If you’re not so fortunate to have ExchangeDefender protecting your mail server you may have noticed your mail server is slowly choking in the junk that seems not only to be dumping massive amounts of data off but also significantly slowing everything else down..

Why?

Wel, there is a huge Trojan outbreak of Agent-GBX at the moment and it seems that the saturation is pretty remarcable. The throttling control on this beast is out of wack too, it seems to be opening so many connections that the connections hang and just sit in an open state until the server terminates them. So, throttle down your timeout values while you can still get to your ESM

(two part series of selling into SMB space: Postmaster Woes is next)

One of my biggest pet peeves about SMB IT Professionals, and that term ought to be used very loosely for some, is the constant complaints about inability to stay on top of everything thats going on. Now common sense would dictate that if you’re having trouble staying on top of all you’re doing you may need to sharpen your focus because you’re spreading yourself too thin. But this isn’t common sense, this is SMB, and in SMB you make stupid decisions because money is tight.

Nonetheless, I felt that the problem of SMB following product changes and communication was a legitimate complaint by the SMB folks. I’ve been trying my hardest for years to help consolidate the huge body of knowledge for the SMB sector, produce 101/introductory podcasts and videos, present at UG meetings and (no, I’m not as stupid as I look) all of that is an extension of what we do at Own Web Now and how we learn and perfect our approach. How do we communicate to the client that there will be changes? How do we alert them when there are problems? How do we handle the issues that come up as a result of the holes in the above?

When it came to handing off my direct touch with our partners and clients I went with a three prong approach. First, we created a single point of contact for all the alerts and issues that our company publishes, stuck it on a public blog (http://www.ownwebnow.com/blog) and even have the top five stories syndicated on our front page. Step 2, we wrapped a portal around the above to make sure everyone had a place to get in touch with us in an accountable way so issues can be tracked, recorded and documented over time (http://support.ownwebnow.com). Final and third step included direct email, the worst method of communication since the launch of Vistaprint.com, that let our product subscribers know things are coming.

So about two months ago we announced the launch of a huge new OWN data center. Over a month ago I sent an email to the customer base saying “This new stuff is going to require you to drop in some more IP addresses in the SMTP access lists.” and followed it up by five blog posts on the corporate site, two on this site, and even Susan Friggin Bradley blogged it.

Yet, day after day, people are constantly, constantly, constantly not receiving some email, some email is missing.

Did you add in the new IP address ranges? Yes, of course! 

I have to this date personally closed over 300 trouble tickets at support.ownwebnow.com that were complaints about messages not getting there and the resolution was to add the IP addresses we published over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. Which leads me to the following thesis:

“There is no information overload in SMB – you just aren’t paying attention.”

Now granted I am a very very tiny paramecium in comparison to the universe of information that Microsoft is, but the parallels that I see in complaints are just enormous. What is particularly frustrating (and just the cosmic way of balancing out the carma for all the smack I’ve said about Microsoft in the past) is that when things break people blame you first. Why? Well, they had problems a week ago, this surely must be related.

Point is, there is only so much of a margin you can use when talking about being too busy before it becomes a loud sign of complete and total incompetence. Yes, things are going to slip your mind every now and then, you’re going to make mistakes, after all we are all human and this isn’t exactly a minimum wage job (hint: most people reading this blog demand $80 or more an hour for their time) and the reason there is a premium on this profession is because you’re expected to know a lot and do a lot. But when you end up doing too much and knowing too little you can no longer blame Microsoft or Vlad for your shortcomings, you have to take a good hard look at the mirror and re-evaluate the extent to which you’ve spread yourself.

After all, you don’t see surgeons working 3–4 operations at a time. Why do you think that is?

Not the most uplifting of titles but if you’re trying to cut out on distractions and really focus, sometimes you may have to take the path of least resistance and not take part in conversations that yield nothing and are going nowhere.

I have blogged at length about the steps that I have taken to remove distractions and make better use of my limited time on projects that made sense and were more worth while. Big part in dumping the newsgroups, blogs and such has not been the relative abstraction I’ve created to stop myself from paying attention to them during the day, quite the contrary, I knew I would be tempted to look every now and then. And I do, I even posted maybe 3–4 times last week. The trick in optimizing the amount of time I waste in newsgroups is knowing when my post was not going to do me any good: Will replying to this post make me come off any better or will it make the person on the other side feel any better? I have really tried to ask myself that question every time I hit submit, leading to longer times of me holding on to the left mouse button for dear life. In the end, it has reduced my involvement in fruitless efforts and reduced the amount of time wasted on issues I have no hope of affecting the outcome of. And if I can’t make a difference, there is no point in trying.

As another public example of this consider David Schrag’s post titled: Even the job descriptions for Microsoft licensing are complicated, which caught my eye due to a very nice headline. He starts making a nice point but it all falls apart with his usual illusion that a $260 billion dollar company might have people in it that can directly, independantly and unilaterally cause change to the very thing that made Microsoft a $260 billion dollar company to begin with, just so it could simplify SMB licensing and help his dozen clients that have no choice and will pay for Microsoft software regardless of the price.

So, do I respond to Schrag’s post with the same thing I’ve told him a hundred times, fully knowing he’ll delete the comment and continue to stick his head in the sand, or do I just dismiss it and move on?

Truth is, if you’re like me your day is full of Ostriches and the secret to recouping some of your time is identifying your Ostriches and letting them just burry their head in the sand without wasting your time. Client that doesn’t want to take your advice? Fine, here is a sandbox. Problem employee that won’t change? Here’s your sandbox.

Consider the alternative - consider the amount of time you waste going against something for which you already know the outcome and are repeating it just for the sake of… what? Exactly. You’re the ostrich now.

As my buddy Erick says…  Hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. Don’t waste your time fighting battles you can’t win. 

One topic that Susan and I don’t write or talk about in public is the perks (or doom) of blogging fame. I don’t like to talk about it because I hate listening when people bitch and moan about being successful (hint: you do this to yourself) so I am offering this to those of you that are considering blogging professionally either as an outlet or a marketing move.

First of all, if you have any recognizable skill whatsoever and have a unique point of view and delivery, people will read what you write. Don’t get me wrong, just because you put up a blog doesn’t mean people are going to read it — If your writing skills and delivery are equivalent to those of the 11 year old begging vendors for stuff and free conference passes you’ll be reduced to a misguided Google search audience and people that never removed you from Bloglines / Google Reader when they abandoned those accounts.

But let’s assume you have something to say. Let’s assume that its something thats on the minds of your customers, partners, vendors. Let’s assume your opinion is genuine, that you can defend your point and argue it when people comment on it. Let’s assume all that. Sooner or later your blog, your opinion, your writing and everything else that you seem to do are going to attract attention and you’ll become famous. Congratulations, thank you for everything you do.

But, now you’re screwed.

Now that people know you have somewhat of an influence and an opinion people respect, you’re a marketable commodity.

Expect people to call you and ask you for your opinion. Those opinions used by press are often twisted around and used much later out of context which is the reason I always refuse those calls.

Expect people to offer you book deals. Lots and lots of book deals. You can blog, ergo you can write, ergo it can be edited and marketed to sell books. Plus you’re likely to drive demand for it through your blog so the publisher has little risk.

Expect people to invite you to speak at events. Conferences are the most difficult invites because you actually have to know your stuff. User groups, regional conferences, vendor events and gettogethers are the easiest but also come with $0 pay.

So far so good. Now on to the screwed part:

Expect people to get mad at you when you tell them you have a real job and don’t want to go across the country to speak in front of 6 people for free.

Expect people to be mean to you when you don’t blog for a day or god forbid don’t answer a question they sent you via the blog. After all, what are they not paying you for!

Expect people to not understand why you aren’t press and aren’t willing to be at every event on earth. Even if by some mirracle the ticket to the conference is free the time away from business, plane, food, hotel tend to pile up.

Expect people not to treat you like a business owner but press – “Oh, we can’t talk about that or you’ll blog it” or “What do you mean you want to go to sleep, its just 1 AM”

Expect people to want to cut alliances, strategic focus groups, partnerships and sadly exclusion groups.

Finally, expect people to expect you to work for free. Expect to sit in conference calls, webcasts, podcasts, conference rooms, focus groups and all the other good stuff and make nothing out of  it. Some are pitched as a priviledge, some are pitched as exclusivity, some are pitched as a part of what you do… but expect not to be compensated for your time and skill.

This isn’t a whine or complaint by any means, I love what I do which is why I continue to do it, but you ought to be aware of end game and the need for a very thick skin. It ain’t for everybody, there are many rewards but there is a dark side to it as well.

I just wanted to make it official and say that this is the last post ever on the subject of popularity and stats because I think that by now only I am amused by what this little Vladville has become:

cat vladville.com | grep “Vladcast10.mp3″ | wc -l
8257

In less than 10 hours I got over 8,000 listeners to what is essentially just just my soapbox. Thank you. The popularity of everything I do never ceases to amaze me. I understand that reading everything on vladville.com may at times be very hard to swallow, especially if you percieve the article to be written about you or putting your case on the spot, but I want you to know that numbers above are what keeps me honest. It may burn bridges, it may hurt feelings, it may damage personal / business reputation but I hope that one day when all is said and done by me on this plant nobody feels like I mislead them or didn’t give them the benefit of all that I’ve (or in business sense, OWN has) got to offer.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for supporting me/us or at the very least thank you for paying attention.

Warning: DO NOT watch the video if you are easilly offended.

Ok folks, I am about to let you in on a deep personal secret of how far I will go to make something unfunny. Vince Tinnirello was telling my wife how he is probably one of the few folks that gets my embedded jokes because we grew up in the same area. So, here it goes Vince, you’re among friends:  In 2005 or 2006 I was watching a seminar presented by Jim Harrison on how ISA handled rate limiting. His precise words that obviously stuck with me were in describing multiple layers of firewalls: “I don’t care what you use, Pix, Foundry, Monkeys in Buckets.”

Fast forward to 2007, we’re walking around WWPC after talking to Clint from Zenith Infotech about their new products and the sentiment was basically: “I am not so sure I want to leave my clients government regulatory compliance in hands of indians in buckets.” Later that day, www.indianinabucket.com was born.

Now, fast forward further to last months Orlando ITPRO meeting where the topic was managed services tools. We talked about the Zenith Infotech in particular and I suppose someone remembered my indianinabucket.com joke and brought it up. Seems like everyone loved it. A little too much.

Last Friday I get an email from a partner asking for my mailing address. Since we don’t take checks my first assumption was that this had to be a pipe bomb. Oh well, 8131 yada yada. Earlier today I get an email from the Partner:

I understand your new employee was delivered today.

I had my wife ship it and I think she put her company as a return by mistake. If I managed to offend anyone in the process REMEMBER it was from me personally, not my wifes company, nor ____… ;).. There, the disclaimer’s out of the way.

Let me know how he works out, I hope he’s highly productive for you.

What ensued is highly offensive, I do not recommend you watch it under any circumstances. However, I gotta say, this is the best gift I got in quite some time, I enjoyed it. Warning: offensive but not explicit.

Warning: DO NOT watch the video if you are easilly offended.

Click here to watch the video: File Attachment: indianinabucket.wmv (12678 KB)

One thing that I have consistently struggled with in the past has been the attendance at the SBS UG meetings. Maybe it’s the word SBS that turns off so many folks, maybe it’s the location but for the most part its the feeling that if you hang out with a bunch of your competitors they will be able to drain your synapses and take away your business and competitive edge you’ve built in your Bait Shop brand. Truth is, people are successful because they are busy and they are busy because they are successful. Causality loop. Whatever the cause, the effect is that some of my best partners are not fully realizing their potential (or benefiting from the connectivity of the community) and it just turns out that there is another little software company out there that feels the same way.

So what will the three hours of ExchangeDefender and Open Value with Business Desktop Bundle pitching look like? (and the audience vanishes…) Well, first of all, these are not official company presentations so the stuff you’ll be watching will not be delivered by Own Web Now Corp or Microsoft Corp or individuals acting as their agents. We’re just going to pick some topics that are present at the moment and we’re going to discuss them, put them on video tape and let you wind down the evenings with a brief chat about our business and technology.

What specifically are we going to talk about? Well, I will start it off with a mumbled version of all of the above, combined with a nervous paper folding or PocketPC fumbling. Then I will gloss over the SMB technology stuff that you might want to know about (Acer bought Gateway today for example, presenting an interesting quagmire of how you can market two crappy computers with a Ferrari and a cow and where they thought their brand synergies would come from).

JJ will then take over and talk about SharePoint v3. JJ, though he hides this fact, has an MBA so again we’re talking about practical SMB implementation of a portal. You can get level 200, 300 and even 400 SharePoint webcasts from Microsoft on demand, hearing how to make it make sense to an SMB practice… thats JJ’s bag.

And saving the best for last, Jessica Emmons, PCM for Microsoft’s “The South Shall Rise Again” region will be flexing her own MBA muscle:

“I’m really looking forward to it, and planning to cover everyone’s favorite business topic: marketing… Will be lots of general business building in there, as well as some specific things for MSFT partners to watch for.”

Truth is, there is only one goal to this whole thing: to sell you crap you probably don’t need to make you realize that at the end of this whole mythical “community” all it really has is just a bunch of great people that are proud of what they do and they talk about it because they think it would help others. We thought this would help you, there is no tag or motive associated with it, take it for what its worth and I hope you learn something new. And if you’re so thrilled by it and like doing business with decent people it’s not difficult to find a place that needs OWN or Microsoft stuff and if you ever need something in Orlando there will be at least 30 people there that showcase what this community is about, hope you tune in.

VladCast 10, a short 9 minute brief on what I’m doing on the community / community related side. Update on Shockey Monkey, progress of Thieving Weasel, the explanation of Orlando ITPRO TV and just what the whole idea behind it all is. You have a face for radio never rang truer. 

Play VladCast:

Add feed to iTunes  / File Attachment: Vladcast10.mp3 (3291 KB)

Due to the popularity of Vlad’s Lexicon and the internal grumbling over it, I proudly present Vlad’s Grading Scale:

Best thing ever. (also known as “you rock”) Used when something goes way beyond my expectations.

Complete waste. (also known as “you suck”) Used when something goes below my expectations.

And to be fair, the pendulum between the two ought to swing, constantly. Yes, in perfect scenario everyone would be consistent, there would be 0 change and we’d all move along like happy automatons, but thats just not the way things go. Things change, circumstances change and what rocks today is going to suck tomorrow and vice versa. When things rock, it takes very little for them to fall apart, when things suck it takes even more to make them spectacular again. The same thing can rock and suck at the same time (read: Microsoft) and organizational consistency is harder to accomplish the larger the set of management points becomes.

I hope you noticed that Vlad’s grading scale does not include normal / ok / status quo / as it should be, etc. Why? Well, in life you get rewarded for beating expectations and beaten down when you don’t meet them. You don’t get an applause for doing your job, thats why you see a paycheck every two weeks.

“Customers are bitching that there is too much SPAM” – right, its our job to kill it.

“Customers are bitching that there are too many false positives” – right, it’s our job to let ham through.

“Customers never say thank you when everything works perfectly” – wrong, every 1st of the month they bow down with their AMEX and sacrifice many presidents for the glory that is this company.

This goes back to the conversation that Dave Sobel and I often have about why most people are not cut out to be entrepreneurs, they need constant reassurance and praise for what they are supposed to do in the first place and fall apart at the first sign of criticism. In words of Chris Rock: Whatcha want, a cookie? You lowexpectationmo@%#@%!

Wow, just… wow. Safe for work but potentially damaging to all synaptic functions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

Awesome.