Jim Goings

I received this email “newsletter” from one of my company’s vendors.  This is just about the worst marketing effort I’ve seen from a legit company.   The sheer concept of shooting people is tasteless marketing to begin with, but the gun, blood spray, and Merry Christmas message just make this a complete an utter epic fail.  Fire that marketing team.

For those of you that haven’t seen my dorky office at work, check it out.  Points if you can identify the 3 sci-fi shows that are represented.

I was thinking about the future of social software and it’s place in the enterprise this morning.

1. Internal social networks will become the lifeblood of companies.  Connecting thousands of employees and housing a majority of their thoughts, plans, and processes will be paramount to success.  Social software will not be optional to survive in the business world, much like email today.
2. Social software will become just as important and complex as ERP and CRM systems.  We need to learn from these massive software systems… what to do and what to not do.
3. 1. It will need to be stable and capable of scaling to huge sizes
   2. We will need to connect to other systems (ERP, CRM, etc)
   3. Reliability will be critical.   Clustering, backup/restore granularity, etc.  Restoring should not mean “reload the entire database from yesterday” and ideally does not involve making a request to someone in IT.
   4. Security will be paramount.  Encryption of stored data, secure transactions with other systems, regulatory compliance, etc.
4. Social software will shift to include a greater focus on content creation. We already see this trend in full swing with Google Docs, Zoho, Buzzword, and others, but I honestly think that content creation will become closer to Microsoft Office with complex publishing capabilities including databases and cross system data sharing.  Users will look first to create their content with the social system itself.
5. 1. This means that there will be ways to share this information outside of internal networks.  We also need to be able to view and access content created with other systems.
   2. Document creation and management is just the first step.  Data storage and manipulation will also become important.  I already use DabbleDB for storing information (inventory, software licenses, purchase history, etc) and doing this with in house social software seems like and obvious requirement.
6. Profiles will become huge. Personal and work related content will need a closer interaction.  Specifically, we need to hook into things like Twitter, Word Press, Blogger, etc.  When you visit someones profile, you will see their personal blog, work blog, flickr photos, facebook, myspace, linked-in, whatever all in one place.

Clearspace has already become something I cannot live without at work.  Word Press, Flickr, and Twitter are my personal addictions.  Now to just make them talk to each other…

We spotted the hummer owner parking on the other side of the street today. He parked legally and paid… But get this: he put an empty parking citation envelope on his dash, presumably so that when his time expired it would look like he already got a ticket.

We also discovered that he’s the manager of Aura, a night club that we frequent for weekday happy hours.  I really fought the urge to say something to him, but realized that nothing good would come out of it.  He isn’t going to care that he cost my company several hundred dollars.  And most likely he’d just kick us out of the club which would be bad for everyone since they have grub food.

Here you can see the hummer with the “ticket” on it.

And here you can see the empty envelope.  (yes, we checked – it’s a decoy!)

And here you can see that his parking permit expired at 4:21PM… picture taken at 5:15pm or so.

The movers we hired had an amazing truck driver that was able to put a tractor with a 53′ trailer right into our back lot without even flinching (inches on each side – it was crazy).  While they unload the truck – some a**hole parks his hummer right next the driveway in the no parking zone.

As a result, they couldn’t get the trucks out of the back lot which prevented the other two trucks from unloading.  The space was so tight by the freight elevator that we couldn’t even park the trucks on the street and roll the stuff around the sidewalk – there was no room for anything past the trailers to get to the elevator.  So we were stuck until this Hummer was moved.

I called the police and told them that this guy was costing us a few hundred dollars an hour.  They were Johnny on the Spot and the parking enforcement dude showed up with a huge grin on his face.  He was absolutely thrilled to ticket this guy.  In fact, he got two tickets – $60 for parking in a no parking zone and $60 for not having a front license plate.  He then slapped a red “Tow” sticker on the windshield.

The tow truck showed up about 15 minutes later – but because there was another car in front of the Hummer, he couldn’t do much.

His dollys weren’t beefy enough to handle the weight of the Hummer and the parking break was set, so the only option would be to drag it out, likely causing drive train issues for the Hummer owner.  He called in his buddy who had a different towing device that extended out and could reach the hummer.  They lifted the front of the hummer up and the front of the tow truck came up too – it was pretty cool to behold.

I snapped this pic just as the tow truck’s front tires hit the ground after being about 1 ft off the ground.  They continued to jockey the hummer, just inches from the back of the Jetta and finally got it into a position where they could hook it up to the larger tow truck.

Unfortunately, the with the rear wheels still locked in park, they had to crawl under the Hummer and disconnect the drive shaft.  Here are some choice quotes from the tow truck dude while they were under the Hummer: