Thankfulness…

As I sit here in my home on our first US Thanksgiving since moving into our new home, I’m struck by how truly blessed I am. I have a job that I love – it challenges me and grows my skill-set daily – and I work with some truly brilliant people who help me strive to become even better. I’m working for a company with a lot of passion and soul – a company dwarfed in size by our two main competitors, yet several times a year we show the world what a smartphone pushing design and technological boundaries looks like. I’m blessed to have a strong, wonderful wife that understands and appreciates the work I do, and is incredibly supportive of my efforts to give HTC my best. My son is the purest joy I have in my life, and he’s a smart, funny, kind-hearted little man whom I have the honour of helping grow up. I also have supportive extended family who encourage me and my family in our new “faraway land”.

I am humbled to have been given all these things, and for them, and so much more, I am thankful.

What are you thankful for?

Image above found here.

Is Twitter a River or a Glass of Water? Depends On Who You Ask

Twitter, like all social networks, doesn’t come with a rulebook. Sure, there are technical limitations to what you can and can’t do with it, but just like all flexible communication technologies that came before it – faxing, email, texting, IM, etc. – the way it’s used is defined by the people who are using it. Different peer groups will have different implementations; the way two 30-something’s text is radically different from the way two tweener’s text.

Twitter is no different. Over the couple of years I’ve been using Twitter, I’ve been surprised – and sometimes amused – at the friction caused by mis-aligned expectations of how Twitter “should” be used. I’ve been asked a couple of times to explain how I use Twitter, so here’s that long-overdue blog post.

I think in general there are two camps on Twitter: those that treat it like a river and those that treat it like a glass of water.

Twitter as a River: Your Twitter stream is a rushing flow of information. You follow many hundreds or thousands of people, and what you see from them is what is in your feed when you open up your Twitter client. You see what’s flowing when you step into the river, and when you step out, everything keeps flowing. When you come back to it, what came before doesn’t matter because there’d be too much to try and read. You can follow as many people as you want because unless they have an ultra-high output on Twitter, you may never see what they tweet. Oh, and if you’re following thousands of people and claiming you’re reading everything they tweet, you’re either lying or unemployed (or maybe both).

Twitter as a Glass of Water: Your Twitter stream is a large glass of water. It’s something you can drink in one sitting, or maybe you sip it regularly throughout the day. You follow a few dozen people (or maybe a hundred low-volume streams), but you read everything they post. When you load up your Twitter client, you scroll back to read what you missed. You take it all in.

I treat Twitter as a glass of water; right now I follow around 100 people/companies, but more than half don’t even post daily. The exceptions are sometimes Engadget and Business Insider; their output is so heavy I often skip past Tweets (especially Business Insider – I’ve unfollowed several times because they tend to get pretty spammy).

When I start to follow someone, I’m going to read everything they post. If, after a few days/weeks their Twitter subject matter isn’t interesting to me and/or their volume of tweets is overwhelming, I un-follow. I could say it’s nothing personal, but it kind of is – your Twitter stream is a partial reflection of who you are as a person, and what interests you. I think Twitter works best when people find the topics that interest them the most rather than the people (unless the person they’re following is consistently tweeting about one topic).

When I un-follow someone on Twitter, and they notice and ask me why (which is a bit awkward in itself, but I don’t shirk from answering), my response is typically along these lines – that they either tweet too much for me (too much noise and not enough signal), or what they’re tweeting about is on a topic that doesn’t interest me. I’m not offended if someone stops following me on Twitter, but I tend to find most people don’t share that reaction – I’ve had more than a few people get offended and hurt when I stop following them. I don’t know if there’s a way around that without being dishonest.

I don’t pretend that everything I tweet is going to be of interest to the whole world, but I do try to post thoughtful comments or questions that add value in some way through insight, humour, or something I’ve discovered worth sharing. I do not tweet “Good morning”, I do not tweet “Good night”, I do not tweet that I’m hungry, or that I’m sleepy. I ask myself with every tweet if what I’m posting is worth a few seconds of someone’s time or not. How I wish more people did that! If, however, you’re using Twitter as a personal diary and posting only for your own benefit, that’s fine – but don’t get offended when someone doesn’t want to follow you.

Ultimately the strength of Twitter is that I can follow you without you following me; it’s an asynchronous system that works well, even when we all have different ways of using it.

River image courtesy of this site; glass of water courtesy of this one.

Another Piece of My Web History Archived: The Two Inch View

As I transition from my old life to my new life – that sounds so dramatic, doesn’t it? – I’m letting certain domains lapse and taking projects from an “archived on their own domain” state to a “archived on this site” state. I think the Internet is one of the greatest made-made creations there is, and I hate to see any of the information shared on it – no matter how trivial – be obliterated.

I’m especially thankful to the creators of HTTrack Website Copier for making a tool that allows people like me to take our work and archive a whole domain’s worth to a single folder. Comments get lost in the case of a WordPress blog, which is a shame, but it’s a small price to pay for the ability to archive an entire site.

I won’t pretend that archiving the site below is anything other than an ego trip of wanting to remember the work I did in years past, but as someone who has a passion for keeping digital memories of all sorts, this is something I’d been planning for a while.

The Two Inch View was a Web site I created under contract for Microsoft. This was back in the heady days of Pocket PCs, Smartphones (note the capital “S” on that), and Portable Media Centers (a.k.a PMCs). A contact of mine at Microsoft wanted an “instant content portal”, so I created one. It was all real content, written by me, but it was created to support specific marketing pushes – each month I’d suggest topics for them, and we’d decide what would get written about. It was a fun little sandbox to play in, different from Pocket PC Thoughts and my other sites.

The amazing WordPress theme was designed by my friend, Fabrizio Fiandanese, and I recall getting several messages a month asking where I got the WordPress theme from, whether or not it was for sale, etc. It was a beautiful Web site for its time (and still is).

In my current role for HTC and dealing with vendors, I kind of chuckle at some of the ways I thought back when I did this project…if only I knew then what I know now! Enough talk, into the archives it goes…

Making it Easy for Your Potential Customer to Use Your Service

This is the first post in a while that deals with the topic of business…this is a subject I want to start to explore more on this blog. I don’t feel blessed with much spare time at the moment, but it’s important for me to continue to write somewhere, lest I become too rusty. So here goes…

I was in Mexico recently on vacation, and on the way through the airport in Puerto Vallarta I was reminded again what a clever design the airport has for encouraging people to spend their last few pesos. You literally have to walk through several stores on your way to your gate. Not near them, but through them. It’s less obnoxious than it sounds, and it’s effective. The point is, by the time you get to your gate, you’ve probably spent your last bit of cash. There’s also the thought that most travelers have of not wanting to return home with useless paper currency they can’t spend unless they come back.

After passing through these stores, you finally make it to your gate. In this area there’s a small, two-chair massage station business that offers travelers 15 minute back/neck massages. If you’re sitting at the gate and you’ve got the time, why not, right? That was my thinking, and having a pre sit-on-my-butt-for-five-hours-massage seemed like a great idea. I was practically relaxing already as I walked up to the two massage chairs. The women greeted me with a smile, I smiled back, and before I could say anything my eyes caught a fairly large sign that read:

CASH ONLY

I was quite taken aback by this. Cash only? Really? People are getting ready to board their plane, have walked a gauntlet of stores designed to coax the last pesos out of their wallet, and this business is expecting people to pay for their service in cash? I felt a rush of disappointment come over me, and to my dismay I practically scowled at the woman as I said “Do you think most people have cash on them as they’re about to get on the plane?”. I threw up my hands and walked away, no doubt leaving her somewhat stunned. Anyone who knows me understands that hiding my feelings is something I’m rather poor at.

In that moment, I was a customer who was excitedly looking forward to paying for a service and in an instant I became someone who was turned away because of a poor decision the owner made. It certainly wasn’t the fault of the woman working, but she lost a paying customer and the tip she would have pocketed.

The lesson here? Meet your customers where they’re at in every way possible. If you set up your business in a location where people are unlikely to have cash, take credit cards. Be flexible. Don’t let payment terms be the thing that gets in the way of you making a sale. You’ve done your work, you’ve paid for a prime location, you’ve trained your staff, you’re ready to make some profit. Why destroy all that by being a cash-only business in a place where people are unlikely to have cash?

On the flip side, there was a great business that snagged $25 from me easily: it was a small, tastefully designed kiosk with a large flat-panel TV, and small but powerful Bose speakers playing music from a violin/piano duet called Arcano. They seem to do strictly covers, mostly pop/rock (like this), and since I’m always looking for good music to serve as a back-drop to periods of focus, I handed over my Visa and walked away with two CDs in less than two minutes. That’s how you run a business!

Yes, I’m Still Alive and Kicking

I was never a highly prolific blogger here, but even for me, not having posted for four months is a long stretch. So much has happened, but I’ve found that social networks (namely Facebook and Twitter) have largely replaced what used to get posted here on this blog. I tend to think that the people who care about what’s going in my life are already following me on Twitter or are friends with me on Facebook, so this blog serves a different role in terms of being a home for long-form content and things of merit that I want to share with the world.

The short version of my life right now is that I’ve got an amazing job at HTC, my family and I have moved into our new house in Renton, Washington as of two weeks ago, and I’m learning to live like an American. Most of the things are the same, but there are enough differences that there’s the occasional struggle – mostly around healthcare. When you call your insurance company and even they can’t explain their own rules, you know you’re trapped in a system that tries to keep you from succeeding with it. All in all though, I feel tremendously blessed and honoured to have been given so many great opportunities.

I haven’t given up on blogging, but life is so hectic right now I won’t fool myself into thinking that I’m going to be putting up any more content here any time soon. I’m hopeful by the summer months things will have calmed down.

Microsoft’s Productivity Vision of the Future

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0&hd=1

Every technology company has a vision for the future of productivity and interactive computer systems. Above is Microsoft’s. I’d like to live in that world. 🙂

The Groupon Experience: Three Business Owners Share



I’ve long held that Groupon, or any online coupon offering like it, is like juggling a flaming knife for a business owner: only the truly skilled will survived. full article here.

G – GOD | O – OUR | S – SINS | P – PAYING | E — EVERYONE | L – LIFE

Propaganda rocked it at our church a few weeks ago and I’m glad I was able to find this video. “Refreshingly awesome” is what was running through my mind as he shared this with us.

I’m Selling The Thoughts Media Network, Moving to the USA, and I Got a Job Working for HTC. Any Questions?

I’ve been writing and re-writing this post in my head over the past couple of months, and that headline was the best I could come up with. It’s not easy to encapsulate one of the most significant changes in my life in a single sentence. Now let’s unpack that bombshell I’ve just dropped…

The HTC Job

I’ve been working with HTC, the mobile phone and tablet maker, since August 1st of this year. Being a long-time fan of Microsoft’s efforts in the mobile space – and largely tying my career to those efforts, for better or worse – I’ve watched HTC grow from being a nameless, brandless, tiny Taiwanese ODM making Palm-sized PCs/Pocket PCs to the mobile powerhouse they are today. I’ve always had tremendous admiration for HTC as a company and loved their products, so when someone I knew from Microsoft got a job with HTC in late 2010, I reached out and we started talking. The rest, as they say, is history. I believe HTC is uniquely positioned to do some amazing things in the mobile space over the next few years and I’m excited to be a part of it!

Thoughts Media is currently a vendor for HTC USA, and come October 1st, I’ll be a full-time employee. I have an H1B work visa, and after closing the sale of my house this weekend (phew!), I’ll be moving in the near future to the Bellevue, Washington area with my wife and two year old son, and starting my new career. To add a little extra stress into my life, we’re also building a new house and will be in temporary lodging until it’s finished. Oh, did I mention this is the first corporate job I’ve held in 13 years? This is the single biggest career transition I’ve ever gone through.

What am I doing for HTC? I’m a part of their social team – the team that focuses on HTC customers via Facebook, Twitter, and other communities. My title is Senior Manager of HTC Communities. I’m creating something special for them that, when the time is right, you’ll hear about in a very big way. The job couldn’t be more well-suited to my skill-set if I had created it myself. I’m massively excited about the opportunities I’ll have at HTC, and my admiration for them as a company has only grown since I’ve been on the inside. A big shout-out to my awesome team at HTC for making a slightly bewildered Canuck feel right at home.

Effective October 1st, I’ll be retiring from the Microsoft MVP program. This ends a 14 consecutive year run that has been profoundly rewarding on both a professional and personal level. I became a Windows CE MVP when I was 22 years old; I’ve been an MVP for more of my adult life than not, so it was a big decision to remove my name from being renewed for the next year. I have some amazing memories and made some great friends being a part of the program, and I’m forever grateful to Microsoft for allowing me to be a part of it.

You may have noticed my recent posts about HTC on Windows Phone Thoughts or Android Thoughts have contained zero commentary – just the facts. It’s been difficult to try and keep the two worlds separate, which leads me to…

Selling the Thoughts Media Network

Months before I started seriously talking to HTC, I was exploring the sale of my Web sites. I’ve said no to several offers over the years, but it’s now time to sell. I’ve loved running these sites since launching my first one (Pocket PC Thoughts) an incredible 11 years ago, but I’ve felt for a couple of years now that I needed a career change. When you stop acquiring new skills at a job, and you feel like you’ve gotten all the experience out of it that you can, it’s time to look for something different.

I say this with no sense of exaggeration: it has been one of the great joys in my life working with the amazing volunteers who keep things humming across all six of my sites, and I’m forever indebted to them – and to you, our awesome community – for giving me the ability to do this for so long. I’ll have a more eloquent farewell message when I finally sign off for good, but this was easily one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. Leaving my creation – our creation – in the hands of someone else is no small thing.

The logical question is “Who’s buying the Web sites?”. Right now I’m looking for a buyer for all six sites in the network – I’m in talks with several people/companies, but nothing has been finalized yet. If you’re interested in taking over a network that has been finely tuned like a racing car, staffed with amazing volunteers that are ready and willing to work with a new owner, please contact me directly.

Serious inquiries only please, but the selling price of the network might be less than you think. Let’s just say I’m a motivated seller because it’s time for me to move on and jump in with both feet at HTC. I’ll be accepting offers over the next seven days, then making my decision, so if you’re interested please let me know. The ideal buyer is someone who has a passion for technology, community, and an entrepreneurial spirit for making things grow. Oh, and being a little brash and opinionated can’t hurt!

Comments? Questions? Thoughts? Let me hear them…

(this post is duplicated over at Windows Phone Thoughts if you’d like to comment there)