Shameless Self-Promotion

I find that I gag when people try to sell me solutions to problems that don't really exist. Most geeks do. It doesn't seem honest and makes us wary of the ulterior motives behind most sales and marketing efforts. On the other hand, sometimes issues do exist and we're just waiting for a better solution.

I saw an ad on television for one of those "better solutions" the other day and I remember noticing that instead of feeling marketed to in a bad way (read, slimed on), I was glad to have the knowledge. Done right, marketing serves a valuable purpose - bringing together a true need and a true solution. Done badly, it simply annoys the heck out of us.

All of us market ourselves, every single day. Yes, even you. The question is whether you're doing it effectively or not. Plenty of us regularly engage in our very own negative campaigns, literally selling ourselves short.

It's a good idea to get used to the notion of there being a right way to engage in marketing that finds the right people and draws them toward you... and an ineffective way of marketing yourself that pushes folks away or draws in the wrong crowd - people who are not a good fit.

Drawing the wrong crowd is as bad as not drawing one at all; in fact, often it's worse. When it's not a good fit, it means we're generating negative publicity for ourselves down the road and that's bad marketing.

Think of good marketing as education more than selling, and you'll be on the right track.

In the case of this blog, I've heard from folks that the randomness with which I make entries can be a bit of a problem. They check back every once in a while to see if I've written anything but I'm sure it's as annoying to them to visit when I haven't written in a while as it is disappointing for me to think that I've made and entry and people may not know about it.

If you're a Windows user trying to figure out when I'm going to get around to writing another post, then I may have a solution for you. I recently discovered a site that facilitates building custom toolbars that can include RSS-aggregator elements so now you can have your very own SME Toolbar.

The toolbar is kinda cool, I think. You can see how many recent posts are available and how many you have not yet read, right there on your browser toolbar. There are other cool features too and I'm hoping that with your help, I can make it even more useful.

For those of you who already aggregate feeds into a reader, I hope you'll let me know if you ever experience a problem with the XML, Atom or RSS links that I've been providing. I'd also love to know what reader you use. I'm still looking for one I really like.

You can send your toolbar and your reader recommendations to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com as well as your thoughts on what sorts of self-promotion works for you and what you dislike or find difficult about marketing yourself. Let's have some fun with this.

What kind of marketing do you do for yourself?

Politics in the Workplace and the World

Sometimes a new way of looking at things is a huge help in finding ways to make things better. That was definitely true for me last night when I had the opportunity to hear author Donna Zajonc speak about her new book, The Politics of Hope.

With so much of the nation feeling disappointed or even bitter about the results of the presidential election and many of the rest telling them to get over it, and with the Washington State gubernatorial race still in question as we head into a manual recount after a machine recount further narrowed governor-elect Rossi's tight margin of victory, tilting into the holiday season and the start of a new year with all its promise, I felt the timing could not have been better.

Personally I'm exhausted by it all and want only to find ways to make it better; I feel closer now to people with whom I disagree on political matters who are able to have a civilized conversation regarding our opinions than I do to people with whom I essentially agree but cannot get past the ranting. Having been in danger for a time of staying rant mode myself and still working past the occasional tendencies to regress, I find it's important to cultivate opportunities to surround myself with hope and steer myself that direction as an alternative to fear. As far as I'm concerned, this is as true within the workplace and corporate politics as it is in the rest of our lives.

Some of you know that I serve on the board for the local chapter of coaches, the Puget Sound Coaches Association. Part of that means that I make a special effort to attend all of our program meetings. Of course, I was doing that already, which probably has something to do with how I got nominated and elected to the board in the first place. In any case, my attendance record served me quite well last night because it meant that I was there to hear Donna speak about her insights around what she calls the four stages of political evolution. While she came up with this model as a way of viewing the democratic process, I believe it can be applied in a variety of situations, including leadership in the workplace.

Take, for instance, her views on trust... where are you and your co-workers?

Stage 1 - "Trust no one"
Stage 2 - "Trust our candidate to solve our problems"
Stage 3 - "Trust only yourself and your immediate family and community"
Stage 4 - "Trust the evolutionary process and our collective wisdom to create fair policy"
From the book The Politics of Hope: Reviving the Dream of Democracy, published Oct. 15, 2004 by Donna Zajonc; used by permission.

For the corporate environment, substitute the leader of your choice for 'candidate' and workgroup and department for 'immediate family and community' and it maintains its relevance.

I share with Donna the belief that as we begin to shift in our own evolutionary processes, so will the others around us. When we reach sufficient critical mass as a group, we will begin to impact what happens at a larger level. That kind of critical mass will only occur when we reach out to each other regardless of perspective. Mathematically, it cannot occur if our conversations are restricted only to those with whom we know we agree or if we are strident in our approach, pushing away the others with whom we disagree.

Whether you disagree or whether you have tips on dealing with people who disagree with you, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com to see what more we can learn from each other.

How are you bridging the gap between someone else's perspective and your own?

Finding Relevance in Silliness

A certain small person I know, like many other persons both large and small (myself included), very much enjoys blowing the paper wrappers off of straws. Unfortunately, the drinking straw manufacturers may have decided that this activity is potentially hazardous and are intent on discouraging such behavior. The perforations often found at the ends of the wrappers seem designed specifically to make this activity impossible.

My ploy is generally to see first if another person at the table will be successful in blowing off the wrapper. If they are not, I usually decide it is not worth the effort to try myself. On a recent foray into the land of fast food, the scene played out just has it had many times before... only this time with a bit of a twist.

Soon after the small person discovered the paper wrapper on his drinking straw was going nowhere, we all settled down to eat. Ever watchful of his surroundings (I'm going to have to learn to be this much more observant myself), small person calls out - "Hey, I saw someone shoot a wrapper!"

I've learned not to question the observations of this small person. He's nearly always right. In this case, I have no idea if he was correct or not; it turns out to be completely irrelevant.

Hearing, though, that someone else was successful where we had not been, caused my mind to race. If there was a way to make it work, what would it be? Then it hit me.

"I bet I can shoot a wrapper at you," I challenged. "But if I do it, you have to promise to let me tell you what's more important than how I did it."

It took me two tries, but ultimately I made it work. Even with a perforated wrapper, I was able to blow it off the straw, just like the old days.

The secret, I explained, was in first believing it was possible. Holding that bias meant that I did not give up until I had discovered the solution. My mistake in the past had always been that because I had seen other attempts fail, I had made the erroneous assumption that what I wanted was not possible.

What perhaps surprised me the most was how quickly I discovered a solution once I was certain one had to exist.

For anyone curious about how it was done, it turns out that sliding the wrapper partway off so that you have room to make a gentle twist or two that cuts off airflow through the perforations is one way that works pretty well. There may be others.

Do you have proof that drinking straw manufacturers are trying to eliminate good clean silly fun or do you have other counter-seriousness measures you care to share? Send them to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com so we can encourage more humor in life.

What if the challenge in front of you is not as impossible as it may seem?

Cobbler's Children's Shoes

Well, I know what I'm likely to be spending most of my day doing. Apparently the fan is out on the power supply for the old computer I use as a print and scanner and weather station server. Alarms started going off VERY late last night and I just sat and stared at it wondering what the heck it was till I figured out it was the overheat alarm. What a drag.

At least I was still up (working on the background info for the project that I've decided to take on as part of NaNoWriMo). It would have been even more of a drag to have been woken up by those rather obnoxious alarms. Of course, now I can't really print until I get this thing taken care of.

I don't fool myself though - the job is not really just as simple as changing out the power supply. This is the second time in about a year I'll have had to do that so clearly something else is up. Which means, of course, that unless I want to keep changing out power supplies and risking further damage, I'm going to have to take the time to figure out what is up and do it pretty darned soon.

I don't exactly have a great track record there though - like many techies, I tend to have my systems running closer to the edge (at least for my own capabilities, if not always the true edge) than really works to keep it all running in top condition, which means my equipment regularly crosses the line into inoperable or barely-operable-using-annoying-workarounds. And I don't always take the time to fix it right, just fix it enough to get it back operational again. It's a case of the cobbler's children having no shoes. Such minor problems invariably are simply larger problems waiting to happen.

On the good side, when the larger problems raise their heads, I usually recognize that I myself am the root cause for ignoring the earlier warning signs I and don't go looking to point blame anywhere else. Strange how the reality that things are FUBAR and it's all my own fault should be in any way a good thing. Hmmm, maybe I can prepay for a trip to de Nile.

I'm curious how you approach important, non-urgent issues and hope you'll send some thoughts to me at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com. And if you happen to know what (besides replacing the whole box) could readily be done to fix whatever keeps sending my power supplies into never-never land, go ahead and let me know that too.

What are you putting off today that could become a serious issue tomorrow?

Geekier Than Thou

With most geeks, only one thing matters - being smarter, or more of a geek, than the next person. The odd thing is that for the rest of the world, being a geek is the last thing they want to be. Of course, since they're not geeks, most of us who are don't much care what they think. And therein lies part of the problem.

There are entire message boards of geeks telling each other off for not being smart enough, since the ability to be clever is the only measuring stick worth using. Everyone else is stupid so why care what they think?

There are stupid people out there, certainly and it frustrates me to no end when I run into them. Don't confuse different types of intelligence, though, with stupidity. And I beg of you not to think that your kind of intelligence is the only kind that matters. In my book, people who only think one way are as difficult to be around as those who don't use their heads at all.

So you make a great product... so what? If only people who are as smart as you can make it work, do you think you're going to have much of a market share? So you're the best troubleshooter or the best programmer who ever walked the earth... so what? If no one can work with you long enough to find a solution that meets more than just the needs you think are important, then what good are you?

And don't worry, I'm not talking about you or where you work, at least not on purpose. I've seen this more places than I can count. I also realize that what I'm saying is likely to only hit home with those who already see things the same way I do (if you do, I'd love to hear from you - we're in the minority and need to strengthen our numbers). Everyone else is likely to point out that I'm only a manager and not smart enough to be credible. Fortunately, I don't worry about that a whole lot. My friends and family know better. I'm geekier than they are, so clearly I'm a geek. They usually forgive me, though, because I work pretty hard at speaking human most of the time.

What experiences have you had on either side of this fence? Have you or anyone you've seen crossed that fence and seen both sides? Is there hope for the human race? You can always let me know at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com.

Managers - how well do you understand and address this aspect of geekdom? How do you establish and maintain credibility?

More on Toys

One of the people who picked up on the Trillian kick pointed out that it maintains a weblink history. This can prove very handy for capturing all the links that tend to fly back and forth. It also means there's no pressure to go visit every last site right this minute. Of course, given my own level of impulsivity, I probably will anyway. In fact, that's probably the single biggest reason why I hadn't really noticed before now.

For storing and managing links, I still prefer Backflip. I like their Daily Routine feature and the notion that I can visit my favorite sites without worrying which computer I'm using. Plus, the ones I visit most often float up onto a Top 10 list that I find very convenient. I'm curious, though, to know more about what everyone else uses - besides the Favorites or Bookmarks lists in their browsers, that is.

If Backflip counts as Something Old and Trillian as Something Blue, then the Something New must be Monday's announcement of the pending availability of the Treo 650.

Yes, it will have BlueTooth, just as everyone has been expecting, and it will have an MP3 Player too. I could care less about VersaMail, as I consider Sproqit to be way better, but then I admit to a certain amount of bias around that one. What I don't know is how much they plan to charge for this puppy - that bit of detail is noticeably absent from the marketing literature I received though I can't say I'm really all that surprised. It should drive down the cost of the unlocked 610's on ebay though.

Help me fill in the gaps by sharing what you know about prices, other technologies you prefer, functionality, etc. at techsurvivor@soaringmountain.com. If you'd rather talk about functionality you wish was available, that's okay too.

What role does technology play in your life?