Utah Open Source Planet

The trouble with pizza girls (and everyone else these days) is that they blog.

I love the internet and its bountious opportunities for citizen journalism.  Ten years ago you would never have heard this story.

Wow, landing contract work can be time consuming. Sometimes it takes more work to find the contracts than to fill the commitments. In the last couple weeks I was able to land a few good deals and get few solid leads, but I had to let a big one fall through so I could attend an out-of-state family funeral.

I think I’ve pretty much decided against the full-time employment route. Contract work has been fun so far, but it’ll probably be a month or two before the flow of contracts becomes more or less steady. With that in mind, I’m starting to think that in the long run I’d rather sell a product than my time. I guess I’ll keep looking for contract work, meanwhile revisiting some of the business plans I’ve drawn up in the past…

I noticed that there will be a few voip-related tracks at UTOSC tomorrow. If you’re going to be there want to talk shop on open-source telephony, I’m game.

A big thanks to those that have reached out with employment and contract leads. I’m sincerely grateful. Make no mistake, no matter what entrepreneurial schemes I come up with, I’ll still need any work I can get. After all, I’ve still got mouths to feed. ;)

At last year’s Utah Open Source Conference, locally-based Linux training firm Guru Labs hosted the first Troubleshooting Challenge, a contest to see who could restore a seemingly hopeless broken Linux system back to a pristine operational state the fastest. We watched as hopeful contestants rapidly keyed in commands to try to track down problems, beads of sweat appearing and running off their foreheads. Finally, a lone “Got it!” escaped one person’s mouth as spectators quickly gathered around to witness the remedy for themselves.

The drama is back!

On Saturday, August 30, as part of the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference activities, Guru Labs will, once again, be hosting a Troubleshooting Challenge to determine, once and for all (until next year), who is the Guru.

There will be a few rounds as the contest is whittled down to a final four. The ultimate victor will walk away with a $150 cash prize from the Utah Open Source Foundation. Final four finalists will each receive vouchers from Guru Labs to be used for enrollment in one of Guru Labs’ excellent week-long training courses. All participants who enter the challenge will receive Guru Labs t-shirts.

About the Utah Open Source Conference 2008

The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.

For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.

How to register for the conference

UTOSC 2008 has chosen to utilize eventbrite as its registration system this year.  To register for the Utah Open Source Conference 2008, visit <http://utosc2008.eventbrite.com/> and sign up today.  We accept credit cards (through paypal) and payment at the door.  We’re looking forward to seeing you soon.

I’ve always wondered where the taboo in political and religious discussion came from.  It seems that when people start talking about these two deeply held beliefs, they get defensive and are quick to personal attacks. And this year is no different with the political posturing of both parties (again, I say parties instead of candidates).  

Perhaps it is because of the inherent need for Americans to “win”.  We live in a very competitive society for which rewards are only seen in a complete and overall domination in a desired area.  As such personal victory is the only thing that matters, whether or not one is actually part of the process.  For example, sports fans are dedicated to their team, often cutting down the fans of other teams because of their “loyalties”.

But it doesn’t stop there, many a flame war is driven by someone’s need to be right, and another’s need to prove that they are more knowledgeable.  And so it continues through to other aspects of life.  The need to “race” against each other to see who is the best is deep-rooted in the human psyche, it seems.  

But sports fans and others like them are willing to accept their teams flaws and understand why they didn’t win.  And yet this doesn’t happen in a political pundits are unable to accept the loss of their candidates.  Why?  What makes the process so difficult to understand?  

The first reason is the process in which elections are held.  People have the right to vote, and people make the decision.  Because it’s not really in the power of the candidate to win based on a set guide of criteria, often a defeat can be crushing.  Hence (at least in my mind) the reason why Democrats have been so bitter the past 8 years, and Republicans the 8 years before that:  They just couldn’t understand why they lost.  Generally 3rd party candidates are blamed for the loss.  It kind of makes you feel sorry for Ralph Nader and others like him. 

The second reason is because “better” and “best” is such a subjective definition when it comes to politics.  Politics reflect a person’s base value system.  One votes for a person based on their perception that the candidate best reflects their values.  Some of these values are based in real issues (i.e., war, economic needs, etc.), and others are based on superficial concerns (gender, race, age, wealth, eye color, etc.).  Either way, the candidate needs to prove to the majority of people around them that they are more likely to rule in their favor.  

Us Against Them
One popular method of getting the support from people is to turn them against “THEM”.  No, not the giant ants in a popular 50’s horror film, but rather the ambiguous “them” that are against us.  How are they against us?  They don’t have our values.  They don’t care about us.  They want us to lie in the gutter and die as they manage to steal our money, land, children, and kidneys.  ”They” are determined to see us dead and dance merrily on our graves while our children are slaves to their will.  In short, everything we hate they are, and everything we are they hate.  

Is there really a “they”?  I don’t think so.  People, in general, are good.  They want to do what is best for all persons, including themselves.  And so they look for ways to do that.  What is the saying?  ”The road to hell is paved with good intentions?”  Everyone wants to believe they are doing something for the good of all.  

Politicians (and people in general) have seemed to tap into the fear of a “them” in order to generate more votes.  Talks about “being out of touch with the average American”, or “they are just too popular to really know what is going on” merely feed into that concept of a “them” out to destroy us.  It is all based on fear, uncertainty, and doubt.  

Responsible Voting
So how do we combat the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) around political pressures and make informed decisions?  Educate ourselves!  Get to know the candidates, the parties, and the platforms that are being bandied about.  Use resources to see track records of candidates, look at the issues that are best for you, and who better embodies those issues based on real results.  

Resources that are best are those that are the least biased (notice i say leased biased.  No person can claim they are not biased, nor that their products are not biased).  I find that actual roll call votes from the Congressional sessions are ideal, because you can see how people voted at a given time.  Likewise the same roll call votes from the Senate are just as useful, particularly if you are looking at the candidates.

Next, look at each party individually.  Filter out the partisan bickering and finger-pointing, and get down to the core values that they hold.  Remember that “I’m not another Party” is not a position.  Just because they oppose another party doesn’t make that party responsible.  Look at the goals they are trying to accomplish, as well as those that are absent.  Which are the most important to you?  

Finally, I find that it is by far more important to be unaffiliated to a particular party.  This is my personal choice, but it gives me the freedom to look at both parties without worrying about potential loyalty guilt.  Of course there is a drawback:  I can’t participate in the primary elections for many parties, and as such have little control over who does end up representing me.  

So, I hope this post has made some sense.  Hopefully I can convince someone out there to look past the rhetoric and look at the real issues at hand.  Don’t look at the person, look at the people they will hire to get the job done.  Who will be their staffers?  Who will be in the Cabinet?  Who do they support in Congress, or the Supreme Court?  All these issues are just as important as whether or not they will be the oldest person to sit in the Oval Office, or the first person of their race (or gender).  After all, in this day and age, isn’t is time we got past the whole bias on age, race, gender, etc?  Are we not supposed to be a more tolerant generation?

Anyway, my 2 cents.

I got this unexpected windfall this week (a check from an old job that I forgot about), and honestly, one of the first things I thought about when I got it was, “Oh, good, I can pay my rent early.”

Something has obviously gone horribly wrong.

I think I need to go buy a framed poster of Small Soldiers or something to make up for it.

So I was experimenting with the new Ubiquity extension from Mozilla labs and fell immediatly in love. Needless to say, Twitter integration was great, but I needed Remember The Milk. So, Viola!

rtm_ubiquity

My Ubiquity Feed Page

It’s pretty straightforward, the only command is ‘addtask’ and I think we can all guess its purpose. I’ll hopefully be making it more intelligent soon, its really just a ‘Hello World’ right now.

I'm presenting on Mercurial at the Utah Python Users Group tonight. Probably not as useful without the demos, but here are my slides: mercurial.pdf. Sadly, the slides really just seem to be my notes on a pretty background.

I finally figured out how to make the verbatim environment work with Beamer. Beamer can't handle the following code:

\begin{frame}{A Title}
    \begin{verbatim}
    Don't mess with my text.
    \end{verbatim}
\end{frame}

To make it work, you need to include the fragile option for the frame. Example:

\begin{frame}[fragile]{A Title}
    \begin{verbatim}
    Don't mess with my text.
    \end{verbatim}
\end{frame}

If you use the listings package, the same trick works for the lstlistings environment.

Better late than never, right? I finally updated the VirtualBox OSE Guest Additions for Windows to the 1.6.2 release last night. Nothing too exciting, although the installer actually supports upgrades now and the tray icon shipped with VirtualBox looks better.

I don't know why I put off trying it for so long, but Vimperator is incredibly cool. Now I really can drive almost everything I use with the keyboard, and with Vi-like keybindings to boot.

It seems to me that sales tax in Utah used to be 6.25%. Then an extra 1% was added to prepared food. Then other small chunks were added in. If you've ever wanted to see the sales tax breakdown for where you live, there's a helpful chart on the Utah state website.

If you've been running Windows in VirtualBox OSE you've probably noticed that it doesn't include a prebuilt copy of the guest additions. I've been working on a project so that you won't have to setup a build environment on a Windows box and then install the drivers by hand on your virtual machine. So, here it is, a VirtualBox OSE Windows Guest Additions Installer. It should work on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, but has only been tested on XP.

At the BYU UUG meeting this week, Peter mentioned a great ViM trick that I've never seen before. Here's my feeble attempt to document it.

Because ViM macros are stored in registers they can be edited. This means that if you create a long macro and then realize that you forgot to send the cursor to the beginning of the line before finishing the recording, you don't have to create the entire macro again, you can just add the motion command. You use it like this:

1. Start recording your macro by typing q and then the single character ([0-9a-zA-Z"] are allowed). The single character is the register your macro will be stored in.
2. Enter the commands you want included in the macro.
3. Type q to finish recording the macro.
4. At this point you could run the macro by using @ and the register name.
5. To modify the macro, move to a blank line and type "Rp replacing R with the register name of your macro. This will paste all the commands in your macro to the current line.
6. After making the changes you need, save the macro by typing 0"Ry$ replacing R with the register name you want to use for the macro. The register name does not have to be the same as the original.

I've heard rumblings about Urwid occasionally; today I actually had a chance to use it. For those who haven't seen it before, Urwid is a pure Python library for console user interfaces. It can uses curses as the backend or speak directly to the terminal emulator. The library isn't too complex and as long as you can pick colors better than I can the TUIs look pretty nice. Check it out the next time you don't want to write a GUI.

It’s old news that Fannie Mae (FNM) is in big financial trouble.  Through some bad decisions and an overall poor strategy, they are now on the brink of collapse.  What is news, however, is that they are starting an Operational Excellence program and are aggressively recruiting for a Director of Lean Six Sigma — a recruiter called me today, wanting to talk with me about the job.

Apparently, after stumbling upon shmula.com via a google search on Lean or Six Sigma keywords, the recruiter felt impressed to contact me and thought I’d be a good fit for the position.  What happened next really solidified my view: Operational Excellence IS NOT a Strategy; it can enable a strategy, but Operational Excellence — in itself — is not a strategy.  That is, for firms that wish to remain competitive in the marketplace, Operational Excellence is necessary, but not sufficient.

She and I talked about the job and the state of Fannie Mae.  She told me that there’s job security.  She, then, went on to share that Operational Excellence is going to be a key strategy going forward for Fannie Mae.  I told her thanks, but that I’m not interested right now but to keep me in mind for other opportunities.

The Art of Exclusion

Michael Porter (Porter’s Five Forces) argues — I believe correctly –, in his seminal work, What is Strategy, that Operational Excellence is necessary but not sufficient. What is needed — even still and always — is a winning strategy. In his article, he argues that the essence of strategy consist of two related propositions:

1. strategy is engaging in activities that are different than the competition
2. strategy is engaging in activities that are similar than the competition, but perform better than the competition

Regarding (1), Porter argues that, regarding (1), the firm must choose a position — one that sets the firm apart from its competitors; a position that makes the firm and its products or services uniquely and competitively different and leads to a sustainable and profitable competitive advantage. Porter then claims that an important aspect of strategy is deciding what NOT to do — the art of exclusion.

Regarding (2), a firm will undoubtedly engage in activities that are similar than the competition. For example, take a traditional internet retailer — a firm in that space will usually have a front-end store and a fulfillment back-end. To set the firm apart on similar activities from its competitors requires that the firm perform those activities better — with better quality, lower costs, with better service, and deliver quicker than the competition.

Deploying a Lean or Six Sigma culture within your firm is essentially an activity borne from (2) — but it is not a panacea; by itself, a culture of Operational Excellence will find itself lacking in a hyper-competitive world.

Necessary but Insufficient

While Fannie Mae might wish to adopt Operational Excellence, it has, over the recent years, essentially failed to engage in activities that are uniquely and competitively different than the competition.

Speaking as an outsider, it appears that Fannie Mae has continued to run an efficient business, producing products and services that had adequate demand, but the Fannie Mae leadership executed a poor strategy, rife with bad decisions leading the firm to its current state of near-collapse: No amount of Operational Excellence would have prevented failure stemming from poor decisions and a bad strategy.

The Need for Leadership

The theme, I see, with most corporate problems, overwhelmingly points to Leadership. The OPPOSITE of long-term thinking, inspiring, visionary, humane, collaborative, reflective, selfless, nurturing, interested, responsible, and mobilizing is what seems to be what most companies elevate to the Chief Executive position.

Emulating Gary Convis

Gary Convis was recently brought in to be the CEO of Dana Corporation (DAN), an $8.7 Billion manufacturer of auto parts. Convis is a 40 year veteran of the auto industry and a former executive at Toyota. Dana Corporation is a struggling giant, currently in bankruptcy. When asked what words of wisdom he has to impart to his new team members at Dana Corporation, he said this:

“manage as if you have no power”

For me, that statement elegantly summarizes the the essence of Leadership — the type of Leadership that is capable of satisfying both (1) and (2) above.

The job description if below, right above the comment section, in case anyone is interested.

+++++

Articles on Ethnography and Design:

1. Feature? What Feature?
   
2. Simplify The Product
3. Ask Aza Raskin
4. Aza Raskin on Poka-Yoke & The Humane Interface
5. Aza Raskin on Quasimodal Design and The ATM
6. Aza on Feature-Bloat and Site Clutter
7. Aza on Google Search Results Page
8. Aza on Cooperation and Team Size
9. Design Thinking in Medicine
10. On Designing a Watering Can for Little Hands
11. Queueing Theory and Visual Management
12. An Interview with the Inventor of “Clocky”
13. Bad Breath but Good Design
14. What is Ethnography

Articles on Leadership:

1. Overmanaged and Underled
2. Colin Powell on Leadership
3. Team or Staff?
4. Tipping-Point Leadership
5. Abraham Lincoln on Leadership
6. How to transform an Organization: Chime-in Before Buy-in

Articles on Queueing Theory:

• Queueing Theory: Part 1
• Queueing Theory: Part 2
• Queueing Theory: Part 3
• Queueing Theory: Part 4
• What is Waste?
• On Time-Traps and Waste
• Call Centers as Queueing Systems
• Travel Time & Waste
• Little’s Law for Product Development
• YouTube’s Queueing Properties
• Psychology of Queueing and Disneyland
• Queueing, Disneyland, and FastPass
• Multi-Tasking Leads to Lower Productivity
• Queueing Theory and Terrorism
• On Queueing Theory and Elevator Mirrors
• Psychology of Queueing, Haunted Houses, and Halloween
• The Variability Tree
• Attitude and the Psychology of Waiting - The Psychology of Queueing

Articles on Operations, lean and six sigma:

• Managing Constraints Under Peak Volumes
• Order Pipeline of Events
• On Game Theory
• Applied Regression Analysis
• 5S
• Click-to-Ship Processes
• Kanban Sizing and “Pull”
• Lean at Krispy Kreme
• Theory of Constraints and Camping
• Lean for Software Development
• Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time
• Featuritis and the Focus on the Customer

The Fannie Mae Job Description

Fannie Mae is a shareholder-owned company with a public mission. We exist to expand affordable housing and bring global capital to local communities in order to serve the U.S. housing market. Fannie Mae has a federal charter and operates in America’s secondary mortgage market to ensure that mortgage bankers and other lenders have enough funds to lend to home buyers at low rates. In 2008, we mark our 70th year of service to America’s housing market. Our job is to help those who house America. For more information about Fannie Mae and our career opportunities, please visit www.fanniemae.com.

The Director of Lean Six Sigma is also the Master Black Belt and is responsible leading a team to deploying and driving Lean Six Sigma across assigned divisions/functions. This position has significant leadership impact on the success of the Lean Six Sigma program and reports directly to the VP of Operational Excellence. As a senior member of the Lean Six Sigma Team, this position will drive results oriented performance improvement initiatives using the proven methodologies of Lean and Six Sigma while ensuring accountability, focus, strategic alignment and cross functional relationships with the other Fannie Mae entities through the use of metrics based goals and objectives. This position will also develop and deliver the materials and method for effectively training Champions, Sponsors, Black Belt and Green Belts on the Lean Six Sigma methodologies.

• Lead the development and implementation of Lean Six Sigma for Fannie Mae and establish a sustainable model for continuous process improvement
• Manage a team to drive the model of continuous process improvement through Lean Six Sigma and creating development opportunities by setting direction and driving quality results
• Align Lean Six Sigma initiative and project objectives to business strategy, and prioritize projects accordingly
• Train, coach and develop Black Belt and Green Belt resources assigned to projects related to Lean Six Sigma tools and methodology and offer technical expertise and guidance in project reviews
• Provide technical leadership and coordination to major improvement projects within the business
• Provide problem resolution point of contact for Black Belts and Green Belts to offer technical or professional expertise
• Lead multiple process improvement teams towards quantifiable result in defect reduction, cost avoidance, loss reduction or revenue enhancement
• Deliver significant operational improvement and financial benefit across assigned divisions/functions
• Act as change agent to instill Lean Six Sigma culture throughout the organization
• Serve as internal expert on process improvement tools and techniques focusing on Lean Six Sigma and coach process owners, black belts, and deployment leaders
• Expand the education and develop training curriculum for Fannie Mae leaders, managers and process improvement teams regarding Lean Six Sigma
• Facilitate quality and change management processes; identify customer needs and key drivers to reach customer satisfaction goals with financial benefit
• Lead the identification, prioritization and selection of process improvement opportunities
• Develop a more formalized approach to organizing and pursuing projects, including development of project management skills and techniques
• Monitor service delivery to ensure customer satisfaction and project delivery to ensure benefits are realized
• Advise and support Senior Management regarding culture change needed to successfully accomplish and maintain improvements

KEY QUALIFICATIONS

• Technical competency in Lean Six Sigma skills: Lean, DMAIC, DFSS, Kaizen/Work-out, process management, change management and advanced statistical techniques
• Subject matter expert in process improvement with a focus on Lean Six Sigma tools and techniques
• Significant experience in application of Lean Six Sigma in the mortgage or finance services industry
• Strong leadership abilities and experience including situations involving organizational culture change
• Ability and demonstrated experience in providing education and training related to process improvement including Lean Six Sigma
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with emphasis on oral presentation skills and class room training techniques
• Project management expertise and experience
• Facilitation of groups, especially as it relates to identifying opportunities for improvement
• Significant experience in use of metrics and benchmarks to drive process improvement
• Strong analytical skills including the ability to assess complex situations and data, and reduce important and actionable tactics
• Experience in complex organizations and matrix reporting relationship
• Ability to interact with multiple layers of the organization with demonstrated success initiating change and ability to influence at all levels
• Minimum of 8 years professional level experience

KNOWLEDGE/SKILLS REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s Degree (MBA preferred)
• Formal Lean or Lean Six Sigma training and Master Black Belt certification
• 5+ years of Lean and/or Six Sigma performance improvement and change management experience, with a minimum of 2 years of experience as a Master Black Belt
• Completion of 3 transactional-related projects with demonstrated success and financial results (preferably in the mortgage or finance services industry)
• Extensive Lean and/or Six Sigma Performance Improvement experience 5+ years consulting or management experience in the mortgage or finance services industry preferred.
• Extensive training, coaching and mentoring experience (strongly preferred)
• Proficiency in Windows, Minitab, Excel, Word, PowerPoint and both simulation and project management software

COMPENSATION

Fannie Mae’s compensation and benefits package is very competitive. It is designed to help employees meet varying needs throughout their careers and to reward employee’s skills, experience, and potential. Fannie Mae is an equal employment opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, gender, age, color, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation, or any other protected factor. As a condition of employment with Fannie Mae, any successful job applicant will be required to pass a pre-employment drug screen and to successfully complete a background investigation, which may also include a credit check if the position is sensitive in nature.

So, one of my friends and co-workers Eric, just came to my office and asked if I had a couple AA batteries that he could borrow. I searched and looked and finally found two in a Maglite flashlight I had in my backpack. I held the flashlight up and said “here’s a couple” and he said “Uh, you don’t have 4? OK, I’ll keep looking”.

I could have sworn that “a couple” meant two. I think he’s just focused elsewhere - his last day here is tomorrow.

If your Web service does anything that sets cookies, you'll probably bump up against the fact that Internet Explorer--since version 6--has implemented a fairly strict privacy policy regarding cookies. In a nutshell, if the site does not have the right P3P privacy policy, first-party cookies (i.e. from the site itself) are downgraded to session cookies and not stored in between browser sessions and third party cookies (i.e. from another site) are rejected completely. Here's what to do to solve this problem.

P3P, or the Platform for Privacy Preferences is a W3C "protocol allowing websites to declare their intended use of information they collect about browsing users." In IE 6 and 7, users can use a slider bar to set their desired degree of privacy and then IE will automatically check the privacy policy of the sites they visit and "protect" them according to their preferences. The default setting (medium-high, which most people never change) gives the behavior I describe above.

Deploying a P3P policy actually isn't very hard. There are some great tools for creating the policy itself. But it can be difficult to know exactly what to do. I followed these instructions but still have a few questions, so I'll document exactly what I did below.

The first step is to create the policy. I used IBM's P3P policy editor. It's a Java program, so it will run most anywhere. Using the tool takes a little work since it's not clear at first what you're editing. Create your policy from a template if you can since that will save a lot of decisions later. Once you've done that, select Policy->Policy Properties and fill in the information about your service and organization. If you look at the errors, you see that you have to fill just about everything in. Make sure you add a "privacy seal" even if it's just a notice that your customer service department can answer questions.

The policy itself is in the "groups" on the right. Double click each one and make sure you agree with what it says. Clicking on "Errors" will show you things left undone and clicking on "HTML Policy" will show you the human readable version of what you're creating. At the bottom it provides an analysis of how this policy will play in IE. Very helpful.

When you're done and there are no errors, you need to save four things:

1. The policy itself as name.xml where name is the name you selected under "Web Sites" in the Policy Properties pane. You will likely have just one, but you can have many covering different parts of your site.
2. A policy reference file as p3p.xml. This file provides discovery services for the policies. Whether you have one or many policies for your site, this file tells programs which policy applies where and how to find them
3. A human readable policy
4. A compact policy. This is a string of three and four letter acronyms that specify the policy in a compact manner.

Put the first two in http://yoursite.com/w3c/... Put the third in whatever URL you specified the human readable policy would be referenced by.

The compact policy is used in the HTTP headers that your server returns for ant HTTP request. This gets rid of one or more round trips to the server to request the XML version of the policy. In my experience, this was a necessary step to get IE to recognize the policy.

Having Apache return the compact policy in the header requires building and installing the mod_header module. I'd already done that so I simply added this line to my HTTP configuration file:

Header append P3P "CP=\"NOI DSP ADMo DEVo TAIo ... DEM STA\""

Once you've got all this installed, you should be able to open IE, double click on the eyeball with the red slash through it in the status bar and confirm that your cookies are no longer blocked. If there are no blocked cookies, the eyeball is not there at all.

That's it from a technology standpoint. The trickier part is deciding whether you can actually live with the restrictions you'll need to put in place to let IE store your cookies.

The whole thing feels like a waste of time. Your product won't be better and most people won't be any more protected when your done. But you need to do it in an IE world.

Tags: kynetx privacy internet+explorer

A Quick Photoblog Update! Time for real specifics later, but other news includes 2 awesome upcoming events!

• Utah Open Source Conference (if your in the Utah area, see you there!)
• Desktop Search Hackfest in Berlin! (I’ll be posing more on my goals for the Hackfest later!)

New Posters From NPS!Our Tickets to Dave Matthews Band!

View From our new Place!

Sloshball!

Massive Utah Mountain Fire!

My brother Gabe wrote an interesting post highlighting how Google Trends searches show that Utah is a hotbed of Open Source. It reminded me that I haven’t plugged the Utah Open Source Conference that’s happening this week. This conference is something you don’t want to miss.  I think you can still get tickets.

If your business is still not leveraging open source, you need to stop by to meet some of the people that can help you make it happen.

Now, on a separate nerdy note, I wanted to echo Gabe’s post by pointing out some business terms in which Utahans have peculiar interest according to search data in Google Trends.  When it comes to industry related searches, we rank #1 for Multi Level Marketing, #2 in Outdoor Recreation, and #3 in Telemarketing.

Utah also does a disproportionate amount of searches for online business terms: we rank #1 for SEO, #2 for Internet Marketing, #1 for Web Analytics, and #2 for Internet Business.

Can you think of any other obvious top Utah searches?  I’m looking specifically for business terms; although searches for jello, meth, and vouchers are interesting in their own right.

Only a couple days left until the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference begins on Thursday, 28 August. If you’ve been reading these dispatches, you know there are lots and lots of reasons to come and participate in this year’s conference, but here are a couple more.

David Moss, Salt Lake Community College

After last year’s first Utah Open Source Conference, the core team was approached by David Moss, department chair of the Computer Science department at Salt Lake Community College. David was apparently impressed with the first UTOSC (and rightly so! It rocked!) and was interested in hosting the conference in 2008 at Salt Lake Community College. We explored lots of options for other venues, but in the end, SLCC just seemed the best place for the conference in 2008. To make things even more interesting, David said attendance at the conference would be required for students enrolled in the Computer Science program. Indoctrination… BEGIN!

We are pleased to announce that David Moss will be speaking to us the morning of Saturday, 30 August, at 8:30 a.m. and will speak on the topic of open source in education. David says he’ll be discussing the barriers the SLCC computer science department has faced adopting open source in its curriculum and how he plans to expand the use of open souce in the future.

Wait! That’s not all!

Howard Tayler, SchlockMercenary.com

Howard Tayler… where to start on this guy? Howard likes Halloween a lot, I mean, a lot. He also says he enjoys “recreational pyrotechnics and discharging firearms at helpless cans, bottles, and outdated computers.” He’s a veteran of Novell, where he was a product manager, and escaped relatively unscathed in 2004. He now has his dream job of working from home purging his demons via creative writing and drawing cartoons.

Howard is the creator of the über cool site SchlockMercenary.com which hosts a Web comic featuring the characters Kaff Tagon (Captain Kaff Tagon), Sergeant Schlock, Jevee Ceeta, and others, as they go about their mercenary missions aboard the space vessel Serial Peacemaker in the 31st century. If I didn’t get that all correct, get over it.

Howard will be speaking on Friday, 29 August, at 2:30 p.m. His topic of discussion will be… uhm… What was it again? … It’s not about carbosilicate rejuvenation, is it? Oh… right. Howard will be speaking about giving stuff away and making some money doing it.

About the Utah Open Source Conference 2008

The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.

For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.

How to register for the conference

UTOSC 2008 has chosen to utilize eventbrite as its registration system this year. To register for the Utah Open Source Conference 2008, visit <http://utosc2008.eventbrite.com/> and sign up today. We accept credit cards (through paypal) and payment at the door. We’re looking forward to seeing you soon.

I blogged that this was happening, and now it’s happened.  I liked David’s Garber’s summary of the Utah GOP’s delegate bait and switch so much that I got permission to post it its entirety:

———————————————-

It’s official! This morning, by a vote of 70 supporters to 12 opponents, Utah’s state Republican Party’s Central Committee voted to adopt a proposed new “standing rule” that would apply a new twisted interpretation to our party’s by-laws–an interpretation that will now bind our state’s set of Republican national delegates to vote for McCain rather than Romney on their first national convention ballot.

Here is the precise text of this new standing rule:

Standing Rule

This Standing Rule has been adopted by the State Central Committee of the Utah Republican Party and shall be a binding rule of the Utah Republican Party unless and until superseded by a change in the Constitution or Bylaws of the Utah Republican Party, or by a subsequent standing rule adopted by the State Central Committee expressly revoking or modifying this Standing Rule:

It is hereby ruled by the State Central Committee of the Utah Republican Party that:

1. An ambiguity exists in the meaning of “the candidate” as it is used in Bylaw 7.0 (B) that is sufficient to have generated public controversy among Party members over the meaning and effect of Bylaw 7.0(B); and that

2. Each reference to “the candidate” in Bylaw 7.0(B) is hereby interpreted to mean a person who is a candidate for nomination on the first ballot at the National Convention at the time of that ballot, according to the rules of the Republican National Committee and any rules adopted by the National Convention; and that

3. Bylaw 7.0(B) does not require that the Utah National Convention delegates and alternates be allocated to or bound to vote on the first ballot for a person who does not meet the definition of candidacy defined in part 2 of this Rule; and that

4. Bylaw 7.0(B) does require that the Utah National Convention delegates and alternates shall be allocated to and bound to vote on the first ballot for “the candidate” as defined in part 2 of this Rule, who has received the most votes of the statewide vote in the Utah Republican Presidential Primary.

RULED this 23rd day of August, 2008, by the State Central Committee of the Utah Republican Party, meeting in South Jordan, Utah, in the presence of a quorum.

Funny that they never noticed this “ambiguity” before–they seemed pretty clear about what it meant during our state convention when they tried to have this rule suspended.

I wrote this story for some friends on MySpace to try to explain what happened:

Utah’s GOP Leaders Defeat Utah’s GOP Rules

This morning marked the end of a long war between Utah’s GOP leaders and Utah’s GOP voters/delegates/rules over whom our national delegation will support at our national convention next week.

Utah’s GOP Primary: “Okay, it’s time to vote, Utahn Republicans! Which of these candidates do you prefer to become your next President?”

Utah’s GOP Voters: “Well, 89% of us reckon that we prefer that conservative-talkin’ LDS guy with the nice hair!”

Utah’s GOP Rules: “According to us, based on these primary election results, Utah’s Republican national delegation will be bound to cast 100% of their votes for Romney on their first national convention ballot in September.”

Mitt Romney: “Meh, my Presidential campaign is hopeless, with McCain’s friend Huckabee drawing votes away from me. So, I’m suspending it and becoming McCain’s biggest cheerleader, instead. *buttsmooch* I now want all of my national delegates to vote for McCain to the extent that the law/rules will allow. Now, what is thy bidding, my master?”

John McCain: “Muhahahahahahaha!!! Now, more than 51% of all national delegates will be voting for me! Next, I want to assimilate the other 49%, as well, so that I can enjoy a big everyone-loves-McCain-fest in September. Hey, Utah, gimme yours!!!”

Utah’s GOP Rules: “Sorry, McCain, but we don’t allow that–they’re bound to Romney, as the voters decided, and that’s final.”

Utah’s GOP Leaders: “Whoa, not so fast, you darn rules! No worries, John, we won’t let those pesky rules stop us from getting you whatever it is you want. Hey, state delegates, we need 2/3 of you to vote to suspend these annoying party rules so that our national delegates can be free to vote for McCain, instead.”

Utah’s GOP State Delegates: “Wait, you want us to throw out our rulebook and nullify our primary? Just to please that awful McCain?! HECK, NO!!!”

Utah’s GOP Leaders: “Dang, this won’t be as easy as we’d hoped. Darn those state delegates! Why must they be so devoted to those silly party rules rather than us? Hmmm, we need a different strategy to deliver those votes to McCain…”

Utah’s GOP Rules: “Forget about it, guys. As long as it’s up to us, Utah’s national delegates MUST cast their first set of ballots for whichever candidate received the most votes in Utah’s primary election. And that was Romney by a landslide. Sorry.”

Utah’s GOP Leaders: “Hey, that’s it!!! We’ll just redefine what the meaning of the word ‘IS’ is! Er, ‘candidate.’ Let’s see, hmmm… Let’s say that ‘the candidate who received the most votes in our primary election’ does not apply to candidates who suspend their campaigns once the primary election is over! So, although Romney was initially ‘the candidate who received the most votes’ with 89%, since he suspended his campaign, he no longer counts–and, so, McCain has now became ‘the candidate who received the most votes’ with only 5%. Once we pervert these rules, those darn rule-respecting Utahns can follow them AND still give us what we want! Why didn’t we think of this devious scheme sooner?!”

Utah’s GOP Rules: “Hey, that’s not what those who wrote us meant to…”

Utah’s GOP Leaders: “SHUT UP!!! You’ll mean what we say you mean! Now, central committee, we need you to vote to approve our new screwy interpretation that we’ve invented so that it will serve as a new standing rule for our party.”

Utah’s GOP Central Committee: “Okay, 85% of us say, hey, whatever you want, boss.”

Utah’s GOP Leaders: “Hurrah, we won!!! Eat that, voters and delegates! As you can see, your votes only count when we like the outcome. We, not your silly rules, are the supreme power in this party! Bwahahaha!!!”

So, in less than two weeks, despite the fact that 89% of Utah’s Republican voters wanted Mitt Romney (not Juan McCainnedy) to be their next President, and despite our party rules that we all assumed would bind our national delegation to support our primary election winner, our national delegation will presumably vote for McCain, instead, thanks to these underhanded machinations of our party leaders.

I’m tempted to produce some sort of flier about this subject, mass-produce it, and then deliver a copy of it to every likely voter in my area. Unfortunately, I’m too broke at the moment to spend much at any copy centers. But I hope that some of y’all will consider doing something like this, though. Our Republican neighbors need to know what schmucks are running their party and, unless they hear it from us, they may never hear it at all.

———————————————-

I also liked these comments from Lowell Nelson:

The new “standing rule” passed 70 to 12. It binds the Utah delegation to the convention-election candidate who received the most votes in the primary election. But it was introduced as a clarification (not a change to a bylaw), and passed with a simple majority instead of the two-thirds required to amend a bylaw. Dishonest. Lacking integrity. Sad day for the GOP and the Utah electorate…

Thus, in my view, party leadership was able to CHANGE Bylaw 7B WITHOUT proper notice and WITHOUT requiring a 2/3 majority vote. In doing so, they arbitrarily determined that the second-place finisher in the primary was also the second choice of the electorate (which is illogical to me). Effectively, this change repudiates the will of 265,000 Utah Republican voters and a majority of the state delegates, and replaces it with the will of a relatively few party leaders.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if delegates had been released to vote for whomever they liked, but this political chacanery to force Utah GOP delegates to vote for John McCain (who got less than 5% of the vote) is nothing short of political BS. Worse still is that the results of this “standing rule” created as result of political expedience will have long-reaching effects perhaps not considered by the State Central Committee.

Around this time last year I posted a cheatsheet for writing/packaging/testing scripts in python. Well, I'm speaking this week at the Utah Open Source Conference and will be giving an introductory talk about python. I've also been given my brother'

Looking for work has actually been kinda fun. I get the feeling it has something to do with looking at the right time, being in the right place and having the right skill sets.

I’ve known that Utah was a hot-spot for tech and I assumed it was a great place for Open Source hackers. This post over at Pingdom seems to confirm my suspicions. The point is that no matter what Linux or Open Source topic you pick, Utah tends to be at the top of that search trend. Try it: Linux #1, Kernel #2, BSD #2, GNU #2, GPL #1, Apache #1, Postfix #1, Bash #1, Python Scripting #3, Asterisk #1, IPTables #1, Cron #1, MySQL #1, PostgreSQL #1… As you see, I could go on and on. I don’t know what can really be learned from those rankings, but one thing is sure - there is a lot of local interest in Open Source.

Just for fun, let’s see how Utah does for 5 random words. Thinking… taco (not in top 10), printing (not in top 10), ear plugs (not in top 10), drills #9 and microwave (not in top 10). Well, I’m glad I’m not selling drills door-to-door.

Also, I find it interesting that while I’ve been looking for different types of work (in this order: consulting, contracting, business opportunities and full-time work), nearly everyone I’ve interviewed with wants full-time employees. They say that although business is down a little (economy, or whatever), they’re all mostly cookin’. I say, good for them, good for Utah and good for me. ;)

Lots of the spam I get uses the Cyrillic alphabet. I believe it's Russian. I don't correspond with anyone using the Cyrillic alphabet, so I've come up with a procmail recipe to filter this email out. But first some background. It seems that the subject lines of many (all?) Cyrillic emails ...

So its soo close.  So very close, to the Utah Open Source Conference 2008.  Only, I have to write this paragraph about the conference itself and what it means to open source in Utah.  What it means to be involved in this amazing conference.

This blog post is supposed to be about something useful, but I think its just going to be a rambling session about all the things I think that are neat about open source, freedom, Utah and the benefits of holding UTOSC every year.

So what do I think, well… I think that UTOSC is my favorite thing I’ve ever done as a tech person.  I have an 8 year old boy, which is much of the reason I do this sort of thing.  He’s the reason I try to get webcams working with Ekiga, or try to record videos to send him with Cheese.  I love my boy, and I want him to be proud of his papa, and this is one way I can make a mark on society, to change the world if you will.

When I talk about changing the world, I don’t mean changing every aspect, but just doing something so simple that you love, to change the way others look at the thing and say, “wow!”.  That’s the thing I mean about changing the world.

I mean, geez, what do we have this year anyway?  Let’s see.  Oh, to start off with, a great theme ‘HOWTO’.  It really can’t get any better than that, can it!?  It points the way to learn how to do something in open source.  A contributor, a learning mechanism, a simple text document that started the whole thing.

We also have a great team of folks involved in making it happen this year.  I would be remiss if I didn’t thank them.  They’ve been instrumental in getting this to be the world class conference I hope it to become.  We’re not there yet, but give us a couple more years to learn all of those little tips and tricks.

Software, that’s another thing we have that’s great.  This coming year, I plan to take the UTOSC conference site and remake it again, this time with a better feature set.  I have to say, however, that the system we put into place more than 8 months ago, has turned out to be a great asset.  I thank those who’ve helped us make conman, our conference management software.  You know who you are, and I appreciate the help.

Because we’re running the conference and are also computer nerds/geeks/etc, we get to play with cool hardware, dink around with printing, do audio, video and invite families to participate in our wondrous extravaganza every year. But we also get to do something else that much cooler, we get to share our joys and passions with others.  Show others why open source is the way of the future.  Why its important to us and why we think that paying for software or having limted access to software is just wrong.

Learning is always part of a hobby.  This great, wonderful, exciting hobby of ours is so great we want to share the wealth with you all.

A couple things that I think are great about UTOSC 2008 are Family Day, I’m excited to set up the try-it lab on Friday night for the kiddies.  The fact that we’ll have booths for all three of the major Linux distributions (Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu). But there’s more.

On Thursday evening, Paul Frields will kick our conference into high gear with Fedora, first.  Friday comes and Joe Brockmeier will entertain us with some community talk.  And finally, on Saturday morning, we have Christer Edwards whose been instrumental in much of the Ubuntu community growth over the past couple years.

I’ve been influenced heavily by the Fedora Project.  And as an North American Ambassador, I’m also in charge of the Fedora booth.  We have a few volunteers and they’ve been great.  I anticipate the booth to be filled with people asking questions all three days.  One thing I wanted to mention, is that the booths/expo area is open to any/all that come through.  Spreading open source means allowing for the opportunity to use the software.  We want you all to come and listen to what our folks have to say.

Okay, so it sounds like my writers block really didn’t happen, but I wasn’t sure I could just sit down and crank out something this easily.  Off to write a simple 100 word intro to the Utah Open Source Conference.

Wish me luck!

Herlo

As my neighbors in Second Life have noticed (and been amused, it seems), I have been rather fickle with the the various buildings for my home.  Most of the time I have purchased low-cost structures built by someone else.  All of them have looked great, but none have been what I wanted:  a building that would allow me to cover all the goals for my property while being low-prim enough to meet the requirements of my plot.  

Lately I have been interested in building my own homes.  I wanted to target a more commercial aspect (hoping against hope that my efforts would pay for the land I have purchased).  In order to do so, I would need to build something that is all my own, yet looking professional.  This is also important for me as I wish to have a learning environment for my students to visit for “extra credit”, and for office hours.  

I started with an idea for an English Country Pub.  From the many pictures I have pulled from the Internet, I came with a very well constructed approximation of a pub as my first home.  It’s currently for sale in my new digs for a price I think reflects the level of construction.  I also built a number of low-prim accessories for the building, which I will have up for sale soon.  

But it was too small for what I wanted, and I didn’t feel that it fit in the neighborhood in Caledon Downs.  That, and I didn’t have enough room for everything I wanted in the house.  I tried a parachute platform, but since you can fly in Caledon, why would someone want to parachute around the land?  It just didn’t make sense.  

So, I found some nice textures for a Victorian Brick building, and set to work.  I built a new Victorian Department Store that is just large enough to fit in my land, and gives me 4 floors to provide a store (first floor), a Cinema currently showing the 1916 version of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (second floor), a third floor with a whiteboard and slideshow viewer for online courses, a fourth floor Restaurant with Fish and Chips and Tea for all, and finally an attic for changing clothes without anyone looking in on me.  

I’ve since had two neighbors who have not talked to me before comment on how much they like the new building, and are quite impressed with it.  As such I posted it for sale inside for the benefit of anyone else that would like the building.  

Now, I have heard some people mention the fact that they find Second Life a “game” that equates to something similar to Facebook or MySpace.  And all I can say is many Universities are using Second Life as a solution to their physical classroom problems, and there is a reason.  Soon I hope to have a solution for some Technology Education classes to be taught in the new medium.  And this new building is large enough to provide for those classes, and provide a fun environment for students to enjoy.

So if you are new to Second Life, or have land and want a nice large building with a small footprint, feel free to visit!

I haven't done a review for a while, so maybe this is due. This past week I picked up a bag of Valdosta Pecans by Sahale Snacks. This wasn't my first bag. Or second. Or even third. In fact, I've pretty much lost count by this point. I have become an addict.

First of all, Sahale Snacks has other nut blends as well. These are not your traditional trail mixes with a few cliche roasted peanuts plus some crappy dried fruit. Oh, no. These are high-end. There is some sugar, but not enough to be overpowering; just enough to stick some flavors together. There really isn't so much of an emphasis on nuts, despite being called a "nut blend". The focus seems to be on making a single dish of flavors that compliment and even enhance each other.

I've found however that if you don't like the nut that the blend is based on, you won't like the rest of the blend either, even if you would normally like all of the other ingredients separately. For instance, I didn't care much for Soledad, featuring "a sunkissed combination of almonds, flax seeds & tender dates, tickled with balsamic vinegar and cayenne". Man, that all sounds good... except for the almonds. I hate whole almonds. But I'm in the minority there.

Perhaps you'd be interested in Sing Buri, with "tastes of Lemongrass, soy-glazed cashews, pinapple, peanuts & sesame seeds, lightly dusted with Chinese chili". It all sounded so good, so perfect! But when I tasted it, the wow factor just wasn't there. Don't get me wrong, it was good. But again, just not my thing.

Then I tried Valdosta, "pecans with sweet cranberries, black pepper & orange zest". So simple. Such a beautiful list of ingredients. It has sweet, but also spicy. Cranberry and orange are a match made in heaven, and pecans only add to the delight. But that black pepper bit, that was just genius. I once bought two or three bags of this stuff at once, and it didn't last the weekend. And bonus: this stuff seems to be kind of good for you too. It has a little saturated fat and a little sugar, but it seems to come from the right places. The closest the ingredient list comes to sounding like processed food is "organic evaporated cane juice", followed by "organic tapioca syrup".

This is a great snack. It's extremely low in sodium, has no cholesterol, and no fake sweeteners. Not even a drop of corn syrup. But heed my warning well: this stuff is addictive. You may stop eating "real food" in favor of it. Then again, if by "real food" you mean a burger and fries, maybe filling up on this stuff will do you better anyway.

The Utah Open Source Foundation is hosting dinner for geeks, bloggers, and open source enthusiasts at Tucanos Brazillian Grill at the Gateway Center in downtown Salt Lake City on Friday, August 29, beginning at 8:30 p.m.

While this event is planned in conjunction with the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference going August 28-30, you do not need to be an attendee of UTOSC 2008 to come.

The Utah Open Source Foundation will be paying for appetizers for those who show up at Tucanos.

Tucanos is located on the south end of the Gateway Center, just above the California Pizza Kitchen. Directions to the Gateway Center can be found here.

About the Utah Open Source Conference 2008

The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.

For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.

How to register for the conference

UTOSC 2008 has chosen to utilize eventbrite as its registration system this year.  To register for the Utah Open Source Conference 2008, visit <http://utosc2008.eventbrite.com/> and sign up today.  We accept credit cards (through paypal) and payment at the door.  We’re looking forward to seeing you soon.

Just an FYI- I’m testing out a new IRC nickname- eightyeight. I play the piano, of which I’ve done since a kid, and a number of friends through high school called me “eightyeight keys” or “eightyeight” for short. It stuck, and as such, I ended up getting a tattoo on my right shoulder with “88 KEYS” of my own design. Well, after trying out a few nicknames online, it hit me that “eightyeight” would be appropriate. I got the nick registered on Freenode as well as a few other servers I frequent. We’ll see how it turns out. Just in case if you’re wondering who “eightyeight” is.

Rob Alexander is one of the few Ron Paul endorced candidates running for State office; and he happens to be running in Utah.  He’s running as a State Representative on the Republican ticket against a Democrat incumbent in the Utah’s 35th District.

I know Rob.  I think he’s a good guy, and I like his politics (for the most part, anyway).  He’s doing a money bomb today, and it looks like it could use a bigger push.  I hope you’ll consider supporting his campaign.

There’s a volunteer meeting tomorrow as well, if you’d rather donate labor (or both). Here’s the info:

To celebrate the results of the moneybomb, I will have a campaign volunteer meeting the next day, Saturday, August 23, from 1 PM to 3 PM at the Taylorsville Library (formerly Park Library), 4870 S 2700 W, Taylorsville, 84118. We will be giving out walking/calling lists and rolling up fliers and placing them in clear plastic door-hanger tubes. Please reply to me directly at voterob@alexanderfamily.org to let me know whether or not you will be attending this meeting.

Thank you for your support of liberty, prosperity, and transparency,
Rob

I'm starting a new business called Kynetx. As I go through some of the things I do, I'm planning to blog them. The whole series will be here. This is the fifteenth installment. You may find my efforts instructive. Or you may know a better way---if so, please let me know!

One of the things that ought to strike fear into any technologist's heart is getting your first customer. You've spent months building a product you hope people will buy and find useful and suddenly someone actually is putting their faith in you and your baby.

You're happy, of course. But most of all, you're scared. What if something doesn't work? What if it doesn't scale? What about feature A, B, and Z that we haven't built yet? What about the shortcuts you took here and there to get it done? What about...

I've done this a couple of times now and I'm convinced of two things: (1) you're going to sell your service before you're ready and (2) you should have sold it even earlier.

We're at that stage with Kynetx. We've signed up several good pilot customers and we're actively courting the indirect sales channel. These are sharp, demanding folk with good ideas and little time to waste. That scares me.

Don't get me wrong. I've never built a product or service that has been more ready to scale and that I'm as confident works as promised. We've spent months automating infrastructure. I've written thousands of tests. Still, it's scary. If you asked me, I'd take another couple of months. Of course, at that point, I'd still take another couple of months. You're never ready.

That leads nicely to my second point. Since you're never ready, you might as well start selling even earlier. There are big advantages to having real people kick the tires and give you feedback. The product becomes better faster through that process than anything else you can do. And you invariably plug some of the holes that have crept into things.

But wait. There's more. The best part of selling your product early is that it helps you understand what you do and how you're different from your competitors. These are two key pieces of information when you're going out to raise money.

You may think that it's weird that you could start a company and not know what you do, but in fact it's quite common. Oh, you know what you do on many levels, but telling other people about it can present some challenges. In an earlier post in this series I wrote about finding your story. Same idea.

When you start to tell others about your product or service, they invariably try to understand you by comparison. "Oh, so you're just like [insert company name here]" or "Oh, so you're a [insert product category here]." Often these are the very companies or categories you're trying to distinguish yourself from. You need to understand how your different in ways that you can easily explain.

Going through some VC meetings and pitching events helped us refine our story, but we're reached a whole different level talking about what we do with clients. They're usually more willing share, explore, and engage in a dialogue than VCs who typically hold their cards very close to their vest.

Clients aren't as interested in comparing as VCs because they don't care as much who you're like. They're not trying to find the next category killer. They just want to solve a problem and if your nail will secure their board, then they're game.

Besides, I don't know about you, but in client meetings I'm a whole lot more relaxed than I am in a VC pitch. I'm in my element--showing off the things I'm most passionate about right now. Clients usually want to see what you have and our demo usually wows people. VCs never want to see a demo.

As a consequence of all this, I wish we'd been positioned to start selling well before we started raising money. Unfortunately, because of various timing issues and our own understanding, things didn't work out that way. If I do this again, I'll start selling much earlier.

Tags: kynetx startup selling

On Thursday, August 28, the Utah Open Source Conference begins. Presentations start at 12:30 p.m., but Phil Windley will be kicking off the conference with a CTO Breakfast from 7:30 - 11:00 a.m. in the Salt Lake Community College Student Center, room 221/223.

The CTO breakfast is an informal monthly gathering of leaders within Utah’s tech community. You don’t have to be a CTO to come. “Anyone interested in product development in high tech is welcome,” Windley says.

The SLCC Student Center has a variety of food vendors on the first floor. Get what you want to eat and jet upstairs so you can participate in the CTO Breakfast. For information on parking and where all UTOSC activities will be taking place, see this map.

About this conference thing

The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is the second annual gathering of open source enthusiasts in Utah. Following the amazingly successful first conference held in 2007 at Novell’s Open Source Technology Center in Provo, UT, this year’s conference is being held on the Redwood campus of Salt Lake Community College near Salt Lake City.

For more information about this conference, to register to attend, or to see a really neat website driven by open source software, go over to <http://2008.utosc.com/>.

How to register for the conference

UTOSC 2008 has chosen to utilize eventbrite as its registration system this year.  To register for the Utah Open Source Conference 2008, visit <http://utosc2008.eventbrite.com/> and sign up today.  We accept credit cards (through paypal) and payment at the door.  We’re looking forward to seeing you soon.

From the grass is always greener dept….

“Hey, we own the auction space. How about if we stop doing that and try to compete with someone else.”

WAKE UP! Ebay = auctions. Amazon = other stuff. If I want to just buy stuff, I’ll go to Amazon. If it’s the same price as ebay, I’ll buy it at Amazon. I’ll always look to ebay first though - because that’s where the bargains are.

If you want to turn around ebay, bring back the bargains. Make it cheap for sellers to sell anything. I list stuff on Craigslist because ebay is too expensive. Make it so cheap that I can buy a block of auction fees for $20 and then sell anything I want. Start with free and go up from there. i.e I have boxes. I can ship them or you can pick them up. Shipping is $x.xx per box. Let people bid on the boxes that I was going to give away for free. If it goes for free, no charge. If I get money, I share it - Once. I should be able to get this for just the paypal fee or the ebay fee. Requiring me to use both is painful and inefficient. Efficient markets succeed. Inefficient markets fail. The problem at ebay is not that Amazon is too good.

Stupid - stupid - STUPID!

Story that started the rant:

Washington Post

-Peter