Ideas Excite Me!

I just had coffee with my friend Carter Crockett, a business professor at Westmont College. If you have read my LinkedIn profile you know talking about new ideas is one of my favorite things to do. Carter and I had this great conversation about a new business idea and I can hardly get my brain to stop working out the details so I can focus and do work for kevin sturm Consulting clients.

One of the biggest changes in my life since quitting my job has been how I think differently. Versus being mired in all the "things" and "problems" that dominated my day and my brain, I am free to dream about new and fun ideas. Your brain really can do amazing things when you stop trying to force it to do something it doesn't want to.

If you have a new business idea you want to talk about, invite me to coffee. I love hashing it out even if it never happens! I'll even buy!

Don't Steal Software

I was on Craigslist today and came across this post.
In response I flagged the post as in violation of Craigslist rules and sent "sale-569449932" the below email. And yes I did give him/her a link to this blog, which I hope they find with this post.There are a few things here that amaze me. First, it is really bold to openly post for the world to see that you do not care about software licensing. Stealing software is a crime, and just really shady.

Second, it takes a narrow minded person to not realize that it is stealing and you are stealing from lots of people. It is not just Bill Gates; it's the Gates Foundation (you cannot argue it's not a good cause), the developers that wrote the software, and some seriously hard working people at Microsoft (that are not rich) which I have had the pleasure of working with during my career.

Thirdly, as much as I like working with Microsoft they are not the only software option. Lots of companies that are not Microsoft exist. If you don't want to buy Microsoft software do a Google search on "mac office software" and NeoOffice comes up on page two. It would take less time than doing a Craigslist post.

If you want something with a little more functionality for a really low price try OpenOSX
for $30.

With so many options out there why resort to something that shows such poor character?

Make Sure What You Do = What Your Customer Wants

Sometimes on the weekends I do very dad-like things.

Brody turns 3 in April, and since we are expecting baby-sister (no name picked yet) in April it was time to move into a "big-boy" bed. So this weekend I built a bunk bed. Okay I assembled a bunk bed, but I did everything but sand and stain the wood. I could not believe the amount of assembly required for this bed. It made me feel very "daddish" though and I was super excited about it. Putting together my sons bunk bad...seriously how dad is that!? Brody loves it and climbs all over it.

And today we were playing with his cars from the movie Cars (he has all of them) and I got this great idea to build a ramp to drive the cars down from his top bunk. I thought we would have a great time building it together. We went to the hardware store and got some material, got the project all setup, and after attempting to hammer one nail Brody got bored with the board. I spent the next 45 minutes building a ramp with barriers, lanes, and finish molding. I thought it was really cool (still do). I took it up to him all excited and set it up. Brody thought it was cool for about 4 minutes until a different toy grabbed his fancy.The reality was Brody did not ask for a ramp. He was completely content just playing cars with me and didn't need anything else.

I often find I want to do something for my customers that I think is cool, even if they don't need it. This is especially easy in software development where unnecessary features get added because they are cool but not very functional (think annoying paperclip man in Windows). Avoid doing something because you think it's cool. Instead do something that is useful, which should start with spending some time with your customer and listening.

And if you're a dad spend some solid time playing with your kids and listening.

Spending Money in the Wrong Place

I'm not an economist and I am probably not the best source for how a company worth billions should spend their money. But I think Microsoft is about to spend money in the wrong place. Microsoft submitted an unsolicited offer today of $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo (read about it at Bloomberg.com). This is historic either way as it represents the largest technology take over in history, but I think it may be historic as another bad decision my the new Microsoft. I can't help but think they are competing with Google in the wrong way.

Google did not win the search engine war by buying other companies that were also loosing the war. They were innovative, created a product that was easier to use, and got a reputation as company you wanted to work for (still do). They did awesome things like pay people to advertise for them (AdSense) even when 98% of users never see $0.10. Microsoft's Vista and IE 7.0 "innovation" has created more Mac and Google fans out of former Microsoft fans (me included as I write this from my MacBook Pro using Firefox). At what point did Microsoft make it a business plan to bottom feed buy spending billions of dollars on inferior technology and companies?

This former Microsoft evangalist would like to see them either buy an innovative industry leader (think YouTube) or spend $44 billion dollars and a release a product that gets the kind of buzz and adoption the iPhone got.

At the most basic level they could attempt to copy a very easy thing that made Google easier to use. Look a the three pics below and tell me which you would rather use if you were trying to find something on the Internet.

It's Finally Done!

After long hours of figuring out html works and much gnashing of teeth my new "other blog" is finally done. As most of you know I quit my job and started my own consulting firm. As part of this initiative one of things I noticed was that there was very little online content in the way of blogs for hospitality technology. Most of the major industry media organizations have one as part of their website, but there really isn't anything from someone that works day to day in hospitality technology consulting.

So, as of tonight hospitality technology made simple is up an running. It's a blog about trends in hospitality technology. My hope is that the blog will be helpful to venues looking to implement new systems and to consultants in the industry looking to get or give advice. I hope to do some interviews with major figures in the industry, and if people actual find it interesting get a forum up where we can all share ideas for success.

I will only be posting every week or two weeks at this point, so I'll still be updating this blog regularly as my personal blog of business and life in general. If you know of anyone that may find the new blog interesting please point them to it. It will be a couple of months before there is enough content to be really meaty. You can also email me topics that you think would be interesting (if you care about hospitality technology). I'll need the content ideas.

Delivery for a $1.00

I'm on my way home from my first client trip. I was at Microsoft's office in Seattle for three days (never saw the sun).
I was working out of the R&D building and tried to see the latest Microsoft Surfaces demonstration but no luck. I didn't even get to see the current one. Most of the things going on in the building we won't see for 10 to 15 years. How do you plan for technology products 10 years in advance? With as fast as technology changes that just seems unrealistic...but I suppose somebody has to do it. There were also supposedly 30+ researchers with PhDs in the R&D building! That is a whole bunch of brain power.

Most of the offices are in Redmond, WA and the entire city is pretty much Microsoft. From what I was told Microsoft employs 45,000 people at the Redmond campus! That is almost half the population of Santa Barbara! And the campus is pretty amazing. They have multiple soccer, football, and baseball fields, indoor and outdoor basketball courts, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

I was there to install eMenu, a software that will allow all Microsoft employees to order lunch via the company Intranet and have it delivered to their desk. Seriously. You can check out eMeu here, but don't order from this site because this place actually exists in NY. Microsoft has the most amazing company cafeterias with awesome food and now they are offering to deliver your lunch for $1.00 (plus the cost of the food). I think that is awesome because I'd take a lunch break to go work out and then have my lunch delivered to my desk and eat it there (in the scenario I had an office of course).

James, the Microsoft analyst I did the install with, had a futon, big screen TV, DVD player, Xbox and wii in his office! It was complete with a small movie and video game library. How would you ever get any work done?
Microsoft's countdown to release clock

Creating Simple Software

Blogger just release their new templates wizard and it's super sweet. It's really easy to use with a very intuitive UI. As a product manager I love easy to use software. They added a new drag and drop feature, and that really is cool.

Someday I'll create my own blog background and what not, but until then thanks Blogger!

Great software...cool company

So I just found this software that I think is about one of the greatest ideas ever. It's a "newer" company I belive, called Meebo. It's a website that allos you to chat via messanger - using your existing messanger accounts IAOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ). You should go and check it out at http://wwwm.meebo.com/ and enter your account info. All of your contact information is there as well...AWESOME! What a great idea...wish I would have thought of it.

I was also reading about the company a bit, and they do what's called a Meebo Meeting. Basically they let all their users know where and when the meeting will be, and it's a time to chat, meet people, and network. What's really fun is that they are doing the next one on the train they commute to work on. You can read about it on Meeblog...fun name!

Blogger World

This is my first blog in a while, and I've decided to dedicate it to my favotire blogs. I'm not that great a posting to my blog, but I'm pretty good about keeping up to date on my favorite blogs. Below is a list of what my favorite blogs are, and why you should check them out.

NO REGRETS... is Chystal Sturm's blog (yes that is my wife!). Her blog is funny, sincere, and pretty entertaining. She has a great sense of humor and is a bit self deprecating on it...which I always think is funny. She has a super funny post about being a former cheerleader. We were talking about it and she let me in on a little secret about how she felt like her mom (because her mom was a cheer leader, too). It was more funny how she said it though...

Signal Without Noise is Guy Kawasaki's blog. If you are into blogs with cool ideas and interesting bits of knowledge from a innovative business standpoint, this is a great blog to read. I'll let you catch up on Guy's background yourself, but he's someone you could probably learn a lot from. He is author of Art of the Start, and I will say that I learn something almost every time I read his blog.

OpenSourcePhoto (aka OSP) is my friend David Jay's (aka DJ) blog. DJ is a wedding photographer, software architect, entrepenuer, and all around good guy. He's got some cool ideas out there, one of which is dedicating his time to helping other people be successful. Oh, and he's always surround by these cute girls... Now I'm married to a cute girl already, but it's nice to see DJ hangin' with cuties all the time.

PresentationZen is an awesome website about all sorts of different presentation formats...articles, products, ads, etc. This blog probably has some of my favorite content on it, and is a place I look at regularly to be inspired. A few of my favorite entries are below

• Inspiring Visual Presentations
• A jogging reminder on the importance of simplicity
• If you idea is worth spreading, then presentation matters

Sandersays.com is a blog by Tim Sanders, author of Love is the Killer App and The Likeability Factor. Tim is the Chief Solutions Office at Yahoo, and has some great insight. If you haven't read Love is the Killer App you should, and then you should buy it for someone and have them read it. Tim's blog is pretty new, but has all sorts of tid-bits of knowledge on how to run a better business and be a better business person. I like that kind of stuff.

So, there is a little insight into where I waste some of my evening time.

Go hard to the pond!