Category: blogging

Who Is The Well Armed 2nd Amendment Militia?

On By JohnIn Analyst, analyst relations, bias, blogging, capitalism, delusions, Education, Elitism, Freedom, government, history, Human Capabilities, Life, military, people, politics, screw ups, social media, socialism, unqualifiedLeave a comment

The conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty.

– Antonin Scalia

It is the amendment that protects citizens against the government.

An analyst that I used to work with tweeted his commie statement about wanting to know just who were this militia? Well James G., there is your answer from one of if not the constitutionally best informed minds.

I left twitter a long time ago because of hate and snark just like this and other anti-American crap put out by people like James, but I didn’t forget that it needed answering. I’m finally getting around to it.

You also claimed to be an American because you had a passport, but you are a Brit with dual passports. I don’t care because, only living the ideals and believing in America makes you an American. I know in your heart not only do you not love this country, your words indicate your disdain for it. I didn’t forget that either. You asked me if I questioned whether you are an American and yes, I do. Actions speak louder than words. In UK snark, you are what our execs call you, a wanker.

This goes for the rest of the liberal haters on what makes this country great. A lot of them are born US Citizens with generations of family who came here for a new life. Why you hate it is because you don’t understand what it took to make it great.

Just look what happened to the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, China and anywhere else they took away guns from the people. It’s just that the sheep and the idiots don’t grasp the concept of freedom, and the concept of what communism and socialism do to the population of a country.

Oh, they’ve banned guns in Australia, and now have kicked Djockovic out of the Aussie Open for not being jabbed. The people can do nothing about it. He had Covid twice so he has immunity. Same for Canada. Freedom is fleeting.

When Pressed Conservatives Can't Name One Reality Based ...

Blogs I Follow, Deplorable Bloggers Alliance

On By JohnIn blogging, censorship, Covid-19, Education, Elitism, Freedom, Health, history, integrity, Medical, obvious, politics, Writing and AuthorsLeave a comment

I find this to currently be an excellent source of Covid information. It used to be called Infidel Bloggers Alliance when it covered obvious other subjects when I first found it.

Some of the links in my Covid stuff come from there because he finds a ton of information that the mainstream lamestream Media (MSM) won’t cover. There is a lot of ways to get around what we are being told and what is true to be found there.

I found that they follow a lot of the same blogs I follow, so we think alike.

If you want to find the truth about Covid that other won’t tell you, go there.

I promise that no matter how sarcastic I am, my stuff is absolutely tame compared to this place, which is why I find it refreshing.

Here’s the tagline at the top of the blog:

All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same unalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, if the governments of the world can’t get that through their thick skulls, then, regime change will be necessary.

Who Have I Offended Today?

On By JohnIn blogging, celebtards, delusions, Elitism, fail, Freedom, Global Power, government, history, Human Capabilities, Life, not obvious, patterns, people, politics, sarcasm, screw ups, self-helpLeave a comment

I notice people going in and out of my blog. I kind of know where they stand when I pick a subject they don’t agree with me about as they are gone. I never really cared though as this is one of the outlets for my thoughts.

I don’t take particularly hard political stances, because most of politics is dancing with the devil, a house of cards built on sand.

I do however call out facts that go against someone’s personal beliefs sooner or later. I’ve never met anyone who agrees with me on everything. It’s just that I’m old enough now to call bullshit on things that are just too obvious for me to be hoodwinked into. I shake my head at people who buy into stuff that doesn’t have a chance of being supported by anything other than ideology, power, control or money.

Go to my tag cloud on the right and pick your poison. I even put in the about section that I’ve offended people.

Heck, just look at the post below where I state the obvious not because of my politics, rather a persons obvious track record screams the truth about what is going on.

Blogs I Follow – Busted Knuckles

On By JohnIn blogging, Covid-19, Education, entertainment, Freedom, Human Capabilities, humor, Life, people, sarcasm, Writing and AuthorsLeave a comment

I’m not sure how I found Phil at Busted Knuckles. It may have been through the Feral Irishman or Knuckledraggin’ My Life Away. It may have been a link from someone pointing out his site. When he was changing platforms, a lot of blogs I follow pointed to the new URL to help him out. He’s a popular guy.

It doesn’t matter because it’s near the top of the list of blogs I look at in the morning. His mornings are a lot funnier than mine with his morning coffee and smokes, and really tough work hours.

It took me a while to figure out what he did, but I think he is a mechanic. A lot of his blog stuff doesn’t concern it other than going to work and them trying to screw him out of a job because of the jab. I am following closely to hope he beats the system and gets to keep working. He looks like a pretty talented worker and would be valuable to whoever picks him up.

What is great is that his tool collection/stuffed garage and how he can fix damn near everything is intriguing. His followers send him old tools that they don’t use, but he knows exactly how to use them/fix them if they are broken and tells tales about how he has used them on a job. No matter how much I bitch, no one sends me anything like that.

I find his car project, a Sprite to be funny also. He’s put months or years into fixing it and every drive is an adventure as to if it will make it home or where it’s gone. I saw him threaten to sell it after owning in as a project for years. I’ve been a car guy forever and love these stories.

Back to the Vaxx, he has done his homework on what it can do to you and I agree with his position many hundreds of percent. It is surprising given that he lives near Portland. That has become a hellhole (I had a daughter who lived there) and not known for people educated like him.

I’ll give him this, he is very generous with helping others, especially his family and I don’t know if they appreciate it enough.

Anyway, head on over and enjoy like I do.

In honor of him, I’ll end it like he does a lot, BFYTW.

How Much The Media Is Lying To Us

On By JohnIn bias, blogging, Covid-19, Elitism, fail, Global Power, government, history, msm, news, obvious, politics, sarcasm, unqualifiedLeave a comment

If you think you will get the correct story of what is going on from the mainstream media, think again, especially lately.

They’ve always had a biased point of view, but at least they tried to hide it from us. Let’s go through a couple of examples of their lying and behavior.

If you don’t know about my point of view, I’ve worked with the media for decades. They tell some, part or none of the real story depending on what works for their agenda. I lost my trust years ago and stopped watching the traditional news of any alphabet (all of them, left or right) and dig for details from those who give the truth. Sometimes I know as it is the opposite of what is reported, like the following.

Russiagate

From WND, Those who perpetuated the Russia collusion deception – and this means editors and pundits, not only reporters – still hold premier jobs in political media. Many, in fact, have been rewarded with better gigs. Is anyone at the Washington Post or New York Times going to return a Pulitzer? Is anyone going to explain how multiple alleged independent sources regularly buttressed the central fabulistic claim of the dossier? Journalism is ostensibly about transparency and truth, yet not one of these sentinels of democracy has explained how they were supposedly fooled for years, exhibiting not a modicum of skepticism – one of the most vital components of good journalism. When asked by Axios about the Steele dossier, the two outlets that churned out some of the most sensationalistic and conspiratorial content of the Trump era, CNN and MSNBC, wouldn’t even comment.

The New York Times appears less forthcoming. In one piece taking on this new development, Bill Grueskin looks into how the media managed to play this entire story in so wrong of a fashion, but the level of introspection is lacking. The Times had been at the forefront of the reporting, and two of the reporters from that piece — Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo — were part of the team of journalists from the Times and the Post who were granted the Pulitzer Prize for coverage on the dossier and the ensuing fabricated scandal.

The New York Times
                                                                       AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File

Grueskin hits on many of the elements that prodded the press to keep hounding the story. Obviously, the sheer contempt for Trump by the news industry was the motivator, but there were plenty of justifications to keep the momentum going. Denials from a man they dubbed a serial liar were viewed as practically the same as confirmation, and those covering the story were being lauded and rewarded, either with circulation and ratings, or awards.

Then there was the shift in acceptable standards to keep the story alive; instead of verifying things, the lack of contradictory evidence was regarded as proof. Rachael Maddow famously said, “Some elements of the dossier have been verified. A number remain neither verified nor proven false, but none so far have been publicly disproven.”

Going back in history first, here are some corrections/retractions just published to lies stories told years ago:

From the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos:

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story published March 30, 2017, referred to previous reporting in The Washington Post that Belarusan-American businessman Sergei Millian had been a source of information for a dossier of unverified allegations against Donald Trump. In November 2021, The Post removed that material from the original 2017 story after the account was contradicted by allegations in a federal indictment and undermined by further reporting. References to the initial report have been removed from this piece. 

Here is the next, same retraction, different article:

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story published Nov. 17, 2017, referred to previous reporting in The Washington Post that Belarusan-American businessman Sergei Millian had been a source of information for a dossier of unverified allegations against Donald Trump. In November 2021, The Post removed that material from the original 2017 story after the account was contradicted by allegations in a federal indictment and undermined by further reporting. References to the initial report have been removed from this piece. 

Covid

Nothing has been more speciously covered with blatant lies that Covid and the vaccine. Death counts are so overstated that you’d thing it was the next Black plague. Over 99% of people survive it, probably more than those who survive the vaccine, another lie.

Here are the Covid Vaccine deaths and injuries that have been hidden.

Chilling new data about the COVID-19 vaccine has just come to light, and it proves that people were right to be skeptical of the jabs all along.

The official European Union database of suspected drug reaction website has revealed that as of November 13, there were 30,551 fatalities and 1,163,356 adverse drug reactions from COVID vaccines Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca.

The European Medicines Agency stated that the adverse reaction data from COVID-19 shots were posted in an ADRreports.eu portal that “allows users to view the total number of individual suspected side effect reports (also known as Individual Case Safety Reports, or ICSRs).”

Here is the database. Go to the C’s and click on the Covid Vaxx by manufacturer.

Not reported, the Covid Jab is 800 times more deadly than any other vaxx.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Data suggest 1 in 317 boys aged 16 to 17 will get myocarditis from the COVID shots, and after a third booster, that number may be even higher
  • VAERS reporting is likely underreported by a factor of 41. Since there are over 8,000 domestic deaths reported to VAERS, and 98% of those deaths are “excess deaths,” this suggests that as many as 300,000 Americans may have died from the COVID shots thus far
  • Calculations based on government data from 35% of the world’s population suggest we’re killing approximately 411 people per million doses on average. Moderna and Pfizer are both two-dose regimens, which pushes this to 822 deaths per million fully vaccinated. And that’s just the short-term mortality. We still have no concept of how these shots might impact mortality and morbidity in the longer term
  • An Italian investigation found that if the COVID mortality definition were changed to only include those cases where there were no preexisting comorbidities, the mortality from COVID comes out to just 2.9% of the overall reported number. This suggests that if a COVID death was redefined to being a death actually “from” COVID rather than “with” COVID, the death count could be substantially smaller than 760,000 deaths and may be smaller than the number killed by the vaccines
  • The deadliest vaccine ever made is the smallpox vaccine, which killed 1 in 1 million vaccinated people. The COVID shots kills 822 per million fully vaccinated, making it more than 800 times deadlier than the deadliest vaccine in human history

Or that the Vax is the most dangerous in history.

According to multiple independent analyses summarized here, the death rate from the COVID vaccines used in the US is at least 400 deaths per million doses. That’s 800 deaths per million fully vaccinated.

That makes the COVID vaccines the new leader by a long shot: the most dangerous vaccine ever created in history. They are 800X more dangerous than the smallpox vaccine with respect to death, and over 25X worse with respect to permanent disability (since the permanent disability rates are 10% higher than the death rate as you can see from the OpenVAERS redbox summary for US reports).

According to Offit, this rate of death and disability is unacceptable. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been calling for a halt to these vaccines since May 25, 2021 when I wrote this very long article for TrialSiteNews summarizing what I found after 3 weeks of intensive research.

Image

Fast forward to the present. Offit voted to approve these same vaccines for kids at the October 26 VRBPAC meeting because he refuses to look at the safety analysis (done using 8 different data sources). Offit thinks nobody has died or been permanently disabled by these vaccines. What does he think caused all those VAERS reports? I wish I could ask him that question. He doesn’t think there is a single death caused by the vaccine. That’s impossible. The VAERS data shows that virtually all the deaths in VAERS are excess deaths. If the vaccine didn’t cause those deaths, what did?

Nobody at the FDA, CDC, or on the committees has figured out that the COVID vaccines are 800X more deadly than the former record holder. I’m pretty sure I’m the first one to figure this out.

Why won’t Offit debate my team of vaccine experts?

Or how much the Pharmaceutical companies are spending on lobbying

Annual Lobbying on Pharmaceuticals/Health Products

These are just a few examples, but they are lying to coverup, lobby politically or ideologically and are on the take for money from the pharma’s.

Rittenhouse

“Much of the coverage at the beginning was wrong,” he told “Banfield” host Ashleigh Banfield, who previously worked for CNN, Sunday. “The trial proved that.”

Richards, Rittenhouse lawyer mentioned outlets like CNN and MSNBC who blatantly spread misinformation, such as MSNBC host Joe Scarborough detailing that Rittenhouse shot his firearm 60 times.

Another false claim fueled by the media was that Rittenhouse’s firearm possession was illegal, while multiple media outlets also inaccurately reported that Rittenhouse illegally crossed state lines with his rifle. In reality, the AR-15 he used during the riot was already at a friend’s house in Kenosha. 

“That’s wrong,” he said. “When I hear some guest host on Joy Reid say my client drove four hours to go to a riot with his AR, that’s wrong. It’s false.” 

“And it makes me angry that they can’t take the time to at least get the generic, basic facts correct because it didn’t fit in the story they wanted to tell.”

Richards explained that he would not normally give guidance as a criminal lawyer for Rittenhouse to take civil action in suing networks for defamation, even though the 18-year-old has been advised by other professionals to do so. No actions were filed by Rittenhouse while represented by Richards.

MSNBC’S JOY REID BLASTS ‘WHITE, MALE TEARS’ WHILE COMPARING RITTENHOUSE TO KAVANAUGH

“When I got involved in this case and there were a couple of other prominent lawyers who were involved and trying to make some calls and I said, ‘Look, all of your riches and civil lawsuits are going nowhere if this kid is found guilty of anything,’” he said. “So let’s worry about what’s important.”

Source

My advice is turn it off. At least don’t associate yourself with the liars who are on the take and don’t even pretend to care that they report the facts.

Educate yourself rather than be a sheep.

Why I’m Suspicious When Things Go Right Too Often – AKA The Fuckening

On By JohnIn blogging, Education, fail, family, general, Human Capabilities, intellectuals, Jobs, Life, not obvious, people, sarcasm, screw ups, self-helpLeave a comment

My Mom said that life is about overcoming obstacles, climbing mountains and clearing hurdles. You are either in a crisis, just finished with one or about to start another.

That’s why I’ve learned that when too many things are going good, then this:

I used to live in bliss and then get blindsided as to how things can go wrong. When I was dating, there were times that I had a different girl for every day of the week and said no to others. Not long after that, it seems that even the professionals wouldn’t take my money.

I’d have 3 job offers waiting for me while I loved the job I was at, or I hated my job and no one would even give me an interview.

Now, when I’m feeling on top of the world, I start to prepare for what might be around the corner.

It sounds pessimistic, but I’ve realized that my Mom was right. Just wait long enough and you’ll have a challenge to overcome.

Blogs I Follow, Doug Jones (Lawryn’s Lynx)

On By JohnIn blogging, censorship, Education, Freedom, msm, sarcasm, social media, twitterLeave a comment

This is a good news site for those that want to skip the lies and bias of the MSM, link here.

I don’t know about you, but I gave up trusting the alphabet news services on either side. They all have an agenda. I decided to go to sites not bought off by a political party.

There isn’t sensationalism here, but I get a good cross section of what is going on that others won’t cover.

I have a lot of sources and will link to them over time. This is one I’ve followed for years and am ok with.

If you look at the Bad Blue top 20 tweets, I get some of my sarcasm material there.

FYI.

Blogs I Follow – Grouchy Old Cripple

On By JohnIn blogging, Education, entertainment, Freedom, history, humor, ibm, integrity, Life, obvious, people, sarcasm, Writing and AuthorsLeave a comment

It’s tough to stick your neck out in today’s cancel culture. It’s why I read who I read.

Denny, the author at GOC does just this. He isn’t afraid to call out the truth and say what is going on the way it should be said. If you are offended easily, don’t go there (actually please do for my entertainment). If you are PC or a SJW, you will be offended. You probably deserve it.

He is a clever writer (something I admire) and has a way with words. He breaks from stoic grammar with words that don’t exist like yannow (hope I spelled it right).

I started following him when he was pointed out by a lot of other blogs I read. I thought the name of his blog was funny as hell and so was his banter.

One of my favorites is AOTW (asshole of the week). I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with him.

I discovered that he also suffered through working at IBM. He routinely roasts them with the truth about diversity, wokeness and other crap that is ruining a once great place. Since we worked about the same time there, albeit in different divisions, I can relate to what he says.

We texted through comments this week and he hammered them appropriately. I felt a kindred spirit. I was glad to find out I wasn’t alone and that I am glad I left when I did.

I wish him well and look forward to every next post, especially AOTW.

My Personal War On Woke Now Includes My Sarcastic Profile On LinkedIn

On By JohnIn Analyst, analyst relations, bias, blogging, celebtards, censorship, delusions, Elitism, Environment, fake news, Freedom, fun, Global Power, Green, history, humor, integrity, msm, not obvious, politics, Religion, sarcasm, science, screw ups, Social Computing, social mediaLeave a comment

I was very early to LinkedIn, as I was to blogging, Twitter, Facebook and others.

When I got fed up with them going woke or being so biased that I didn’t trust them, I de-platformed Twitter and Facebook.

Recently, LinkedIn stopped allowing revenue to anyone who is in their words a climate change denier. I worked in the Green and Sustainability Industry long enough to learn these things about climate and politics.

  1. At the top, it is about money and power, not saving the planet.
  2. The people that believe it treat it as their religion. The ones I’ve met are the real science deniers. This just confirmed it.
  3. You can’t change the weather, it comes in cycles.
  4. Bonus: They are hiding the past where the weather was the same as it is now. It’s a version of 1984 Newspeak.
  5. Double Bonus: It is based on predictions that never come true, they just predict another one.
  6. Triple Bonus: when they debunk the current cause of global warming, they change it as they do the name (note I used the first name of this nonsense).
  7. Quadruple Bonus: Carbon Dioxide is plant food. It’s why they plant trees for an offset.
  8. Quintuple Bonus: Almost everyone likes warmer weather and farmers grow more.
  9. Not a Bonus: As with LinkedIn, when they don’t agree or lose the argument, they try to shut down the discussion and facts. I expect to lose readers at this point and doubt they’ll read any further, missing the point of the post.
  10. Also not a Bonus: It is an excuse for everything from racism to global cooling.

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.” – Bertrand Russell

As soon as there is a problem, they change their tune and are now burning coal in China and Europe.

So, when I heard that LinkedIn banished one side of the conversation on anything, I changed my profile to poke fun at them. Here are some of the changes.

My education is now Faber -Knowledge is Good. I put my fraternity as Delta Tau Chi. If you don’t get this reference, you missed one of the all time funniest movies. It was also a stab at my real college that went woke. I won’t even mention them here because I banished them too.

I changed my current Job to writing a sarcastic blog and not finishing several books. This is actually true. I was in their Associates Program which is for freelancers, but I’m blowing them off now.

The rest of my work life is true for now, but I don’t give enough of a tinkers damn to take LinkedIn serious now, so I’m having fun where I can.

I now want to freelance on the boil of wokeness that is on the ass of regular people by elites.

I decided I didn’t care that much about them to take them seriously. Besides, I retired because I hate the corporate nonsense. See here, here and here for the above stated wankers.

You got the bonus plan:

12 other woke companies to avoid

Blogs I Follow – Sharyl Attkisson

On By JohnIn bias, blogging, Book Reviews, censorship, Education, Elitism, Freedom, government, integrity, msm, news, not obvious, podcast, self-help, Writing and AuthorsLeave a comment

I was made aware of her when she left CBS when her computer was hacked by the FBI/DOJ, and she wouldn’t stand for it. She currently is in mid-trial against them and I’m on her side. (Link here to her site)

Why I follow her is that she is actually independent in her views. Any post that have written that has the tag MSM shows my contempt for the press, their bias and lack of journalistic skills. They have become the propaganda tool for political parties. Note, I don’t excuse Fox News either because they have been on an island for their views, but still are not unbiased. The rest are fully ensconced on the left.

I also have been clear about my respect for those who write well. She is among them. She also has established an independent online show and podcast. Disclosure: I follow her blog and podcast.

I spent my career working with TV, Radio, print and online journalists. There are very few that I ended with any respect once they made their bias known.

Just to prove that she is a better writer than me, here is an excerpt from her book, Slanted.

The five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author of Stonewalled and The Smear uncovers how partisan bias and gullibility are destroying American journalism.

The news as we once knew it no longer exists. It’s become a product molded and shaped to suit the narrative. Facts that don’t fit are omitted. Off-narrative people and views are controversialized or neatly deposited down the memory hole. Partisan pundits, analysts and anonymous sources fill news space leaving little room for facts. The line between opinion and fact has disappeared.

In Slanted, Sharyl Attkisson reveals with gripping detail the struggles inside newsrooms where journalism used to rule. For the first time, dozens of current and former top national news executives, producers and reporters give insider accounts, speaking with shocking candor about their industry’s devolution.

For those who understand how hard it is to write well, I encourage you to go to read her work. It is a breath of fresh air in the cesspool of what is journalism and the MSM are.

Why Not To Use Or Trust Google and Why Smart People Don’t

On By JohnIn bias, blogging, censorship, Elitism, Freedom, Global Power, government, Human Capabilities, intellectuals, IQ, military, news, not obvious, politics, predictions, screw upsLeave a comment

Besides the obvious that they track you and sell your soul to the world, now they are being forced to turn over searches to the Government. This sounds eerily like the 3rd Reich or Stalin or Mao.

Eric Schmidt (then CEO) told me he’d sell his mother’s info. It was all I needed to know. I’m pretty sure I thanked him for being honest.

Accidental leak reveals US government has secretly hit Google with ‘keyword warrants’ to identify ANYONE searching certain names, addresses, and phone numbers

This is what they say they are doing:

  • Investigators are secretly using keyword warrants to help track down criminals 
  • The relatively new style of warrant orders Google to track and provide user data on anyone who searches specific names, addresses or telephone numbers
  • Cybersecurity experts fear that keyword warrants set a precedent for breaching the fourth amendment protection against unreasonable searches
  • Google, however, has defended its decision to respond to the federal government’s keyword warrants and claims they protect users when doing so
  • Both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have been cited as entities that have or may use keyword warrants 

They can get whatever they want and if you are on their bad Santa list, whatever you put in can and will be used against you.

Of course they have done the same to Microsoft and Yahoo. It’s why everyone should use Duck Duck Go instead, but then you’d have to be smart.

Blogs I follow and Why – Don Surber

On By JohnIn blogging, Education, entertainment, Freedom, Human Capabilities, news, people, self-help, words, Writing and AuthorsLeave a comment

Here is the link to his blog.

Now, why I follow him.

When I first started blogging in 2004, Glenn Reynolds or Instapundit was the the biggest game in town. I noticed that Don got a lot of attention by linking to him. I thought he was being contentious to gather a following, until I found out what he did for a living.

He was a reporter for a Newspaper in West Virginia, now retired. I won’t mention it because he’s said that he’s not all that fond of it.

What draws me to his writing is that it is good. It’s hard to write well. I can ramble on and take forever to make a point, but Surber gets to it with wit and pithiness that I admire.

I love his Highlights of the News and his commentary of it. I’ve read it for a long time now. He doesn’t pontificate, yet makes his point with the summary that he presents.

Hopefully, I’ll one day be able to get my style somewhere in the ballpark of Surber, but I doubt it.

I don’t expect him to mention or follow me. It doesn’t matter.

I was most happy for him when the greatest radio host of all time called him out last year. That is an accolade to take to your grave and I’m glad it happened to him.

Blogs I Follow – Knuckledraggin’ My Life Away

On By JohnIn blogging, censorship, Education, entertainment, Facebook, Freedom, fun, history, Human Capabilities, humor, Life, people, pets, politics, sarcasm, Writing and AuthorsLeave a comment

I decided to break from Covid vaccine bashing (I’ll be back, don’t worry) and give some shout outs to those who deserve it.

Ken the wirecutter writes this blog. You should go over there and donate because I think that is how he makes a living.

Why do I like it? I first started when I found your Florida report for the day. I’m originally from there and it is so true. I didn’t realize how many idiots were there until he pointed it out.

I like that he doesn’t care about offending anyone. One of his regular posts is shit I post on Facebook. I think it’s great that he tries to get banned. If you’ve read much of my blog, you already know how much I loathe fake book and happily got rid of my account. That he ties up their time to review the hilarious stuff he posts there kills me.

There are posts like, roast me, fucking Mondays, Friday gif dump and I’m sure she’s taken men that I look forward to. I went through the loss of his 2 dogs and now he’s left with Jack the asshole dog that found him with a broken tail.

His sarcasm, wit and creativeness is a breath of fresh air for me and I hope it is for you.

I linked to him in the posts that I follow and hope he links back as his audience is big. He also is in cahoots with other blogs I’m going to call out.

Keep it up Ken. I love your stuff.

Covid Vaccine Dangers We Were Not Informed Of – This Time Pseudouridylyl

On By JohnIn 2020, bias, blogging, Covid-19, crisper-cas, Education, Elitism, Global Power, government, Health, healthcare, history, hollywood, Human Capabilities, integrity, intellectuals, Life, Medical, msm, news, not obvious, patterns, people, politics, predictions, science, screw upsLeave a comment

I am still trying to understand why there is such a push to get the jab by Governments, agencies such as the CDC, WHO, NIH the MSM and foundations like Bill and Melinda Gates. I’ve noticed if they try too hard to sell us something, it’s worth questioning. Like the fake Ivermectin story linked here. It’s not like the government has given us any reason to trust them or their motives recently. Some go so far as to say that there is an excess of lying about it.

There is plenty of evidence that the jab it isn’t working the way it was supposed to when considering the Covid re-emergence in Israel, the most vaccinated country in the world. Conversely, there is plenty of evidence that existing medicine proven to be safe are being disparaged, yet they are shown to be effective like HCQ, Zinc, Ivermectin, Z-Pak and so forth.

It makes me ask why is this happening. I think the jab has helped some people with co-morbitdities, but there are more fatalities and side effects from it than all other vaccines combined. It is far past when they have pulled other vaccines because of their danger.

I posted about graphene oxide, a poison and a substance that can make it a bio-weapon. This was my first red flag.

Now, I’m discovering the dangers of pseudouridylyl. This is a discussion about it and what it does.

COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease (Yes, it can cause diseases that should be rare. This violates the do no harm Hippocratic Oath)

States Dr. Carrie Madej joins journalist Alex Newman to discuss the trans-humanist agenda behind the COVID vaccines…SARS-CoV-2 (the mathematical model) contains a replica of human chromosome 8, which means that the WHO PCR test kits should give a positive result in all people tested. More worryingly, chromosome 8 has to do with human intelligence and fertility. That means it could trigger an autoimmune reaction against a chromosome that codes for two of our most valuable human qualities.

Pfizer and Moderna have also incorporated an artificial nucleoside into the vaccine’s RNA, called pseudouridylyl, or “Psi” for short, which is absolutely out of this world. Dr. Madej says, “Nobody knows the effects of this… It can act like a computer hacking program. It can be like a one-way program, always trying to hack your body… they say they suppress our immune checkpoints so they can put the code in and our body doesn’t destroy it…

Here is an excerpt from a larger article and is the set up on new vaccines, the Covid jab and effects of pseudouridylyl.

The advent of new vaccine technology creates new potential mechanisms of vaccine adverse events. For example, the first killed polio vaccine actually caused polio in recipients because the up scaled manufacturing process did not effectively kill the polio virus before it was injected into patients. RNA based vaccines offers special risks of inducing specific adverse events.

One such potential adverse event is prion based diseases caused by activation of intrinsic proteins to form prions. A wealth of knowledge has been published on a class of RNA binding proteins shown to participating in causing a number of neurological diseases including Alzheimer’s disease and ALS. TDP-43 and FUS are among the best studied of these proteins [2].

The Pfizer RNA based COVID-19 vaccine was approved by the US FDA under an emergency use authorization without long term safety data. Because of concerns about the safety of this vaccine a study was performed to determine if the vaccine could potentially induce prion based disease.

Me——-> A bunch of science discussion here from the same article here to get you thinking whether it is safe for you.

Back to the link.—–>There is an old saying in medicine that “the cure may be worse than the disease.” The phrase can be applied to vaccines. In the current paper the concern is raised that the RNA based COVID vaccines have the potential to cause more disease than the epidemic of COVID-19.

This paper focuses on a novel potential adverse event mechanism causing prion disease which could be even more common and debilitating than the viral infection the vaccine is designed to prevent. While this paper focuses on one potential adverse event there are multiple other potential fatal adverse events as discussed below.

Over the last two decades there has been a concern among certain scientists that prions could be used as bioweapons. More recently there has been a concern that ubiquitous intracellular molecules could be activated to cause prion disease including Alzheimer’s disease, ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases.

This concern originates due to potential for misuse of research data on the mechanisms by which certain RNA binding proteins like TDP-43, FUS and others can be activated to form disease causing prions. The fact that this research, which could be used for bioweapons development, is funded by private organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Ellison Medical Foundation [2] without national/international oversight is also a concern.

—–> Back to me trying to put the facts together.

The link I noticed was the use of proteins. Amino Acids are the building blocks of our internal make up (gross generalization here) and proteins are made up of amino acids. They use the word bioweapon again.

The mRNA jab induces a spike protein to create some immunity. It can also be used for other nefarious purposes. I don’t trust that those listed in the first sentence have our best interests in mind. I could get into some conspiracy stuff like population control (and may later if the facts line up enough), a Bill Gates favorite, but let’s stick to the science.

—> More science discussion about protein and the jab now using the link above.

Published data has shown that there are several different factors that can contribute to the conversion of certain RNA binding proteins including TDP-43, FUS and related molecules to their pathologic states. These RNA binding proteins have many functions and are found in both the nucleus and the cytoplasm. These binding proteins have amino acid regions, binding motifs that bind specific RNA sequences.

Binding to certain RNA sequences when the proteins are in the cytoplasm is believed to causes the molecules to fold in certain ways leading to pathologic aggregation and prion formation in the cytoplasm [2]. The current analysis indicates Pfizer’s RNA based COVID-19 vaccine contains many of these RNA sequences that have been shown to have high affinity for TDP-43 or FUS and have the potential to induce chronic degenerative neurological diseases.Zinc binding to the RNA recognition motif of TDP-43 is another mechanism leading to formation of amyloid like aggregations [9].

The viral spike protein, coded by the vaccine RNA sequence, binds ACE2 an enzyme containing zinc molecules [8]. This interaction has the potential to increase intracellular zinc levels leading to prion disease. The initial binding could be between spike proteins on the surface of the cell transfected by the vaccine and ACE2 on the surface of an adjacent cell.

The resulting complex may become internalized. Alternatively, the interaction could initially take place in the cytoplasm of a cell that makes ACE2 and has been transfected with the vaccine RNA coding for the spike protein. The interaction is quite concerning given the belief that the virus causing COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is a bioweapon [10,11] and it is possible that the viral spike protein may have been designed to cause prion disease.

The ingredient that causes it is pseudouridylyl.

What are prion diseases?

Prion diseases comprise several conditions. A prion is a type of protein that can trigger normal proteins in the brain to fold abnormally. Prion diseases can affect both humans and animals and are sometimes spread to humans by infected meat products. The most common form of prion disease that affects humans is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

Prion diseases are rare. About 300 cases are reported each year in the U.S. (me here, this is normally, but the jab can induce it, read on)

Types of prion diseases include:

  • CJD. A person can inherit this condition, in which case it’s called familial CJD. Sporadic CJD, on the other hand, develops suddenly without any known risk factors. Most cases of CJD are sporadic and tend to strike people around age 60. Acquired CJD is caused by exposure to infected tissue during a medical procedure, such as a cornea transplant. Symptoms of CJD (see below) quickly lead to severe disability and death. In most cases, death occurs within a year.
  • Variant CJD. This is an infectious type of the disease that is related to “mad cow disease.” Eating diseased meat may cause the disease in humans. The meat may cause normal human prion protein to develop abnormally. This type of the disease usually affects younger people.
  • Variably protease-sensitive prionopathy (VPSPr). This is also extremely rare, it is similar to CJD but the protein is less sensitive to digestion. It is more likely to strike people around age 70 who have a family history of dementia.
  • Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease (GSS). Extremely rare, but occurs at an earlier age, typically around age 40.
  • Kuru. This disease is seen in New Guinea. It’s caused by eating human brain tissue contaminated with infectious prions. Because of increased awareness about the disease and how it is transmitted, kuru is now rare.
  • Fatal insomnia (FI). Rare hereditary disorder causing difficulty sleeping. There is also a sporadic form of the disease that is not inherited.

What causes prion disease?

Prion diseases occur when normal prion protein, found on the surface of many cells, becomes abnormal and clump in the brain, causing brain damage. This abnormal accumulation of protein in the brain can cause memory impairment, personality changes, and difficulties with movement. Experts still don’t know a lot about prion diseases, but unfortunately, these disorders are generally fatal.

—-> Don’t miss the word protein

Now I ask myself, why are they trying to give us a 3rd jab? Did the first two not work or not work enough? Is there something more behind the scenes? More discussion now about long term effects of vaccines.

—-> more from the link above

Vaccines have been found to cause a host of chronic, late developing adverse events. Some adverse events like type 1 diabetes may not occur until 3-4 years after a vaccine is administered [1]. In the example of type 1 diabetes the frequency of cases of adverse events may surpass the frequency of cases of severe infectious disease the vaccine was designed to prevent.

Given that type 1 diabetes is only one of many immune mediated diseases potentially caused by vaccines, chronic late occurring adverse events are a serious public health issue.

In Summary for now

As always, decide for yourself and do your own research. I think all the pressure to get jabbed stinks and I’m trying to find out why. There is a pattern and an underlying reason they are pushing it instead of using safe, cheap and effective cures, proven to work. TPTB don’t want to use it and are still pushing the jab on us by saying it is safe. I’ve now listed two ingredients that are poisonous to humans and what they can do to you.

I may write more (if I’m allowed, I’ve notice an uptick from China and unusual places that censor stuff they don’t like) and may tie all of my posts together. There is a theme developing that I hope to develop. It’s already there for those of you who think like a detective and connect the dots.

There is enough that doesn’t make sense to continue sticking this poison into us while ignoring the obvious cure.

Think about it.

I Got What I Expected, China is Stalking Me

On By JohnIn bias, blogging, capitalism, celebtards, censorship, Covid-19, crisper-cas, delusions, Education, Elitism, Facebook, fake news, Freedom, geek, Global Power, Health, history, Human Capabilities, msm, news, not obvious, sarcasm, science, screw ups, technology, terrorismLeave a comment

I’ve posted stuff on Covid (link here to some of my posts to make it easy on them), where I called it the China/Wuhan virus, all to point at the CCP and the MSM. I also have done a lot of gene editing posts about creating bio weapons and super soldiers, and highlighted how they have doped the athletes over the years.

I don’t single out just China. I’ve listed stuff a lot of other people or countries have done too.

My blog is insignificant compared to others who have massive audiences. I go after the Media a lot too. I worked with them for decades and know how much they lie and how biased reporting is. (Recent studies show they have about 12% trust in America).

The statistics show me who’s reading what, and all of a sudden I’m getting a lot of hits from them. They re-route through multiple servers, but I can see that too. I poked the dragon and they responded, from all over the world.

I can’t be cancelled off of fake book or Twitter, or most of social media either because I cancelled them first. It is a cesspool of hate and once you try to silence any group, you are no longer free or accurate. It just becomes propaganda and Josef Goebbels showed us what that leads to.

I’m shocked that they give a crap about a blog that now has topics that go all over the place, but not surprised that no stone is left unturned.

Maybe I should work on the Russians or the Iranians next. I could create all kinds of fun. I think those guys kill people with polonium though. I don’t want to die like that.

Perhaps they’ll get a kick out of all the Gorilla Glue screw ups instead.

On This Day, 10 Years Ago…..A Momentous Occurrence Happened To Me…..

On By JohnIn analyst relations, Bible, blogging, capitalism, Economics, Education, Elitism, family, Freedom, friends, Human Capabilities, ibm, introverts, Investing, Life, not obvious, patterns, people, predictions, self-helpLeave a comment

I retired and enjoyed the heck out of it. If you want to know what I did, go to about and about me.

I started planning for it when I was in my 30’s and knew it would be a long game to have enough. I listened to Larry Burkett of Crown Financial Services, a biblical based ministry that taught me to save and to live debt free. I posted about it a while back on how an average Joe can become a millionaire.

Was it hard?

You bet it was. There were a lot of sacrifices and a lot of learning about investing, managing money and faith in God. It turns out that we were blessed with an abundance of riches, only a small amount of which are financial.

We were alone.

Fortunately, my wife was on the same page. Heck, my Mom even taught me how to save as she lived through the depression. She could make anything last longer than possible. That woman sacrificed for us and I noticed. My siblings however never learned. Mom told me she taught each of us the same lessons, but said no one else listened to her.

I caught a lot of crap from my friends.

Working in the airline industry is very common for my family and friends. We have many pilots and flight attendants in that group.

One of them, with whom I went to school with since 7th grade, gave me a ton of grief when I was in my late 20’s. He was serving cokes for a living (flight attendant) and wasted 15 years of his life doing it. He was broke when he quit.

I spoke to him one Saturday when I was at work. He told me that he only worked 2 weeks a month and was off to Hawaii, rubbing it in my face that I had to work. When I hung up, I knew right then that I was making a short term sacrifice for long term gain. I would be retiring early while being financially safe and knew I would have to work hard. I said to myself that I would make it my goal and I’d be playing golf while he was working. He still is working today, and when he got to the real world I’d had 15 years of experience. I had owned my own business shortly after that conversation. FWIW, I played golf this week.

Did I get even with him?

I chose not to rub it in because the facts show our different outcomes. I’m glad I have mine.

Being an introvert, I don’t want to get into it anyway and he doesn’t want to talk much anymore. I don’t care what happens to others as I can’t control anything other than my destiny. I’m sorry he didn’t listen to me. He told me he resented that job for 13 of the 15 years he did it and hates his current job.

A theme and a pattern.

It wasn’t only my siblings and friends. When I sold my business and went to work for IBM, they were the same. When it came time for me to say goodbye, my house was paid off and we had saved. Almost no one could believe that I was pulling the plug that early. They thought it was some scandal that I had to quit and were very disappointed that the reason I retired was because I could. Most of them were keeping up with the Jones and didn’t save. I looked some of them up and they are still stuck working at the same job when I left.

At the end, IBM was a terrible place to work (see managing executive ego’s, the good, the bad and the ugly). I actually pulled the trigger a year early to get out of that hell hole. To a person, everyone said they wished that they could do what I did, get out. They were too far in debt to do so.

I turned down moving to New York to “climb the ladder” because living there sucks and I didn’t want to raise a family there. People told me when they moved to New York, they got to pay 30% more for everything, for less than I made. Again, I knew that I was making the right decision for my family not to go there to “get ahead” (behind would have been the actual case if I’d gone there).

My Father.

Dad worked until he was 70. Work defined his life. He was lost when he retired.

Working was only a means to an end for me. To be fair, I was fortunate enough to be highly successful and God decided that I should be compensated for it. That helped make it happen, but if you go back to my siblings, they earned more than me at times. They still work though as most of it was wasted on useless stuff.

Dad couldn’t understand my goals, but I had so much going on that work was interfering with my life, so I stopped. I never regretted it.

A lot of the IBM’rs died shortly after retiring because they had to work a long time. I saw that and knew I wanted to enjoy my life. Now, every day is Saturday for me.

I have enjoyed each day these last 10 years. Heck, I’m the president of the how to enjoy your retirement club. Never once did I think about going back because I didn’t have to.

If there is any lesson, it is in the post of how to become a millionaire.

Short term sacrifice for long term paradise.

Breaking: A New Update On Euphemisms for Stupid (Bonus For Introverts, What to Say Is Handed To You Here)

On By JohnIn blogging, censorship, delusions, entertainment, fun, Human Capabilities, humor, intellectuals, introverts, obvious, quotes, sarcasm, screw ups, self-help, SJW, unqualified, woke, words, Writing and AuthorsLeave a comment

By far, my most popular posts are What’s it like to have a high IQ and this one, Euphemisms for Stupid. For a decade, this post was #1 worldwide in Google on how to call someone stupid.

More people have re-used content on this post around the world than some marketing campaigns by Facebook, and that is where a lot of it wound up it seemed (and I still have a happy life after I fired them).

To honor that post, I updated it today (there are almost a hundred creative ways to say someone fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down or that they couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel) with this one:

Enjoy, and if you want to find out a way to say someone is stupid that you’ve never heard of, go get you some at the link above.

Bacon and Bombings, Testing the Censors

On By JohnIn bias, blogging, capitalism, delusions, Elitism, Facebook, Freedom, Global Power, Life, msm, news, people, politics, Social Computing, social media, twitterLeave a comment

I love bacon. It’s what I thought of when I saw this. Then of course, I recognized an opportunity to test out the censorship of WordPress.

I think a lot of the tech companies are loony about free speech and who is allowed to have it. That’s why I put stuff up that I know others will get mad about. It’s not about you honey, this is poking the dragon ever so slightly at first.

I self-censored Fake Book and Twitter so I can’t go after them, but then I’d have to be in that cesspool to get kicked out. I left that social media shithole behind to better my life. It worked.

Twitter, The Cesspool Of Hate Announces Birdwatching Stasi To Spy On Others

On By JohnIn blogging, censorship, Elitism, Facebook, Freedom, history, Human Capabilities, msm, obvious, people, Social Computing, social media, twitter1 Comment

Eliminating as much social media from my life as possible has made it much better. Sooner or later, even your bestie is going to post something that pisses you off and down the toilet we go.

Now, you can spy on your neighbor like the Stasi and report your neighbor. As for me, I’m getting rid of as much hate as I can, and that started with Twitter. Their latest to shut down free speech isn’t helping anyone.

The Tweeter is recruiting volunteer truth interrupters’ to crack down on misinformation they say is running rampant across their site. The site announced the launch of “Birdwatchers” on Monday to empowering certain users to flag misleading tweets. So-called Birdwatchers will discuss what’s misleading about a flagged tweet and then be able to rank those comments, with the goal of allowing seemingly unpaid users to take a hands-on approach to combating your lies and falsities.


The Official Tweeter Support Account posted the announcement with a video of an failed attempt at humor of an egregious example of a necessary flagging of falsehood: “Whales are not real. They’re robots funded by the government to watch us.”  Now, you don’t have to read between the lines to understand the mentality that came up with this idea.


At first, Birdwatch will only be open to a few users who apply to join the program, traditional fact-checkers and other high-profile people.  Birdwatch replies to tweets will meanwhile only be visible on a separate section of the site. But eventually Twitter hopes to include the replies on the regular site, building a Wikipedia-style system of relying on users to combat misinformed and blatantly false tweets.


IP’s, User Names and Locations would surely not be cataloged. *wink wink*


Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News, said the program has “promise,” but cautioned that Twitter doesn’t seem to have a plan to prevent retaliation against Birdwatchers. Twitter said it’ll adapt the program based on user feedback before debuting it on the whole site.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1353769252784926720&lang=en&origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.diogenesmiddlefinger.com%2F2021%2F01%2Fyou-too-can-sign-up-for-dorseys-truth.html&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

My big concern — which I expressed many times to Twitter — is for the safety of these contributors. What happens when a high-ranking Birdwatcher whose note does well on a Ted Cruz tweet is featured on Tucker Carlson? They say user safety is top of mind but … you know.— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) January 25, 2021

Hat tip to the middle finger.

Jihadi John

On By JohnIn blogging, humor, obvious, people, politics, Religion1 Comment

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

One of my favorite blogs to read is Proof Positive.  I’ve even borrowed some content like a version of the comments rules because it is one of the best.  This re-post is just good because toilet humor is very often funny and this is a good example. 

I hope he doesn’t mind.  I also hope that I’ve pushed some traffic to him as I love the satire.

I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t be very concerned about my aim when going if this was real.  There are at least 2 targets to hit.  I could play the drone game while peeing.

What Are Good Interview Questions?

On By JohnIn bloggerview, blogging, general, Public RelationsLeave a comment
This is a aggregation of suggestions I’ve been collecting.  Credit goes to the various authors respectively, including me.
Important Things Learned

  • “What’s the most unexpected thing you’ve learned along the way?”
  • “If you could call yourself five years ago and had 30 seconds, what would you say?”
  • What is the best piece of advice you have been given?
  • What is the first moment you remember in your Life?
  • What is the best question anyone has ever asked you? …and how did you answer?

How You Would Spend Your Time

  • “On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you with your life?” Then, after I answered, I was asked, “What would make it a 10?”
  • “How will you make this world a better place than when you came into it?”
  • “When you die, what do you want to be remembered for?”
  • What would you do with your time if you could afford to quit your job?
  • If all jobs paid the same, what would you be doing?
  • What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
  • Are you doing what you thought you would be doing when you were growing up?
  • What would you change in your life now if you wanted the answer to this question:”What is your greatest regret?” to be “I have no great regrets?”

About You

  • Someone gets a text message from you, and for whatever reason they’re not sure it’s actually you. They’re worried that someone may have stolen your phone. What could they ask to make sure it’s really you?
  • What music do you listen to?
  • What is the craziest belief (the one that fewest educated people will agree with) that you hold?  Why do you believe it?
  • Make a request where the “right thing to do” is for the other person to say no to you.
  • Are you lucky?
  • What would you do if you were homeless?

“How will you make this world a better place than when you came into it?”

or similarly, in the same spirit,

“When you die, what do you want to be remembered for?”

I’ve found that, in general, a person can only answer these questions well if:

  • they’ve done a fair amount of self-reflection
  • they’re reasonably good at long-term thought/planning
  • they have a good assessment of their current skill-set, what skills they want, and how they can use the former to help achieve the latter
  • they have self-confidence
  • they are aware of their mortality and, rather than fearing it, are inspired to do as much good as possible

What is the first moment you remember in your Life?

How have you grown and changed over time?
What about you hasn’t changed over time? Are you happy or unhappy with this lack of change?
Tell me something about yourself that would otherwise take six months for me to learn.
What is the best piece of advice you have been given?
If you could have lunch with any 3 people, who would it be and why?
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
If money were no object, what would be the first thing that you would do right now? What do you think is your greatest strength? Greatest weakness?

What are 3 qualities that you take most pride in in yourself?

If you were to be exiled to a deserted island (presumably this island has nothing other than basic survival items) by yourself and were allowed one comfort item, what would that item be?

What is the last thing that you have seen/heard/experienced that has inspired you?

Do you have a role model right now, and why is that person your role model?

What are you most afraid of, amongst the 7 deadly fears?
– Most people don’t know what the 7 deadly fears are, so I often phrase this question as “What is worse, rejection, inadequacy, guilt, or whatever else you can think of?”

Rank the love languages for a) how you love to receive, and b) how you give.

What is the funniest thing that you’ve ever watched?
– Some people say chick flicks, some say The Office type shows, for me the Tina Fey spoof with Sarah Palin in 2008 takes the cake. You get the point.

If you go into a bookstore, what is the first section that you will go to?

What engages you intellectually?

Someone just told you “you are awesome”. What just transpired?

What drives you? If there ever come a point where you commit suicide (touch wood), presumably because you have lost all hope and drive to live, why would that be?

What would keep you up at night?

What is the most misunderstood trait/belief about you?

10 years later, you are the happiest person in the world. What could have happened in between those 10 years?

When was the last time you cried, and why?

What is your proudest moment in your life thus far?
– I get answers ranging from career accomplishments, to small things which do their family proud, to encounters with personal growth, etc.

What would be one skill that you would want to learn if you could master it in 1 hour?

What is your biggest challenge in life?
And finally, I like to throw in a trick question that the Mensa elitists like to ask to mess with someone,
What is the meaning of life, give three examples.

Why Newspapers and The News Are Not Only A Dying Model, But Dead

On By JohnIn blogging, delusions, history, integrity, msm, obvious, predictions, technology, twitterLeave a comment

“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.” – Thomas Jefferson

I don’t subscribe to the newspaper anymore, but I got one this morning.  I’m sure that it was a teaser to try to get me to subscribe.  Upon reading it, I realized I already knew everything in the paper except the local high school football scores from games after I went to bed.

A DYING MODEL

The subscription rates to newspapers are dying, not even a slow death.  Similarly, the evening news is also a dinosaur.  They report what we knew as much as a full day before.

I am on twitter and read blogs all day long.  I occasionally go to the news sites,  but as I discuss below, their bias (I hold both left and right guilty equally here) usually makes me fact check what I’m trying to find out which defeats the purpose of fact-finding, especially if it involves politics. That subject is pretty much unavoidable these days.

Nevertheless, I enjoy many other subjects which you could read about it on other blog entries if you have nothing better to do, and I find good information about them that is interesting and INSTANT.

I’m a boomer, although a technically savvy one having been in the IT industry all my life.  The Gen X,Y, millennials,  and whomever follows them demand even more instantaneous everything virtually dooming the news model of our prior generation.  Thank you Internet.

THE END OF THE BASTIONS OF NEWS

We have establish that we are now used to getting information instantaneously.  The other reason that the model is dying is that they are biased.  This is ok if you are a neo-con or a loony lefty, but for everyone else (the other 80% given 10% on the edges of left and right) we don’t trust them anymore.

Once, these two sources were the basis of our world and local information.  Besides being static rather than dynamic, they also have stopped being factual sources of information, rather they are partisan, with Fox on one side and CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NYT, WAPO, LA TImes, Reuters, AP, HuffPo, Local News, Local Papers and most other news sources on the other side of issues.  All are positioned in a place that position the facts from a point of view.   Some of them blatantly lie.   Reporting was supposed to be the facts of the story that let the reader make up their mind on their position.

We’ve actually learned that the news has been biased for at least as long as there has been television, we just didn’t have the instant fact checking that the internet and the other sources have provided.

There is a joke from Bernie Goldberg that said if they had been reporting on Moses at Mt. Sinai, the headline would read “Moses get the 10 Commandments from God, and here are the two that we think are important to you”.

Walter Cronkite said that the Viet Nam war was lost during the time that we were winning.  LBJ said that if he’d lost Cronkite, he’d lost America.  We’ve since learned that the then “most trusted man in America” was also one of the most biased.

LIFE MOVES ON

Other things have died and we have lived and moved on.  Black and white TV, network only channels vs. cable TV and landline phones vs. mobile (cell for those in the US) phones.  Such is the fate of newspapers and TV network news.  Here is just one fact concerning the NYT declining rates.  I’m sure you could find somewhere that their subscriptions are increasing, but this would seem deceitful given the nature of digital delivery.

So am I disturbed by this trend?  Actually I didn’t even notice it until I saw the paper in my yard this morning.  I haven’t subscribed for news in many years (note: I get the Sunday paper for the coupons as long as they pay for the 1 day delivery – my sister calls me a tightwad but it leads to becoming this).

I get my news from the above stated sources and know more about what is going on than the anchors have time to present in their biases manner.

So as they say, life moves on.

2010 in review

On By JohnIn bloggingLeave a comment

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 9,400 times in 2010. That’s about 23 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 19 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 283 posts. There were 38 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 11mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was December 7th with 122 views. The most popular post that day was Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a day that will live in Infamy.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were stumbleupon.com, blog.softwareinsider.org, search.aol.com, twitter.com, and google.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for what the customer wanted, euphemism for stupid, jeff jonas, dan marino, and gina smith.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a day that will live in Infamy December 2005
2 comments

2

Euphemisms for Stupid March 2006

3

Customer Service? Give the Customer what they want? October 2006

4

USS Indianapolis August 2006
17 comments

5

September 11, 2001, Good vs. Evil September 2006

More on Blogger Relations

On By JohnIn blogging, Social Computing1 Comment

This seems to be a topic that has legs, as they say. I first noticed this on James Governer’s blog, then on Net-Savvy both in the context of Blogger Relations and Defining Social Media Relations.

This will involve a different way of thinking, mostly because blogging to be effective gives up control, which causes fear and uncertainty in the realm of traditional communications. It’s going to be about managing the process of the message coming to and from communities rather than the corporate marketing machine. It’s also going to be about how to communicate and integrate with the various blogging communities.

These communities (ok for IBM in this case) include the technically inclined group such as IT analysts, the Investor and Investor Relations crowd, IBM watchers from the outside, and making sure that it doesn’t become a part of the spin machine from the inside. Yes, PR has a place in the blogosphere, but one must be careful not to use it as a place to post a press release. So the ability to work with the communities on behalf of the company while respecting the social rules is imperative to this cause.

We have some very technically capable bloggers, some that are more brand specific, and well respected company leaders, so there is no shortage of IBM bloggers, but other than developerWorks, we haven’t coordinated as much as evolved. We’re blogging, podcasting, delivering web 2.0 tools, but I sense there is more work to do.

Having started blogging for Analyst Relations at IBM, and over seeing it’s initial growth, being made lead by John Mihalec, I was able to develop the program for IBM in it’s infancy.

So the deal will be how to speak to bloggers as bloggers, and deal with them on this basis, even if they have a job title of analyst or something else. I also sense that it is going to morph from just blogger relations to social relations and deal with social computing, web 2.0 at the tools, technology and social levels, and much more.

It will be interesting to watch the evolution. Stay tuned.

Blogger Relations, Where does it go?

On By JohnIn bloggingLeave a comment

I’m intrigued by a blog that James Governer wrote on Blogger Relations which he described as active tracking of blogs to identify and foster relations with influencers, traditional or not.

When I consider it for IBM (disclaimer, I am not the person who gets to decide this), the first question after what it is, is where does it sit (ok, the usual like mission, action, direction are assumed decided….defer to James here).  We have dedicated disciplines at IBM for Public Relations, Analyst Relations, Internal, Investor, Community and so on.

Unless you are at my blog for the first time, you know I sit in analyst relations.  AR has done more with the blogs than any of the other external communications functions.  This is due to the audience we deal with, desire to move this forward by John Mihalec, VP of IBM analyst relations to name a few.

So one would think that it belongs in AR, but the Internal and Corporate folks (remember when IBM introduced its blogging strategy – Corp. Communications did it and has an extensive function here).  So who’s to say?  I’d seek advice here.  If it is to attain equality to the other communications disciplines, it should be its own function.  If we are to stay where the focus is right now, it falls under A/R.

James points out that any good developer relations function has to have a good blogging capability.  Interestingly enough, I was in IBM developerWorks when we started the first IBM external blog site. So maybe it sits in development, it would depend on the mission once again.  I’d say this one is doubtful as there are too many issues covered by IBM bloggers at this point.

We put up blogging at developerWorks as IBM is too large to notice the minutia, and the communications, which is led by the PR flaks in Armonk who can’t see past the major publications.  This allowed us to put the site and develop such a following that dW was the defacto site for blogging for a long time as the nincompoops in corporate PR can’t get it together to understand what blogging really is.

I saw this trend far in advance of those enlightened New Yorkers.  They were still stuck in the land of print (and online print) and never saw this coming and dW was put up right under their noses.  It was sand in their gears that they couldn’t control everything and we produced vital messaging and forced them to work on our platform because of their moribund thinking.

IBM is a different animal as we are sometimes viewed as an octopus…8 arms in every direction, so anything we do usually has consequences in area’s that other companies do not even have products.  SAP and Oracle have no hardware or Server divisions.  Others  don’t have dedicated Finance divisions, and still others have no services.

Typically, on issues such as this, we start slow and get our feet wet, then get into the pool….our entries have been somewhere between Greg Louganis and a cannonball so no telling.

I’ll end by quoting James as he writes it well…”How should corporate communications respond? In a word flexibly.” (see the comments earlier about the inflexibility of Corporate Communications).

Swamped by the Perfect Storm

On By JohnIn blogging, family, hunting, ibmLeave a comment

Moving, on top of multiple analyst reports, on top of being on the planning team for the SWG analyst event, on top of hunting season starts Saturday, on top of my regular job…..has made me an inconsistent blogger, a blogging sin I know.

The good news is I’m finally coming up for air, and I can get back to life. Although moving in is a 6 month ordeal, most of the stuff is out of boxes (over 200) except of course the specific item I need at the moment which is either unpacked or put somewhere I don’t know and can’t find it.

The after summer onslaught of work was twice as much as last year. I ask others and it appears to be the same, there is more to do to just to hold your ground, then more on top to stay ahead.

The SWG analyst event is changing this year for us. More concentration on personal meetings and less main tent combined with more exposure to our offerings has landed me as the lead of the technology for the event. If you had one product, you’d have the demo, the messaging, the logistics, etc. But at IBM, we have one of everything, so keeping things straight tangles the mind by itself. Oh yeah, we have the SMB analyst event next week, so double your fun.
Throw in a couple of analyst reports that your group is microscoped on and I’ve got more on my plate than I have time for….enough kvetching for now.

On the good side, I’m taking my son on his first hunt this weekend, the opening day of deer season. We took the hunter safety class together and found that this group is one of the most ethical, safety and environmentally conscious oriented groups I’ve seen. All the actions are about preserving what we have and passing it on. What was very interesting was how they actually put it into action and not just talked about it. Keeping the herd and the landscape healthy was a major concern. If you don’t take care of the land, there is nothing in the future. Keeping the herd population managed makes for a healthier and stronger offspring. They even have a program to provide meat for the poor and the unsheltered.
Anyway, he’s amped about it as he’s already a good fisherman and he’s increasing his outdoor skills…

Next week is back to work and heads down to stay ahead, and better blogging.

Note: I had a great conversation with Ed Brill about using Notes as your blogging platform…type offline and replicate..I may go there

Moving, update 4, out with the old, into the new, oh and I managed to do some Analyst Relations also

On By JohnIn blogging, family, screw ups1 Comment

Out of the old house with 200 boxes and furniture, my old house is now empty. Here’s my buddy Wes who helped schlep close to 15,000 lbs of my junk.
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In with the new, although nothing arrives until tomorrow, there is a mad rush to get it ready, including contractors for kitchen, landscape, carpenters, electrical, plumbing, fence, and others.

Here they are trying to get the kitchen ready.

And best of all, here is the future office of IDR Analyst Relations, that by Monday has to be up and working. But we did narrow the list of technology for the showcase at the SWG A/R meeting. The current issue is how bleeding edge to balance out the middleware capability is at stake. Also, blogging issues and a technology jam are on the table being decided. This is good for interaction with the analyst’s with our software capability. Stay tuned, or weigh in.

But as I said yesterday, I get my dog back tomorrow.

More Social Computing Education and Analyst Relations

On By JohnIn Analyst, analyst relations, blogging, Social Computing1 Comment

In an effort to keep our A/R team in Software Group as up to date as possible, we did another education call, this time on podcasting. We were joined by Steve O’Grady and Cote of Redmonk who presented on the subject, and members of our own communications team who do some excellent podcasts.
Besides having the education, we’re moving on to how we can use this in the A/R discipline. Among the usages are announcements, standards discussions and other related events where it can be either educational or directional. It becomes a piece of the informational package around a technology, standards or announcement info that can be downloaded.

We currently have a series that covers some analysts that we’ve done podcasts with on our Analyst Inputs and Outtakes, and hopefully, the creative minds in our a/r group will come up with more creative ways to use this and the other components of Social Computing. So far we’re blogging, podcasting, have a wiki and are part of the greater IBM social networking programs.

David Hill – Chief Lenovo Designer, a Man Who has Created Much, and Touched Millions

On By JohnIn bloggerview, blogging, ibm6 Comments

DHill-16-crop-small.jpg

Many years ago, I brought John Dvorak back to the ThinkPad design center for an interview with David. This is a room with more creative designs than most museums. Many items never make it out of this lab, yet they would make a lesser designer famous.

I never sensed that David yearned for fame, but it follows him nevertheless because of his work. If you’ve ever touched a Lenovo or IBM Personal Computer or Server product, David has touched your life, I’m guessing many hundreds of millions here. As you’ll read below, his design reaches out to you rather than you looking at it.

I always try to bloggerview interesting people, and this is as interesting as any I’ve done. While being quiet spoken, his thoughts and creativeness speak loudly. Go to David’s Blog to be informed. That was what I did and why I asked him to be a guest here.

I was speaking with Bill Howard at PC Magazine during his laptop roundup one year. He mentioned to me that while you see Dell’s or HP’s or whatever laptop in advertisements, if you go to the businesspersons working area or any airport’s premium flyers lounge, regardless of the airline, it is a ThinkPad convention. He said they were the best designed, most rugged and the most trusted laptop, enough said.

Briefly explain what you do for Lenovo, and is it the same thing that you did for IBM?
What I do for Lenovo is lead all of the design activity for the commercial products, ThinkPad, ThinkCenter, Lenovo 3000 and ease of use. I also am in charge of the corporate identity element for the company including building design, signage, storefront, business cards and the overall identity of the company beyond the products.

The job is similar to IBM except for the corporate element which has been exciting for me. We are designing a new Lenovo building in Perimeter Park near RTP. It is a new facility and I’m leading the architectural style and appearance. I’ve been working with an external architectural firm on the interior design, landscaping and courtyard.

What is your background and qualifications?
Early in my university education I was fortunate to meet a working industrial designer who brought in portfolio of products and talked about design of everything from household products to cars.

So I studied Industrial Design at the University of Kansas.

I worked for several years at a design consulting firm in Wichita, designing everything from underground trenching equipment to wristwatches. I worked with talented and interesting people there, but I always had desire to work in an environment where I had control. At a consulting firm, you might do a sketch (for example I designed a hand held spotlight) and then never see it again until it was a product. They changed the spotlight and it negated the design concept which compromised the product. I found that to be frustrating and realized that this wouldn’t work for me.

I looked for a company with strong internal design organization and a sense of history, and found IBM in Rochester MN, Interestingly, I took the job of a classmate from college who went back to school to get a PhD. I worked there on the systems product division, then known as the System 38 and 36. I led design for the AS/400 Advanced Series, which we changed from being beige, innocuous and drab products into powerful, black, purposefully designed servers. This design became pervasive throughout the entire server series from the initial 1994 product. The beige products were too “quiet”, we made design into bigger statement for the company.

What inspires you for your designs?
Design inspiration comes from many things, It comes from your own personal experience of using products, observing someone else using a product, market research, seeing interesting products at a store, a garage sale or a museum. It is difficult to pin down. I’m always looking at design and architecture, art and products to see what is interesting and why is it interesting.
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The thinklight which I blogged about recently for example. It was an invention in my head which came out of necessity (link to Friday blog). My son had book light made from a small led and batter and I saw the “light”. It came from necessity and constraint which were the inspiration. When sitting on a plane, you had to disturb the passenger next to you with the overhead light, or open and shut the monitor part of the ThinkPad to see. Ultimately, I couldn’t see the keyboard in the dark.

If someone said design a computer with no restraint for example, I would be at a loss. Constraint would be logical, a cost, a reason or a solution to a problem.

It is more challenging to design something that has to be better or fit into a smaller box.

What makes a design work or be successful?
I think that it is difficult to pin down, It can come in many ways, There are examples of great design which solves a problem, but are not a financial success. The ThinkPad 701C butterfly was such a product. It had tremendous brand building success which people talk about today. It had an element of creativeness and innovation that lives on in the ThinkPad design today.

What designs have surprised you as being more successful than you expected?
I never anticipated that the original work on the AS/400 Advanced Series would be so significant in changing the landscape to the entire line of servers, It later extended to NetFinity now System X for example. At first they weren’t rack mounted and had the same design problem as AS/400, they were uninspiring. It did work and was functional, but they were not exciting. We worked on extending the AS/400 to Netfinity in terms of design…then everything followed suit and finally the entire server line had a similar look. I never expected it to go that far. We changed the Rack mounts as the beginnings of what they are today.
system I.jpg

It was a big battle internally to get IBM to make the servers black…in fact it was a major controversy. Very early on in his tenure as chairman, Lou Gerstner came to visit the Rochester site, only his second visit, We had a room set up with the Advanced Series on one side and Beige Racks on the other. The plan was to bring him in and give him a history of the product, Then we were going to turn his attention to the advanced black model. The server folks thought it would be way to kill it and to “get David Hill out of the way”. Well, the entourage came in and the first thing Lou said was ” wow those are the coolest computers I’ve ever seen, you must have an industrial designer”. I stepped forward and said I’m in charge of industrial design and we had a nice talk about the product, then he left. Needless to say, that was the end of the beige/black issue.

Conversely, what designs didn’t work/sell as well as you thought?
The Butterfly. I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d seen, but it was too good to be true, It combined everything about great design, utility and value with a compelling aesthetic attribute, but when larger flat-panel displays dropped in price, the volumes didn’t take off and the design was never extended.

If someone were looking to be in the design field, what advice would you give them?
Be prepared for tremendous amount of hard work which on surface may not get any attribution. Art schools are filled with emotionally charged people. There were only 8 people in my graduating class, and thousands in business school. You would find that the lights were on 24/7 in the design school. They are emotionally connected to what they are doing. You can’t cram for final on design of building. I once designed the interior of a tractor cab in college. You couldn’t cram for that. I would say that this amount of time follows you wherever you go. It’s hard to turn design off and on. Once, I bought a TV and painted the knobs because i didn’t like them.

Why did you become a blogger?
Design is a core element of Lenovo’s strategy. It spans behavior, aesthetics, emotional, ease of use and human factor. As people believe products become commoditized, design changes its value. For example, if you go to an electronics store, there are rows of toasters. Some are long, some black, some lay down, some stand up, some mount under a cabinet and many other designs. A corkscrew is another product with design differentiators. There are whole museums on this subject. Design is a way we differentiate.

It’s also about solving problems. A blog gives us chance of making people aware of design and features and solicit feedback on what they have, what they like and what they don’t like. What may be the next inspiration of new ThinkPad. Dialogue on the subject of design and the human factor to a company. Lenovo should be easy to approach and work with and a blog that supports this will help. Many blogs are corporate communications inspired and are sanitized, and not written by a designer….my blog will help bring us closer to user.

I’m also going to post about the design of motorcycles. I’ve been associated with them since I was 13…would Dell do that? It’s about me talking about design. The television show “American Chopper” is fun to watch because of the interaction between father and son. The design of choppers is mysterious.

I hope to put a human face to Lenovo, and make people think design matters.

I look at modern architecture in friends house, some homes are designed some are cookie cutter houses. It’s the same way in our industry. Some computers are designed well and some are not…read between the lines on generic computers and generic companies here.

What are you looking at (other that what is on your blog) for future Lenovo design?
We are in brand building mode. While we are strong in china, outside of china we are still growing. I want to make it iconic. We have several ideas that will do this. Perhaps at some point i may blog about it.

Changes and Trends in Communications

On By JohnIn blogging, delusions, ibm, msm, technologyLeave a comment

I guess they chiseled press releases on stone at some point to promote the invention of fire. Later, parchment must have been sent out to document the parting of the Red Sea.

But the industrial revolution gave us good tools like the printing press and the typewriter, fax machines and let’s not forget the copy machine from the Xrocks corporation which allowed us to mail press releases an astonishing 2 weeks prior to the announcement, embargoed of course.

Then came email, the internet, instant messaging…I’m not going out on a big limb here history wise. Now with the push of a button, bingo – news everywhere.

So what’s the point here? I like to see trends and be an early adopter where possible. There have been times I wait for the technology to stabilize before I expose my backside to any corporate or public lashings, but for the most part, I like to be or know about what the next advantage possible to be gained. I remember using MCI Mail in the mid ’80’s to beat the big companies to the story (then my competition was, gasp – IBM). I was talking to Bill Howard, Bill Machrone and John Dvorak of PC Magazine when it seemed like there were about 25 email users total in the business world.

Despite my daughter’s ability to overwhelm me in Instant Messaging volume, I did use it as a communications tool to reach analysts in the ’90’s before others caught on.

I’ve been beaten to the punch more times than not on new trends, but I give credit to those that catch on before me and I try to learn to do things in a newer better way. Social Computing is such a trend that offers the next new world to those who have vision.

I originally called this the change/death/other titles here of PR, but that will never die, only morph. Those that adopt the new media approach which is happening now, which includes but is not limited to (good lawyer speak there) blogging, podcasting, videocasting, wiki and the various other components of Social Computing will beat others to the punch. (I was later to this game than I wanted to be, but still ahead of many I’m finding out as I beat my head against the wall here sometimes.)

While there was no moment of truth type revelation about why this is, I’ll give Charline Li the credit to why big companies are not always the leaders on this, it requires giving up control. Now tie this into the above stated PR change issue, as control is vital to shaping the message or dealing with the other large major media outlets. The quicker more nimble folks who already embrace Social Computing are moving ahead and larger companies are trying to figure it out and sometimes try to control it. I will say that IBM is conducting perhaps the largest social computing exercise ever right now, but the control issue prevents any details here until it is complete. I hope to blog about it soon, and I hope to start an analyst relations practice/position about Social Computing, send your positive references in now about me as I’ll be canvasing soon for a new frontier that I think we need here.

This is not just a company/industry or PR issue either. Smaller and more nimble analyst firms are leading the way and are way ahead of 800 pound gorillas here.

So I know people who were naysayers to email, IM and other trends and look what happened there. Social Computing will change the messaging capabilities, the way we will work and exchange information and that train is leaving the station, be on it or miss the chance.

Off to Linux

On By JohnIn blogging, geek, ibm, iPod, microsoftLeave a comment

Just like why I’m blogging, I’m installing Linux. I figured that if I’m going to talk about it, I need to experience it.

Fortunately, IBM has a desktop install that I currently have underway, approximately 817 files to be downloaded and installed. The only issue for me is that I work remotely and I had to go into an IBM facility to load it. So I blog here from a cube farm in a building that is half IBM and half Lenovo.

But the good news is that I’ll work as much as I can from Linux, except for the Windoze only programs that I have to keep until I find a work around.

I’ll have to speak with Steve O’Grady to see how he migrated his iPod/iTunes to Linux, cause that’s one of the programs on the table for me.

Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the reasons I’m switching is the millions of blue screens of death I’ve experienced, the delay’s in operating system releases, the bugs, security, and some amount of arrogance.  By the way, I’ve been at this since DOS 1.0, so I have experience with PC OS problems.
I also need to expand my boundaries technically. I can’t bear to sit back with the norm, it seems I have to push the envelope to test my abilities, hope I can pass the test.

Blogger Meetup at RSDC

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, ibm, rsdc1 Comment

Well, after all the anticipation, we finally had it last night at RSDC. Thanks go out to Steve O’Grady for giving us advice on this and for showing me the best comment related to the meetup which came from an unnamed IBMer who said he would go anywhere there were free drinks.

It was a success and step forward for IBM in progressiveness. As we’ve found with our partner programs, there’s nothing like face to face discussions, no matter how much you’re web enabled or connected through a myriad of devices.

My only regret was that Grady Booch who had agreed to be the host couldn’t make it. Please send him your best wishes. I’ll speak to his absentia presence at the meeting later this week.
Here are some photo’s from the meetup.

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Steve O’Grady, Diane Flis, Rawn Shah

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Rawn Shan, Steve O’Grady, Ian Wesley

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Teressa Jimenez, Murry Cantor
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Greg Hamilton, Colleen Inches

What it took to get to RSDC

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, ibmLeave a comment

The actual planning for the event started at the end of last year’s RSDC, getting a location, estimating the crowd, logistical things on getting a show site and such.

The Audience
For us in the communications world, we started in earnest around the PartnerWorld timeframe. There are many audiences at a customer event like this and many constituencies that intermingle. You’ll read from the other blogs about their lives and experiences at RSDC. Mine is working with the Analyst and Press, and the corresponding IBM AR and PR teams.

We first picked out the target list of analysts and press that follow Software Group, Rational or developerWorks. Then we went through the invitation process to get them there, knowing that there were a specified number of slots (other parameters defined this, but that is minutia not worth delving into). From there it was a match game on both sides. There was an interesting dynamic to this year’s planning as the SOA analyst event was at the end of last week, causing some decision making on the part of the analysts who follow both and the resources on our side knowing we had to staff and support both. SOA is an important initiative for us so careful planning to give it it’s due was appropriate.

The Scheduling
Once we had the audience, we had to do the scheduling of matching analyst (and press) interests and the right executives. There are times that execs are double and triple booked and it’s a logistical exercise that maybe the Pentagon could lend assistance to. The reality is that the actual scheduling goes on until the last 1:1 is held. Everyone is switching times and availability due to everything from an interesting briefing or customer they want to see to changing flight schedules. One has to be flexible to work out everything on the side of the Analyst/Press and the IBMers they are to meet with.

The Show Blog
Ever since developerWorks was the first external blog site, we’ve tried to push the envelope. Last year we held the first IBM coordinated show blog at an event and this year we are doing the same. We have both internal and external bloggers keeping you updated on their perspective of the event. We wanted to host the first meetup, but Lotus already did that….guess it pays to have your event first. I’m glad we as a company are having many factions working to keep current (or catch up) with the blogosphere. Nevertheless, we are having a meetup as I’ve gone on about ad nauseam on Tuesday night at the Dolphin bar from 6-8.

We had meetings for months getting the right people to blog and get them ready to do so. Some were already bloggers, some had to be registered to developerWorks and some, like mine are just links. We asked analysts to be a part of it and some did (thank you) and many declined for various reasons.

You’ll also be able to listen to podcasts of executives at the show. Here is the list:

Danny Sabbah, General Manager, Rational Software
Lee Nackman, Vice President, Product Development and Customer Support, Rational Software
Walker Royce, Vice President, IBM Software Services, Rational Software
Buell Duncan, General Manager, ISV and Developer Relations, IBM Software
Murray Cantor, Distinguished Engineer, Rational Software
Martin Nally, Chief Technology Officer, Rational Software
So you’ll get the range from newbies to veterans on this show blog. Pick your poison.

The Final Prep
Today is registration and final detail day. We’ll all get together this afternoon to go over last minute changes and who is covering what. Hopefully everyone will make it into town without flight delay and our planning will be complete. Then it’s blocking and tackling time. The most important capability in pulling these off is the ability to handle the proverbial monkey wrench. Someone can’t come, or is coming in a day late, or gets sick or whatever. The ability to deal with these issues and keep your cool is a valuable skill. Panic never helps.

So I look forward to seeing both my teammates for the first time in person regarding RSDC and the analysts I haven’t seen in a while, or in some cases since last year. Then it’s off to the races…

Off to RSDC

On By JohnIn Analyst, bloggingLeave a comment

I’ll be offline until this weekend as I’m leaving for RSDC.

I’ll get to see my Mom for the first time since my Dad’s funeral, so we will get to catch up on things.

Speaking of catching, I’ll do that tomorrow, see the previous blog.

Then it’s RSDC and blogging time. Besides the usual array of activities that include keynotes, analyst briefings, blogging and other show staples, we’ll have the meetup and a lot of material to cover.

So good luck to the SOA meeting today and tomorrow in NYC. Lots of things happening at IBM right now.

Blogger Meetup Correction

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, fishing, ibm, technology2 Comments

I had lamented that IBM was late to the party for meetups, but bragged that we were having a meetup at RSDC on Tuesday June 6th from 6-8 at the bar by the escalator at the Dolphin Hotel.

Well, the egg is on my face as blogger compatriot, Ed Brill let me know they’d already done it at Lotusphere. Way to go guys, you flew the flag for us.
So the good news is that IBM is not as behind as I described, and we’re still having ours hosted by Danny Sabbah, with the first round of drinks on IBM. I hope to see you there as there will be plenty to discuss from the first two days of the show and our blogging escapades.

And Steve O’grady, I hope to have fishing pictures by then as I’m going out on Friday to chase Redfish in Titusville with one of my best friends over the years.  Here’s what we’re after.
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Why I gave up the newspaper and don't miss it

On By JohnIn blogging, msm, screw ups, technology2 Comments

I went from 7 days a week to almost cold turkey on the newspaper, and don’t seem to miss it much. I got the Raleigh News and Observer.
There are a number of reasons why:

  • The news was 24 hours late
  • I already knew most of it from the internet
  • I couldn’t believe what they wrote due to poor research or point of view
  • The weather prediction is a crap shoot
  • I couldn’t believe what was written
  • I’ve boycotted all the pro sports that boycotted me because they weren’t getting enough millions and were complaining
  • I get better news and points of views from the blogs or podcasts
  • I couldn’t trust whether it was true or not
  • If there was something I needed from the local paper, I got it the day of off the net rather than the next morning

I know I repeated myself in about 3 of the above points, on purpose.

I now take it on the weekends mainly because they have the coupons for saving money. It makes the subscription about free.

What do I miss?

The daily cartoons that I follow, but even they are on the internet if I really cared. Also, it was handy when I needed to take something to the reading room.

I have followed the decline of the subscription renewal rates for most of the written publications and they are going down faster than a truck without brakes on a mountain. Mostly from the reasons I stated above. My unscientific research looks like it’s a toss up between lack of timeliness and lack of believability now. I’ve followed this trend with the network news and most of the cable news also.

Update:  here is how the blogs discover the truth, and the MSM doesn’t do proper jounalistic research:

Blogger Meetup at RSDC

On By JohnIn blogging, geek, ibm1 Comment

IBM will be having it’s first ever meetup at RSDC in the Dolphin Hotel at Disney from 6-8 on Tuesday June 6th during the Rational Software Development Conference.

This is somewhat significant as we’re doing a meetup, but you’d expect a blogging company to do these things.   Well, we weren’t the first company to blog either, but we’re in that game now.  I’m just glad I had something do to with something that is a first, which at a company the size of IBM, is tough to do.  In all fairness, Steve O’Grady helped us with it so we didn’t screw it up, thanks Steve – you were a big help.

Additionally, we’ll be hosting a blog during the show for executives and analysts and webcasts with the Rational and developerWorks Executives.

See you there, either in person or in the blogosphere.

IBM Bloggers, Who are we? – Jeff Jonas

On By JohnIn bloggerview, blogging, technology1 Comment

jeff jonas.JPG

A little while back, I asked the question, who would you like to see in the next bloggerview? Stefanie Sirc, one of my first ever bloggerview’s suggested today’s interviewee as one of the fascinating people she works with.

Jeff as you’ll find out is like many of the recent bloggerviews, one of the really smart guys who works for IBM, an inventor and someone who can fit two or three days worth of work into one. I found Jeff and his work to be very important and something I take a personal interest in, finding and dealing with bad guys. I’ve included a link to Jeff’s blog below so you can read more on how they use data to deal with things like cheaters in Vegas and how they can put the pieces together to link up events before 9/11.

For more on this, here’s a link to Jeff featured on The Discovery Channel talking about spotting relationships amongst thieves, an excellent discussion of Jeff’s work.
What is your job title (and what does that really mean as far as your job)?
I am the Chief Scientist for IBM Entity Analytic Solutions and an IBM Distinguished Engineer. What does this mean you ask? I tell my parents my job is to invent new left hand columns. Here’s what I mean by that…
When organizations want to acquire technology they often place the capabilities/requirements in the left hand column and then the competing products across the top columns. This matrix is then used to evaluate technologies. My goal is to invent capabilities the customer has never even conceived of. Thus when they hear about the innovation, they say “I must have that!” and so it becomes a new left hand column. And they start telling everyone else about it. The best news of all though, is IBM already has it!”

Some work experience/background that you want can tell the readers?
Back in the early 80’s I worked a lot with credit bureaus/collection agencies. These organizations often had “skip tracing” units with trained staff who would use public records (and other tricks!) to locate people who had ducked out on their debt – doing their best to hide. Learning a bit about this technique turned out to be extraordinarily useful when asked by the gaming industry how to keep the unwanted out and later when asked by the government how to detect corrupt employees within.

How do you describe what you do to people who don’t know you or your industry, to the layman?
I help people find a few bad guys … and work awful hard to do this in a way that does not cast such a wide net as to trample the privacy and civil liberties of the innocent. Catching bad guys while upholding our Fourth Amendment values turns out to be a rather tricky activity.

What are good things about your job, what keeps you going?
My job is my hobby. I am constantly trying to figure out how to get more work done and I try to structure my life to be as productive as possible. Of course, I also have to do this in a way as to be a good Dad — I am a full-time single parent of three kids (two still in the house). What is so gratifying is when I get a call that says something like “you should be a proud American today” –then “click” they hang up. This means one of my systems somewhere in government helped in some material way!

What are your hobbies?
I am a triathlete in my spare time. I do several Ironman distance races a year. And while I am not very fast, I always seem to achieve my first two objectives — not being last and beating at least ONE girl! Last year I did two Ironman races, one in Zurich, Switzerland and the other in Western Australia. Because I work so much, I don’t have much time to train – for example, I only swam twice last year (each race) … that’s right no swim training at all! Not only does that make me a slow swimmer, but by the time I get out of the water my arms are so tired I can hardly get my wetsuit off under my own strength! 🙂

What are things you’d like to change either at your job or IBM?
I have so many ideas in my head — inventions, new left-hand columns – that it would take hundreds of IBM engineers to keep up with me. So in the meantime, I have to find the best one or two inventions a year to champion, while the rest lay in wait. As an innovator, this makes me feel a bit under utilized.

Briefly describe what Relationship Recognition is.
Let’s take a retailer for example. When the purchasing agent turns out to be roommates with the vendor — that can be a big problem (conflict of interest) if not previous disclosed. But how would the retailer ever know this? Relationship Resolution detects this by making sense of the data the retailer already has in its arms – albeit trapped in separate database silos.

Does that make you feel like a superhero?
From time to time I’ll suffer a brief “delusion of grandeur” moment, and then shortly thereafter I’ll get utterly humbled. So I’ve basically learned to be very cautious about a sense of greatness. And whenever I think I am at the top of some game, I find another group of people significantly more elevated. For example, I started thinking I was a privacy advocate myself. This lasted less than a month, then I met David Sobel, the general counsel of EPIC. I heard him speak. He was so inspirational and deep. I immediately demoted myself to a student of privacy and realize that is the most I can hope to be.

Where do you see your work going in 5 years, 10 years?
I am really interested in the area of “perpetual analytics” whereby the “data finds the data” and “relevance finds the user”. This is required as we cannot expect users to ask every smart question every day. I see computers beginning to deliver extraordinary new levels of useful information in such areas as improving healthcare outcomes. The trick will be advancing technology so that organizations and governments can compete in ways that stave off the “surveillance nation” end-state. In fact, my latest innovation to become a commercial product is this ability to have computers associate more data for better conclusions while handling only anonymized data. Such a breakthrough, whereby information can be robustly analyzed while remaining in its cryptographic form, may result in a world where it becomes common place to anonymize one’s data before sharing it. This is a better privacy story than prior information sharing alternatives.

What do you wish you could do now that you can’t and why?
I often feel that the way I see the world and the immense opportunities for improvement are trapped in my head. What kills me is I find it hard to get these ideas out of my head and into the hands of others in such a manner that they get the really big picture I am seeing. That is one reason that I started a blog. My goal has become to speak less and write more.

What is your relationship with analysts:
I brief analysts from time to time. Although names and affiliations are a bit of a blur, Mark Beyer at Gartner and I really see eye to eye!

What do you need to tell analysts about EAS that you’d like them to know?
There is this interesting capability that almost every system lacks called Sequence Neutrality. If Sequence Neutrality is present, the order the data arrives does not change the end-state once all the data has arrived. So many processes are designed to assume that all required data to make the decision is present within the system at the decision making point. But what are the odds of that? Sometimes no better that 50/50! Could that mean half the analytic answers produced by some systems are incorrect? Possibly!

One of my first entries in my blog (www.jeffjonas.typepad.com) is on Sequence Neutrality. And we are the only ones talking about and delivering solutions in this direction. And it is going to be a game changer when folks realize why it is so critical not only to accuracy, but also scalability and sustainability. Without sequence neutrality data warehouses drift from truth. With sequence neutrality they don’t drift at all. This means no periodic database refreshes are required. That means an organization does not have the wrong answer until the next database reload is completed. This is a BIG thing in itself.

IBM Bloggers, Who are we – Grady Booch

On By JohnIn Analyst, bloggerview, blogging, geek, ibm, ibm research, military, star trek6 Comments

grady.jpg

As always, I really like doing these bloggerviews, this one especially. A lot of it is because I get to talk to some of the smartest people at IBM and in this case, the industry. For as much as he’s done, Grady has the right to enjoy celebrity status being an IBM fellow and a leader in the IT world, yet he is very down to earth and we had a very enjoyable conversation. I know you’ll enjoy reading this as much as I did learning from him.

A bit of history, when we first thought of the concept of the developerWorks Blog, the discussion came up that we needed blogger of rock star status to gain notoriety. The first name that came up was Grady. I knew when I started my blog, that this was one of the discussions I wanted to have, now you can too.
Note: Grady is hosting a blogger meetup at the Rational Users Conference June 6th from 6-8 pm, see you there.

Were you a rebel as a kid?
In a different way. I built my first computer from scratch when I was 12. I had borrowed a book called Computer Design, and used it as a manual to create my first computer. I saved my allowance to buy discrete transistors and so I built from scratch. My parents didn’t really know how to deal with me. In addition to the computers, I built my own laser and I was into model rockets. You could say I was a classical geek. In fact, I was a geek before it was cool to be a geek.

I built my computer because I really wanted to program. The computer did four function math and had 256 bits of memory. I thought it would be cool to program so before high school I wanted a job in computers and I went knocking on doors of all the local computer companies, to no avail. I then went to the local IBM sales office and a sales guy sat with me at a lunch table and gave me a book on Fortran. He probably thought that I would go away after reading it, but a week later, I came back with some programs I’d written and I asked for computer time. He got time for me on weekends on an IBM 1130 used by the Amarillo Public Utilities. My first program was a simulation of particles colliding at subatomic speed and a calculation of the release of energy. I still have the original deck of cards. Perhaps the one event that started me on computers was an article in Life magazine about a robot named Shaky built by Marvin Minsky. A few years ago, I approached the trustees at the Computer History Museum in California, urging them to also become a museum of software. While I was getting a tour of the emerging facility, John Toole told me to turn around too look at the original Shakey, sitting in a display behind me. That was so cool and it gave me a pleasant sense of closure.

One thing that my friends and their children are surprised at is these days that I always knew that I wanted to be a computer scientist.

How did your military career help you with what you do now?
So I was self taught until I went to the Air Force Academy. I had many scholarship offers including West Point, but chose USAFA because they had an incredible computer science program. Also, I knew that when I graduated, I would be involved with some amazing technology in the real world from which I could learn. Some of the things I did in my first assignment was to help build systems in support of missile programs such as the Minuteman, Titan and Shuttle. One of the last things I did was work on a range safety system for both the West and East coast military ranges. Through this work, in my early 20’s, I learned what it means to build complex systems. We had hundred’s of thousands of lines of code, running on distributed computers, and so the issues of scale and complexity hit me early.

I’m proud to report that in 1979 I had my first email address on the Arpanet..

Around that time, I was also doing some Ada work and got involved as an instructor at USAFA. I was asked by Larry Druffle who was involved with the Ada Joint Program Office and later went on to found the Software Engineering Institute to consider how one would apply modern software techniques to Ada. It at through this work that I coined the phrase object oriented design.

It has been a long journey for me with in complex software, far before it was an issue in industry.

You say on your blog that you like to read. What interests you in your book selection?
My book listings on my site are mostly professional books. I have a spreadsheet includes all the books and journals I read there. Frankly, one of the reasons I built my current home is that wife and I ran out of space for our over 8,000 books.

I enjoy writers who are good story tellers like Michael Chabon and Terry Pratchet. Right now I’m reading Wuthering Heights, and I just finished reading a book on the history of Islam and another on prayer. I’m attracted to authors who have a command of the language, such as Umberto Eco, and I try to learn from them. As a result, I think I’m a curious combination of a geek albeit an articulate one.

I read more nonfiction than fiction. I like history, especially covering medieval and renaissance periods. In fact I play the Celtic harp.

Why did you become a blogger and How did/does that affect your job?
I started blogging before IBM asked me to. It happened in conjunction with the handbook on software architecture I decided to write. Being involve as a software architect in a multitude of systems in various industries across the world, I wanted to fill a serious gap in the body of knowledge of software engineering, by codifying the architectural patterns that are used in the world. I realized it then that it would be a journey instead of a discrete issue, so thus the blog as a forum for discussion during that journey.

So I began the blog but I couldn’t find any software out there that did what I wanted, so I wrote my own blogging software so I could work on the Handbook anywhere in world. I added an RSS feed to push XML to the IBM developerWorks site, so now it posts to both that site and mine..

What blogs do you read?
This will certainly reflect my political views, but I read crooksandliars.com. Slashdot is also a must have. My Handbook site lists the many that I read from time to time.

Do you like Sci-Fi, for example are you a trekkie?
Yes actually, in my office every copy of Star Trek, the Next Generation, episode so you could say I’m a trekker.

What are your favorite video games?
This is interesting as I just came back from a gamer convention. I just finished Halo 2, and am currently stuck inside the gates of hell in Quake 3. All things being equal, though, I’d rather read a good book.

Speaking of the game community, I’m attracted to it because this is an industry that’s really discovering the problems of building complex software.

Your job Title is IBM Fellow, but what does that mean to the man on the street
It means two things. My role as a Fellow is to invent the future and to destroy bureaucracy, I’m a designated free radical for IBM, and it’s my job to disturb the norm, to think outside of the box, to make people uncomfortable with the status quo, plus have I have a license to do so. It is to IBM’s organizational credit that it recognizes it needs such people.

If you weren’t an IBM fellow, what other job would you be doing, or what company would you be working for?
Now there is an interesting question. I’d probably be an poor itinerate musician or a priest. Baring those more radical career choices, I’d otherwise still be in the software world, doing the same things as I am doing now. My professional passion is how to improve and reduce the distance between vision and execution in delivering complex software-intensive systems.

What are you working on now?
I work on many things, some I can talk about, most I can’t. The Handbook is an important project for me, I spend a lot of time with customers, I help to manage Rational’s relationship with IBM research, and that involves me in efforts about radical simplification and what to do when Moore’s law dies.

What do you talk to Sam Palmisano about?
I don’t talk to Sam that much – he runs the business and I’m essentially a geek – but I do work with Nick Donofrio who works directly for Sam, We talk about various customer engagements, improving industry/academic relationships, and various issues of technical strategy.

What is your vision of the future, next year, 5 years 20 years?
Software has been, and will be always be fundamentally hard, In the future, we’ll be facing yet greater complexity . Open source, the commodization of operating systems and middleware, disposable software (that which is created by non developers), the presence of pervasive devices are elements of this growing complexity. Furthermore, the world is flat. No political or geographical boundaries limit creativity and complexity in software-intensive systems, and thus it’s also increasingly a problem of collaboration.

How long do you see yourself doing what you do now?
Until my heart stops beating.

What is your relationship with analysts? What would you say to them?
I have an A/R handler, I go where they tell me to go, What i talk about though is where I spend my time, namely worrying about the future, the primary horizon being 3-5 years out, with consideration of the forces that are morphing us.hat we need to get us there.

If you could write your legacy, what would it be?
There is a question I’ve never been asked before. How about “he’s not dead yet.”

Seriously through, I hope people will have viewed me as kind and gentle man who lived fully.

Everything else is just details.

What’s on your iPod?
Surprisingly, I don’t have and iPod, but I do have 9 Macs along with a Google Mini and two terabytes of storage, on which I’ve ripped all my music. I’m currently listening to Adiemus, , Dead Can Dance, Tori Amos, Loreena McKinnett, and Twila Paris.

What is the final frontier for users?
It’s curious what we do as software developers: at its best, be build things that are invisible. If we do it right, our work evaporates into the background and remains unnoticed, yet still providing socially and individually useful functionality.

Hosted, At Last

On By JohnIn blogging, delusionsLeave a comment

I finally made the trek from Blogger to a hosted blog, from where I’ll be posting from now on.

I learned many things along the way, like I should keep my day job as I’m not going to make it as a web designer. I also learned that it is good to have friends that know what they are doing, like SSteve O’Grady who helped me get this done (read, did all the real work to get it to the hosted account). I also learned different Blog programs which was good for me.

I wonder if I lost readers, or through the promotion process of letting people know that I’m in a different place, I’ll get some pick up. I never was overly concerned about competing with Scoble or Instapundit anyway.

Learning is good. Now back to blogging. The good news is I have Not all Geeks are Wimps Part II ready to go and a bloggerview with Grady Booch just around the corner.

My quest to switch my Blog

On By JohnIn blogging, delusions3 Comments

Part of my title says that I’ll blog about my escapades of trying to be a blogger. Here is one of those blogs.

Due to a number of reasons, I’m now on a quest to move my blog to WordPress. Here are a couple of those reasons:

1. I got complaints about Blogger’s comment ability by analysts.
2. It’s time for me to grow up as a blogger and go to a hosted account.
3. Having a blogger domain is sort of like an aol email.
4. Blogger is offline too much lately.
5. Many blogged a long time ago that you weren’t real unless you were hosted and not on a free account, have tags, trackbacks, etc. I agree with her on this.

I spoke to my RedMonk buddies and they gave me options. I went for WordPress hosted for my by 1and1. My first step was to get an account which I did today, it will be deladequacy.com, still Delusions of Adequacy. Public thanks to Steve O’Grady for helping with the process on how to do it different ways and why hosting it was the right thing to do.

I’m blogging this to put the pressure on me to get it done and convert. Yes, I was getting comfortable with the limitations of Blogger, but we all have to grow up sometime. Keep you posted.

Customer No Service

On By JohnIn blogging, competitors, screw upsLeave a comment

I’ve blogged before about issues with customer service Dell Hell, or as consumer advocate Clark Howard coins it, customer NO service. Since I worked in the PC industry for 20 some years, it is easy for me to talk about it. I frequently compare selling PC’s to the used car world with their respective salesman and policies, but that might be giving used car industry a bad name with this next example.

Tiger Direct has a rebate scam going that is documented by the Better Business Bureau, and Bloggers, and to add salt in the wound, they are also selling your personal info. As of this post, 42,508 customers have requested a reliability report on Tiger Direct in the last 36 months according to the BBB.

I always maintain that customers vote with their dollars (or Euro’s, pounds, rubles, rupees, whatever.), I wonder if this will be the case or is the drive to somehow get an extra discount worth going through this poor example?

It’s time for the PC industry to stand up and offer quality service rather than just a next discount. After all, PC’s are on just about every office desk, at most homes and travel with most businessmen and women.

Here is the opportunity for the HP’s and Lenovo’s of the world to stand up and inject some integrity into the industry, I hope that between the customers and the manufacturers, they/we can weed out those who do this sort of thing.

Finally able to blog again, like missing a friend. Can I be that busy?

On By JohnIn blogging, delusions, fishingLeave a comment

I just went the longest period of time without blogging since I began. I’ve missed days because I just didn’t have anything to talk about, but this streak has a different cause. Before I get to the point of discussion, let it be known that I really missed blogging. It causes me to focus on a subject and be lucid about it. This comes naturally to some, not to me. I also have to line up future blogs as I can’t just sit down and write all the time.

Advertisement: I lined up Grady Booch, Drew Clark (IBM VC programs) and my favorite PHP programmer , as well as I”m going to blog about an analyst event next week that has in part kept me too busy to write.

I’ve been too busy, a pretty lame reason I admit but true. Now that I have that out of the way, I knew this the entire time, and even talked about being too busy when speaking with several analysts and co-workers.

This brings me to why. When talking to the others, I got the same answer, yes they were busier than normal and no, they didn’t know why either. Here’s my hypothesis.

Bandwidth
A few years back, we said the answer to problems was bandwidth. It was cheap and getting cheaper and we should just throw bandwidth at a lot of situations and it may not be the perfect answer, but it would solve the problem. Now we have lots of connectivity, anywhere, anytime and while not instantaneous, we can get what we want, who we want and can pound away at enough doors, one will open.

Tools
Handhelds, access devices, instant messaging, cellphones…more ways to do more stuff and reach more people. This has turned the volume knob up also. Before, we’d send out a request and wait for an answer, now we get it right away and are distracted to answer these requests. How did we find our way for 1000’s of years without a GPS, or meet up with someone else without a cell phone?

Attitude
We are far less patient for things now. I fish and patience is a virtue. You have to wait for the right conditions, the fish to move up to your space, the weather, sticking with a pattern, whatever. Patience is a virtue they say. On the other hand, my son plays video games….it is an attention span zapper, but a sign of the times. So like the gamers, a lot of us at work are expecting more and more now in everything. If it doesn’t happen now, run and gun to something else. Even as I type this, I’m getting IM’d about decisions on bathroom decorating from my wife.

So am I getting more work done? Outside of blogging, yes. My real job is analyst relations and I’m getting more done and working at a faster pace, doing more and being more efficient. I have to.

I need to find some more time to fish.

Miscellany

On By JohnIn 24, blogging, delusions1 Comment

I’m working on a couple of things that are taking longer than I thought, delaying any real issues I could be effectively writing here.

1. For ISV analyst issues, it’s going to be about SOA, SaaS and PartnerWorld in the next couple of months, watch this space and make requests to find out what we’re doing. I’ll be reaching out as we get closer, but you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to know what we’re up to.

2. Blogging, IBM is moving forward and we’ll have things to say about our company efforts as bloggers. Some tools came out at Lotusphere, but this will be more about how we organize our people efforts outwardly (jg and sog please contact me here).

3. Bloggerviews- I’ve asked Grady Booch and Rod Smith to participate. If I can get them, they should be good.

4. Not all Geeks are Wimps Part II. This has been one of the more difficult blogs I’ll have written. Some blogs come to me in my sleep, not this one. I’ve read 2 books for to prepare, and the respect I have for the person I’m writing about puts pressure on me to perform, which of course slows down the process.

5. An entire episode of 24 last night without Jack Bauer killing anyone. Hope he makes up for that next week.

IBM and Crime, a Podcast to hear

On By JohnIn blogging, ibm, podcastLeave a comment

This is an advertisement for an IBM Podcast on crime that drew my interest.

The podcast is hosted by Ben Edwards and features a discussion between Dr. Charles Palmer, head of security and privacy for IBM Research, and Bob Bragdon, publisher of CSO Magazine.

Other IBM Podcasts range from banking, driving and online games.

IBM got dinged for being late to the blogging party (which I took exception to since I was as early to the game as anyone), but here’s some evidence that things are going in the right direction.

Time shifting

On By JohnIn blogging, geek, iPod, podcast, technologyLeave a comment


I got what I wanted for Christmas, a video I-Pod. Yes, it’s one of the coolest tech toys I’ve had in a long time. As a blatant request, please send your favorite audio and/or video download links as I’m busy trying to add content (don’t worry, I haven’t run out of stuff to put on yet, but I’m looking for cool stuff that I don’t know about, but know it’s out there).

I’ve also had a DVR for over a year and today I read this story from CES. It’s not hard to put 2+2 together here. We’re watching things differently, calling our own shots as to when and where.

It used to be we could only watch what was on when it was on. Then VCR’s helped us to watch when we wanted to, but the serial-ness of tape was at best OK for searching.

Now, we can watch what we want, skip the commercials (except the Superbowl) when we want. We can slow-mo the car chase scene’s, the foot out of bounds or whatever.

More important and finally to the point of this blog, is that we watch differently, or time shift. For example, there is 40 minutes of content per hour and 20 minutes of commercials. That means I can start a 4 hour NASCAR race 80 minutes after the start of the program and see the finish on time and skip what I don’t want to see.

Now, thanks to the web and the power of consumer demand, I can time shift on the Video I-Pod and watch my stuff on a plane or at the Gym or wherever. Here’s a small list of what is on today as an example (ESPN is the only thing that interests me on this list, but the point is that lot’s of content is on the way).

A sampling of video content available now or soon online:

— AOL (aol.com): Starting early 2006, episodes from TV series such as
“Welcome Back Kotter,” “The Fugitive,” “Eight is Enough,” “Growing Pains”
and “Lois & Clark;” on six online channels

— CBS (cbs.com, cbsnews.com): Web-only video supplements, soaps and shows
such as “CSI” and “Survivor;” talk-shows and interviews with contestants and
actors. CBS News offers Web-only breaking-news coverage, evening news
segments and behind-the-scenes pieces

— Comedy Central (comedycentral.com/motherload): Clips from shows such as
“Chappelle’s Show,” the “Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “South Park;”
shorts, short clips from comedians’ stand-up acts

— ESPN (espn.com): ESPN Motion videos are embedded in most Web pages and
include game highlights and athlete press conferences; ESPN 360, only
available to some broadband providers’ subscribers, offers full archived
games and live sporting events

— MTV (mtv.com/overdrive): Live performances, music videos, interviews
with musicians, movie trailers, news

— Starz Entertainment Group (vongo.com): Subscribers pay a monthly fee
for unlimited downloads of more than 1,000 movies, including “Finding
Neverland,” “Annie Hall,” “Good Will Hunting,” as well as concerts, extreme
sports and Starz TV programming

Source: the companies

2005, another one bites the dust

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, family1 Comment

Here I sit at 7:15 on New Years Eve, blogging about the year. I’m not much of a partier, and this is the night the amateurs try to keep up with the professionals on the drinking circuit, then drive, so I’m going to stay alive another night, God willing.

So 2005 is over. As it is with most periods of time, we accomplished moving the ball forward rather than backwards. Professionally, we had one of the best years as a team (IBM SWG A/R) and made progress. IBM moved forward in a number of directions. We’ll mourn the loss of Dave Liddell as our leader, but celebrate the ascension of Sarita Torres as the new boss.

Since I’m blogging, we made huge steps in this area (yes, I’ll give you we started later than we should so we had more to make up). We now have good bloggers, we’re releasing blog tools and we are going forward, not backwards.

Personally, I started Delusions of Adequacy in mid-year and have shared any number of IBM’rs with you and made blogger acquaintances/links/professional relationships both in and out of the company.

I was promoted to 2nd degree Black Belt in 2005, so I’m gaining traction personally. Working out, I lifted 3,977,911 pounds as calculated by the Fitlinxx machines I work out on, and burned 300,708 calories while doing so. I worked out roughly two thirds of the days this year, so I’m more fit than this time last year, and better able to defend myself.

I’m not going to get into New Year’s resolutions here, partly because this is about 2005, partly because very few people keep them, and partly because I haven’t thought about it yet.

I’m hoping for consistency, the ability to fight the good fight at home, at work and for God. I am now raising my second teenager, and the experience I learned from raising the first looks like it will be mostly useless. About the only thing I can re-use is that teenagers can make some of the dumbest mistakes while trying to learn lifes ropes, and we as parents just hope for survival sometimes…both ours and theirs. Happy New Year.

The News, Have it your way

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, technology2 Comments

I read the other day from Steve O’Grady , why he stopped watching the news. It’s been bouncing around in my head for a couple of days and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

We want the information/news/updates/whatever the way we want it, not the way the current regime of news/papers/print magazines decide for us what they want to interpret as news. I’m pretty sure this has always been the case, but we as information consumers haven’t had the opportunity to customize it until recently (a matter of years for some, more recently for others).

I commented on his blog about how right he was, and that I already had stopped watching it also (but you got me Steve, I didn’t even realize this). I always have a better understanding of the issues before it hits the traditional news. I find the subject that interests me, then I can go to sources, blogs or the web that may have been at the place of the event, and almost always there is someone who understands the issue better than a newscaster. It occurs to me that the whoever the media source is, they are really a journalist, not a field or subject matter expert. The blogosphere has now become the more informed reporter.

When the sources for news was limited, these generalist journalists were the only choice. As with any job, there is always a range of talent and quality. But as any economist will tell you, a monopoly causes quality to go down and price to go up. The news has been monopolistic with respect to news feeds, and media conglomerates. Go to any channel and you get virtually the same story, the one that was in the morning newspaper a lot of the time.

Which brings me to how I want to get the news. If you’ve read any of my blogs, you know I love IBM Research. If you ever get the chance, talk to research or read about them. They are not just blue suits, rather some unbelievable minds. Back in 1999, I saw a demo of a flexible newspaper that was really a screen that you customized your own news. When we showed it off, it wowed everyone as the technology was cool, but it opened up freedom of content.

All you need is a news bot to get your sources and it downloaded and formatted. Now that sounds a whole like feed aggregators (google, bloglines, other). It likely won’t come to fruition in that format, but the concept is coming true.

So it’s getting to the time that we can select what we want and get it. This is bad and good for the traditional news. As anyone with a search engine can find, circulation numbers are down for the traditional news, most cable news (ok, one exception was up) and print news.

Why is it good? Back to the economists. Capitalism invites competition, the result of which is lower prices and better quality. So they will either have to improve, or go the way of the horse and buggy (Steve’s example again here). Otherwise, we get what we want because we have choices.

And like Steve, I chose getting the real story from my research, not the negative or slanted (both directions) that someone thinks I should get. Either way, I’m going to get a better product, at a cheaper price.

Update: Here’s a story from Tekrati that shows a trend towards consumer preference. We may win after all.

And another showing lower prices…

Today's blog in binary

On By JohnIn blogging, humor2 Comments

I’ve been holding this one for a while now. I’m posting the rest of this blog in binary code. Here is the link for translation.
Binary coder/decoder

01110111011001010110001101101111011011010110010100100000011101000110111100100000
0110110101111001001000000110100001101111011011100110111101110010011010010110111001100111
01100111011001010110010101101011011001000110111101101101

010010000110111101110000011010010110111001100111
0111100101101111011101010010000001100110011010010110111001100100
01110011011010010110110101101001011011000110000101110010
01110111011000010111100101110011001000000111010001101111
0110001001100101
0110100101101110011101000110010101110010011001010111001101110100011010010110111001100111

0111011101101000011011110010011101110011
011000010010000001100111011001010110010101101011
01101110011011110111011100111111

IBM Bloggers, Who are we? – Bob Sutor

On By JohnIn Analyst, bloggerview, blogging2 Comments


I am most privileged to be able to offer this blog interview of Bob Sutor. Bob was one of the first links I had when I set up my first RSS feed, still a neophyte to the blogosphere. He has graciously agreed to my interview series for which I am most grateful.

This is a very interesting read, with subjects ranging from guitar’s to calculus and polynomials. If you think that PhD’s aren’t witty, read the story about his son at the Gartner conference. Being a Trekkie, I’d like to teleport also.

I asked some questions with analyst’s and open standards in mind, and you will find the answers most revealing.

What is your job title (and what does that really mean as far as your job,)?
I’m the IBM VP for Standards and Open Source. Basically, this allows me to stick my nose into anything we’re doing on those topics. I work with my team to make sure that we have consistent management of these activities across all the business units in the company. I work closely with our intellectual property folks to ensure we are striking the right a balance between “open” and more traditional ways of doing things. Then I like to tell people about all this.

Some work experience that you want to tell?
I started work for IBM in 1982 when I was between my two stints in grad school. I spent 15 years in IBM Research working on “symbolic mathematical computation” (instead of thinking of a spreadsheet and what it does, think of a system that allows you to manipulate things like polynomials and matrices and do fancy calculus computations). My main job before working for IBM was a paper route. I was very involved in IBM’s early work on web servcies, particularly the standards bits and how we worked with other companies. Although I consider myself a technologist at heart, I spent almost two years as Director of Marketing for WebSphere.

Any hobbies or fun stuff you want to discuss?
After a 34 year hiatus, I started trying again to learn how to play the guitar last December. Progress is slow, but satisfying. I’m using it as an excuse to learn about music as well. I was always told that people who were good at mathematics were also good at music, but felt it didn’t apply to me. It still might not, but at least the evidence will be empirical rather than anecdotal. I do wish I had started a lot earlier.

How do you describe what you do in your work to your family and those who don’t work in our industry?
Last April I was on an Open Source panel at the Gartner conference in LA and I brought my (then) 7 year old son. He learned a fair bit about the ideas behind it but he really has no sense of, say, what enterprise software is. (He loves Firefox, by the way.) For people outside my immediate family, I tell them I help do things that make computer systems made by different people work together. By the way, the Gartner folks were really great to my son and gave him a badge with his name on it and the word “Companion” where the company name usually goes. He told me that when he grows up he is going to start a company called Companion so he can get into future conferences for free.

What are good things about your job?
I love the broad range of things I get to look at on an everyday basis. I also like working on things like the initiative we announced in October around use of our patents for healthcare and education standards. That is, when we get to do things that might change the direction of the industry, it’s really exciting.

What are things you would change?
Shorter, more efficient conference calls would be a good start. I like travelling and talking to customers, people in industry and government, but I wish that the actual travel time getting there and back wasn’t so consuming and tiring. I think often of Star Trek-like teleportation and wish we could have that today.

What are the biggest challenges at IBM?
Because of our size, there are so many things we do do and could possibly do. There is simply not enough time to do it all. Prioritization is therefore really important. I really value people who are good at that as well as being very efficient communicators. In the area in which I work, the world can change radically every six months. I also value people who accept if not thrive on that.

How did you get started as a blogger?
IBM developerWorks asked me to start a blog in August, 2004, when I was working in the WebSphere area on web services and SOA. I had written byliners for trades like CNet for a few years, so it was actually liberating to be able to say things on a more regular basis in more or fewer than 800 words. I also have a personal blog which is being sadly neglected, but I have big plans for it if I ever get some more free time.

How has that changed your job?
I’ve done probably 75% fewer press interviews but I get my views out more precisely and frequently. In addition to saying whatever I want to say to people outside IBM, I can also talk in a public way to people inside IBM via the blog. It gives me a chance to explain nuances of things to whomever might be interested. When I do meet new people in the industry or members of the media, I’ve often told that they’ve read my blog. That allows us to immediately jump in and discuss things at a deeper level without a lot of background explanation.

Since analysts read this, what would you like to say to them about Standards?
People need much more guidance on what the word “open” means. I think analysts need to start quantifying how open the various standards efforts are in areas like development, maintenance, accession, implementation, and ability to sub-or superset. That is, we need “openness report cards.” Not everyone will be on the honor role, but companies and governments are looking for this information today. As various people have said in business, it’s hard to change things if you can’t measure them.

What are you looking forward to in the upcoming years, either product or how you will work differently?
I’m looking for standards and open source to give me and other people a lot more options in how we get our work done.

Any thing else I missed you want to say?
I think it is really wonderful how something like the OASIS OpenDocument Format is breathing life into the office suite category of software. Standards and open source software themselves do not have to be immediately innovative in order to drive some really innovative and stimulating things downstream. In both of these areas, you must think of the work you do as being an investment in the future. If you take intelligent risks, you can reap big rewards. If you risk nothing or hang on to the status quo too long, others will move past you.

Mantenance update on my blog

On By JohnIn blogging, delusionsLeave a comment

Since I’m stuck between being content free and stuff I can’t say publicly, I decided to do maintenance work on my blog.

I’m starting with adding some links. Although I pick up a lot of IBM’rs through my IBM bloggers link, I’ve paid attention to some analyst comments that IBM’rs link to too many IBM’rs and not enough outsiders. I’ll take suggestions here.

After that, I may start breaking down my blogs based on themes I’ve noticed, like IBM, Karate, my dog and fishing.

IBM and Social Networking (IWB and blogging event)

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, ibm2 Comments

This week, IBM held a Social Networking event hosted by Irving Wladawsky-Berger for the press. Some local analyst’s attended.

On the panel was:

Irving Wladawsky-Berger
IBM VP of IBM Technical Strategy and Innovation

Irene Greif
IBM Fellow and head of the Collaborative User Experience Research Lab

Mike Rhodin
IBM Software Group, Lotus
General Manager of Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software

Bill Ives
Author, Business Blogs: A Practical Guide

Stephen Sparkes
Managing Director, Investment Banking Division, Morgan Stanley

David Weinberger
Author, The Clue Train Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual

Here is the advertisement before the event:
According to Wikipedia, social networks play a “critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.” IBM believes that this model, which has been so successful in the consumer and open source communities with things like Friendster, MySpace, Craigslist, blogs, wikis and other social networking tools and phenomena, can be tapped to drive productivity, collaboration and business insight for the corporate world.

We won’t focus on whether or not CEOs should blog or what is the right and wrong way for business people to engage with bloggers — instead we invite you to hear and discuss the business opportunities we see for our clients.

We will provide a peek at technologies from inside IBM’s Research labs that demonstrate how these social networks can transform how companies work, and perhaps more importantly how they can drive new kinds of collaborative innovation in business. And we’ll explain how IBM plans to help companies deal with these phenomena: from analytics for searching and mining blogs and what to do with that information to make business decisions, to how these social networks can help transform cultures and change the way we work and collaborate.

Here are some blog comments with the analyst questions with the panel’s answers.

Mike Gotta

David Weinberger

Press coverage:
NEWS STORIES

IBM Says That Companies Need to Mine Blogs, Wikis for Vital Business Data
SearchDomino.com

IBM Software Tracks Blogs, Web Content
E-Content Magazine

IBM launches blog content monitoring software
Newswatch, India

IBM Software Tracks Blogs, Web Content to Capture Buzz, Spot Trends Around
Linux Electrons

Blog-Spotting With IBM
InternetNews.com

IBM Discovers What Willis Is Talking About
WebProNews

Aren’t Communities Great – again

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging1 Comment

I stole this title from Steve O’Grady at Tecosystems , partially because I’m in it, but also because it helped me find some lost co-workers.

In an earlier life, I was the Director of Marketing for a Disk Drive supplier that integrated storage and backup products into IBM PC’s and compatibles. I’d lost touch with almost everyone I’d worked with until this weekend when the head of R&D found me on Steve’s blog. Little did he know when he was writing about Danish translation that it was a tech meet up.

So I found out about some folks I used to work with, one of which is now a VP at Fujitsu. Email me Joel if you get this.

SOA for me, I'm off to Richmond

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, ibm2 Comments

I’ll be in Richmond VA. the next two days at an SOA customer event sponsored by WebSphere. It’s the second time in a month I’ve done this, so I’m wondering if there is a trend I should be noticing?

Anyway, I’m helping out a hurricane victim colleague in analyst relations (sorry about that Sara) who was going to be the AR lead there.

Ironically, she lives about a mile from where I moved away from when I left Florida.

So Steve, if you’re reading this, no blogging interview with Willy….but he’s out of the country anyway.

SMB’rs, I won’t be on your call either. I’m a WebSphere pinch hitter. Hope I hold my own at the plate.

IBM Bloggers, who are we? – Ed Brill

On By JohnIn Analyst, bloggerview, blogging, ibm1 Comment


I’m especially excited today, as this interview with Ed Brill is the first (in what I hope is a series) about IBM bloggers. Ed was nice enough to help point out that my RSS feeds got messed up when I switched templates. He performed this act of kindness when he didn’t know me from the next guy at the airport, which as you’ll read is where he’s been quite a bit lately. In another act of kindness, he stayed up late from who knows where to complete this interview.

When I first got on to blogging, Ed was one of the first guys at IBM I read. I encourage all of you to add him to your feeds.. He can also be found at developerWorks. So without further adieu…..Ed Brill.

What is your job title (and what does that really mean as far as your job)?

Business Unit Executive, Worldwide Lotus Notes/Domino Sales. I’m responsible for the success of these products in-market worldwide. That means I work outward — with IBMers, partners, customers to provide the right solution with Notes/Domino, and inward with product management, marketing, development and support to make sure we are building a successful product.

Some work experience that you want to tell?

I’ve been at Lotus for a little more than 11 years. I’ve had a variety of roles: pre-sales engineer, Notes product manager, Domino product marketing, Notes/Domino offerings manager (what most companies call a “brand manager”), Lotus competitive strategy leader. Before IBM/Lotus I was in IT at US Robotics, FTD, and Indiana University Computing Services. I’ve been “online” since 1988.

Any hobbies or fun stuff you want to discuss?

I really enjoy travel and photography. I’m fortunate that my job takes me to all corners of the planet, and I’ve visited 45 countries so far (30+ for business). I rollerblade when I can. I work out of a home office in my hometown, which is a really interesting thing when you consider the global nature of our company and specifically my role.

How do you describe what you do to your family and those who don’t work in our industry?

Heh — I tell them that I’m responsible for selling Lotus Notes. We have good brand recognition so a lot of people know the product even if they don’t use it. My mom used Notes at her last job before she retired. If they don’t know Lotus Notes, I just tell them I work in computer software or “internet stuff”.

What are good things about your job?

My job is an MBA-by-fire — I get involved in all aspects of running a market-leading, mainstream product for IBM. I get to talk to customers every single day. I work from home, and love the flexibility that offers. I work with a product that gets press and analysts talking, that draws customers to conferences, and that continues to confound and irritate my competitors. Most of all, I have met and continue to meet some really amazing people.

What are things you would change?

I’d like to be able to get more mindshare for my product within IBM. I’d like to be able to react to market conditions more quickly than sometimes is possible.

What are the biggest challenges at IBM?

IBMers have hundreds of solutions we can talk about with customers — hardware, software, services, business consulting, training, even financing. Our competitors like Microsoft and Oracle get to have laser-sharp focus when they talk to CIOs and CEOs. It would be great if I could have every IBMer talking to every customer about Lotus Notes. I’m sure every product leader at IBM would say the same thing 🙂

How did you get started as a blogger?

My friend Volker Weber encouraged me to try it out, not necessarily with a goal in mind but because I’ve always enjoyed writing publicly. Over time, it evolved into a way to continue the one-to-one interaction I’ve had with customers in our online product forums over the years, with more focus.

How has that changed your job?

I consider my blog to be a critical part of how I can be successful in my job. I get a sense as to what is going on in the market, and my customers know that they have a source for up-to-the-minute, unfiltered information. I’ve been able to win in the market, and especially been able to defend against competitors who are more liberal with their use of fear/uncertainty/doubt in the market, all through the voice of the blog and the blog-o-sphere.

Since analysts read this, what would you like to say to them about Lotus?

The analysts are mostly saying encouraging and positive things about Lotus these days. I’ve been pleased that they mostly recognize that Lotus has successfully passed through a technology transition period, and that the Lotus business is presently successful and growing. I think what I’d like analysts to consider is more around applying a critical eye to some of the messages coming from my competitors, either about their actual vs. perceived success or the robustness of their solutions.

What are you looking forward to in the upcoming years, either products or how you will work differently?

I’m really looking forward to the evolution into a full contextual collaboration era, with some of the tools IBM Research has been building for the last few years coming into actual shipping products. Specifically, I’m really interested in convergence of mobile/pervasive devices, instant messaging and VoIP, and other tools that will really be intelligent about message delivery and filtering.

Any thing else I missed you want to say?

I think the market will notice soon that there has been a huge increase in the number of IBM bloggers in the last few months. We have some strong and important voices, and my IBMer blogroll grows by the day. We might not have been the first company to embrace blogging, but it’s becoming increasingly important in how we embrace the IBM values around customer success and personal responsibility. I’m not afraid to tackle the tough questions customers are asking, and I think more and more we will see supply chain and vendor transparency like that in-market.

A Long Day, and my Exhaust

On By JohnIn blogging, delusions, family, humor, partnersLeave a comment

Actually, it’s been 2 long days. I’m on a task that’s critical to our partner program and strategy. Why we’re doing what we’re doing and not out buying companies is making more sense to me every time we speak to analysts. Look for more on this topic in a couple of days. I’m hoping the analysts out blog me on this.

Between that and trying to fix the template on my blog site, it’s been a long couple of days. Although I didn’t realize it, my blogs are longer than I imagined, so I picked a different template that will allow for more text to be read on one screen. While doing this, i messed up all my RSS feeds and links and it took a day to fix. The good news is Ed Brill found it for me and I fixed it. The real good news is that he agreed to an interview, so I can’t wait to get that out as it seems the interviews are well received.

Now for the lighter side. My wife borrowed my truck to help a friend move. I recently had to replace the exhaust and being the Redneck that I am, I bought the loudest one I could find. The mechanic told me, “you won’t be sneaking up on anyone now”. Anyway, my wife’s friend completes the story and makes my day when my wife started up the truck to leave. Her friend says, you’re exhaust is really loud, maybe it’s broken. Life was good at that moment for me.

I know the New Yorkers deduct IQ points from southerners for stuff like this, but this goes back to an earlier post on why it’s good to be a guy. We get to play with toys all our life.

IBM analyst relations, who are we? – Nancy Riley

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, ibm3 Comments

I’d like to point out that Jacqueline Bisset got this picture of Nancy before plastic surgery as the model for the doctor to work towards.

I’ve worked with Nancy longer than all but two other people at IBM. Our paths crossed in PR and AR, Networking and Software. We have a good working relationship that is based on the trust that when either one of us is on the job, we have confidence that it will get done right, without much intervention.

As with the other interviews, I don’t edit the answers so you hear it from the person as is.

What is your job title (and what does that really mean as far as your job)?
Manager, WebSphere Analyst Relations — I manage a team of seven analyst relations professionals who interface with analysts who cover the application integration middleware space. Our product areas include SOA, ESB, web services, application server, integration, business process management, mobile middleware, and industry solutions based on middleware.

Some work experience that you want to tell?
My background is in communications and I’ve held lots of different comms roles in IBM, including marketing comms, field/internal comms, event planning, public relations and analyst relations. My previous job was as a PR manager, representing networking, security and e-commerce software products. My first job at IBM — and probably my most fun job ever — was developing marketing programs to sell computers to college students. We went to Daytona Beach for spring break and tossed IBM-logoed frisbees on the beach. Talk about job satisfaction!

How do you describe what you do?
We’re responsible for maintaining and promoting positive interactions with analysts and often that means putting them in touch with subject matter experts or supplying product information. We help the IBM teams distill their information and package it in ways that make it easy for analysts to digest, so that they in turn can advise their clients about our products. We hire analysts to help us refine our product and marketing strategies to make them understandable to all different sorts of customers.

When I tell my relatives what I do, I just say I work really long hours but I get to go to conferences at nice hotels and leave it at that.

What are good things about your job?
I work with a great team. I love the interaction with analysts — we learn a lot from them and it truly helps shape our product and marketing strategies. I get to be in meetings with a lot of really smart people. I like being able to influence the thinking of an analyst who maybe doesn’t think our products are as great as we think they are. Did I mention that I work with a great team? : )

What are things you would change?
As with any large company, sometimes we get bogged down in the internal bureaucracy and politics. Metrics reporting kills me. The number of internal meetings I have to attend kills me. We are often the first out the door with new announcements because we have to brief analysts well in advance of the official announcement, and it’s always a lot of last-minute thrashing. I would make it illegal to create a Powerpoint presentation that’s more than 20 pages and/or greater than 5 MB. (I can dream, right?) I would also have more in-person interaction, both with analysts and IBMers; we spend WAY too much time on conference calls.

Name a funny analyst story.
I’ve been around a long time, so permit me two funny stories.
(1) I was project managing an analyst briefing hosted by the IBM chairman. The meeting was being held at the very lovely Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto. After an exhausting day, I collapsed into bed around midnight. At 2 am, the fire alarm went off. I jolted out of bed, threw on some clothes and shoes, and headed down 30 flights of stairs. About half-way down, I realized I had two different shoes on and hoped I wouldn’t see anyone I knew when I got to the lobby. When I got to the lobby, I found I was WAY overdressed because most everyone else — including MANY of the analysts attending our meeting — were there in their plush Four Seasons bathrobes. It was so hard to maintain a professional demeanor when what I really wanted to do was crack up at seeing all those analysts in their bathrobes! Wish I’d had a camera — would be great blackmail…

(2) I was hosting two analysts at a strategy planning meeting at an IBM site. Since we were all staying at the same hotel, I drove them to and from the meeting. On the way back to the hotel after the meeting, not only did I get lost, I got a speeding ticket (but come on, I was doing like 46 in a 35 mph zone). I tried to explain to the officer that I was lost, didn’t know the speed limit, etc, all to no avail. To their credit, the analysts were very sympathetic (and said I should submit the ticket on my expense account).

Describe an analyst win situation for you.
It’s always a great feeling to see an analyst quoted in the Wall Street Journal (ok, CNET is cool, too) with a really pithy and positive quote about our products. That’s something I can show my mom to prove to her what a great job I’m doing.

Describe an analyst disaster for you. (no names)
I’ve given out wrong telecon numbers more times than I care to remember. I’ve scheduled back to back calls with the same number and passcode so that caller #2 arrives on the line before we’re finished with caller #1. I’ve sent the wrong presentation. I’ve introduced people by the wrong name. They’re all just minor disasters though, right?

What would you like the analysts to do differently, suggestions of what would help both sides maybe.
I’d really love for them to schedule a conference in Maui. Aside from that, I’d like more turnaround time on the reports they send us for fact-checking. I’d like “group rates” from the larger firms when we’re engaging multiple analysts for consulting. I’d like easier rules for quoting analyst content in presentations and collateral. I’d like all of them to be as cool as James (let’s see if he reads this).

Any thing else I missed you want to say?
Considering that there are less than 200 people in our company of 300,000+ who do what we do, we should all feel very privileged to do this job! I know that’s hard to remember sometimes, but we are on the cutting edge of what’s going on with IBM Software and that alone can be a very cool thing!

What I was going to blog about today, only to get messed up

On By JohnIn blogging, competitors, fishingLeave a comment

I had planned on blogging today about the IBM/RedHat Emerging Markets announcement today Businessweek , but that’s gonna get covered in the press. Move on from that one.

As I was reading the news, I saw this comment, Oracle “continues to fail, will continue to fail, and we’re going to help them in every way we can,” Bill McDermott, chief executive of SAP’s North American unit. I was thinking, here’s a potential rant. How the heck does he know whether it will fail or not? Is he a blowhard? Is he a good soapboxer? Is he looking for some spotlight? Actually, it reminds me a lot of political speech where you can call your opponent a collie molester and then he/she has to defend that they don’t molest collies while digging a huge hole.

So now I’m up to two subjects and I’m debating two blogs or a catch all for news today. Or I could just link to them via del.icio.us.

Here’s where my day went bad. My pal Jblog , writes today about how google blog search is and that he found his own blog.

Ok, I’m hooked, I googled my own blog and found four other blogs with the same name as mine. I’ll save myself the trouble of linking to them, you can play with Google Blog Search.

I thought I had sort of a creative name, only to find out that I’m late to the party once again, without a gift. Some of the other delusions were pretty good reads. I’ve got work to do.

So I rumble a few subjects through my mind to post about during the day to try and be witty, or humorous, or perhaps insightful (don’t worry, one day I will be) and right before I blog, any thoughts of having a original or imaginative name are shot down like I had the Red Baron on my tail.

Well, at least I got some new baits from Manns Bait Company which they’ve asked me to test this weekend. Think I’ll go fishing and stop crying about my blog. By next post, I’ll have decided on a single subject that readers can go away from with a modicum of content.

Dell Hell – the power of blogging

On By JohnIn blogging, competitorsLeave a comment

This is not news to real bloggers, but it struck me a couple of ways what it’s like out there.

First, it’s tough to be #1. Dell has been number one for a while in the PC space. It’s tough to get to be #1 at anything, then it’s tough to stay there. Everyone shoots at #1, from football to business to retail. Those shots come in the form of paradigm shifts to sniping. Worst of all, it can come from within….What’s the saying? A house divided against itself can’t stand? Think it goes something like that.

Here’s a paradigm shift. Blogging. Jeff Jarvis BuzzMachine talked about his tech support nightmare with Dell. It then goes all over the blogosphere and Dell has a customer support perception problem. As we know, perception is reality in a lot of cases, so they have support and perception problems to deal with.

To properly navigate the stream of the business world while pleasing your customers is very tricky. Not that customer support took down every company, but I’ll be everyone knows a company they don’t buy from anymore ’cause they made you mad. Customers vote with their money.

Do I think this will take Dell down from their top position? No way. Not on this by itself, but big companies (and number 1’s) have to fight a lot of battles to stay on top, internal and external…real and perceived.

Steve, we've got your Hotel room confirmed, or now I know blogging is fully mainstream

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, humor2 Comments

We’re holding a blogging roundtable in NYC with some analysts, interesting IBM’ers and academia. I have the analyst portion. These events are in the realm of cool when you hear what’s being said and people that will be there.

Normally in the course of communications, we confirm with email, voicemail or conversations. This is not possible for one of the analysts who is on the road right now. I’ve left every way I know as to how to reach him, but travel prohibits contact right now.

So I call his colleague (James) in hopes of him contacting Steve first. Then the revelation hits home when James tells me, just put it on your blog, he might read that first.

So here it is. STEVE, WE GOT YOUR HOTEL AND CONFIRMATION. PLEASE CHECK THE NOTE I SENT FOR THE DETAILS

So blog before email? a new paradigm?

More on Spam

On By JohnIn blogging, delusionsLeave a comment

Due to the wonderful invention of automated spam, I’ve set my comment policy to word verification. You get to type in a word that appears, then comments are free as usual. I battled back and forth as to whether this was within blog protocol, and finally decided to give it an experimental try.  It has allowed me to filter out idiots like Catherine Helzerman who weirded out at while working at IBM and finally left. Word has it that she pets cats now after her team called her a traitor.

So once more, an experience in blogging for me. A lot of bloggers have already fought this battle, perhaps you could give me your suggestions as to how you managed this.

How long does a blog take to get around?

On By JohnIn blogging, delusions4 Comments

Well, it looks like from 1 to 22 days according to responses I have.

Yesterday, I was paid the (maybe not so) ultimate expression of existence, I’m now being spammed.

On the first day, the guy I named my blog after, Joe Trippi commented on my blog. That seemed a whole lot more genuine.

I took a calculated risk by being the first IBM blogger, but it affords me the luxury of doing what I want since no one else here has a clue, especially corporate communications who thinks the world revolves around major media and not much else matters.  They lose their mind when the ever declining NY Times so much as picks their nose.  This works for me as I don’t have to deal with those losers (both parties above) and get to do work that they don’t realize is going on as they don’t have a clue what a blog is (unless they ask me).

What I know and they don’t is that social media is the way influential people want to communicate.  They are inundated by emails, telephone calls and the corporate flacks like the above mentioned.

I guess I’m now in the beginning of being in the masses of the blogosphere. Maybe I give myself too much credit, accept my apologies if that is the case.

In my title, I said I’d talk about my escapades of being a blogger, there you have it, a new target for spam.

Blogging at IBM, a snowball rolling down hill

On By JohnIn analyst relations, bias, blogging, Elitism, ibm, obvious, partners, Public Relations, screw ups, unqualifiedLeave a comment

This time last year, we put up the developerWorks blog as the first external IBM blog site. It was a small snowball barely dropped from the top of Mount IBM.  It turns out be an end around being able to blog at IBM who now want to establish a company wide policy that will smother and restrict effective blogging communications.  Fortunately, IBM Corporate Comm’s is clueless and so behind the times and we were able to put this site up under their noses without much effort.  Since we did it without asking, it now can’t be taken down as too many people look to this site for blogs.  Many people are trying to get on to it so for now, we control the outbound blog content unlike comm’s department in Armonk which moves at the speed of smell.

Armonk communications is a bubble that can’t see past New York, led by a hot head who ran Ed Koch’s liberal political campaign.  Their lack of vision is the bane of much of the sterile communications that you read about when IBM is discussed.  While they see it as a well oiled machine, the rest of the comm’s team who actually does all the work, know that they are a ball and chain that has to be worked around to get anything done.  The developerWorks blog site is a prime example of how to work around people such as those in Armonk.

It’s funny, almost like the tail wagging the dog, as we are doing what we want, whenever we want, while the rest of every word written from IBM goes under the microscope at the home office, effectively removing any creativity or actual information that might be helpful.  If you don’t believe it, read a press release.  It is quite enjoyable to usurp the Stalin like control that they try to impose on everyone else, and act like a regular company who understands how to deal with the media.

I decided to list my blog there as I was the first official blogger for IBM analyst relations and have set many of the policies up until now, including starting and running blogging for IBM A/R.  When the corporate communications machine finds a way to destroy the effectiveness through obsessive guidelines overseen by people who have never written or likely read a blog, any control I currently have will diminish.  They are so paranoid from the monopoly trial that they manage to put effective PR into the stone ages. Fortunately, they are so obsessed with the media right now, the most effective communications program is on the analyst side as they don’t understand what it is.  Anytime they try to interfere, they treat A/R like pr and look silly.

At that point, my blog may or may not be on the corporate site depending on the rules and guidelines. Since I don’t care what they say (and best of all am not in NY, which the powers that be can’t see beyond) and have learned to be more creative about communicating through social media than they have, I’ll make that decision as needed on my terms.  I’ll likely then be on new social media platforms that are industry wide so it won’t be tough to stay ahead of them while keeping current with the rest of the world.  Since they move so slowly for fear of actually stepping out into the real world, I won’t have to worry about it for a while.

With prodding from the outside (thanks to the analyst community) and many unconnected but interesting bloggers, we got the fever. Now there is the internal blog with thousands of bloggers going at it (another IBM communication killer since the audience is IBM’ers), a mainframe blog, gamers and worst of all attention on this from the top.

What I see is momentum for blogging that started as grass-roots inertia (bottom up, not the usual top down) which I believe is best (ask RIM or Palm). Sure, we were a bit later than some companies, but it won’t be that long for us to catch up. Fortunately, I started my blog and put up the developerWorks site like we did and that is how it will be done.  All we need is a few rock stars to start writing.

Now the blog plan is prominent in the outreach plans for new products and announcements.  Normal companies do this and since I came from the outside where I honed my skills staying ahead of companies like IBM, it is important to connect on terms with the audience that are mutually agreeable and most effective.  I knew that I’d already won and would get the message of the company I represented if there were IBM communicaitons people in the room.  Sure, they were the 800 lb. gorrilla in the room, but as soon as I got time with the media or analysts, they were far more likely to work with me as A) I wasnt’ trying to write their story and B) I actually was working in the 20th or 21st century.  I’ll bet those same comm’s folks were hell with tabulation machines and IBM 360’s.

So it’s more like cells dividing, people from all over the world in IBM are jumping on this as they should. Many of the execs who are the busiest people in the world are blogging Buell Duncan and IWB.

I’ve watched trends for a while at IBM, lots of hype at first, then some catch on or fizzle out, but this one has legs…the snowball is now big, and for now the only blog site at IBM until the wonks in IBM corporate communications figure out how to sterilize this also.  The fact that I can write this clearly shows that they have no clue about social media at this point, nor do they move faster than cold honey.

If you’re reading this, you likely had something to do with IBM blogging brought to you by developerWorks. Thanks.  We offer more information on a timely basis that is more meaningful than you’d ever find from the wonks in Armonk.

Steve Mills on developers

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, ibm, partnersLeave a comment

I’m linking to this as it is an interview by Amy Wohl with Steve Mills and his take on developers.

Steve Mills on developers

I won’t spoil the read, but he talks about Linux, SWG’s different constituencies, and why IBM is different than Sun and HP.

Steve is a very interesting person, and since he’s very deep on many subjects, always a good read.

Today's SWG A/R blogging Inquiry

On By JohnIn Analyst, blogging, fishing, ibm3 Comments


I work with some of the best analyst relations folks you could want to work with. We constantly strive for better methods/tactics and ways to improve how we do our jobs.

Today, we had an inquiry with RedMonk on writing blogs. All in all, it went well. I received several instant messages during and after the call about how informative this was.

The call of course was led by Steve O’Grady and James Governer. Each offered insight into how and why we could/should do this, and tips on how to be a better blogger. Not that I want to give our competition an advantage over us, but these guys know what they are talking about. Just google “do blogs work” and see who’s on top.

Personally, I liked the part when Steve mentioned fishing when discussing personal things about yourself and how to build relationships between analysts and a/r representatives. Of course, it’s one of my favorite topics and I knew he referred to some of our conversations (see my 14 spot redfish above).

I still find the most compelling reason to do this was a statement that was made regarding how the next job interview would go when the interviewer asks, “Where is the link to your blog”. That is a jaw dropper if you don’t have one.

So back to my teammates. I wonder if the law of averages or a bell curve applies here. Some will, some won’t, some will do it right away, others will get around to it? I don’t know. These ladies and gentlemen are very tenacious and adapt to new tools to get their job done, so I wonder who’s going to blog. I hear banter from the team about what good writers some are and that they would be good at this. My guess is that is true and I’m sure they would be interesting.

As for me, like a lot of things I do, repetition overcomes a lack of talent.

I know we strive to be leaders, so I challenge you guys to get out there and blog.

Next blogging steps

On By JohnIn blogging, delusionsLeave a comment

When I originally started this blog, it was a self education issue. Afterall, I’m on a number of blogging committee’s at IBM, so I should be true to my cause.  I was the first blogger for Analyst Relations and set up the policies for a/r blogging.

My intentions were to post about what was going on in A/R, things I found interesting and some blogging progress I was making. I didn’t (and still don’t) have intentions of hitting the A-list for bloggers, but it happened anyway.

Nevertheless, part of doing any job right is delving into how things work to make it better. So today I added some links via feedburner like stat count, buzzboost for publicity and a headline animator for prior posts. I set up a del.icio.us account and will use that also. Modest improvements, but still on the plus side of progress.

I’ll be attacking trackback, not offered on blogger, but through a third-party source soon.

I’m open to suggestions that make this a legitimate blog with respect to protocol. All in the spirit of learning and improving.

IBM and Cool in the same sentence, Gaming

On By JohnIn blogging, ibm research, technology1 Comment

The marketing at some companies is really cool. You look at it and say wow, or you can imagine yourself going 196 MPH in that Porsche, maybe you see yourself rocking to your favorite tunes from your iPod. By contrast, other companies are stoic about marketing and plod along, which is ok for water heaters or area rugs.

IBM is in between, and shouldn’t be. I don’t ever imagine myself driving 196 mph in a mainframe computer, but sometimes you look at a product and say this is great, but somehow it doesn’t come off that way.

The under told story is that IBM makes some of the coolest products in our industry. Most folks don’t know it, but if they ever took a look at the products and design from IBM Research, you’d say I’d like to have one of these and you’d feel way cool about showing it off. Now, it would be nice to have shark storage capability in an iPod, but that would be difficult to wear on my belt, but I digress. The under told story is that we are in some great area’s like gaming.

IBM makes the processors for all the game boxes…GameCube, Xbox and PS2. You might say so what, but with those names you cover the majority of the non handheld gaming business. I have a teenager, so games are a part of my life without me having a say in the matter. I know that it’s a market with upside potential for sales and design…there are lots of teenagers and preteens with an insatiable appetite for video games. I ask, how many of these boxes are being sold and how many are going to be sold this upcoming Christmas?

Read about it at the Gamer Blog . Maybe you won’t be jazzed like playing “From Dirt to Daytona” but hey, IBM and cool are in the same sentence – the engine driving the game is ours. Maybe they’ll blog about virtual reality gaming soon, I don’t know. If you’re old enough to remember the movie “Lawnmower Man”, I know I could get amped to play in VR, and would like to know about it when it’s close to my home.

P.S. I’m going to talk more about Research sometime in the future because some of the most fantastic stuff you can imagine is there. IBM helped take man to the moon in the 60’s, and it’s come a long way since then.

Epilogue: It went nowhere as IBM left the chip business.  IBM and cool were never really in the same sentence.  Think of the blue suit, white shirt and red tie.  That is a better vision of reality.

Why Delusions of Adequacy

On By JohnIn blogging, delusions4 Comments

Because with all the content out in the blogosphere, I’m not out to get or will ever be qualified for a pulizter. I’m going to put the things that interest me and products I work with and hope for the best.

While I don’t subscribe to his political beliefs, I do credit Joe Trippi for the name.

http://joetrippi.com

He was out there and dug into blogging and made it a part of his job. Guess what, that’s what I’m trying to do. Wish me luck.

With this, I become the first official blogger for IBM.  I’ve been asked by the V.P. of Analyst Relations to set up a program for the company as well as policies related to this new practice.  I hope to set a trend.