Headed to the lake

We’re headed to the lake (or as Abby calls it, “the little cabin”) for our annual July 4 gathering.  Usually we have 5 or 6 families and over a dozen kids running around, but this year about half the gang can’t make it.

We don’t make it to the lake as much as we’d like — young kids and a Dad with a rock climbing addiction make it tough.  But we hold on to the place in the hope that things will change some day…

The Magic Tie

Our CEO wore a tie to work today and it reminded my of my favorite tie story…

It was 1994 and I was about to graduate from engineering school.  I had decided that I didn’t want to work as an engineer, so I was interviewing for other careers.  Management consulting was hot (remember Reengineering the Corporation?) and I had an interview with Price Waterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers).  I spoke with several people from PW, the last one being the Partner. 

Like most college grads, I had bought a cheap suit for interviews.  But I had invested in a really nice silk tie.  When I walked into the room for my interview, the Partner immediately complimented me on my tie.  We hit it off and had a good discussion, and then midway through the interview he offered to buy my tie on the spot.

I didn’t know if this was some sort of test or if he really wanted to buy my tie, so I told him that the tie wasn’t for sale because every time I wore it to an interview I got an offer (For the record, I had exactly zero offers at the time).  He got a kick out of that and the rest is history.

That tie was magic — I probably wore it 100 times over the next few years and more often than not I got a compliment on it.  Today it looks a little ratty, but I keep it on hand just in case…

Customer-centric vs. Product-centric

I was talking to a veteran marketing executive today and he reminded me of a basic marketing principal that’s worth remembering.  He said that many companies use a product-centric approach to marketing.  They ask, “How can I sell my product to more customers?” or “How can I sell more of my product to existing customers?”.

This is the wrong question to ask because it starts with the product rather than the customer.  The right question to ask is ”What unmet needs or wants do customers have?”  This customer-centric approach looks for solutions to problems, while the product-centric approach often results in a solution looking for a problem.

The reason companies – even smart ones — fall into the trap of being product-centric is that they’ve already got products that have had some measure of success.  So the natural tendency is to think about extending those products to meet additional customer needs (and generate more revenue).  But the danger is that you end up with a half-baked solution that doesn’t really meet the customer’s need.

As the old saying goes, “If all you’ve got is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.”

The difference between 3 and 1

Lots of things get easier as children get older.  One of them is eating.  Witness, first, a 3 year old after dinner:

Now witness a 1 year old after the same dinner:

Some people love the baby stage — but those are usually people that are past it…

This is how I choose to spend my Saturday?

There’s a saying among cyclists that goes, “There’s no such thing as a bad day on a bike.”  Well, today proved that saying wrong for me.

This morning, Ken and I participated in the 22nd Annual Cow Creek Country Classic in Waxahachie.  It’s the first organized ride I’ve done since the DFW MS-150.  The ride started out fine — I got in a good group and despite a strong headwind and chipseal roads we made pretty good time.  The group eventually blew up in the rolling hills and I stopped at around 40 miles to refuel (Note:  I later realized I had only drank 1.5 bottles through that point). 

The next 15 miles were pretty tough due to the wind, but I finally reached the point where the route turned south with the wind.  I was looking forward to a quick tailwind-assisted ride back to Wax and even had a chance at finishing with an average over 20mph.  But then at 60 miles my right leg started cramping.  I’ve had cramps before, but usually they go away if I stretch a bit.  This time the cramp just kept getting worse no matter what I did.  I tried twice to continue but eventally my leg seized up into a permanent cramp.  For a couple minutes I was laying on the side of the highway in pretty intense pain.

Eventually help arrived.  I never envisioned myself crossing the finish line while sitting on an ice chest in the back of a SAG truck, but there I was on the ride of shame.  This was my first, and hopefully last, SAG experience!  My leg continued to cramp for the next hour, but eventually the muscles relaxed.

Judging from the headache I have now and the fact that I was 5 pounds lighter than normal when I got home (after trying to rehydrate), I think the cramps were a combination of dehydration and lack of training (I haven’t ridden more than 50 miles in almost two months).  I also think I have a tendency to lose excessive salt, so I’m going to check into some sort of salt pill or supplement.

There is some good news though — Ken, who has only been riding for a couple of months, finished strong.  Congrats, Ken!

 

 

Graduation Day

Abby graduated from Angela’s Fish School yesterday.  Every day for 2 weeks she went to class with her friends Becca and Caroline to learn pool etiquette (don’t get in the pool until a grown-up says OK), how to backfloat (still working on that), and how to hold the side and get out.

Congratulations, Abby!

What’s wrong with Hollywood?

Megan and I have had the unusual opportunity to see 3 movies lately.  All of them had big name actors and were heavily marketed.  They ranged from just OK (Zohan) to boring and predictable (Get Smart) to just plain bad (Indiana Jones).  Another much-hyped movie, Love Guru, starring Mike Myers, scored 15% on the Tomatometer.  I can barely stand to watch the preview, let alone the movie.

How does Hollywood produce so many bad movies?  Is there a dearth of good writers?  Of good ideas?  I don’t think so.

Today I visited the Magnolia Pictures web site.  They specialize in “unique and eclectic” films, and there are several I’d love to see.  In particular, Bigger, Stronger, Faster and Surfwise, which both scored 100% on the Tomatometer.  But guess what – neither film is coming to DFW, which is ironic given that Magnolia Pictures is owned by Mark Cuban.

I understand why the major studios prefer to invest in formulaic movies with big-name actors.  It’s a fairly safe bet.  But would these movies be less marketable if they had interesting stories or good dialogue?

Oh well, at least WALL-E is coming out soon.  Pixar hasn’t had a miss yet and this one is getting rave reviews.  Plus, I can take Abby!

Idea of the Day

Whenever I go hiking or climbing I usually stuff my keys into the hitch receiver on my car so I don’t lose them.  Here’s a great idea — a combination lock that goes in the receiver.

Just one problem – At $70 it’s too expensive (even with free shipping).  For $20 or $25 I’d buy it in a heartbeat.

Random Statistic of the Day

This chart is pretty eye-opening.  It compares US defense spending against the spending of other world powers.  It’s no surprise that we’re the #1 spender.  But more than the next 15 countries combined?  Wow.

Of course the US is also the world’s biggest economy, but our share of global GDP (21%) is much smaller than our share of global military spending (47%).

The Tipping Point

I read on TechCrunch today that Google just beat out Microsoft to provide email service to 1.5 million students in Australia.  Highlights are:

• BETTER:  With Gmail, students will have 6GB of storage.  With Exchange/Outlook, they had 35MB.
• FASTER: It took Microsoft 4 years to roll our Exchange/Outlook to all students.  Gmail will be rolled out by the end of this year.
• CHEAPER:  The Google contract is AU$9.5 million over 3 years.  The Microsoft contract it replaces was $33 million over 3 years.

For years, people have been talking about web-based applications replacing their desktop counterparts.  But it’s been slow to happen.  Historically, desktop applications have had a few key advantages:  they were faster (because processing happens on the local machine), they had better UI’s (due to limitations of HTML), and they could be used both online and offline.  Desktop apps also have their disadvantages; namely, that they are hard to deploy/update/manage and they have to be written for each operating system they support.

But I think we’ve reached a tipping point where web apps are better in every way.  Email is a great example.  My company uses Exchange/Outlook for email and it works OK.  But for email “power users”, Outlook is really slow — to the point that it impacts my productivity.  Outlook and Exchange just can’t handle email accounts with thousands (or tens of thousands) of messages.  And Outlook doesn’t have a decent search feature (so I use Google Desktop).

Gmail provides all of the same basic functionality as Exchange/Outlook, but it effortlessly handles large volumes of mail.  And I think the Gmail UI is actually better than Outlook’s UI.  And of course there’s no software to install — it’s all centrally managed by Google.

If you run a small business, you’d be crazy not to use the whole suite of Google Apps – email, calendar, work processing, etc.  Over time, big companies will come to the same conclusion.  Microsoft has enjoyed a monopoly in the apps business for a long time, but they’re coming under full-scale attack.  It may take a few years to see the effect because Microsoft is so entrenched in corporate America and owns the de-facto standards for electronic documents.  And of course they’ll roll out their own (lame) web-based versions of their Office apps to stem the bleeding.  But over time better, faster, cheaper always wins.