Month: April 2007

Running Uphill

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

As I was running yesterday in Kirkland and started up the long gradual hill that rises on Market Street from Marina Park, I found myself thinking about my approach to running hills as I began to seriously question it.

For whatever reason, I have always viewed a hill as an opportunity to not just sustain my pace, but to increase it and pass others as they reduce their speed.

I have no idea if this is wise or that it necessarily helps my placement in race (against myself or others), but it is something I have made a habit of over the years. I do, however, certainly think it defines some part of me and my approach to challenges.

I think it’s a good question to ask of people and suggest steering clear of those that choose to walk the hills.

Why the White House/RNC email flap should come as no surprise

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There is a lot of rhetoric flying around about scandal, cover-up, Hatch Act violations, etc. in the most recent firestorm in our 24 hour news cycle society – the White House is having trouble getting their hands on emails requested by Congress.

Let’s put aside any discussion of political cover-up/opportunism, Presidential power privilege/abuse, or even if something illegal was done for a second and understand that what the White House is experiencing is the same thing corporate America is dealing with every day.

Just ask Morgan Stanley how easy it is to ensure you can quickly and readily get your hands on archived emails even when you are suppose to be able to do so by law:

Morgan Stanley Muddles Through An E-Mail Mess

Court overturns $1.6 billion ruling against Morgan Stanley

Regulator Says Morgan Stanley Withheld E-Mail in Cases

Morgan has a pretty clear standard to meet spelled out by SEC 17a-4 requirements. The situation with the RNC emails is a little less clear. As this story from the LA Times points out, the RNC has an established policy of automatically erasing most email after 30 days.

Now, I’m not expert on the Presidential Records Act so we’re going to have to leave that to the really smart clever lawyers on the Republican and Democrat side of the aisle to slug out and claim respective victory when the dust settles on this one.

What’s playing out in the headlines is what we see everyday within the four walls of companies where, even in the absence of an official inquiry or investigation, there is a significant challenge in getting at sent/received emails. This is due in part to a lack of understanding from those that are asking for them and significant technical challenges on those that are charged with getting them.

It may be easy for you to go to your inbox and find an email, but until you try sifting through months and years of emails for thousands of employees stored in various locations and formats that include everything from vacation pictures to system alerts to newsletters you will not truly appreciate the nature of this problem.

Inbox or Sent Items – which folder can you live without?

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Not that this question ranks up there with the greatest of all time, but it did come up recently in a conversation and thought it was worth sharing.

Regardless of whether technically you could lose one and not the other is not the issue here rather which do you put more value on?  If your inbox was taken away, would your world come to a halt?

I suppose this is dependent on what you do and how you manage your information.  If you are like most people, your email is your central file repository, contact manager, and #1 business application used during the day. Here’s how I see it:

   1. Inbox – information sent to you and/or many others

    * No control over who sends you what (other than spam/virus filters)
    * Some control upon receipt by automated or manual folders (managed folders approach)
    * Includes informational or no action types of messages where you are one of many, a distribution list member, or CC/BCC
    * Receiving something (i.e., successful delivery) is not the same as accepting it, agreeing with it, or implying you will act on it
    * Greater propensity to reply to an important messages thereby putting a copy of it in the Sent Folder

   2. Sent Folder – information you share with identified recipients

    * You send fewer emails than you receive and this requires deliberate action
    * Creates a personal audit trail to “prove” that you did something and when
    * Contains your original or modified work product (including ability to find the most recent one)
    * Identifies your most important contacts or at least those that you interact with more frequently

For me, I would choose the Inbox to live without. Maybe this is a function of how I work and spend my day – right or wrong. Whether you could live without both is another post.

Is an IM chat a business record?

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As messaging gets further defined beyond email to IM, texting, etc. companies are struggling with what to save and for how long.  The explosion in more and more unstructured ways to interact both in and out of the corporate network presents quite a dilemma for those in the legal, records, and/or compliance groups.

One particular question that has had a pretty consistent answer as we have talked to customers and prospects is that they (and, more importantly, their legal depts) feel they don’t have to archive IM conversations because it is "like a phone call."  Don’t record calls so therefore don’t archive IM chat sessions. 

The reinforcing point here in any retention program is consistency.  Do what you have always done and if you are going to start doing something new make sure you are well documented/justified and that the timing is not suspect.

Clear as mud, right?  The discussion over the burden that US companies feel to be compliant and prove their innocence is a topic for another day.  Also, please don’t take this as the gospel as I am not a lawyer and you should take inventory of your own situation.

Of course, if you are one of the unlucky firms regulated by NASD/SEC (17a-4) rules, you really have no choice here so plan on continuing to roll out storage infrastructure and chasing down how folks interact electronically.  You’re welcome.

A little dose of SaaS reality

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I’m not even quite sure how I came across this post at this point, but thought it was worth highlighting.  This is from Going Private – a blog focused on the private equity business and an entry entitled Buried Cable.  The author provides some great perspective on the realities of Software as a Service (SaaS) from his perspective.  Whether you agree or not, it is a good read to keep those of us that advocate the new, new thing honest and humble.

Couple of my favorite points:

1.  On putting more infrastructure in place between the user and their data

  • "…the strength of a chain is only that of its weakest link"
  • "’Oh, but with the increasingly pervasiveness of fast internet because
    of wireless hot-spots and broadband internet…’  Hogwash."

2.  On real "use cases" and where to invest

"Still, every time I hear someone sing the praises of software as
service revenue I roll my eyes and
picture "Ralph," the union back-hoe
operator pulling up a fiber optic main, writing a blog post with my
e-mail client while sitting on an unconnected airplane, or imagine
myself working diligently on my laptop, finishing by candle light a
spreadsheet during one of the summer’s increasingly common blackouts
caused by increasing strain on decades old and barely adequate power
infrastructure.

Call me a Luddite, but I think I’ll invest in utilities with aggressive grid growth reinvestment policies instead."

How to get a meeting with a venture capitalist

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Venture capital is often discussed and often misunderstood.  I have learned some lessons and taken my lumps by being on the entrepreneur/management team side of the equation and there are some great VC blogs out there that I highly recommend (several I list on my blog).

That said, I am a huge advocate of this kind of risk capital and the role it plays is driving innovation and private enterprise in both the US and global economy.  I’ll save that for another post, but wanted to put the word out about a great way to chat with a venture capitalist…at his request.

Jason Caplain of Southern Capitol Ventures in Raleigh, NC writes a blog called Southeast VC.  He has put out an open meeting invitation to anyone who wants to get together on April 20 in Raleigh for a chat.  This is the kind of openness and proactive approach that I love to see.

I like and respect Jason and encourage anyone that can swing it to take him up on his offer.  I have family in the RTP area and he took my meeting request without knowing me as I passed through Raleigh a while ago.   

Interview with Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners – a personal view of the future

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I picked this up from AlarmClock who picked it up from Marketwatch and the now departed Bambi Francisco (of recent vator-gate fame).  It’s an interview with Roger McNamee about managing the mid-life crisis of mature media and content companies. Roger is part of Elevation Partners which is the vc firm formed by Bono of U2.

Anyway, a couple of good excerpts that are posted below.  Red highlights the points that I think are key.

Bambi:  You’re a product-cycle investor. Are there any product cycles of
major significance coming up in the tech world that investors could
ride (i.e. Microsoft 
    Vista, Apple’s iPhone/TV? Nintendo’s Wii for video games?)

Roger:  "It’s more of a thematic-cycle trend rather than a product-cycle trend.  That trend is helping people to make better use of their time. Research In Motion’s Blackberries and [Apple’s] iPods are excellent examples of integrated systems that helped people make better use of their time."

Bambi:  What’s the next disruptive technology?

Roger:  "…I also think mobility is incredibly disruptive. I have no idea how that’s going to look. Everything that matters will come on my person.  That’s the thing that disrupts the PC market. The one-sized-fits-all-PC
model is broken. Eventually, PCs will produce shrinkage of demand for
PCs in the developed world. Apple’s iPhone is part of the mobile
disruption, but a small part. The disruptive stuff isn’t one thrust.
It’ll come in small parts, like getting nibbled to death by ducks."

Generational view of electronic communications

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We conduct a variety of research and roundtable forums every year and, in one of our most recent ones, a senior information security person provided the following perspective on the evolution of electronic communications:

Today’s younger generation uses email, IM, and text messaging as follows:

1.  You email your grandparents
2.  You IM your parents
3.  You text your friends

So unstructured communication will become even more unstructured as the next generation of workers populates the workplace AND company networks will not be the place where all communication occurs, is logged, and can be retained. 

Another participant pointed out that workers joining their companies in the future (and today) will already have a mobile phone and laptop and that they are putting the pieces in place to support personal devices (phones and PCs) vs. incurring the cost of supplying and supporting them.  Puts network security and management in a whole different light to manage non-standard/unknown devices hitting the network, accessing data, and communicating with each other.

Changing behaviors

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Ultimately behind all technology use are users and users make decisions about how to use technology to communicate, complete work tasks, and live their lives.

So, as companies struggle with how to increase awareness of the possible risks (security, legal, regulatory) from errant actions, how do you find the middle ground between mitigating risk and respecting the privacy of employees?

An extreme example of instant feedback to change behaviors was recently covered by the BBC- ‘Talking’ CCTV scolds offenders

Surveillance cameras that speak to you if you litter or commit "anti-social" behavior.  My favorite part of the story is using children’s voices to correct offending behavior

Competitions would also be held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the voice of the cameras, Mr Reid said.