired a leading designer to lead its effort to save Glass.

Here’s the World-Class Designer Google Just Hired to Save Glass

• Victor Luckerson@VLuck

May 16, 2014

    

Google has been putting a lot of effort into making Google Glass seem like a fashionable device and not a vaguely creepy gadget for geeks. The wholesome Mother’s Day ad was a solid first step. Now, the company is handing the reins to a master designer and marketer who will be tasked with making Glass appealing to the masses.

But, consider that the most famous Google Glass image is this one of Robert Scoble.

A Metric for Friendship, # of Shared LinkedIn Connections - 191, 165, 138

When I make a new connection through LinkedIn I often go to see the shared connections which tells you a bit about the other person, and allows you to have conversation on how you both got to know a shared connection.

I decided to do the opposite and went to LinkedIn did a quick search of my well connected data center friends.  I have 944 connections, and the three unnamed friends have more than than I have.  Here is a surprise.  For each of my three uber connected friends I have 191, 165, and 138 shared connections.

Metrics for a friendship may sound silly.  You know who your good friends are. 

7.7% of LinkedIn Contacts work at Microsoft, 8 Years Ago I left and connected to so many more

Last night our family got together with two other families who we ski a lot with and each of us have a kid who ski together all the time, and they spend time together off the mountain as well.

It’s pretty hard to recognize people unless you are familiar with their clothes, so it is nice when you can see people’s faces.

One of the parents mentioned how so many of his LinkedIn contacts are other Microsoft employees.  Turns out both of the dads are at Microsoft.  I didn’t work with either of them when I was at the company, and we talk about so many other things than Microsoft.  The one thing one dad said being an executive is he gets LinkedIn requests so much from Microsoft employees after a while his LinkedIn looks like a Microsoft Directory.

Out of curiosity I wondered what % of my contacts are current and ex-Microsoft employees.  I worked there 14 years (1992-2006), and live in Redmond so Microsoft would be highest.  Adding it up 7.7% of my 944 connections have Microsoft as the company. Next in size of contacts is Gigaom, Google, Apple, and Schneider Electric.  I can understand Gigaom.  What was interesting to see that I had more connections at Google (didn’t work at) than I do at Apple (worked at 1985-1992).  The low Apple count could be leaving Apple to go to Microsoft is not a popular thing to do.  :-)

It’s been 8 years since I left Microsoft and it was good to see that my Microsoft contacts are less than 10% of my LinkedIn profile given I spent 14 years there and live in Redmond.

What did make sense is 20.6% of my connections are in the Seattle Area which is #2.  #1 for where my connections live is SF Bay Area with 20.8%.  Well that is basically a tie and make sense given I spend so much time in the bay area and so much of my work is related to clients in the bay area.  Some people see me so often they think I live in the bay area which I did do from 1960-1992.

The Cloud, The Fast Food Experience of IT, Users are tired of the waiting, and waiting, and waiting

The Cloud is old, yet new.  I have a good friend who was smart enough to join AWS in 2006, close to the beginning.  Hey, that was almost exactly 8 years ago.  So, Cloud is old.  But, it is still new in IT years for many even though it is popular.  What is behind the popularity of the cloud?  OMG you could go on and on, and it is so confusing.

How about this?  The Cloud is the Fast Food Experience of IT.

:  of, relating to, or specializing in food that can be prepared and served quickly <a fast–food restaurant>

2

:  designed for ready availability, use, or consumption and with little consideration given to quality or significance <fast–food TV programming>

...

Fast food is the term given to food that is prepared and served very quickly, first popularized in the 1950s in the United States. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a packaged form for take-out/take-away.

IT used to be the in-house experience.  Collecting requirements.  Asking everyone what they want to eat.  Prepare a menu.  Discuss the menu.  Make a shopping list.  Go to store.  Put everything away for cooking later.  Time goes on.  Get ready to prepare meal.  Realize you forgot something.  Go back to the store.  Running out time. Start cooking.  Family sees what you are cooking.  Makes new input.  Ewwhh, I don’t want to eat that.  Make a decision modify the meal plan or tell your family you will eat what is on the table.  You finish cooking.  But family is not all home.  Food sits in the oven, staying warm, degrading the quality and look.  Eventually everyone gets together to eat, and no one talks about how good the food is.  Clean the kitchen, put away the left overs.  Fast Food seems so much easier and the family gets what they want.  Never mind the cost, the quality is not as good or better depending on how good of a cook you are, the sugar, the fat and salt content are beyond your comprehension.  As your families health deteriorate and they gain many more pounds, they get used to fast food.

Fast Food is part of everyone’s diet.  The Cloud is too. 

Who has the best Quality Cloud?

The pricing of the cloud is highly competitive between Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, making the rest fall in line.  So you feel like you are getting good value, but are you getting good quality?

: how good or bad something is

: a characteristic or feature that someone or something has : something that can be noticed as a part of a person or thing

: a high level of value or excellence

McDonald’s rose through its belief in quality.  A consistent experience where your food tasted the same at any McDonald’s you went to.

Consistency, quality and success

Ray Kroc opened the Des Plaines, Illinois restaurant in 1955, and with the first Golden Arches, launched a legendary brand. He saw the value of a restaurant system that could be famous for offering consistently prepared, quality food that tasted the same in every location, every time. In 1958, McDonald’s sold its 100 millionth burger.

One of the things that insiders know is the inconsistent qualities of the cloud between different locations.  Price is the same, but performance and quality is different.  This is shrugged off by most of the providers, but from a customer’s perspective it puts the ownership on you to measure the quality of the cloud.

Sounds wrong.

At some point someone is going to pull a Ray Kroc and focus on quality of the experience and win customers.