Being in the service industry, I regularly read blogs about happenings in the business world. And every blue moon I get to read a good business book.

One book that I just finished reading is Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, written by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh. The book chronicles Tony’s entrepreneurial journey from his first successful business where he sold mail-ordered button to the rise of Zappos.com and subsequent sale to Amazon. Throughout the book, Tony weaves in mini-lessons on what made things work (and what caused things to fail at times). Since the book is about delivering profits, passion, and purpose, I wanted to highlight a few lessons that struck a cord with me about running a business (or a team):

Lesson #1: Your business won’t survive without having positive cash flow.
It should come as no surprise that you cannot spend more than you collect. You may be able to float a few short periods of negative cash flow but in the long term your business must break even at the very least. To this point, learning to do more with less can help you stay in the black.

Lesson #2: Hire passionate people.
Building on lesson #1, cash helps you hire help. But when hiring, you must focus on your company’s culture! You may consider hiring talented individuals that bring new skills but unless they fit culturally (in other words, they’re looking to connect with your current employees on both a professional and personal level), you’ll see the negative impact of your decision on your culture, your customers and ultimately your business.

Lesson #3: Develop a shared company vision.
Again, building on lesson #2, it helps to hire passionate, like-minded, people. As the “tribe” leader, it is critical for you to organize employees so they cohesively work in support of your business goals. You’ll see amazing results when your employees work as a team and take risks to help the company reach/exceed its goals. But don’t forget the reward once your company reaches the goal. The absence of incentives, either tangible or intangible, will likely result in employees losing their drive over a period of time. Keep the passion burning by keeping your promise.

If you’re looking for a meaningful book about creating and managing a business with a purpose, then look no further than this book or check out the supporting blog.

Today, I ran the Windermere 5K in Cumming, GA. While I’ve run longer distances, I was nervous because I twisted my foot earlier in the week and thought that I’d have to skip the race altogether. Fortunately, I rested my foot over the past few days and felt comfortable giving the race a try.

I lined up at 7:30 am and anxiously waited to hear the announcer yell “go” to the crowd of 100+ runners. As soon as I heard the words, I quickly jumped to the front of the line but I quickly got this odd feeling as my heart started pounding at what felt like a 100 miles an hour. A good part of my nervousness was driven by my thoughts about foot — was it going to hurt or was it going to carry me through the race? Once I realized that my foot was solid, I focused on the run and stayed within my pace. And as I hit the first mile, I unexpectedly found myself outside of the pack for the first time. I realized how the pack helps me gauge my progress and pace. Being outside of the pack, I noticed that there was no real feedback so I decided to just go as fast as my body would take me.

I found the feeling of being out of the pack unusually exhilarating. I stayed focused — watching my pace and looking back every so often to determine if any other runners were catching up to me. Once I started climbing the final hill of the race, I noticed how my brain became poisoned with the idea of taking a short break but I immediately talked myself out of it. And as soon as the finish line was in sight, I picked up the pace and hurled my body over the line clocking in at 20:50 for a 3.1 mi run, my best time for a 5K.

And while I’m darn proud of my 7 minute per mile pace, I was actually more proud of the unexpected lesson that I learned today that is applicable to running as much as development and entrepreneurship: you shouldn’t be afraid of getting out of the pack. The course and goal remains the same so first focus on pulling away from your competition and then just go!

The Atlanta office of Engauge is seeking a paid intern to work full-time from now until August 2010 to assist me, the VP of Technology, with emerging technology research/ideation, proof of concept development, code QA, and anything else that may arise.

If you are a prospective college graduate/recent graduate with a CS/IS degree or currently in between jobs, this is the perfect opportunity to learn about the delivery of technology to mid-size businesses and enterprises and the inter-workings of a digital agency. Qualifications that I’m looking for:

• Positive attitude
• Great verbal and written communication skills
• Exceptional analytical skills and an insatiable appetite to troubleshoot technology problems — big or small!
• Experience in Office Suite apps including Word and PowerPoint
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail
• Working knowledge of HTML/JS/CSS/PHP or Web App Development using .NET/Java
• Working knowledge of web platforms (Content Management, eCommerce, Web Analytics, Social) a plus

If you’re interested, please provide me with your brief qualifications via the contact form. NOTE: Carpooling experience is not required!

I’m a big fan of TV comedies. One of my favorite new shows is Modern Family on ABC. The show focuses on the lives of three families; each episode typically has 3 story lines that are woven together. On last night’s episode (called Game Changer), one of the three story lines focused on the iPad. One of the main characters on the show, Phil, was planning to stand in line this Saturday to buy an iPad, the latest gadget from Apple. Since it was Phil’s birthday, his wife offered to stand in line for him but she fell back asleep, thus not making it to the Apple store in time. Eventually, the family figures out how to get Phil the iPad so all ends well. But during the closing scene, Phil proclaims his love for the iPad as his wife walks behind him, which she mistakenly takes as a complement for her.

As a technologist, I’m fascinated by how the writers took advantage of the well publicized iPad release event. The timeliness of this makes the show even more relevant and possibly makes fans of the show and Apple even more loyal. It’s also an amazing feat since writing the show’s script and producing it cannot be done overnight. Just goes to show how efficient we’ve become. Kudos to the show’s staff!

NOTE: Adage is reporting that Apple did not pay for the iPad placement in the Modern Family episode. (Thanks to Karna Crawford for that nugget of info).

As a technologist who’s focused on marketing, I love stats (short for statistics) because they help me tell a story. But as a former researcher, I’m very familiar with the famous quote by humorist Mark Twain:

“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”

At last night’s AiMA event on search engine strategies, the speakers referenced a study where users showed no significant preference to Bing or Google. After a short web search (via Google), I found the research paper by the Catalyst Group (see below). In the study, users reported that they wouldn’t switch from their current search engines even though Bing possessed some favorable improvements to Google.

While the findings attempted to explain how Bing will never catch up to Google, I was surprised that the speakers chose to quote the study as fact. There were two glaring issues that I immediately noticed once I located the study:

• The participants used Google as their main search engine.
• The study involved only 12 participants.

While some may argue that the opinion of the participants was tainted (since none used Microsoft Search as their primary search engine), I was even more surprised that no one considered the small participants pool. While I subscribe to the notion that we’re creatures of habit and users won’t change when they can’t find a significant value in the new “shinny object,” the bottom line is that the study’s findings are statistically invalid. While I’m fairly certain that the speakers were not aware of flaw in the study, it demonstrates how easy it is to rely on and propagate bad statistics and how careful marketers need to be when they quote a study.

NOTE: I recently wrote a blog post about Twitter data and Rapleaf based on an NPR radio bit. Rapleaf reached out and explained the issue with the misinformation that I had referenced. It goes to show that we’re all human; we make mistakes.

Catalyst Group Bing V. Google Usability Study

Launching new services is rarely a silky smooth process, especially for a large enterprise. Take for example my recent “experiment” with Fancast:

A few weeks ago, I tweeted about the streaming service from Comcast called Fancast. While other streaming services allow you to watch videos from the major networks, none give you streaming content from premium channels like HBO, Cinemax and Stars. So when my DVR started being flaky this past Saturday night, I decided to give it a try.

The log-in process was painless and the search functionality worked well. To watch premium content, the service required a special Adobe AIR player, which I promptly downloaded and installed. Everything was smooth sailing until up to the point when I tried to start Watchmen. For some reason, the service kept displaying a message that I was an HBO subscriber thought I was. After reading the FAQ’s, I confirmed that was I logging in with my primary Comcast.net account, which is a requirement, so I decided to call in to Comcast’s local customer service. After waiting on hold for a short while, the representative confirmed that all of my account settings were correct but indicated that another department would be better equipped to handle the issue. She tried to switch me to that department by I kept getting disconnected.

When I called in to customer service again, I spoke with another representative but the second one didn’t even know about Fancast. Yikes! Even though I explained to her how the service worked, she questioned me whether it was something that Comcast offered. My wife, who was sitting in the room, was rolling on the floor laughing as I attempted to convince the woman to help me. When the rep tried to switch, I was promptly disconnected again. So, I searched Fancast and (finally) found the toll-free number for support. When I called it, the Fancast rep informed me that my account was working correctly but error that I kept getting was due to an issue that Comcast/Fancast has been having for a week. And there’s no ETA for when it will be fixed. Now that’s a bummer!

While most would chalk this up to Comcast’s poor service, I think that the issue is actually a combination of poor user experience and internal communication/training. NOTE: I challenge you to name a cable television provider that you think is doing a great job these days! While the integration between Comcast and Fancast isn’t where it should be (and there’s a myriad behind the scenes reasons why that’s the case), I would have liked to see a simple error message that indicates that the service is currently down and that they’re working on it. Also, it would have been nice if the customer service reps at Comcast get training on Fancast so that customers like me don’t have to feel like I’ve just made a prank call. Lastly, both Fancast and Comcast should communicate on a regular basis about system status — it would have been much better if the Comcast rep told me that the service was down and to try again later instead of trying to fix my when in actuality it wasn’t the problem.

Comcast must be feeling the pressure to adapt to shifting consumer behavior and increasing pressure from competitors. According to eMarketer, nearly 25% of all TV content watched each day will be time-shifted, on-demand, on the Web or on a mobile device by 2012 (source). Viewers are abandoning television for the internet. Also, both Apple and Google are looking to challenge traditional video distribution channels by offering their own subscription services (source and source). While the service is still in Beta, it is just a shame that Comcast wasn’t able to deliver on the concept.

After spending more than an hour trying to use Fancast, I’ve decided that I need to give Comcast another few weeks to work out the bugs — eventually this service is going to be Comcastic.

Despite the icy roads and frigid temperatures, hundreds of people from the US southeast region came together at SCAD Atlanta on January 8th – 9th to attend the inagural WordCamp Atlanta, a conference where the WordPress (aka WP) community exchange tips and tricks about this widely popular blogging (and sometimes as a web content management) tool.

I had the pleasure to attend this event along with my colleague Kathlene Hestir. Below are the highlights from the various sessions. I’ve tried to link to the presentations on Slideshare whenever possible.

Friday Night, Janurary 8

WordPress & Journalism
Alejandro Leal and Thomas Wheatley (Creative Loafing Atlanta)

• Managing their blog using WordPress MU (which is the multi-user version of WordPress).
• Have a decent amount of data: 58 blogs, 906 users, 7977 Posts, 17556 Comments.
• Digital or online content is mostly separate from print content; very little sharing between the two.

WordPress & SEO (View on Slideshare)
Topher Kohan (CNN.com)

• Use basic SEO, such as good page title, content headline, 250 words, and ALT tags, on your website.
• You should use breadcrumbs b/c taxonomy is good for both search engines and the user).
• Rankings is going to become dependend on page load times (so hire a developer with strong server and page code optimization experience).
• Sculpt your webite with rel=”nofollow” attributes.
• Canonical URL’s are going to play a larger role in the future.

ADDITIONAL NOTES: Topher takes SEO very seriously — he did an amazing job getting everyone fired up about this topic. There are a ton of good plug-ins in the presentation so just check it out.

The AJC and WordPress
Cliff Barnett and Jason Gilstrap (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

• Rolled out WordPress to make this simple and consistent.
• WordPress is the central content repository for newsroom as content from system gets pushed both online and to the print system.
• Blogs responsible for 8% of traffic; posts on average get 700 comments.

Saturday, Janurary 9

KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: WordPress Resolutions: What to expect in 2010
Jane Wells (Automattic)

• Big Announcement: WP 3.0 is a producet of “The Merge” between WordPress and WordPress MU.
• Expect lots of goodies: a multi-site platform, new base theme, custom posts and canonical plug-ins (or de facto plug-ins for Twitter, Google Analytics, etc.).
• Enhanced media functionality is now pushed to WP 3.1 (maybe).
• WordPress.org is going to be undergoing a major redesign (with help from WP Ninja Mark Jaquith)

ADDITIONAL NOTES: Things like multi-site platform, custom “posts” (aka custom content types) and canonical plug-ins is HUGE news — this is where WP finally takes the baby step to become a true PHP-based web content management tool. Alternative solutions such as Drupal should take note!

Advanced Google Analytics Integration with WordPress (View on Google Docs)
Rusty Tanton (WebMD)

• Current plug-ins for Google Analytics are weak — they only feed you the basic info.
• Using custom variable and advanced segmentation one can REALLY analyze what’s happening on your blog

ADDITIONAL NOTES: Rusty code examples in his presentation so I suggest that you check it out.

Complex Content Management with the Pods CMS Framework Plugin
Scott Kingsley

• Ability to create custom content types in WordPress using Pods (Pods Plug-in).
• Data for pods maintained in separate tables.

ADDITIONAL NOTES: An interesting conversation started up between Scoot and Mike Schinkel over the viability of Pods since Jane announced that custom post types were coming (see tweet).

WordPress Security: Protectin your WP from Inside Out (View on Slideshare)
Syed Balkhi (WP Beginner)

• Do the obvious: keep WP updated, rename “wp-admin” folder and use strong passwords (10 chars or more).
• Use advanced techniques like, moving wp-config.php out of webroot, reassign admin rights to another user and delete admin account, get rid of error message on login screen, and limit access via IP whitelist to wp-admin folder and change DB tables prefix (don’t use wp_)
• Tons of good plug-ins for security so don’t be lazy!

PHP and WordPress – Converging Communities
Aaron Brazell

• Core is still written in PHP4 (some parts are using PHP5) so it is time to update core!

Final Thoughts

First of all, the event was a great success — kudos to Tessa and Brandon for pulling it off. I can’t imagine someone walking out of this event thinking that they didn’t learn a ton. And in case you missed it, plan to attend next year’s WordCamp Atlanta Conference, which will be held February 11-12 2011.

Last July, Bill Gates handed over the reins to Steve Balmer. But while Bill is no longer running operations day to day, his quest for world domination now seems to be immortalized.

In a recent preview for the movie Despicable Me, we found an odd similarity between one of the characters called Vector and Bill in his younger days. In the movie preview, Vector is defending his company from another villain who’s wearing goggles (get it goggles, Google). Well, if you don’t believe me, check out the image below or the link movie preview. Bill, I mean Vector, makes his debut about 47 seconds into this clip.

Happy New Year!

Despicable Me trailer on YouTube:

One of my favorite blogs on software development is Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horrors. Jeff is a programmer turned blogger that has a unique (and real) perspective on the psyche of developers. His blog posts are based on a topic that he’s researching for work or fun, which is something that I also do regularly.

In a recent search, I came across a blog posts from 2006 on “modern software development” (source) where Jeff he explains that development really hasn’t changed much in the past ten years. Based on my experience of working with developers both on client and agency side, I think that he’s spot on. Looking at his list, I came up with only a single addition (which appears in red/bold) for traits of modern developers:

• Store code in a source control repository. The beauty of using source control solutions, such as SVN/subversion, Git, or Visual Source Safe (VSS), is that a team of developers can develop code without overwriting each the changes made by each other.
• Deploy code using scripts. With a script, developers can automate the launch of a website, this ensuring that nothing is missed in the process.
• Develop using TDD or Test-driven development. Instead of writing code first, developers focus on writing tests for their code. This provides a solution to limit the number of bugs as a unit test can also serve as a low-level regression test as new code is introduced.
• Reuses code when possible. Modern developers know that they don’t need to re-invent the wheel. Instead of rewriting code, they tend to reuse code that’s already working. This translates to saving development time, plus it allows developers to focus their energy on learning something new.
• Apply the Model–View–Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. Since code is logically separated into 3 tiers (data layer, presentation layer, and business layer which connects the other two), developers can more easily maintain their code.

The good news is that the barrier to become a modern developer is low. Old school developers only need to adopt the MVC pattern to be new again.

NOTE: Stonehenge photo was provided by Danny Sullivan.

I just finished up the book Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod. The book is actually a collection of entries from Hugh’s blog where he talks about his hobby of drawing cartoons on the back of business cards. It was a short read — but it was packed with great life lessons, especially if you’re a product manager. Like a product manager, Hugh had to produce and promote his product (art on business cards) while facing plenty of criticism. This book reminds us that there are no such things as shortcut — the road to success is a long one. The three big lessons that struck a chord with me included:

Stay Focused. Once you find a direction, you have to stick with it. People may try to sway you with their opinion but you can’t let that get in your way of success.

Work Hard. You have to keep plugging away at your dream even if there’s no immediate reward. Theodore Roosevelt actually said the same thing: “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led diffcult lives and led them well.”

Keep Practicing. If you want to get better at your craft, you have to do it again and again. There are no shortcuts. (NOTE: Jeff Atwood seems to repeat this message in his blog on development; see here).

Hope that you get to enjoy this book as much as I did.