Live Chat Programs

Also see: The Exception Model

This gem of a post recently popped up in my Techmeme/TechCrunch RSS feed. its Michael Arrington lamenting the hassle/aggravation/frustration of having to deal with a daily onslaught of thousands of emails.

Michael, I feel your pain. Making my email readily available seemed like a really smart thing to do when I first bought the Mavs in 2000. In hindsight, it was a huge mistake. Now of the thousand plus emails I get in a day, a hundred may be of the “You Suck” variety. Another 100 or so are of the “I want ” variety. I would say that less than 20pct of the emails I get in any given day are truly of any interest and value to me and 99pct of those are from employees.

The good news is that I have a filter system setup so that I can push emails from people I already know or do business with into folders that I know are of relative importance.

Yet, I still trudge through the emails from the sports people who want to rant for the sake of ranting, giving them the shortest of glances, just in case they truly are a customer of the Mavs with a valid issue. I still glance at the “I want” emails, just in case there is something of truly redeeming value.

Unfortunately, there is one element of email that I have been forced to give up on. I have emails going back to the 1980s. Starting in about 1994, I have as many emails as I have been able to save as possible, up until about 12 months ago.

I had always wanted to keep each and every email I ever got figuring that it would be a history (more…)

Also see: Yes, it does mean everything

Should bloggers be allowed in the Mavs locker room ? Conceptually its not a big deal. A blogger, a beat writer, a columnists. The medium they use to deliver their content should be irrelevant. No question about it.

But then there is the question of realworld constraints. This is a picture of our locker room. This is the area the media conducts their interviews post game. As it is now, between reporters, photographers (both still and video), trainers and the players, it gets pretty full.

Right now we have a situation where a blogger that works for the Dallas Morning News would like continued access to the locker room. Prior to last week, I had no idea this person’s primary job at the Morning News is to blog. I hadn’t seen or read it. He was just one of the 4 or 5 people from the Morning News in the locker room post game. When it was brought to my attention I immediately made it an issue. Why ?

Not because I don’t want this blogger in the locker room doing interviews. What I didn’t like was that the Morning News was getting a competitive advantage simply because they were the Dallas Morning News. I am of the opinion that a blogger for one of the local newspapers is no better or worse than the blogger from the local high school, from the local huge Mavs fan, from an out of town blogger. I want to treat them all the same.

Unfortunately, there isn’t enough room to allow any and all bloggers in the locker room. There also are no standards that I have been able to come up with that diffe (more…)

Also see: Web Services with Spring 2.5 and Apache CXF

Every day I get at least one email from someone proclaiming that they are “destined to be” XXXXX. You can fill in the blank with any number of dreams the person has for themself, be it rich, famous, the best this or that. Of course they aren’t emailing me just to tell me, they email me to ask for money to enable them to be whatever it is they dream of being. For me, its a good problem to have. But it leads to questions. Do we know what we are destined to be, or do we find it through experiences ? Are each of us really good at something, and its just a matter of finding it ? Do we all have something that we would love to do every day and do we inherently know it, or do we have to find it ? Will what you love to do always be what you are great at ?

Personally, I always have enjoyed business, but I never knew that I had an aptitude for technology until I got a job at Mellon Bank that lasted all of 8 months. But during the many hours of boredom, I found myself sitting in front of a mainframe teaching myself a scripting language called Ramis and loving every minute of it. Which lead to me buying a TI/99A I think it was, for 99 dollars, attaching a tape recorder as a drive (how is that for dating myself) and teaching myself basic. Which led to… You get the idea. I loved every minute of it. Maybe I wasnt the best programmer in the world, but in combination with business and sales skills, I found something that was a blast to me that I could and did do 24 hours at a time and not miss a beat.

Personally, I don (more…)

Also see: Generics and .NET

Robert Rebholz is not only my boss*, he is also my muse, ideological sparring partner, alter ego, and mentor. Bob is possesed by a special kind of genius, with a sort of Jeffersonian breadth and intensity that makes it a pleasure and honor to collaborate with him, on a day-to-day basis. In my opinion, Bob is one of two people on Earth who can talk about the BIG idea that is Claimspace , with absolute confidence, competence, and credibility. If you have even a passing interest in online communities of practice, folksonomies , reputation systems, credibility, identity, recommendation systems, rewards, “flow”, collaborative filtering, “social search”, & related areas, I encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed and Bob’s RSS feed.

Yesterday, Bob posted an excellent post about Claimspace  that wades into the broad river of uses that it might one day support, for both users and “community owners”, across the Web. He cites the following potential uses:

• “Long tail recognition system”
• Solution to the “Who can I trust? issue”
• “Generalized polling mechanism” (and portable)

• “A simple REST API gives everyone (and I mean everyone — the mashup possibilities are just staggering — caveat, keep the crawl, walk, run idea in mind) the ability use the data in a manner best suited to their needs: community (MVP or other influencer) reward programs, product design input, product feature voting, bug prioritization, and on and on and on, all without a ton of custom code. Any Digg-like application would love this kind of data. Can you imagine – hottest claims, hottest people making claims, most used claims, newest claims, by product, by solution area, by geographical region, and the list goes on.”

• (more…)

Also see: New Assembly, Old .NET (and Vice-Versa)

My buddy Jason had a GREAT post about rules for startups. Read it, love it learn it.

Of course, anyone who has started a company has their own rules and guidelines, so I thought i would add to the meme with my own. My “rules” below aren’t just for those founding the companies, but for those who are considering going to work for them as well.

1. Don’t start a company unless its an obsession and something you love.

2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.

3. Hire people who you think will love working there.

4. Sales Cures All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.

5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap

6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.

7. No offices. Open offices keeps everyone in tune with what is going on and keeps the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show them how to use the lock on the john. There is nothing private in a start up. This is also a good way to keep from hiring execs who can not operate successfully in a (more…)