Month: December 2004

Blogger Jobs and the daily rant

2004-12-13 / / 2 Comments

The New Blogger Jobs is up. And Amazon is hiring.

Too bad Amazon isn’t looking for Web performance gurus. They are a great company and I tried to get in there for a long time, but gave up.

My problem is that I am a Web performance generalist and evangelist. No one wants vague job titles. They want 10 years of experience in analyzing Web performance data with 20 years of Web development and 30 years of SQL expertise.

I have three skills that I value and find far more interesting than hard qualifications: intelligence, the ability to listen and a weird non-linear way of looking at the world.

So, what am I looking for? Last month, I issued a challenge to the world to challenge me. That is what I am seeking — an organization that will let me carve a clear and recognized path through the morass of Web performance without being restricted by a marketing “vision” or a value proposition.

An organization that will allow me to help a company like Amazon understand why they are all over the news these days, and help them make that issue disappear. Amazon and their peers are great companies that do not need to have their very limited, but very public, Web performance glitches leveraged into marketing fodder.

I will still buy from Amazon; but I want to make them better. I would love to be a part of an organization that wants to HELP companies like Amazon stay on top in e-business and drive Web performance to new levels, not quarterly targets.

So, what does that mean? It means that I want to be a part of an organization that inspires me. And what inspires me?

  1. Clear corporate vision
  2. Profitability and a dedication to research
  3. A willingness to develop a Web performance evangelism team
  4. A holistic view of Web performance and its technology and business repercussions
  5. Having a platform to discuss Web performance with my peers who think about this every day.

Do you have it? Are you an Amazon? Are you better? Do you understand that being ok is not enough? SHow me your passion. Convince me that there are really people who think that Web performance will make or break companies.

MSN Toolbar Suite — Not in this machine

2004-12-13 / / 0 Comments

The MSN Toolbar Suite is out. But not in this house.

Get it now! Free!

Warning! Your browser does not meet the minimum 
system requirements. 
You are recommended to use the MSN Toolbar Suite with 
Internet Explorer 5.01 or later.

Gee, you need to integrate it with MSIE…NOT! Anyone out there going to build a desktop search app that ties into the ‘Fox?

Ok, in the interests of fairness, here is the unabashed positive MSFT view of the toolbar.

Management Books as Entertainment

2004-12-12 / / 0 Comments

Occasionally, when I am travelling, I will find an airport with a decent bookstore. And I will indulge my habit of buying management books to try and get a competitive advantage when dealing with all sales people, even those that work in the same company that I do.

You see, when you understand how sales people think, and how they will try and position the types of services that I am capable of providing, then I am able to defend myself when they dream up some cockamamie scheme that will help them cover their butt for just one more quarter.

This time, it is Hope is not a Strategy and Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. Started Hope, and will likely get to Execution later this week. Then I am going to go back and read Solution Selling. Then, after I indulge in all of this competitive detective work, I hope that someone buys me a copy of High Performance MySQL, if only because I love what Jeremy has to say on his blogs (here and here).

So, if you see some non-Web performance related rantings this week, it’s most likely cause of what I am reading offline.

Rants on Rubbermaid

2004-12-12 / / 0 Comments

The Head Lemur has an excellent rant on his favourite Rubbermaid Laundry Basket, and the state of the company itself (Laundry Baskets).

I agree with his design changes, and I also wholeheartedly agree with his rants on the state of the Rubbermaid site. I used to be a Rubbermaid evangalist myself. When I was a grad student in the early 1990s, I stored the contents of my nomadic life in RoughNeck containers, which doubled as firniture. However, since then, the quality and diversity of their product line has sunk and they have been marginalized.

After watching the Frontline on Is Wal-Mart Good for America, I blame Wal-Mart and poor management for the slide of one of my favourite brands. Wal-Mart squeezed an American plastics company right to the edge, exposing magaement issues, and forcing them into a merger with Newell.

So, although I like the design that the Head Lemur has suggested, it is unlikely that a company which was once so creative and cutting edge will even care that someone has a cool idea to improve one of their products.

I hope I am proven wrong as well.

Glad to be home

2004-12-11 / / 0 Comments

A very long red-eye. We were diverted to DEN on the SJC-ATL leg due to a medical emergency. This added 4 hours to the trip. I am still wiped out, but the gentleman definitely needed medical attention.

I got some very uncomfortable sleep, but don’t expect anything brilliant until at least Monday.

Web Performance Evangelism Run Amok

2004-12-07 / / 0 Comments

I wanted to point you to an evangelist of the good kind that Scoble found — “Obi-Wan”, the Prowler Knight. They come in all shapes and sizes.

One of the directors in our company keeps saying how impressed he was by a certain product evangelist he saw at a conference a few years ago. He sings high praises about my potential to do the same. I know I can — spent the last five years delving into the how-tos of Web performance, and have a bit of an opinionated streak to help me along.

Today, I am going to evangelize on Web performance.

The issue is that everyone has specific questions and nobody wants to think about the actual big picture. The biggest question an online has to ask is: “How do we make it fast, reliable, scalable, efficient and economic?”

Easy, right? Well, no actually. Big players in the online commerce world still have problems with this. Why? Why can’t they get it right?

Over the last few days, I have posted a couple of screenshots showing that Amazon, the online retailing poster child, has had 3 distinct and length outages. This is unheard of from them. However, they should be in seasonal lockdown at the moment. So I looked at some data I have access to last night. I know when the problem started, but don’t know the root cause. It is frightening that in the span of a single day, the internet leader is in the uncomfortable position of scrambling to decipher and resolve their problem during the busiest time of the year.

This doesn’t surprise me anymore. I just shrug my shoulders and say, loudly, for the umpteenth time that if someone had asked the right questions, followed the correct process, and accurately analyzed the data none of this would be happening.

I have said it before: I have tried. Look at a retailer like Amazon, and you must also look at Target — Target is completely wedded to the Amazon Infrastructure. Was Target part of the analysis of the data so that they could approve the system state freeze? The answer is likely no, and you know what? Target is likely going to collect a ton of paybacks from SLA infringements as a result of the Amazon outages.

At the beginning, I asked what does it take to achieve Web performance excellence. The answer is time and dedication. Online businesses have to either dedicate themselves to this, or sign on to partners who can.

Some big firms think that the traditional IT consulting firms can do it. What is their expertise in Web performance? How do they plan to validate and verify that the improvement plan they have outlined is actually meeting your business objectives? How will they help you manage your content, customer-tracking and ad providers?

Big IT consulting firms: Can you validate and verify that the performance improvements that you have implemented are economical? Are they efficiently resolving the issue? Who resolves problems?

How many consultant, engineers, developers and business managers does it take to fix a bad Web page?

Answer: I don’t know. Do you?

In the end, Web performance is no longer about response times and success rates. It is no longer about usability. It is no longer about hit tracking, processor utilization, SANs, and distributed content. We performance boils down to a single question:

“How do we make it fast, reliable, scalable, efficient and economic?”

More Radio Spectrum Available Soon — Dying US Commercial Radio

2004-12-05 / / 0 Comments

Steve Rubel: Hate to break this to you — All US Commercial Radio is worthless crap. iPods are a symptom, not the cause (iPods Blamed for Denver Radio Stations’ Decline). The Mega-Media corporation has killed local and unique radio. In San Mateo Samantha used to listen to KFOG; in Boston, it’s WBOS. You can’t tell them apart. So I don’t; they aren’t worth the time or effort.

The only station that I listen to is BBC Radio 6 — Public Radio with tunes from the 1960s to NOW! Wonder if that’s on XM or Sirius.

Alan Herrell on the Sony v. Kottke experience

2004-12-04 / / 0 Comments

I am with Alan on this one.

Boycottsony

His open letter to the Sony Corporation on the Kottke/Jeopardy is a very clear expression of what happens when a major corporation attempts to paralyze free speech.

Sony, please take me off your mailing list. Until you re-align yourself with your reality, I will not buy your products, see your movies, or buy your artists cds.

The blogosphere is very tribal. You attack one of the members, we all retaliate.

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