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Till Gabriel Blows His Horn

Published April 16, 2014 College , Life Leave a Comment
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The eyes of Texas are upon you

All the live long days

The eyes of Texas are upon you

And you cannot get away

Do not think you can escape them

From night till early in the morn

The eyes of Texas are upon you

Till Gabriel blows his horn

Those are the lyrics to the alma mater for The University of Texas at Austin. As you may have figured out by now, I received degrees from there many years ago. For many this is just a song set to the tune of I’ve Been Working on the Railroad, but for Texas Exes it serves as a reminder that what we do with our lives is seen and felt by many people – perhaps not the entire State of Texas or the world, but more people than one would imagine.

A friend and former business associate recently died as the result of a seemingly random traffic accident. He too was a proud graduate of The University of Teas at Austin. While we did not talk as often as we did when we worked at the same company, we exchanged texts throughout the year about the ups and downs of the various Longhorn athletic teams and how things were going in our professional careers.

When I attended his funeral in the small Texas town of Ballinger, it struck me just how many lives one person could touch in their lives. The church was overflowing with people wanting to take a part in honoring his life. As I listened to the eulogies, it also struck me that he was a person that truly lived his life knowing that the eyes of Texas were upon him. As the stories were told of his childhood and on through to his last day, it left no doubt that he had an eye for business from an early age, that community was important to him, and that love of family and God were at the center of every part of his life.

As many of us do, I find myself caught up all too often in the daily work grind. That grind seems to have the ability to consume all our energy, leaving very little for the other much more important things in our lives. The grind gets in the way our relationships with friends and family; it becomes the excuse to not be involved in activities to help those in our community; it even begins to interfere with our faith. In short we let work define our lives. We reach a point where we live to work. What we need to do is work to live.

My friend had it right; he strived for success in his career in order to be a better husband, father, and member of his community. He wanted to make a difference in people’s lives – and I think the evidence is there that he did. I can learn a lot from his short 35 years of life, and the last lesson is to remember what matters most, never lose sight of it and live every day like it is your last chance to impact a life.

Till Gabriel blows his horn…………

I Found Help (and Hope) in Orlando: And I Wasn’t Even Looking For It

Published January 23, 2014 Community , Leadership , Life , Uncategorized 1 Comment
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Help, I need somebody

Help, not just anybody

Help, you know I need someone

Help

“Help” is one of my favorite songs from that lovable British boy band, The Beatles.  As you start reading this you will more than likely be thinking  “what do these lyrics have to do with these ramblings?”, but stick with me.

I had to attend a company conference this week in Orlando, Florida.  And quite frankly in the days leading up to the conference, I was less than 100% enthused to be attending.  I was going to miss several of my kid’s activities during the week; my wife was going to have to play single parent for most of the week; I was on the agenda to present; and overall I thought “been there, done that.  I’ve seen this show before.”

There is still one day left in the conference, but my attitude has changed.  The feel of the conference; the content of the conference; and what I am getting out of it is much more than I ever imagined.  But that doesn’t make a great story, nor is it what spurred me to write about it.

As part of the conference agenda, we had a social responsibility event.  But unlike some other charitable exercises at these types of events, this was not just going out and picking up trash, or working on a house, or beautifying a park.  Now don’t get me wrong, these are all fine things to do.  However, the event at this conference was geared around leveraging the collective marketing expertise that the employees of our company possess.  The event was to create marketing plans for 8 Orlando-area charities, and to then compete in a marketing strategy throw-down in an effort to win $10,000 in marketing services for one of the organizations.

I had the good fortune to be on a team working with Shepherds Hope, a faith-based organization running 5 medical clinics providing free medical services to the uninsured  – and yes despite ObamaCare and all it’s promises there is still and will continue to be a large population of people without medical insurance – in the Orlando area.  The story of the inspirational start of Shepherds Hope, the heart-wrenching stories of patients saved by the services provided, and the thousands of hours of service donated by area medical professionals were awe inspiring.  I think each of my colleagues on the team were brought to tears as we learned about what this organization does in the community.

What changed my attitude was the passion that was exhibited by my fellow co-workers as we in 2 short hours put together a marketing plan for this great organization.  Most of us on the team were not from Orlando, and several were not even from the United States, yet we all felt an immediate connection to this organization.  I was inspired by the collective talent of the group; each of bringing unique skills to the table in an effort to make a difference in the lives of people we will never even know.  To the last person on the team, we all wanted to help Shepherds Hope by providing them the seeds for a marketing plan to attract more medical professionals, attract more and larger monetary donations, and in the end to help them improve the lives of so many people.  This wasn’t about closing a sale for our company, or hitting some financial performance target; it was about using our special talents to help others.

Well it turns out that our team did not win the marketing pitch show-down, but our company graciously donated $7,000 in services to each of the 7 “losing” organizations and the members of my team (without provocation or threat from anyone) all committed to donate personal hours to supplement the $7,000 so that we can help make Shepherds Hope’s dreams for more medical professionals and more donors a reality.

What I thought was going to be just another charitable event where I and others without much effort, thought or connection to help a community, turned out to be so much more.  It turns out, I was the one helped.  I was helped by the dedicated staff of Shepherds Hope and the other charities that reminded me that there are measures of operational success much more important than revenue and OI.  I was helped by my fellow co-workers that reminded me of the passion that we all have within us and the immense amount of marketing talent we possess within our company.  This helped me realize, that while things may not be perfect in our company, we have the passion and the expertise to make it so much better.  I didn’t fly to Orlando thinking I needed help, but I did, and fortunately I found it.

If you would like additional information on Shepherds Hope, you can visit their website (hopefully soon it will be a better site) at www.shepherdshope.org and you can follow them on Twitter @shepherdshope

Weird Science: Your Business Might Just Need Some

Published November 19, 2013 Leadership , Life Leave a Comment
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From my heart and from my hand and
Why don’t people understand my intentions?

Weird science
Magic and technology
Voodoo dolls and chants
Weird science

It’s been several months since my last post, and I come back with some random lyrics from 80’s New Wave band Oingo Boingo.  In case you don’t recognize the song, it is Weird Science, a song that supposedly the members of the band did not care much for and rarely performed live.  The song was also the title song for the soundtrack of a John Hughes movie with the same name – and yes I had a celebrity crush on Kelly LeBrock back in the day.

Today the lyrics serve as an “answer” to something that has perplexed many a person over the years:  what makes a team (or organization) perform at a high level?

I know there have been many books, columns, and Phd. Dissertations written on the subject.  There are all sorts of ideas on how to formulate a high performance team that gives you synergy, i.e. the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements or contributions. I don’t think anyone is 100% sure how to achieve synergy in organizations, so I am just to chalk it up to a little bit of “weird science.”

I started thinking about this about 3 months ago when my daughter tried out for the junior high volleyball team.  She ended up on the mid-level squad with other girls that were deemed to be average players, but not one of the best 10 that made the top squad.  During early season practices the top-level and mid-level teams scrimmaged, and the mid-level team typically won set after set against the team with the more skilled players. My daughter’s team then went out and won the first game of the season, and then won the next one, and the next one, until we looked up and that group of average players had done something that no volleyball at that school had ever done – they had a perfect season.  11 matches, 11 victories.  Not bad for a group of girls that individually were not assessed as being the best players.  I guess you could called it an example of synergy, but I just called it fun.

Throughout the volleyball season, I kept thinking about what made that team successful.  Perhaps it was that during tryouts the coaches evaluating the players were wrong on all 10 players.  Or maybe it was the sheer coaching talent of volunteer parent coaches of the mid-level team. Or maybe it was just some “weird science” that somehow took a group of average players and turned them into a great team.    I did make some observations during the season that just might be factors in the team’s success:

1)    They did not get overly stressed about the games.  During pre-game warm-ups or time-outs you would see them dancing around sometimes even when no music was playing.  They looked like they actually enjoyed being together on the court.

2)    They did not get mad or angry when a teammate had a poor serve, shanked a return or watched a ball drop in front of them.  They simply chanted “shake it, shake it off” and went on to the next point.

3)    In matches where the team dropped a set, the team always came back the next set with a higher level of energy.  They did not let losing the first set, make them lose the next one.

4)    And before, during, and after each match; they prayed.

I am sure there were many other factors that went into this group having a great season.  Whatever all those things were, they had to come together in just the right levels to achieve the desired end result.  The interesting thing is that there was not a recipe that listed the exact amount of each thing and the order in which to add them and mix them together.  While there was some deliberate things done in order to position that team to excel, there was also a little bit of magic involved in having a perfect season.

Many years ago in the business school, I remember taking Marketing 101 where they taught the 4 P’s:  Product, Price, Place and Promotion.  The professors made it sound so simple:  all you needed was the right mix of those four things and you could have a highly successful business.  20 plus years later and I can tell you that it is not that simple.  Through the years, I have figured out that there may be just a few more factors involved in a successful business and that knowing exactly how to blend all those ingredients is far from easy.  I have also learned that while many people have written business cookbooks, there is no magic recipe that you can just follow and find success.   Yes there are some tried of true things you can do to position a business to succeed, but just like in volleyball, you gotta have a little “weird science” to bring it all together – but maybe without the voodoo dolls and chants.

Great American Hero: A Story of Courage and Heroism in Small Town Texas

Published July 30, 2013 American Heros , Leadership , Life , Uncategorized 2 Comments
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Believe it or not,

I’m walking on air.

I never thought I could feel so free-.

Flying away on a wing and a prayer.

Who could it be?

Believe it or not it’s just me

These are lyrics from the chorus of the theme song from the Greatest American Hero, an early 1980’s television show about a high school teacher who receives a special red suit from space aliens that when worn gives him superhero powers.  He then teams up with a FBI agent to save the world time and time again.  A story about the average man turned superhero.  It’s not quite Batman or Superman but good enough to last 3 seasons on network television.

There are many types of people we hold up as heroes.  There are legendary historical figure; for some there are political heroes, and for others sports heroes. While you could make the case that some of these are not worthy of hero status, they have that status nonetheless.   We look up to them; we make movies about them; we idolize them and we place them on pedestals as these great humans that are somehow superior to the average person.

A little over 90 days ago, an explosion happened at a fertilizer facility in the small Texas town of West.  The night of the explosion and the subsequent days and weeks exposed us to a different kind of hero – the average everyday person that found themselves faced with unimaginable challenges.  The world heard about some of these heroes, mainly the first responders that lost their lives responding to the explosion, as there was extensive media coverage of the event.

We heard about the brave volunteer firefighters that perished at the scene.  Each one not hesitating to rush into danger – not because it was their job, but because they were protecting their community, their friends and their neighbors.  The nation and the world mourned the death of these first responders.  Arenas filled with people from all over to memorialize these brave men.  Reporters scurried about town to get the inside story.  The names of these fallen heroes will certainly not be forgotten for years to come.

But the story of heroes in West goes much deeper.  There were hundreds of people that carried out heroic actions that night and the subsequent days.  There were staff members of a local nursing home that ushered elderly residents to a safer part of the building in the minutes prior to the explosion. There were teenagers that wheeled and carried injured victims to a nearby makeshift triage center.  There were brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and parents that rushed to houses to pull out trapped family members in the darkness and chaos of the night.  There were firefighters, medics and police officers for miles around that responded to the aftermath of the explosion.  There were untold volunteers that flooded into town that night and the days following to offer aid and comfort to all those that were impacted by the explosion.  We will never hear or see the names of most of these people, but it will not change the fact that they are indeed heroes.

One of those unknown heroes has a special place in my heart.  She is my sister-in-law, Judy Knapek.  Judy is a member of the West Volunteer Fire Department – one of the few females that have ever been a member.  She was one of the numerous firefighters that responded to the emergency call about a fire at the fertilizer facility.  She was there at the facility when the fire triggered the deadly explosion.  By the Grace of God she was not physically injured by the explosion.  But she saw fellow injured firefighters stagger towards her and carried several out of harms way and got them to paramedics.  She spent endless days and nights at the fire station in the days and weeks after the explosion filling out the tons of paperwork that goes along with a disaster like this one, accepting donations from all over the world, and providing information to concerned citizens.  She did all this while knowing that many of her firefighting brothers, including two of her cousins, did not get to walk away from that deadly explosion.

The things these everyday people did are amazing to me.  But if you were to ask Judy or pretty much anyone else in West that responded in some way to the explosion, they would tell you that they were not heroes.  She and others would just say that they did what anyone would do in that situation, but I disagree.  I think Judy and many others in West fit the true definition of “Great American Hero.”

Buckle Up, Buttercup!

Published June 20, 2013 Leadership , Life Leave a Comment
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Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes

You should know by now that I like music, and this time I have turned to David Bowie to lead us in to this installment. I actually used this same lead in back in March 2012 when I penned Business Lesson from a Nurseryman: Change Can Come Up Roses. Back in March 2012, I was talking about changes in a “family” business. Today, the scope of discussion tackles a much larger business.

For the fourth time since I started at Harte-Hanks in 2001, a new CEO has been announced. That means I am faced with working under my fifth CEO in 12 years; so change in leadership is nothing new for me and nothing new for millions of other people working in companies, large and small, across the world. What is different for me is that this CEO, unlike the other ones in the past decade, is a complete outsider.

The day of the announcement I had several people come into my office and ask me if I knew anything about this new guy. While I had not met him nor spoken to him, I had done a quick Google search on him that scored a few interview clips. While I did not know much about him, I shared what little I did know while trying to not throw in any conjecture. I made sure to tell them that I liked his Irish accent, especially since I claim to be (if you trace back enough generations) part Irish and that I was hoping we might see St Patrick’s Day become a company holiday. Sadly our VP of People has since told me that offices will NOT be closing on March 17 each year.

It was the second question I was asked by those people that I knew probably a large majority of other people in the company wanted to also ask:

“Do you think things will change with the new CEO?”

Each time this question was asked of me, I provided the same initial answer:

“I certainly hope so, otherwise why would we make a CEO change.”

I am not sure that was the answer people wanted to hear, but it felt like the right answer to me. Yes, I expect there to be changes. I expect some of the changes will be ones I like, while others may not be to my liking. But driving change is part of what makes a successful leader, so I fully expect a new CEO to make changes. Organizations must change in order to stay competitive and succeed, and leaders, at all levels, must be the champions of change.

I am not sure what the coming months will bring as our new CEO takes the reigns, but I do know it will be different from what it is today. I also know, I will do my part to champion those changes because that is what leaders do.

I hope my fellow co-workers are ready to say “game on” and embrace the coming changes as well. Of course the transition will have its bumps but hopefully we can anticipate and brace for those challenges. In the words an old high school basketball teammate liked to say before the big games against our toughest competition: “Buckle Up, Buttercup!”

AM Radio……and Beyond

Published March 22, 2013 Information Technology , Life Leave a Comment
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The VCR and the DVD – there wasn’t none of that crap back in 1970

We didn’t know about a World Wide Web

Was a whole different game being played back when I was a kid

Wanna get down in a cool way?

Picture yourself on a beautiful day

Big Bell Bottoms and groovy, long hair

Just a-walking in style with a portable CD player – No!

You would listen to the music on the AM Radio

Yeah, you could hear the music on the AM Radio

These are the opening lyrics to the song “AM Radio” from one of my favorite 90’s bands, Everclear.  I was a kid in the 1970’s and 80s, and I can very much relate to the picture painted by these lyrics.  While these lyrics are from the perspective of a kid growing up in the 70s, you could just as easily rewrite them from the perspective of a kid in 1990 or even 2010.

I still remember the excitement of getting an Atari, a “portable” jambox that weighed over 5 pounds, and cable TV.  The latter of which did not happen until I was in my late teens.  I remember feeling lucky to have a 12” black and white TV in my bedroom as a teenager, and it was a TV on which I had to use pliers to change the channel to pick up one of the 4 stations we could tune in over the air. I also remember going into debt when I was a junior in college to buy a Tandy (yes Tandy) computer so I could use a rudimentary spreadsheet program to help with my accounting classes.

I also remember getting my first laptop when I entered the  high flying world of Big 6 Consulting in the late 90’s – I don’t recall the exact specs of it, but my back to this day remembers that it was heavier than a brick.  And I recall connecting that laptop to pay phones (yes pay phones) at the airport so I could dial-into our Groupwise mail server.  And I can’t forget the awe and amazement when I was issued a cell phone a few years later.

Fast forward 15 years and I am now sitting on a plane writing this blog on a touch screen tablet that weighs less than 2 pounds and is connected via wireless to the entire world at 35,000 feet – all while listening to one of the 1000s of songs on a my iPod and thinking about which type of smartphone I want next  – smartphones that I am sure have more memory and horsepower than that first brick of a laptop I had and certainly much more than the Tandy computer that took me 2 years to pay off back in the early 90s.

As a kid, I never imagined we would have the real time interactions we have today.  To think that in my lifetime, I went from Polaroid picture to being able to stream real time video anywhere in the world from a 3 inch x 5 inch device in my hand is just crazy.  Just last week, I was riding in the back of car through the mountains of Colorado while having a conversation with a business associate in Australia via a tablet connected to a wireless hotspot.  While this is common place technology in today’s world, I couldn’t help but stop and think about how dang cool it was to do it.  And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

In the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to listen to people from Intel and Microsoft talk about what is coming down the technology pipe.  While many of us are amazed at the technology that is hitting the market now – all the touch laptops, tablets, phones and the ever increasing number of connected things – it sounds like what will become available in the next 18-24 months will rock our worlds – in how we work, how we learn and how we live.  The pace of technology innovation feels to be picking up.  The question is “Are we all ready to keep up with it?”

A few final disclosures:

1)      As a kid, my parent’s car had nothing but AM radio.

2)      We still have VHS tapes and a VCR to play them on at our house.

3)      I just recently took the very first DVD player I ever owned to Goodwill.

4)      I can now change the channel on my TV from my iPhone (no pliers needed)

5)      I still listen to AM radio on a regular basis.

Business Technology in 2020

Published March 5, 2013 Information Technology , Uncategorized 1 Comment
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I was recently asked by CenturyLink to contribute an article for an ebook on predictions for business technology in the year 2020. The ebook “Business Technology 2020″ can be found on CenturyLink’s ThinkGig blog. You can also view it using the following link/bitly: http://bit.ly/1149RVV Below is my contribution to the ebook.

I was recently asked the question, “What will business technology look like in 2020?”

My first thought was, “That’s so far out into the future; there is no way to think that many years ahead.” Then I looked at the calendar and realized it was almost 2013, and that 2020 really wasn’t far down the road. I also realized my oldest daughter will be wrapping up college around 2020 and entering the workforce for the first time. So I decided to ask her what she thought it would look like.

My daughter’s first response was one of shock that in seven years she would be starting a career. She told me she thought people would just be using some kind of tablet for work, but a tablet a little bigger than what we use today. One that lets you do multiple things at once: be on a video call, edit a document, and look at a Web page. She also thought the cube mazes at many offices would go away because people would not need to be plugged into anything to do their work.

Though the musings of the future in the eyes of a 13-year-old are interesting, I have my own thoughts on what business technology will look like in seven years. If the past decade is any indication, we are in for a wild ride. I have often said that if my company’s revenue and operating income had grown over the past decade at the same rate as our data storage and bandwidth requirements, I would have retired early. My crystal ball shows that growth in data to still be going strong in 2020, which means a continued demand for more and faster storage, faster network speeds, and larger data circuits.

I have said before that I could see being the CIO of a company without a data center. I don’t think that we will be there by 2020, but it will certainly be closer to a reality. I envision a continued contraction in the size of corporate data centers and the continued expansion of computing capacity being delivered by third-party service providers. I recall five years ago worrying about whether the main data center we built would be large enough to handle our growth and physical consolidation of smaller satellite centers. As I walk through that data center now, I worry about what to do with all the space where racks full of servers once stood — servers that have now been virtualized and take up a small fraction of the physical space. The worry of having a too small data center has been replaced with the worry of having one that is too large. As we march toward 2020, server virtualization and X as a service — X being software, platform, infrastructure, or application — will continue to change the shape of data centers. There will be fewer servers, more network hardware, and less energy consumption.

When I look back at how much has changed with end user devices since I entered the workforce in the early 1990s, I can’t help but think that we will see that same pace and innovation over the next seven years. They will not have gone completely the way of the typewriter, but the install base of desktops and laptops will be reduced substantially by 2020. Tablets and smartphones will be the standard devices in the workplace, and I am sure there will be some not yet thought of device form factor that will be the hot new thing in 2020. Rest assured: There will still be people camping out in June 2020 to buy the iPhone 13. Much like my daughter, I also see the use of the traditional office phone, hard-wired data drops, and the conventional office cubicle slowly being phased out as we approach 2020. I might even dare say that for some businesses, the office as we know it today will cease to exist. The office will truly become wherever the employee happens to be, which will surely drive InfoSec professionals crazy.

So in summary, how do I see 2020? More data. More mobility. Smaller corporate data centers. I just hope that CEOs in 2020 realize they still need CIOs.

Touched By An Angel in the ATX

Published February 22, 2013 Community , Life Leave a Comment
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I recently celebrated another birthday.  I received numerous well wishes via social media; a phone call or two from close family, a great meal followed by cake and presents with the wife and kids; and three birthday cards delivered the old fashion way via the US Postal Service.  While all of those things were meaningful, there was one of those old school birthday cards that had an extra special message.  That special birthday card was from a soup kitchen.  Yes, a soup kitchen.

The special card was sent by Angel House Soup Kitchen.  Angel House is located in downtown Austin.  Since 1990, the kitchen has been serving a hot lunch meal to the homeless and economically disadvantage seven days a week.  Today the number of people receiving this life sustaining service averages over 300 each day.

My oldest daughter and I have volunteered at the Angel House several times.  The volunteering involves assisting with the preparation of the meal, which always includes a huge pot of soup, and also serving the meal to the long line of people queued up when the doors open each morning at 11a.  A day of volunteering takes 3-4 hours; a small amount time that makes a big impact in the community.

Now back to that birthday card.  The message on the card:

Our prayer for you on this very special day –

The day that God created you in His image –

Is that it will be all that He wants for you!

A day to rejoice and be glad.  It’s your day!

 

I recently wrote about trying to be joyful each day.  Receiving a message to “rejoice and be glad” felt like a great reminder to find happiness in each day – not just on your birthday.  Receiving the card was also a good reminder that it probably time to arrange another volunteer day at the kitchen.  All too often we get caught up in our busy lives and forget that we need to find time to give back to others around us.  This birthday card made me stop and remember that we need to share our blessings with others.

If you are interested in learning more about the Angel House Soup Kitchen or want to arrange a day to volunteer or want to make a small monetary donation to a great organization, you can find out more at:  www.angelhouse-abc.com

The Day the iPad Died

Published February 14, 2013 Information Technology , Music , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And, I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance, and…
Maybe they’d be happy for a while
But, February made me shiver with every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep – I couldn’t take one more step
I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside the day the music died

For those under the age of 40, these are the opening lyrics to Don McLean’s 1971 song about the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in 1959 – also known as “The day the music died.” Years ago, I had the opportunity to go to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa and see the last place those rock-n-roll legends performed. If you love rock-n-roll and find yourself in Iowa, stop by and see it.

Today’s thoughts are not about the death of music. They are about, at least for me, the passing of a device that much like Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had an extremely bright but short flame.

I became an “i” guy out of necessity soon after the first generation iPhone hit the market. Our CEO at the time called me up and told me that he wanted an iPhone to use with his work email. I attempted to explain that the iPhone would not work well with our older version of Lotus Notes and that the experience would not be one he would like. As CEOs are apt to do, he did not want to hear that and insisted that I go get him an iPhone and make it work.

So off I went to the Apple store to buy one and set up an ATT wireless plan. With a few days of tweaking and testing, we were able to get mail flowing, but no calendar synching, no access to our corporate directory, no synching of his contacts, and no access to any of our internal systems. It was a far cry from what could be done at the time with Blackberry devices. I delivered the device to our CEO along with the long list of things it could not do within our corporate environment.

Three days later, the CEO called me and told me the iPhone was not what he expected – for all the same reasons I had tried to tell him before ever purchasing one. He told me he was sending it back. So there I was, with a $500+ device and a 2-yr service commitment on a personally-liable account. So for the next two years, I carried that iPhone as my main device and dealt with the pains of Lotus Notes in an ‘I” world. As technology progressed and we moved to a new email platform, the iPhone became a more powerful and useful device. While I flirted with other devices – various Andriods and even a WinMobile – I stuck with the “i” world.

Towards the end of 2011, I told people that the work laptop I was currently using would be the last laptop I ever used. As I became further immersed in the ‘i” environment, I set my sights on the iPad. I had a vision of the iPad being the end of the Windows-based laptop. I tried for over a year to make the iPad be THE work device for me. I bought “Office-like” apps for spreadsheets and word processing. I leveraged cloud storage to have access to needed files. I downloaded apps to enhance my Sharepoint experience. I forced myself to not take my laptop on trips so that I was solely reliant on the iPad.

While I was able to survive with the iPad, I never felt completely comfortable. The “Office-like” apps were not full featured and clunky to use. I yearned for my Excel and my Word. I was also apt to forget to send files to the cloud, so I was always looking for that one file that I really needed. Yes, I felt cool carrying the iPad, but I never could pull the plug on my trusty laptop.

That all changed in mid-January. As part of the CIO track at DellWorld, I was offered a free Dell Latitude 10 Windows 8 Professional tablet. My first thought when I was told I would be receiving the tablet: “here’s another toy to play with for a week or two.” I did not have any expectations that this device would be a game changer.

When my Dell account executive delivered the Latitude 10 to me, we opened up the boxes and I causally glanced at the tablet, but did not jump right in to firing it up. Hours later, I finally turned it on and the revolution was on. I had in my hands a one and a half pound 10” laptop in tablet form. I had the familiar Windows operation system (once I got past the tiles), my trusty Office apps, all my files that I shamefully keep on my local drive, and a long lasting battery in the palm of my hands. The next day I had our desktop team join the device to our domain. Soon thereafter, our desktop management tool was pushing down apps just like it does with any other Windows based computer. Finally, there was a tablet that could be managed with our existing tools. It also came with a handy docking station for easy connection to a full screen monitor, mouse and keyboard.

After three days of using the tablet, I shut down my workhorse Thinkpad laptop for the final time.

A week later, I had to ask myself where I left my cool iPad. It was right where I left it the day I got my hands on that Dell tablet. I had gone 7 days without using the iPad – a device that previously felt like I used every 7 seconds.

For me it was “The day the iPad died.”

It’s 2013: Be Joyful

Published February 4, 2013 Leadership , Life Leave a Comment
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Joy to the world
All the boys and girls, now
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Joy to you and me

I might be a little young for early 70s rock, but I do love me some Three Dog Night.

New Year’s Eve is a special day in the Neill house. In addition to the obvious, it is also the day we celebrate the Lovely Mrs. Neill saying “I Do” to spending a lifetime with a slightly dorky accountant back in the mid-90s. Due to this, my oldest daughter has insisted from a young age that NYE is a family occasion – not one to be celebrated without her and her sister’s presence. NYE 2012 was no exception.

Now how we celebrate each varies and in some years plans don’t gel until the day before or day of NYE. 2012 was one of those years. We had some friends over on the 30th for dinner and they mentioned they were having a little get-together the next night at their house. So the next morning, we pulled together our celebration: NYE Vigil Mass, a nice diner out, and a swing by our friend’s gathering. Well when you wait until the morning of NYE to make dinner reservations, you don’t always get the exact times you want. We ended up with a dinner reservation time that made it impossible to make it to our local parish’s Mass, but we found a time that would work at a neighboring parish.

While selecting a Mass time based on dinner reservations is probably not ideal, sometimes things just work out for the better. The priest at the parish we ended up at was the priest that had guided me through the conversion to Catholicism a decade ago. He always had a way of delivering a message in his homily that resonated with me and his NYE homily was no exception. I am not going to go into the biblical / theological aspect of his homily but his message was one that should hit close to home for most of us.

In two words the message was “Be Joyful.”

We spend too much time in our daily lives focused on the negative and worrying about the bad things going on. We are bombarded with “the negative” from all sides. Our news outlets are constantly hitting us with bad news about death and destruction. Our work days are filled with pressures to perform better on an individual and collective basis. Business leaders are faced with the demands to continually grow revenue and income less face the consequences of falling stock prices. Kids in school are faced with the daily pressures to exceed expectations in the classroom, the playing field, and in the hallway. With all these pressures and negative news, many of us find ourselves not enjoying life. We are constantly worrying about the potential negative things. We are alive, but we are not living.

The message on NYE was simply to enjoy life. Celebrate living each day. Use the talents you have been given to make the world a brighter place. Now that is certainly easier said than done, but I made a commitment right then and there to make it a priority to be thankful each day for having the opportunity to be alive. While I have no doubt that “bad” things will happen in our world and some of those things will hit close to me, my goal is to find joy in each day.

Think what our world would be like if we could all do that every day.

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