“The Sunscreen song”, which is actually named “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)”, by Baz Luhrmann, has been a (potentially odd) source of wisdom for me since it came out in 1998, just a few years after I graduated from college. I listen to the song periodically, and try to share it with my kids who, at 9 and 13, don’t yet “get” it. The words of the song aren’t those of the artist, and they aren’t Kurt Vonnegut’s either, regardless of what urban…
About every two months, a colleague and I travel to various cities in the US (and sometimes abroad) to teach Microsoft customers how to license their software effectively over a rather intense two-day course. Almost none of these attendees want to game the system. Instead, most come (often repeatedly, sometimes with more people each time) to simply understand the ever-changing rules, how to apply them correctly, and how to (as I often hear it said) “do the right thing”. Doing…
“…there is still something to be said for painting portraits of the people we have loved, for trying to express those moments that seem so inexpressibly beautiful, the ones that change us and deepen us.” Excerpt From: Lamott, Anne. “Bird by Bird.”
“The reason why businesses love measures is because they mistakenly believe that measures are real, hard data.” Karen Phelan, author of “I’m Sorry I Broke Your Company.”
A year or so ago, a good friend from Microsoft told me he was leaving the company, and was pondering a few ideas about what do next. His ideas had one common trait, that he wanted to improve how people got things done, a desire I’ve highlighted in some blog posts before. Working with a partner, he brainstormed a few ideas, and they focused in on the following use case: When I post a job to a job board, my…
Imagine I handed you a Twinkie (or your favorite shelf-stable food item), and asked you to hold on to it for almost 13 years, and then eat it. Aw, c’mon. Why the revulsion? It’s been hard for me to watch the excited countdown to the demise of Windows XP. Though I did help ship Windows Server 2003 as well, no one product (or service) that I’ve ever worked on became so popular, for so long – by any stretch of…
I recently read a blog post entitled DaaS is a Non-Starter, discussing how Desktop as a Service (DaaS) is, as the title says, a non-starter. I’ll have to admit, I agree. I’m a bit of a naysayer about DaaS, just as I have long been about VDI itself. In talking with a colleague the other day, as well as customers at a recent licensing boot camp, it sure seems like VDI, like “enterprise social” is a burger with a whole lot…
“As a lad he became expert as an amateur watchmaker. Disliking farm work because, “considering the results, there was too much work on the place,” he became an apprentice mechanic in Detroit, and repaired watches in a jewelry shop at night. He flirted with the idea of entering the watch manufacturing business on a large scale, “but I did not because I figured out that watches were not universal necessities.” His apprenticeship over, he served with the local representative of…
Late last week, some buzz began building that Apple, alongside automaker partners, would formally reveal the first results of their “iOS in the Car” initiative. Much as rumors had suspected, the end result, now dubbed CarPlay, was demonstrated (or at least shown in a promo video) by initial partners Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo. If you only have time to watch one of them, watch the video of the Ferrari. Though it is an ad-hoc demo, the Ferrari video isn’t painfully…
No Googling – that’s cheating. Tell me the executive (a former CEO) and the company. I’ve paraphrased a couple of parts that would give it away. “<he’s> been the primary architect of a failed transformation of <the company> from its core <redacted> heritage to some expansive consumer-centric organization, which we think employees, <partners>, and investors have found to varying degrees to be somewhat incomprehensible.” Answer key: The above is a redacted quote about Jacques Nasser, the ousted CEO of…