
Childhood echoes in my today’s movements and actions. This lyrical piece explores the forest of my youth and the history of my long-ago home. Written about Lincoln Massachusetts, tucked between Lexington and Concord, once and still surrounded by literary, political, and scientific giants. I seek treasures, find awe, and rustle oak fallen oak leaves.
Feb 3, 2021
10 min

Sometimes all of the work smarter, better tools, teamwork boils down to focusing on the job and doing it. Nike says it well: Just do it! A team-building phrase that does carry sympathy and understanding and the tenderness of acknowledging, that work what we get paid to do. It is just work – with deadlines, and challenges, and tiny rewards. Ain’t no real short cuts, but I do find joy in working. Do others?
Jan 27, 2021
18 min

“What could possibly go wrong?”
Around here, if there is one plan there are three plans. We’ve got to have the primary plan, then the backup plan then the other plan for when it all goes entirely wrong. PST – a reminder to start with a primary plan, a secondary plan, and a tertiary plan. Embracing failure may improve our lives, our work, and our teams.
Jan 20, 2021
24 min

Great teams, great teamwork requires planning, effort, and a handful of cute phrases. A team of software developers likely don’t need to hold an axe. “How to Hold an Axe” represents the importance of the suite of tools we do use daily. Excellence is deliberate. Join us as we explore team work and tool management…
Jan 13, 2021
27 min

Ever think about the seconds immediately after buying something online? You get an email. You may have been added to a mailing list. In the seconds buying our product, there are 14 steps, 4 vendors, and thousands of lines of instructions. All invisible, all immediate. When it works, money flows into a bank account. When it goes badly, sweat drips, anxiety soars, and bosses pace. Follow the haps and mishaps of a software development team starting a new venture with a new product on the Soul of an Internet Machine.
Dec 16, 2020
30 min

The sales team from IBM, DEC, Data General, and Xerox were noted for their arrogance and uniformity during the prior century. In 2019, I heard echoes of that sort of arrogance from Okta – a firm specializing in user authentication and identity management – the tools one needs to simplify logging into internet-based software. Listen in on a sales call, and step through a catastrophic failure with our team.
Dec 9, 2020
29 min

The United States Supreme Court changed the landscape of internet commerce with a 2018 ruling called “South Dakota v Wayfair Inc”. With the stroke of five pens, business had to comply with thousands of sales tax jurisdictions within the United States – up to 58 states and territories, 3,000 counties, 10s of thousands of municipalities all want revenue from internet-based sales. This determination opened businesses to new risks. It created an entirely new business venture called: interstate sales tax compliance service provider. And new phrases such as “SST” for streamlined sales tax process. It will cost small business thousands of dollars to comply. For us, compliance will cost more than the taxes we pay.
Dec 2, 2020
16 min

Integrating yet another vendor into our software suite permits us to replace PayPal, the effort lets us explore how to sell to a reluctant audience, how to reach customers with strong defenses, and give me a platform to discuss cluttered, noisy, and crappy websites. Maybe marketing people should accept the idea that the customer isn’t exactly who you think they are. The ideal customer is one who has money and looking for a solution or a product.
Nov 25, 2020
34 min

Paypay is a legacy in a market they created and now they are irrelevent... they've abandoned their own market. lesson: listen to your customers or lose 'em
Nov 18, 2020
22 min

The perfect plans for PodcastFlow did not survive the first months. The plans never anticipated a global shut down. And the plans failed to have the flexibility to respond to failures. This chapter does offer a checklist of 6 tasks for branding a product or company on the internet.
Nov 11, 2020
15 min
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