Month: July 2011

just thinking out loud, Uncategorized 0 comments on Life update

Life update

Well it’s slowed down here a lot, and so it became clear that an update was in order. What has life brought me in July?

  • Wendy & Raif visited

    We had a whole slew of visitors come through the first half of the month. Our far, far away family descended to meet baby Amelia. Unfortunately for Wendy (and Geoff) she had to be re-admitted to the hospital due to an infection. She had a bright red inflammation underneath her oemphalocele, and it took a 10-day course to knock it out. Once she was home though, it was all magic! 

    My dad being in town was nice except he smokes too much. It caused a lot of problems in that Micky kept getting upset, and I think he realized it and got upset as well. We also put him up in a bed & breakfast in the Castro district of San Francisco which I think he enjoyed (even though he got relocated to the “garden suite”). I’d highly recommend the Parker Guest House to anyone who has folks in town.

  • Soccer/Fitness

    Still too fat and slow. I have however started to really lose weight. A trio of us at work are making it to the gym 3 times a week, and I’m loving it. Hop out for 1 hour as if we were going to coffee, and get in some exercise. Rotating muscle groups, but now I need to put some more time into aerobic. I’ve started that this week 

    My goal is to reach 180 pounds by my one year wedding anniversary. I’m at 195 lbs right now. I’m feeling pretty good about my chances.

  • Work

    I think all in all, this may be where things are best right now. 

    I got to present at this month’s board meeting, and that went really well. I’m sure for most folks that’s a non-event, but I wonder if folks who have entrepreneurial  aspirations if your first board meeting is like your first time with a girl? It was about as exciting :-p

    Product team is buzzing with too much to do, and not enough time to do it. Everyone keeps saying that’s a good thing, but I’m pretty convinced that that’s just a convenient story to tell oneself to make it all make sense. I think we’ve got an awesome few months ahead of us at the ‘Box.

  • Vacation

    Which leaves me with what I’m doing right now. We’re on vacation at an amazing house in Tamales Bay. We’re on the water, and we’ve spent the last few days grilling out, hanging out with Amelia and just re-establishing our family. It’s been awesome! Photos to come soon.

Becoming a PM, Uncategorized 0 comments on Hustling

Hustling

I can’t quite put my finger on why, but Friday was an amazing day.

A lot of pretty large projects finally came together, and I really feel like came to a conclusion. Finish lines are too damn difficult to find in their own right, but when you cross two or three together at the same time it’s really a nirvana experience.

It was an intriguing blog post by Brad Feld detailing the 99% committer that helped me realize we were stuck. Everyone wanted one more ounce of promise about direction, marketing or resource commitment before things crossed the finish line. There were good reasons for all of the above, and it wasn’t done out of malcontent or ill intentions, but nonetheless it had to be worked through. Ian let me know that we were, “paying the penalty lap”. It’s an end game that I hope to not make the mistake of replaying anytime soon.

When I announced that Friday was a good day, I got a really good ribbing. You see, I bitch and moan like crazy, and Ian only hears about one-quarter of it (poor guy). Amelia hears the rest, but she just smiles through it all so I’m not too concerned for her. Underneath all of that energy is an anxiousness born from the need to be three steps further ahead, and prepared for what’s coming even beyond that. What this process taught me though was the importance of the present.

Lesson learned: If you don’t hustle the present moment, then there is no future worth planning for.

The theme for the next few months for me is definitely going to be (a) get project started, (b) mature project into product, (c) get product out the door.

Item (a) is too easy. It’s easy to the point where you really end up trying to do as many (a) as possible without worrying about the rest. It’s hustling through (b) and (c) that’s going to win the game though, and that’s a very important skill to build.

Video chat is about to explode, and we’re on the door step of the first anniversary of the OpenTok prototype. The next few weeks will mark the first round of video chat solutions drawing their line in the sand about what/who will win the long term real time communication space. We’re definitely a flyweight trying to win in the heavyweight division, but we can bite ears off with the best of them.

And we’re going to do it by out-hustling the big boys today, and not worrying about tomorrow.

At least not too much

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