New media, old sense of entitlement

New media, old sense of entitlement:

But here’s what I’d suggest you really not do, if you want to actually look like the professional: don’t rise up from your throne and bellow, “How dare you, you little insignificant blogger, question the credibility of someone who was the editor-in-chief of Engadget! Guards, off with their heads!” Because when you do that, then you’re not the professional. You’re the petty asshole. I know it’s a subtle difference—both words start with “p” and all—but it’s important, trust me.

By the way, neither Gruber nor Arment use WordPress. That’s a pretty trivial thing to note, but it just seems to me that a professional journalist would have taken the couple seconds necessary to check.

Just saying.

[The cycle of entitlement is infinite.]

Source: Coyote Tracks

What to obsess over

What to obsess over:

The reason is that these numbers demand that you start tweaking. You can tweak a website or tweak an accounts payable policy and make numbers go up, which is great, but it’s not going to fundamentally change your business.

I’d have you obsess about things that are a lot more difficult to measure. Things like the level of joy or relief or gratitude your best customers feel. How much risk your team is willing to take with new product launches. How many people recommended you to a friend today…

What are you tracking? If you track concepts, your concepts are going to get better. If you track open rates or clickthrough, then your subject lines are going to get better. Up to you.

[Agreed. Now that measuring things is getting easier, deciding what to measure is important. In world where people espouse “measure everything” that firehouse quickly needs some arbitration.]

Source: Seth’s Blog

The only issue that matters

The only issue that matters:

The main thing to expect, in the short term — the next few dozen or hundreds of years — is rising sea levels, which will move coastlines far inland for much of the world, change ecosystems pretty much everywhere, and alter the way the whole food web works.

Here in the U.S., neither major political party has paid much attention to this. On the whole the Republicans are skeptical about it. The Democrats care about it, but don’t want to make a big issue of it. The White House has nice things to say, but has to reconcile present economic growth imperatives with the need to save the planet from ourselves in the long run.

I’m not going to tell you how to vote, or how I’m going to vote, because I don’t want this to be about that. What I’m talking about here is evolution, not election. That’s the issue. Can we evolve to be symbiotic with the rest of the species on Earth? Or will we remain a plague?

Politics is for seasons. Evolution is inevitable. One way or another.

[It is an unbelievable mess we’re making. As I kid I read Heinlein’s line that the meek will inherit the earth… because everyone will have left because of planetary depletion, overcrowding, etc. and found it cute. We’re a long way from being able to colonize another planet so this isn’t looking quite so amusing anymore. And of course, since this is exactly the kind of news no one is interested in hearing, no Party will discuss it. We’re such children.]

Source: Doc Searls Weblog

Doc Searls Weblog · Will the carriers body-snatch the Net with HTML5?

Doc Searls Weblog · Will the carriers body-snatch the Net with HTML5?:

It’s at least clear that TV is the elephant in the snake of the Net’s time. It is moving off the air and over the top of cable and telephony. Still, the Internet is sold as a service already by cablecos and telcos that hate the thought of remaining a “dumb pipe.”

If things go the way Crossey expects, the Net’s carriers will likely expand Net service offerings in ways that fracture the Net into pieces, each with hard-wired dependencies on the carrier. The result will be the biggest body-snatch in the history of business. Standing where the Net used to be won’t be Telco 2.o, but TV 2.o, with lots of marketing gravy. (Think of all that jive the “big data” pushers are saying about “delivering personalized experiences.”)

So, rather than having the greatest marketplace ever created, we’ll have a set of entertainment and marketing services, available only from phone and cable companies, working only on devices they sell or sanction: basically the worst scenario imagined by Jonathan Zittrain in The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. We’ll still have some of the Net’s huge open marketplace, but far less of it than would would have been possible if what ran on the pipes were structurally separated from the pipes themselves.

I see little reason for hope here. Big Business and Big Government, enemies in the theater of politics, are in fact completely aligned around the wishes of Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, Verizon and Hollywood. People like me have been remarkably ineffective in advocating for the free and open Internet and its importance for the free and open marketplace, as well as a free and open society. On letting the Net slide into the clutches of its enemies there is no daylight between Obama and Romney, because it’s a non-issue for both of them. Just like it’s a non-issue for most of us.

Hope I’m wrong. And I’d be glad to hear arguments to the contrary. I’m a born optimist, and I try to keep an open mind. But I’m not feeling good about this thing right now.

[Sounds grim.]

Santa Rosa, California with Andy Hampsten

Santa Rosa, California with Andy Hampsten:

Andy Hampsten will point out pot-holes and cattle grids. He will ride next to you, with his bars a perfect hand span away from yours and never try to smash you. He will descend smoother and safer and faster then you can imagine. If some food pops out of your pocket and you don’t realize, he will stop and pick it up and ride back to you and quietly hand it back without a fuss. He will smile a lot.

Here are some things he won’t do. Complain, moan, talk about himself or drop famous names.

[“There’s a lot of riding to be done.” Amen. Lots to learn as well. Allez!]

The myopic focus on IT and engineering has to stop.

The myopic focus on IT and engineering has to stop.

The truth is that there is absolutely critical telemetry coming from every facet of your organization. All of this telemetry is either directly related to providing better service to customers or directly related to providing better service to your organization itself which, in turn, stabilizes the platform on which you deliver products and services. Of this, I shouldn’t have to convince you and I find that no convincing of the general population is required. Yet, here we are with almost every organization I see standing blind to this vital information.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think technology isn’t a first-class component of today’s (and tomorrow’s) organizations. In fact, I think the technology group has been applying radically advanced techniques to telemetry data for years. It’s high time that these techniques and tools were applied to the organization unabridged.

There is a profound shift in data transparency and accountability coming to the organization to tomorrow. If you don’t buy in, you’ll simply fail to achieve the agility and efficiencies of your competition. I’m here, with Circonus, to make that happen.

[Nice rant Theo, no arg from me. But how about some examples about how you measure things at OmniTI? And how can I apply that to my company without jumping through ten hoops to do so? (I’m not being cynical here. I’ve got a busy group that would happily measure more things if it were easy to implement. Tell me how to do so.)]

Source: The Scriptures of Jesus