Just as everyone prepares to go green my buddy Erick Simpson takes out another huge chunk  of Brazil with the latest masterpiece - the best IT Service Delivery Book Ever. You can preorder it now and save $50 on it.  I’ve already placed an order for mine and might get a few more for my team as service delivery is pretty much what we do around here.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what Erick drops in this book, if its like the other ones it will be packed full of useful templates and humor. We’ll even try to give a few away @ OWN so if you want to try your luck first go at it

I’m also well on my way through my own book on Service Delivery but it will be quite different than what Erick has written. Take a moment to review his table of contents, it’s COMPREHENSIVE and thats even selling it short. So you should pretty much get both.

What am I up to? Well, in the past ten years of managing and building the service business and working with thousands of people doing it (with random degrees of success) I’ve found it that the culture of service is a little more important than the process and forms and basics. Even if you got all the right templates, even if you hired the right people, even if you’ve targeted the right audience and got everything together one PSA side and accounting side….. you’re still doomed to fail if the people and processes you’ve put together are not on the same page you need them to be. To provide consistently exceptional service you have to understand your service teams needs, problems and issues and you have to constantly teach, motivate and mentor your team to do their best with the people that trust their business to you.

If you’ve hired a person that you’ve had to let go, or if you hate the idea of having to manage techs, I’m gonna be taking your money pretty soon But to get to that point you need to have your corporate goals together and The Simpsons will help you do it for $100.

Succumbing to peer pressure, I have setup a FriendFeed account. For the voyers among you, here you go:

http://friendfeed.com/vladmazek

Personally, if you want to chat I’d rather you either email me (vlad@vladville.com) or MSN IM me (vlad@vladville.com) but if you’re on the Friendfeed crack I’m right there with you.

I have to note though that I find the amount of information this site delivers quite disturbing. I tied in a few of my services and if you follow the trail line you can probably guess what I had for lunch from it too along with a full dental record. My god, that is a lot of information available completely anonymously and it even sucks all my friends in too so you can tell exactly the kind of relationships I have with people. Scary. I guess I’ll have to curb my habbit of ordering brides on eBay and befriending little girls on MySpace in light of all this! Damn it! And I just got good at it, too!

Earlier tonight we went to Hooters for dinner and we just couldn’t get over our waitress. Is your last name Wakefield? Do you know Jen Wakefield?

Since I couldn’t get Jen on the cell phone I am just convinced she got a night gig and didn’t want to fess up to it. Here is a pic of her when she is not wearing orange shorts:

Oh, and the hot Jenn is a Gator, friend Jen is a nole

Earlier tonight I was chatting with a friend of mine and we were comparing and contrasting some of the truly ridiculous individuals in our business. Such total outright whores that pretend to be one thing but the money trail reveals them to be nothing other than shills for anyone with a check. On one hand, we have people that have been successful in the business, share what they think will improve their community, but aren’t shy to stick the barcode forward and ask to be compensated for the content that has been thought through, organized, delivered in a consumable way (Karl, Erick, Dana). On the flip side, we have people that pretend to be like that but when you scratch the surface you only get the infomercial. I have made my dislike for those pretty open. My friends advice?

“Forget about them, they don’t matter.”

True. However, when everyone agrees not to say anything, when everyone just turns their back onto the unsuspecting public getting screwed, when everyone is a closet hero that is mad, tired as hell, and not going to take it anymore… okay, well, maybe just a little bit more… okay, well, never mind.. that dear friends is how the people get empowered and allowed to continue until the only thing that is left is them and people to aspire to be like them. 

Now, friends, it doesn’t matter who I’m talking about, it doesn’t matter if it’s in IT, it doesn’t matter if it is happening or not – in order to be right with yourself, your community, your world and be able to sleep at night you need to be able to distance yourself from the herd, think for yourself, and when something bothers you do something about it.

Thats what the blogs, podcasts, video blogs, conferences, group meetings, peer get-togethers, peer chats, 2AM IM sessions on the toilet and being a decent human being are all about. Thats why I encourage people to blog, to speak, to lead. Enough crap has gotten by, IT or otherwise, when the few agreed behind the closed doors not to discuss the problems in hope to save face and the trouble that might ensue if they made their thoughts known.

Remember, you are entitled to nothing and you have everything you deserve. If you strive for more, well, it takes some courage. And it won’t win you a Miss Congeniality award either, but maybe, just maybe, you’ll leave this place a little bit better than you found it.

More on this tomorrow from a very special guest on Vladcast #12.

Erick Simpson Conference Call
First 20 get a free cane and a foam pimp hat. Learn how to sell managed services from the guy that not only sold it to his clients but a bunch of my clients as well.

Date / Time
Wed. Jan 16, 2008
9:00 AM Pacific Time
Dial Conference Bridge:
(319) 279-1000
(U.S. phone number)
Your participant passcode is 1024518.

Last weekend we rolled out Office Communications server to go along with our existing Exchange 2007 and SharePoint infrastructure. What an awesome, awesome product. Unfortunately, bringing in IM on a wide-scale like this to the entire company calls for some rules and I need to play ball as well which means pruning a few hundred contacts out of my MSN contact list and keeping it business only.

I hope I don’t offend many of my friends and associates with this move, it’s not that talking to you is a giant waste of time, I just need to limit my corporate exposure to our clients only in much the same way that I wouldn’t take a personal cell phone and chitchat while people expected me to be working.

Anyhow, I hope you don’t take it personal. I will still read your email if you need to get in touch with me throughout the day!

P.S. If you’re paying us, you’re staying on the list. If we are paying you, you’re staying on the list. If you’re not paying us and we’re not paying you, you’re off the list. Update: If you are paying us and you don’t have any of us on your contact list but use MSN or AIM.. contact me and I’ll make sure we get you on.

Also known as CES and I’ll be there. It will likely be my only conference of 2008 with the TechEd being the last minute call, so if you want to get your dose of Vlad, find your way to Las Vegas between 9th and 12th of January.

I know Karl will be there as well, at least according to my wife who figured it out while driving down I-4 and texting. Yeah, I married well So now we just have to get Erick over there and figure out a way to get Pablo to come over.

Though drinking is just not the same when its not on Microsoft’s dime, how can we get Paul Fitzgerald to drop by?

This blog post is powered by Microsoft Nothing 2008, with Susanne Dansey PowerPack for Microsoft.

SMB blogging, for all intents and purposes, is a family. Small, worldwide, dysfunctonal family. The epicenter of that family is the msmvps.com network, or better known as yoda.msmvps.com, the lone server that nearly all of you have hit either directly or indirectly. Susan hosts a ton of MVPs that blog about just about everything and over the past two years little yoda has gone from a single virtual server, to a full Pentium 4 server, to a Pentium D dual core and.. well.. spammers combined with a horrible blogging platform have made the old yoda a little slow.

So today we welcome a new member to this family.. brianna.msmvps.com will be the new Core 2 server dedicated solely to the SQL server backend of the www.msmvps.com

The server is just a small token of of appreciation and a Christmas gift from me to Susan. Susan is the one up there on the left. I host a number of SMB blogs at Own Web Now and frankly, without Susan you never would have seen those nor would Vladville have ever come to life. Susan is the person that encouraged me to blog and honestly, she singlehandedly runs msmvps.com with only the microscopic input from the peanut gallery. She also gets 210% of the crap and complaints about it from the "community" so I figured that with my latest posts on supporting the resources you like the least I ought to do is hook Susan up with some decent hardware.

The msmvps site remains as the most dominant independent source of information and insight into the Microsoft technology, receives $0 funding from anyone, and runs 100% out of Susan's wallet and the blog posts are all put up by the Microsoft MVPs, who also happen to put them up there for free. When you're having a problem, thats the first place that will likely show up in Google. So if thats where you get your info from, take a moment and at least send them your thanks this holiday season.

Merry Christmas Susan! :) 

Disclosure: I have been a Microsoft MVP in Microsoft Exchange category for two years, each year the reward consists of some swag and a $150 credit in the Microsoft store. How I got the award (first or second time) is beyond me, it carries no professional status value (i.e., it’s not a certification of knowledge or experience like an MCSE) and I generally do not use it. However, it is a great honor bestowed by Microsoft to the enthusiasts of their technology and I am quite grateful for it and the product involvement that has come as a result of it.

Started by the opening few minutes of Simpson’s last night, here is some food for thought..

Some of you feel that you don’t have to support MVPs or really offer any gratification in return for someone helping you. You don’t. Some of you don’t even feel thanks are in order. Fair enough. Some of you feel that the content produced on the Internet is done at the will of its creators, distributed for free to get attention and you can take it or leave it. Very true. Some of you will go to community events like SBS groups, .NET meetings, Linux user groups, bootcamps and mashups without thinking you owe the organizers a damn thing. You’re right!

Point is, you cannot owe someone something if you didn’t agree to purchase it. If it had material value, it would come with a price tag and you would judge if it was worth the monetary tradeoff or not. And since it comes without a price tag it is equivalent to a giveaway. Do you owe it thanks? Sure, if you appreciated it. Do you owe it gratitude? I suppose so, if it gives you a lasting benefit.

In a nutshell, we are a free society with an incentive based monetary system, and if someone is going to offer something for nothing you do not owe them any compensation, personal or commercial.

So you don’t have to. But should you?

Wayne brought up a great point this morning, in a nutshell saying “people can only keep on fighting the good fight whilst they don’t need to think about how to pay the bills. Once they need to think more about money than the job they like doing, they stop to do it.”

Some people thrive on accomplishment. Some thrive on money. Some thrive on personal gratitude. Some thrive on attention. Some thrive on argument and passion. Most people have something that makes them tick, something that self-motivates them to do what they do.

The Answer Underpants Gnomes Are Seeking

South Park is a world famous adult cartoon that places children in rather vulgar adult situations and exposes how in a naive fashion children expose the huge adult flaws in logic.

One of the most quoted episodes is the one of the Underpants Gnomes (wikipedia), in which children are asked to write a paper on economics. They meet the underpants gnomes who sneak into kids rooms at nights and steal underpants.  Gnomes have this colossal operation and setup, designed to make profit with just a few missing pieces. They know where they are (collect pants) and where they want to be (profit) they just need to fill in the middle. This is also known as the “every web 2.0 and dot com business plan, EVER” which is why you see it quoted on nearly every social networking site out there when reviewing questionable business plans:

So, let’s circle this back. When you hear or see someone giving something away for free, you ought to try and answer: How are they going to survive doing that? Are they giving it away to gain exposure? Customer base? Attention? What is step 2?

Same question ought to get asked of the Microsoft MVPs, group leaders, event organizers, user groups, etc. How are the leaders, in the end, being compensated for their work?

The easy answer is the question “Who gives a shit” - after all, if they have the time to write, blog, podcast, video blog, answer questions and participate in the IT events and discussions they likely need to get another job. So what if they get tired, someone else will just fall into their place and it’s not your economic duty to subsidize people with flawed business plans - you’re saving $$$ for the iPod Touch.

And for the record - I don’t blame you. I am perhaps the same. I’ve watched the Evolution of Dance video on YouTube at least 20 times and to my recollection I haven’t paid the guy, or Youtube once. I am sure the guy makes money somehow, somewhere, frankly I don’t care.

But the things I do care about, the things that I enjoy, I support. I love 2 Live Crew music and have purchased every single CD they put out. I love The Darkness, and have purchased the CD’s and even went to a concert. (yes, there is a pattern here, I like it when people do phenomenal things with so few resources / talent). I hate Michael Savage and his beliefs with a passion, but I love his delivery - so I bought his books. I could not fall asleep without Coast 2 Coast AM, and I subscribe to its Streamlink even though the program is available on the AM band and I don’t believe in bigfoot, chupacabras or the JFK conspiracies.

Point is, I support what I enjoy because I care that it survives.

End Game

If you don’t support what you care about, it disappears. If you take what you get for free for granted, it comes back as the nastiest commercial substitute you can imagine. If you can only take, without ever giving, you might get accustomed to that and when you need it there may be none left for the taking.

The loose change bin, do you ever put loose change back or do you only take?

In restaurants, do you ever compensate someone for their hard work - even though it’s their f’n job - or do you just stiff them?

Well, dear friends, it works the same way in Cyberspace. If you don’t support the things you like, they will go away.

If you are a content creator that doesn’t want to run a business but is open to a monetary contribution from the people that enjoy what you do, setup and publish a PayPal address. You can even make a subscription, by making Paypal do a reoccurring withdrawal of a few bucks a month. Whatever the case, you are sharing what you want, the public that appreciates you will send you it feels like is appropriate and it’s not a business, it’s just a way of saying thanks.

For the consuming public: Without gratitude, the courtesy goes away. For the content creators: Be honest about what you want.

If you choose to do nothing, you end up with the insults to your intelligence such as this guys site, and SPF Nation. But if you don’t care, perhaps thats the best you deserve.

P.S. Woops. Had to edit the link to coasttocoastam.com - apparently, coast2coastam.com is an amateur porn site. Thanks to Danny from Nofx for pointing that out.

Anyone that has ever met Karl will certainly claim he is one of the nicest people out there. He is. But when you blog, a lot gets lost in translation. Perhaps the reason most people don’t blog. I can tell you that most people think Susan Bradley blogs with a viking horn hat on, laptop in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. She is also one of the nicest people I know. Andy Goodman has on many occasions told me that there are people out there that are afraid to call / email me because they don’t want to be murdered over the phone. I don’t claim to be nice, but damn.. Check this one out:

First email:

Second, tell me about lunch. I only want to sound like the successful Vlad, not the guy who ends up pissing off more people before 7AM than most people do all week.

Second reply:

And give me credit for not using the phrase “All asshole, all the time.”

Every time you blog, your words are read in the context of the emotional state of the reading party. If they are having a bad day and you say “Indian” the wrong way, you just sounded like a racist. If they haven’t had a proper breakfast and read your blog post in the morning, you could be the guy that ruined their entire day by bringing them down.

Even if you had a grin from ear to ear as you wrote it.

So here is a little blogging advice: Anything negative you ever post will backfire on you one way or the other. There is no such thing as “constructive criticism online” or something you’re posting to get people to see things in a different light. People do not like change, people do not like to be told they are wrong, people don’t like to be criticized, put down, discouraged or encouraged to change.

So you should shut down your blog now, go to sleep, and hide in your little cubicle. Right? Wrong. For every 10 people that cannot look past the words and understand the message (the people that couldn’t think less of you) you will have one person that will now be your friend and your undying advocate because you can talk about both good and the bad. And perhaps people can respect you for being fair, not for being a fanboy. And perhaps those are the only friends that you want, that will give you the good and the bad, for the folks that just like you when you smile are going to be gone the moment you actually need to count on them.

So yes, all asshole, just not all the time.  Welcome to the club, Karl. Andy too. Thank you for making the SMB tech blogs less of a place for people to lie to one another.