Month: May 2009

How do you get a giant hot tub off your deck?

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

With a giant crane of course. 

I think we removed the world's largest hot tub today…and had an equally large crane here to do the job.  The tub was here when we moved in and built into the deck much the same way a bank vault is built into a bank building – first and with no intention of ever being moved again.  We used it a handful of times but not enough to keep.

Thanks to some skillful work by Brian and Chris leveraging the best of Egyptian pyramid engineering, they got it lifted up and moved over so Al from Image Crane here in Kirkland could get to it.  Then, just like that, it was gone!

We are looking forward to the huge amount of new space on the deck.  Here's a few pics of the action:

HotTub_inair

Crane_setup

Gist gets almost $7 million from Vulcan and Foundry Group

/ Robert Pease / 1 Comment

Gist_logo  

I had a super busy day today starting out around 4am pacific ahead of the Gist funding announcement after a late night putting all the pieces in place.  Yes, I know I get no pity from my East Coast brethren for early mornings as our day starts as it is lunch time there – which is why we were working on eastern time today.

Here's the link to the press release and here are some additional details about it on the Gist blog.  It's definitely very exciting to have the guys at Foundry Group involved in Gist.

If you are looking for a Gist beta invite, drop a comment in this post or send me an email (robertcpease at gmail dot com) and I'll get you set up.

The new accidental reply to all

/ Robert Pease / 2 Comments

For years this has been one of the headaches around email – using 'reply to all' to pummel bystanders' inboxes with fyi, cya, and increasingly irrelevant banter as conversations play out.  I chose it as the name of this blog for that reason.  A blog, to me, is a reply to anyone and everyone who cares to read it so I thought it fit. 

Now that Twitter is all the rage and more folks are using it, I am witnessing the evolution of the accidental reply to all.  It comes in the form of the accidental exclusion of the "d" in front of a Twitter handle or  selecting the wrong button in one of any number of Twitter readers (like Tweetdeck).  A message intended for one person is instead broadcast to the entire Twitter universe.

Twitter is an open forum and direct messages should not be assumed to be private.  I'm not being paranoid, I'm just being practical.  Got something sensitive to say?  Send an email or, better yet, pick up the phone and use your voice.  A bit more effort, but certainly more personal.

Who is using all this social media stuff anyway?

/ Robert Pease / 2 Comments

The answer is pretty surprising from this nicely done post by Ryan Healy of Brazen Careerist on his Employee Evolution blog. 

Here are some great data points from Ryan:

Twitter
The majority of Twitter users worldwide are 35 or older. Young adults 18-24 only make up 10.6% of the Twitter population in the US and are less likely than the average user to tweet. 45-54 year olds are actually 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter. (via Comscore) 

LinkedIn
The average age of a LinkedIn user is 40-years old. (via Techcrunch)

Facebook
The 35 to 54 Year old demographic grew at a rate of 276% over the last six months and the 55+ demographic grew more than 194% over the same time period, while 18-24 year olds only grew 20%.  (via iStrategyLabs)

Consumer Technology
A recent Accenture survey concluded that Baby boomers, defined in Accenture’s survey as those 45 years old or older, are embracing popular consumer technology applications nearly 20 times faster than younger generations. (via Accenture)

These are not just the toys of Gen Y.  Rather, they are being broadly adopted by Gen X and even Boomers in greater and greater numbers.  LinkedIn was once thought silly but now is a pretty mainstream business tool for recruiters, sales types, and super networkers.  Facebook didn't make a lot of sense for me (as my post on 8/29/2007 explains) until it gained critical mass from a population relevant to me. I now have connected/re-connected from folks across all stages of my life from grade school to college and beyond.

Most intriguing about the stats above to me is that the often debated role of all this in the enterprise (enterprise 2.0, etc.) is taking shape before our eyes.  The users of this stuff are (on the whole) adults with jobs who are gaining comfort using new technologies and are adopting them to both their personal and professional lives.