Category: Uncategorized
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Licensing thoughts, round two
License Models Suck got a lot of interesting conversations started (and there’s a roundup page), time to revisit from the customer’s perspective. Let’s also be clear, this is enterprise sales with account reps and engineers: self-service models are for another day. As a vendor, the options I describe seem clearly…
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Phases of Data Modeling
Say that you want to use some data to answer a question. You’ve got a firewall, it’s emitting logs, and you make a dashboard in your logging tool to show its status. Maybe even alert when something bad happens. You’ve worked with this firewall tech for a few years and…
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Weekly Status
People are creatures of habit, and effective work is produced by grooming useful habits. Here’s a quick write up of a useful habit: the weekly status report. I haven’t always written these, and I haven’t always worked for people who’ve wanted to receive them, but I’ve been at my most…
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Community
So you’re a software company, and you want to have a community. What next? “Why community” is a great place to start: the stated reasons and budget are often somewhere in marketing, but the community is equally important for customer support. Community is where soft guidelines are communicated, FAQs are…
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Security Logging
Security logging is interesting. Detecting security and compliance issues means uncovering nasty little leakages of unintentional or surprising information all over. When you add a powerful security tool to the environment, it starts to shine light into dark corners. No one expects that temporary file of sensitive data or the…
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Disrupting Ourselves
Let’s talk about some received wisdom: “disrupt your own market before someone else does it to you”. Sensible advice: complacency can kill. Except disruption is generally a pioneering activity, and the survival rate for pioneers is lower than for copycats. Corporate blindspots being what they are, this style of transition…
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Engines and fuel – who writes quality content?
In software, everyone wants to build engines, and no one wants to make fuel. A platform for executing content has high potential leverage and lots of vendors make those. The expected community of fuel makers rarely materializes. Content for software engines breaks down along two axes: simplicity versus complexity and…
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Line Product Management Process
I have some issues with the concept of “automating” or “scaling” product management, which I went into in this blog post — what I haven’t written up is what I do use. This is the process for directly running a product or multiple products; leading a team that runs products has…
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English degree, Tech Career
What is the career value of an English degree in a technology career? I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in English Literature, focus on American poetry. My thesis was on Emily Dickinson. I’ve been working in information technology ever since. So I’m biased on this subject. I’m hardly…
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Merger & Acquisition Failures
Sometimes when two companies love each other very much… Companies buy other companies. Maybe it’s to pump marketshare or shut down competition. Sounds like a boring transaction as long as regulators don’t mind. Or maybe it’s to get technology and people. Those are exciting projects, full of hope and dreams.…
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