Posted in Essays, tagged business, people, principles on August 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Giving gifts can have a big positive impact on your business, but you have to do it the right way.
I have long held the belief that the best way to get more customers is to actually care about them as human beings. In fact, profit is just an unfortunate side-effect of helping people. (more…)
Posted in Essays, tagged business, linkedin, principles, slack on August 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The System z10 Enterprise Class—equivalent to approximately 1500 Intel x86 servers
IT people like to hang out at Starbucks discussing things that really matter, such as what Russia is doing in Georgia, or what the utilization numbers look like for the company’s servers. The sad reality is 
that most servers are provisioned with way more hardware than they need for the job. They may see occasional usage spikes, but the CPU is usually just havin’ a bud. This is mostly due to the secret desire of every nerd to own the baddest, most awe-inspiring box on the planet. (This is second only to their fascination with robots.)
(more…)
Posted in Essays, tagged animation, art, business, linkedin, management, people, process on June 4, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Recently my friend and I left the office for a couple hours to attend a lecture by Dr. Ed Catmull at a local university. Here is a man who knows what he’s doing. Over time, Dr. Catmull has leveraged sound business principles to help grow Pixar into one of the best animation studios in the world.
Given Dr. Catmull’s history (he has a PhD in Computer Science), I was expecting a fairly technical talk. To my suprise, he said virtually nothing about technology. What he did talk about was people. It seems that you don’t have to have an MBA to know how to manage people.
Here, in a nutshell, is Dr. Catmull’s business philosphy, broken down into several principles. (more…)
Posted in Random Stuff, tagged business, education, engineering, skills on March 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
At work our software development team allocates 30 min each day to skill development. It’s a great way to keep our minds fresh and full of new ideas. Today I just came across a gold mine for anyone looking to challenge their inner nerd. It’s called OpenCourseWare. It’s from MIT. It’s nerdy.
Posted in Essays, tagged business, linkedin, principles, startups on March 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
One of my favorite restaurants is the Thai Chili Gardens, a local place not far from where I work. Every time I go, the food is excellent. Every restaurant owner knows (or they will soon discover) that customers expect dishes to taste good, and taste pretty much the same each time they come in. Even subtle changes in the way a meal is prepared or which ingredients are used can turn off customers who will never come back.
