Bubbles

This post is gonna sound crazy but I can't recommend enough a new off broadway show for kids if you live or happen to be in the NYC area. Its called the Gazillion Bubble Show

Its a fantastic show about an hour long. The guy who does the show apparently holds many Guiness Book of World Records for the largest bubble blowing.

Seems Like Forever

My grandfather, Warren Morgan, died last week. He was nearly 98 years old. He lived a great long life. I am working on a family photo montage as a tribute to his life for the services next week. This was my grandfather’s graduation picture.

As I look at all the photos of his life, I am reminded of one of my favorite movies with Robin Williams – Dead Poets Society. Maybe we all think we have forever as we look into the camera at all those special moments in time.

My earliest memory of my grandfather was really building the cabin on Lake Coeur d’Alene that my parents now have. I was about 5 or 6 and my hand print is in the foundation of the place. That couple of summers were really rough as my grandfather, uncle Chuck and my dad worked hard just getting the raw materials out to the cabin for construction (let alone the building part). That cabin was just the third on the whole bay at Benion Point at the time circa 1970 (now there are hundreds perhaps a thousand) in that same area. The roads in to the cabin at that time were incredible rough and steep compared with the one that exists today.

What I really remember about the work is how my grandfather actually truly enjoyed the work particularly with my dad. My dad and I have carried on the tradition since every time I go to the cabin I really enjoy some major building project that we do together. As I child I just couldn’t grasp the concept of “enjoying work” particularly hard physical labor.

At that time like most kids my age, I was into play, swimming, crafts, really anything but work. In those days even leisure on the lake took considerable work. You literally had to climb to get to the beach over huge pieces of driftwood, stumps and other lake debris. A far cry from the way it is today with a pristine beach with grass right down to the shore. Pictured here is the first speed boat (one of his prized possessions) my grandfather bought at the cabin (seated left to right is my cousin Laurie, my cousin Mark and Grandma Morgan)

It was really no different in town at their home in Spokane, Washington; Grandpa Morgan was always working / puttering with some kind of project. His favorite work really was his wood shop buried deep in the back of their basement. He had a full size wood lathe that we carved wood bowls and dowels as well as dozens of other saws and special wood working tools.

In honor of my grandfathers passing I am uploading his life story that he wrote in 1997. We will all miss him.

Alternative Energy…Yes But

I had the great opportunity this year to work with three bright young women in building their sixth grade science fair project from left to right, samantha, olivia (my lovely daughter) and meredith. The construction was fun and I think the girls learned quite a bit from the experiment.

Inside an old doll house that we purchased on ebay they installed lighting and other devices that use power. They learned about different wiring systems and how much the different appliances consumed in terms of load and how they can be hooked in series versus parallel.

On the power source side they constructed three separate green power sources that could power all the circuits in the house. 1) Chemical batteries made by hand that were really cool; 2) Solar cells mounted on the roof and ; 3) Hand crank generators that they could crank manually to generate the requisite power;

The girls did a full presentation to their class where they were asked a bunch of questions from their classmates. They handled the questions really well.

As I stood there in my normal role of "tech support" and "dad", I began to wonder will this be the generation that actually once and for all conquers this energy mess? I am optimistic after watching these three passionately talk in front of their peers about it. I hope for the best and would like to do more in my own life to build a green lifestyle.

On Innovation

Wow it has been a while since I have written not because I didn't want to (as I said previously I love this so far) but I have been so busy both in my professional and personal life. This particular post is about my professional life more than my personal life.

There has been a ton of debate at my company recently about "Innovation". Based on this I want to set the record straight about where I stand on the topic. True innovation is a combination of three disciplines (in no particular order technology, business and design) coming together in perfect unity. I constructed this diagram to show my perspective on innovation. It is not just about technology or design. A very key part is the business perspective. Is the idea viable? How can we make money? How can we be honest with our consumer/audience (ie no dirty tricks)? How do we make larger company goals about valuation and yet make a great product. My point is that innovation IS a balance.

Innovation is NOT a commodity. It is hard to get because it is indeed a balance of all three of these disciplines (technology, design and business).
I believe that the key part that we have been missing on a project I have been working on recently is the business perspective. We are largely a B2B company selling advertising and don't have much of a consumer presence. Our CEO has asked us to have a consumer based product line yet we are mainly pursuing B2B opportunities.

This project is an example of having great technology, great design yet without a business model we cannot truly succeed. We are missing the third leg in my diagram. Furthermore, if we just simply pursue the "normal" business model for the company (advertising) we may not have an innovative product. After all the consumer in an advertiser-based business is the ad agency not the consumer.

OK so my first tool sucked!

Alright, I admit my first tool (bloglines.com) stunk so I have switched to the tool that most of you recommended - WordPress.

It just took me an evening to get it setup on my PHP host. It's looking good although I haven't had time to change all the default templating stuff but I am up and running on a pretty decent template package. Maybe I'll trade services with our design master -- Bob C. to get me some real customized looks:)

I am still dabbling with the Movable Type product as it might work great for my family blog. I am sure I will have plenty of stupid questions to bug my team with about these packages.

I’m Liking It!

3/13/07

My second blog entry – Thanks team for shaming me into this. I kind of like it!

It was the second and last day of our Oxygen Media Ad Sales conference in Miami Florida today and typical of such events there was the perfunctory closing remarks (glad handing, thanks, Rah! Rah!, etc.). Believe me even though this is my first O2 sales/marketing conference, I have been to plenty as I worked as a sales professional albeit in another industry for 5+ years. I have no concerns that this combined team will meet or surpass its goals for the year.

We had a great speaker today about personal performance – Raquel Malo, Energy for Performance. Everything she said about personal performance seemed reasonable. Her biggest point was to make sure you maximize focus/energy for whatever you are doing in life (professional, personal, etc.). In other words make it count. This has always been a personal belief of mine.

My thoughts about her talk was does the same apply to teams? My belief is “yes”. I look at my teams and those of others responsible for creating products at Oxygen Media and I think it’s also true. If teams maximize focus and energy they tend to achieve goals.

The process we use in software development (Agile Development) certainly is designed around this key concept so it supports this premise and indeed I think most would agree that we achieve this at Oxygen.

Another, example that became very obvious to me at this Ad Sales conference was our programming department. Although I am observing this as an outsider it seems like a few years ago that we focused on too many different kinds of programming. In the last couple of years the team has really focused on romantic comedy and reality as a concept (primarily with a few exceptions) and we have really had a few hits and I think the ratings show the results of the focus and energy. Debbie Beece and her team deserve a great deal of credit for this change and momentum.

A counter example though is that I feel our online offering suffers greatly from a lack of focus and building out significant features that our audience expects. The net result is that we are too scattered. We have too many ideas and features none of which is really prioritized higher than any other one. We tend to try and do too many things rather than less of them but really focused on the consumer.

My First Blog Post

My first blog entry – I really can’t believe I am doing this…damn my own team has shamed me into this!

I was fortunate enough to attend our recent Sales Conference for Oxygen Media in Miami Florida. I am told that this year was over the top and even though I can’t judge for sure this year (because it is my first time going at Oxygen Media), I felt the conference was great. Not only was the environmental element impressive (come on what’s wrong with the Mandarin Oriental in Miami Florida for Christ Sake, 82 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, 5 star spa resort, swimming pool, custom white sand beach, you get the picture, if not here’s the link).

I have to say it was a great time to bond with my colleagues from our Ad Sales department, Affiliate Sales department and Marketing (all teams). I was very impressed with not only the people in the departments but their shared vision and outcome. It got me to thinking about the teams I manage (IT and software development) and how we share a vision.

Both of my teams have this strength about sharing a vision and pulling for it but in distinctly different ways. In both cases it works equally well and it’s all about the commitment of the team and the leadership at the top. If either of those is out of whack it doesn’t work. The meetings with all the sales & marketing groups at Oxygen further convinced me that the outcome can be the same if both elements exist – commitment of the team and the leadership at the top.

Indeed my job now is to get my teams to work with these fantastic groups even more than they already do and advertise the product expertise that we have and how that can help sales and marketing at Oxygen. I was inspired by how all these teams work together and how I think we can help them by offering a superior product for them to sell and market.