Digital Common Sense

That’s probably not a fair question, but let me step back a moment. You might want to take a look at two earlier posts I wrote -

Yoohoo Yahoo. Where are you?
Hey Yahoo - Knock, knock. Is anyone home?

They were posts moitivated, at least in part, by comments from friend and colleague Stuart Henshall. I link to his comments in both.

Stuart and I were sharing observations about Jerry Yang at Yahoo and his plan to spend 100 days in silent reflection within Yahoo to sort out their plan of attack. Now it’s perhaps time to reflect on the outcome.

First, 100 days was far too long. In Internet time, that’s the life of some companies. To think time would stand still for Yahoo to spend 100 days contemplating its navel was ludicrous. Secondly, we’ve gone well beyond 100 days. Laughably beyond.

In the time that’s passed, now we hear rumblings of layoffs at Yahoo. I don’t have any direct confirmation, but certainly there are a lot of rumblings. And I have enough connections who work at Yahoo that the barometer shows there’s a climate of change sweeping in, but it seems mostly unknown. I get the feeling that for many Yahooligans,, they’re like mushrooms - being fed manure and kept in the dark. That’s just a sense I get from casual conversation.

In one of my earlier posts, I aimed this comment at  Jerry Yang:

I hope while you’re radio silent you’re talking with and listening to
people like Jeff Bonforte and Daniel Raffel and not just talking in an
echo chamber. If you’re staring into the abyss with a deer in the
headlights look, please don’t let the great people at Yahoo all ride
that train until it derails. I hope you aren’t doing all the talking
and failing to listen to the people who made Yahoo what it was. Because
it can be again, but not if you fail to act.

From the outrsiders perspective, when Yahoo went radio silent, they went comatose. They’ve failed to act, failed to plan, failed to think. None of those may be true. What they’ve really failed to do is provide a clue. They’re pretty much stuck in radio silence.

When you’re a company like Yahoo, competing with the likes of Google and Facebook silence isn’t a weapon. It isn’t a defense. It surely isn’t an attack. Silence is tantamount to cowering in fear.

I said Yang could revitalize Yahoo by talking and listening to the right people, but it’s something that had to be done in a timely manners.

The question in my mind now is whether or not Yahoo has any relevance at all. Is there enough left to salvage and maintain some degree of leadership. For me personally, I’ve realized that I use my Yahoo ID for one thing and only one thing. It’s my Flickr identity. If not for FLickr, Yahoo wouldn’t exist on my personal radar.

So here’s a question for you  - do you Yahoo? How and why? What is it you use Yahoo for these days. And if you don’t use it at all, I’d like to know that too. I can identify a number of things most of us don’t use Yahoo for -

• It’s not the search engine of choice. Google has that.
• It’s not the social network of choice. Facebook seems to have that, although I wouldn’t discount MySpace just yet either.
• It’s not the IM chat medium of choice. With Gtalk, AIM, MSN and Jabber, the real leader is probably a cross-platform tool that let’s us chat on multiple networks. If we’re talking pure messaging chatter, I don’t think we can discount either Twitter or Jaiku.
• It’s not the video tool of choice. Sure lots of people used Yahoo video, but I think Skype has actually overtaken it, and SightSpeed has a continually growing use base.
• It’s not the default home page. My Yahoo just isn’t. The most common home pages I see are Google, MSN, news or sports pages. I can’t remember the last time I saw Yahoo come up as anyones default home page.

If we don’t live in Yahoo, and we aren’t using Yahoo, how sustainable is it? And frankly, what the heck is Jerry Yang doing about it?

As an interesting comparison, there’s been a lot of talk about the senior leadership team at Skype and what’s been going on over there. Is Yahoo as interesting as Skype in terms of what lies ahead? Not in my book. And not if you read the chatter on the web.

Yahoo has lost relevance and is still in decline. The question for me is whether Yahoo is sliding into the abyss or will be able to pull out and salvage a respectable leadership role in any segment. Or will we simply write them off as another also-ran?

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, relevance, Jarry Yang

Filed by Ken at 10:37 pm under Tech in General, Technology, Unified Communications
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Filed by Ken at 9:28 am under General
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Jeff Pulver started this in his post The Bucket List 2008 Meme.

In the movie “The Bucket List“, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman decide to make the most out of what time they think they have left. In the movie they compile a list of things they still wish to accomplish, giving them some much-needed motivation and a desire to still stay young at heart.

In the spirit of the movie, and in the spirit of trying to make 2008 be the year that we all start to do some of the things we would like to accomplish one day, I thought it would be fun to reach out to friends across the blogosphere and ask them to share some of the things on their “Bucket List” they hope to remove during 2008. For some of us, these are not necessarily our “New Year’s Resolutions”, but rather things we have been meaning to do for some time that we WILL get done in 2008

I read Jeff’s post with some interest because of a book that crossed my eyes recently. The my pal Andy tagged me in his The Bucket List post. It’s something I’d like to spend more time thinking about, but feel like I need to just react quickly. I find my focus isn’t unlike Andy’s, with a blend of work, health and personal goals.

• Sheryl and I launched Stardust not very long ago. I want to invest some real effort into making it a success. I’m not quite sure how to do that given the full time job I have that gets in the way sometimes. But it’s one of the most important things on my horizon, certainly from a career perspective. We have to be very discerning about the conferences we attend and maximize our value.
• Last year I learned I’m diabetic. While I’ve done pretty well with diet and fine with medication, I still struggle finding or making the time to get the exercise I really need. This year I’ll change that. More focus on health.
• I’ve been finding my way back to music recently. I’ve begun spending time in the evenings with my guitar and it nourishes me in a way I can’t really describe here. That’s something I won’t easily let go of again.
• Friends are becoming more important to me as I grow older. I’m going to pay far more attention to my rfriends that I have in the past. This year I lost a couple of good ones, and the realization how short life is hits hard.
• In the past few months, my relationship with my sons took a pretty hard blow. It’s beginning to mend now, but I know there’s a long way to go. I’m going to work hard to improve those relationships based on open honesty and integrity.
• Those who know me well enough know that in the past year, Sheryl and I found one another and began a new life together. First a foremost, above all else, more important than jobs or work or technology or brainstorms, I’m going to focus on loving this incredible woman who’s sharing her life with me. I’ll spend every day being the honest man of integrity who stands by her side, fights battles as her partner, supports, loves and cherishes her. She’s a precious treasure and I won’t let a day go by that I don’t make her know how much I love her and appreciate her.

And I suggest that those of you reading this and feeling so inclined, simply tag yourself and participate. I’m not going to single you out. Just jump in and join me in optimistic looking ahead to the future

Filed by Ken at 4:40 pm under General
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I was quite surprised to read the post below from Om Malik just a bit ago. Om’s a good friend, but as is a hazard in our industry, one with whom I’m not in close contact with on a regular basis. While not happy to hear he’d had a heart attack, I’m very happy to know he’s on the mend and doing well.

A Heart-to-Heart with GigaOM Readers

Om Malik, Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 12:35 PM PT 

Happy New Year. As you may have noticed, my byline hasn’t been up on the site for a few days. That’s because the holidays weren’t exactly my most jolly.

I had a heart attack on Dec. 28. I was able to walk into the hospital for treatment that night and have been recovering here ever since. With the support of my family and my team, I am on the road to a full recovery. I am going to be OK.
[Read Om’s full post]

I want to post my good wishes for a full and speedy recovery here, and to chide Om to remember that the smokes, scotch and fatty foods, enjoyable though they are, really do need to be a thing of the past. Take care of yourself, my friend.

Technorati Tags: Om Malik, GigaOm

Filed by Ken at 3:02 pm under Tech in General, Technology
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Last year the O’Reilly ETel event was perhaps the most exciting conference venue in the industry. O’Reilly wasn’t able to continue the event, but that’s not enough to let something so exciting and powerful fade away. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Lee Dryburgh, this year we’ll see the kickoff of eComm2008. It’s what I believe will be the first of a revitalized, high-energy conference that will set the industry aflame with passion and innovation.

The conference takes place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA from March 12th-14th.

Established in 1996, the Computer History Museum is a public benefit organization dedicated to the preservation and celebration of computing history. It is home to one of the largest collections of computing artifacts in the world, a collection comprising over 13,000 objects, 20,000 images, 5,000 moving images, 4,000 linear feet of cataloged documentation and 5,000 titles or several hundred gigabytes of software. The mission of the Computer History Museum is to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age. As such, the Museum plays a unique role in the history of the computing revolution and its worldwide impact on the human experience.

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Here’s just a small sampling of speakers on the agenda. These are just a few that are my personal highlights. Check the speakers page for a complete list.

Bob Frankston

Frankston Innovating, Achieving connectivity from the edge.

Bob Frankston may be best known for writing VisiCalc. He has been working on online services and networks since 1966 and while at Microsoft initiated the home networking effort. Since then he’s focus his attention on a post-telecom model that builds on the Internet dynamic to achieve connectivity from the edge rather than the center.

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Brough Turner

NMS Communications, SVP and CTO

Brough Turner is SVP, CTO and co-founder of NMS Communications wherehe oversees evolution of technology and product architectures andworks on business strategy and new market development. Brough writesand is quoted widely on telecommunications topics in trade and generalbusiness publications and he is a frequent speaker at telecom industryevents around the world. His current interests include mobilewireless access, broadband policy, mobile video, and user createdcontent and communities. Brough blogs athttp://blogs.nmss.com/communications/ on the technology, economic andsocial issues of communications at the intersection of telecom,mobility and the Internet.

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David Isenberg

Awaiting…, Founder

David S. Isenberg spent 12 years at AT&T Bell Labs until his 1997 essay,”The Rise of the Stupid Network,” was received with acclaim everywhere in the global telecommunications community with one exception — at AT&T itself! So Isenberg left AT&T in 1998 to found isen.com, LLC (an independent telecom analysis firm based in Cos Cob, Connecticut) and to publish The SMART Letter, an open-minded commentary on the communications revolution and its enemies.

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Jeff Bonforte

Yahoo! Inc., Vice President, Product Management

Jeff has founded a few startups including i-drive, an online storage pioneer, in 1998. He served as President for SIPphone, where he lead the development and release of Gizmo Project (www.gizmo5.com). He began working at Yahoo! in 2005, where he initially lead Voice. Shortly after, he was promoted to run Messenger, Voice and Chat. He was promoted to Vice President in 2007. Today he works in early product development in Search.

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Lee S Dryburgh

SS7 Networks Limited, Director

Lee S. Dryburgh is a person-to-person communications technologist. He is an engineering doctoral candidate at UCL (with sponsorship from Cisco), SS7 consulting engineer via his company SS7 Networks and the initiator of the Emerging Communications (eComm) conference. He has performed work for numerous operators including British Telecom, O2, Sprint, T-Mobile, Orange, Verisign, Hutchinson, as well as vendors including Marconi, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, and Cisco. He is an acknowledged expert in the telecommunication protocol suite Signaling System #7 and lead-authored the bestselling book on the topic. His research focus is the future of telephony and enabling conversation between relevant strangers.

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Martin Geddes

STL, Chief Analyst

Martin Geddes is author of the popular telecom strategy blog Telepocalypse, as well as chief analyst at STL and co-instigator of the Telco 2.0 initiative (www.telco2.net) — helping network operators and vendors make money in an all-IP world.

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Thomas McCarthy-Howe

The Thomas Howe Company, CEO

Thomas McCarthy-Howe has nineteen years of experience in telecommunications product development. He is currently an independent consultant to service providers, enterprises and equipment vendors in the design and development of next generation communications equipment and services. Thomas has held senior management and engineering positions at industry leaders such as Comverse, Versatel Networks, PictureTel and Aware. As a member of the PictureTel engineering team, Mr. Howe designed audio and video software of the first PC-based video conferencing system, as well as software for the original version of NetMeeting, and as Aware Inc.’s software architect for the first commercially available ADSL chipset. In 2007, Thomas won the O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Mashup Contest. In addition to his writing and teaching, he currently serves on several technical advisory boards and boards of directors.

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That list is just a few of the fabulous speakers on the eComm agenda. Yes, those were chosen because they represent some personal friends we look foward to spending time with, but they’re also trusted colleagues who represent the voice of wisdom in the industry. The speaker’s list for this event is incomparable with that of many conferences.

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Looking over the agenda yields such a depth and breadth of conversations that this is truly an even not to be missed.

My partner Sheryl and I are making sure we won’t miss it. We’ll be there, and expect to be presenting one of the lightning talks on the last day. We’ll be talking about why enabling a hyperconnected state with voice and data services is one of the most vital competitive differentiators in the industry.

We’re also lined up to speak should schedules change or anyone’s travel plans go awry. We will definitely be there blogging, interviewing, podcasting, doing video, and sharing the excitement and frenzy of action from the conference.

We hope you’ll look for us and come say hello. We want to meet and talk with as many of you as possible.

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Special Bonus

The cost of this conference is already low, one of the lowest cost conferences in the industry. Early bird registration is still in effect right now, for another $300 off.

As a special bonus if you email either Sheryl or Ken, we’ll provide a special discount code that will get an additional 15% discount. The early bird registration will end soon, so make your plans now.

Drop us an email to let us know if you’re going to be there so we can set aside time to meet in person.

Technorati Tags: eComm, Lee Dryburgh, Ken Camp, Sheryl Breuker

Filed by Ken at 4:43 pm under Mobility & Handheld, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP/Unified Communications
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I’ve watched this meme float around for a few days, half expecting to get tagged along the way. I mostly don’t jump into these things, but I’ve been tagged quite differently. My life and business partner Sheryl tagged me, after our friend Pat Phelan tagged her. Think about it for a moment. How do you respond when the person you live and work with, your life partner, asks for eight things they don’t know about you?

That means this meme takes a real twist for me, because Sheryl knows an awful lot about me, about my failures and shortcomings, and about my strengths and abilities. For me to answer fairly and honestly requires some real thought. I’m really aiming for eight things she doesn’t know. The rest of you are simply along for the ride.

1) I actually don’t mind being diabetic. It may sound strange, but, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes last year. It’s not the sort of thing most 54 year old men take as good news. I saw several men in my age bracket in a healthy living class I took that were really in denial. For me, it was a wake up call to really pay attention to my diet, to be more active and to take care of myself. I’ve done pretty well with diet. I’m still not as active as I want to be, but Sheryl’s helping me get there. For me, learning I was diabetic forced me to re-examine my lifestyle and behaviors. That’s a good thing.

2) When I was young (teens) I was an avid bicyclist. I lived in the greater Los Angeles area and rode to both San Diego and Santa Barbara at different times. Today I barely ride at all, but I’d love to get a tandem mountain bike and spend time exploring back country roads of the Pacific Northwest on weekends. I would also love visit Italy and bicycle across the country exploring food, wine and local culture along the way. Sheryl?

3) I spent a few months as a barber while in the Navy, many years ago. I’ve probably cut 3000 heads of hair, but none in a very long time.

4) When I began my career in technology, while not introverted, I was not at all comfortable in a public forum. Later in my career I gradually transitioned through sales and marketing evangelist roles. By the time I was teaching on platform weekly, I’d acclimated to being completely as ease in front of a crowd. I once had to fill in and speak extemporaneously for 50 minutes to a group of about 1000 people at a conference.

5) I can talk a lot. Sheryl will claim she already knows this, but she’s yet to really see how much or how long. When I was teaching technology, one of our prerequisites for a qualified instructor was to be able to teach with the complete absence of material. With nothing more than a white board, teach a week long class (assume 32 hours of lecture) each on IP networking, routing, network security, ATM, frame relay, SNA, VoIP. SS7. etc. Given that each of us teaching was expected to teach a minimum of 18 different courses in the technology curriculum, that means stand up and lecture for 18 weeks with no prep time or supporting material. That’s 4 1/2 months of lecture. I haven’t made Sheryl sit through that sort of thing…yet. Maybe when she’s bad.

6) At times I’m terribly insecure as a writer. I’ve written books, more than one. I’ve written hundreds of industry papers and thousands of blog posts. While I’m reasonably comfortable as a wordsmith, there are times that words utterly fail me. It’s as if my brain vapor locks and can’t move. Sometimes the confidence and conviction are there simply to help me work through that self-conscious doubt myself.

7) My father died when I was seven years old. Now that I’m 54, you’d think I’d be over it. The truth is that for much of my life, I felt lost and adrift without a father’s example to follow. It left me always wondering if he’d have been proud of me as a man and as a father. Mostly I think not, but I still hope.

is just too many things and I think I need to maintain some slight aura of mystery with Sheryl. I’ll leave number eight open for discussion some other time.

As we were muddling through this meme, Sheryl said she was going to tag some of her Facebook friends. I’m not sure it it’s fitting or not that Pat’s tagging of Twitter friends spins across to Facebook, but I’m going to do the same and tag eight friends who use Facebook. Then, like Sheryl, I’ll import the note and tag those friends inside Facebook as well. And I’m going to specifically tag people I’d like to get to know better, and in person in 2008.

Moshe Maeir, who’s tirelessly working to make Earth a flat planet.
Blogger, cartoonist and philosopherHugh MacLeod.
One of my most highly respected friends, Jon Arnold.
The newlywed, Frederik Hermann.
Garrett Smith. We’ve met but had almost no time to talk.
Thomas Howe, the undisputed king of telecom mashups.
Howard Thaw who will have to find a way to post it on Facebook since he doesn’t actively blog.
Neil Vineberg, PR thought leader and all around neat guy.

Filed by Ken at 5:48 pm under General
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