Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

It’s that time of the year – resolution time. It’s time to reflect on the past year and look towards the new one. I usually validate my objectives in January while running a marathon, something one of our partners calls “the soul mirror”, when all the superficial desires escape and I get to see what I’m all about and what I want to do. For the record, here is my last years resolution, I think I’ve lived up to most of it.

Looking back, 2006 was very much a building year both for myself and for my business. I got married, I got a number of opportunities to get in front of people and share what I know, more than doubled my partner size network, grew the international business by leaps and bounds, and took a lot of input into the way I/we do things. That is about as far from Vladville as I can get but it really opened my eyes to the possibilities and potential not just of what I’m doing but what I’m enabling others to do.

That has been a great conflict of mine as well, one for which I have been both privately and personally criticized about. Instead of doing the same ol’ Vlad “shoot and ask questions later”, I’ve taken more time this year to make sure we’re really doing what’s best for the business, the partners and customers and not necessarily what’s best for Vlad. This took a lot of patience (one thing most people that know me will grant you I don’t have), a lot of restraint, a lot of holding back – evaluating and testing instead of doing and revising.

Things that went wrong in 2006…

Expectations. I’ve done a lousy job of setting the right expectations on Shockey Monkey, mostly out of the fact that this was an experimental project to begin with. As I took on more input that literally smashed what I thought was needed, that smashed what virtually every competitive product thought SMB IT shops needed, the correct implementation required more input, more guidance and more time on the  drawing table.

Epiphanies. Nothing like getting together with friends in July and realizing you’re on the wrong path. While this was an overall positive both for me personally and for OWN, 2006 would have been a lot easier if I had not decided to significantly shift focus.

Hurting Friends. My biggest regret, hurting the folks that are close to me professionally that I consider my friends. While taking crap is a part of great friendships, I wish I held back on certain things I said to Chris Rue and Susan Bradley.

Things that went right in 2006..

Shockey Monkey. Despite doing a poor job of setting expectations, Shockey Monkey has been the most positive development for me and for OWN. I sat down with so many people, held back judgement, and just listened to what their problems are. Then I did something new. Instead of solving their problems as the old Vlad would have done, I came back to them with a proposal. They shot it down. Ok, how about this? Still not right, ok, how about now? I’ve worked with about 200 IT shops this year really trying to figure out their strengths and weaknesses and how OWN can be a good part of it.

These conversations built and expanded over time not just to the helpdesk and service monitoring but also to the areas of management, training, education, entrepreneurialism, hiring, firing, and what is really important.

So suddenly, whats really important becomes the objective for 2007.

What is going on in 2007?

I see 2007 significantly different from any other year I’ve been in business. For one, it is no longer about doing the same thing just harder. It is about adapting to the drastically changed market, demands and goals of both OWN, our partners and our clients. We learned a lot out of our Vista/Office 2007 deployments about what the next generation is going to look like, what it will take and how it will play out. Hint: There are more important things to SMBs than what Microsoft is imagining. The next wave will be slow.

OWN will continue the tradition of leveraging of its infrastructure and resources to bring the power of scalability to SMB IT Partners to realize the full synergy as we modernize the technology in the SMB sector. And now a translation for the folks that were not fired from a large company due to gross incompetence: OWN will continue to help IT shops bring the powerful applications, expertise and systems to the small businesses that couldn’t afford it otherwise. 

Personally, I will be dedicating more time and effort in the areas that I have identified as critical to both my personal professional growth and helping OWN adjust. You will see me publishing a lot more technical stuff during 2007, I’ve already bought and read a few technical writing books. I will work with Susanne to further the scope of the SBS Show to beyond just IT and business.
Wish me luck and work on your resolutions too. Failure to plan is a plan to fail.

They didn’t get the goatee right but everything else is perfect. Here is a Photoshop of the cartoon.

Things have been moving slowly around here all day, I’m aware, thank you to all of you that emailed me. It’s the SBS Show effect in progress and I still haven’t even syndicated it.

Lots of you also asked about the newsletter, more precisely: What newsletter? First of all, relax, we’re not jumping on the “another junk magazine with barely enough content to sell the ads” fad that’s going around (just try and go buy something in a grocery store that doesn’t have Rachel Ray on the box) we’re just trying to bring yet another way for people to share information. You can sign up for it here, on the right. We’re shooting for a postboard/newsletter hybrid, not sure where/how it’s going to go.

Lot’s of you complained that it was not in the iTunes, that it’s not in the podcast.xml file. So here is the deal – I generate the podcast.xml file by hand. The iTunes system is just an RSS feeder off that podcast.xml file. Because I didn’t update the xml file, the iTunes qon’t get it nor will the other podcast catchers like Juicer, iPodder, etc. I did this simply to find out how important the RSS feeds are and if I can spread the collateral damage done to my Internet pipe if I staggered the delivery to multiple podcast subscription mechanisms. So the first question – does anybody actually read my blog? Do you click on links? What time of the day do people read / listen to the podcast? This one was particularly interesting because the show seems to have an addictive following, some people listen to it immediately. I always figured these were just my buddy Chris Rue’s fans while he was alive (god bless his soul) but they are still with us even though the Nascar season doesn’t begin for two more months. Who listens to the podcast live in their browser and who downloads it to a device? Not that I didn’t have this data before but its a lot harder to interpret the data when you get 12,000 downloads in the space of 15 minutes of updating the xml file. It also shows interesting relationship & rebroadcasting process, for example, how are people finding about it? Me? Someone elses blog? Who will forward it to their SBS group mailing list?

In the end, I shot myself in the foot again – although there were less downloads there were more of them done simultaneously so my charts are skewed again.

P.S. I did fix the encoding issue for our Tivo subscribers – You do need to subscribe to the higher quality “mobetta” version. There is still no high quality XML stream, intend to build that one as permission-only for the newsletter subscribers.

I want a haircut, some fish food and a laptop but I don’t want to make more than one stop. Not to worry, Jimmy Joe Bob of Orlando has an answer:

Jimmy Joe Bob’s Barber Shop, Laptops and Aquariums LLC, where our moto is: “If we can’t cut the price of your laptop repair, we’ll install a free aquarium screen saver!”

Now those of you that had the pleasure of being driven around by me know that I have no shame, I will stop a car in the middle of the street like I’m a Canadian lost in Florida! So if you see a funny Computer & Wildly Unrelated Other Business sign, please take a picture and send it over to me for the annual JimmyJoeBob Bait & Tackle & Computer Shop Awards. That slogan has made it quite far since the first time Chris Rue coined it on the SBS Show.

Many of you bothered to write in, comment on my blog post and forward me email’s from the sbs list I left. In my absence there has been enough said on and off the list along with discussions that have been done behind the closed doors. Here is my whole objection list and disagreement with the current moderators:

The list is unmoderated – There is no post moderation being done. Anyone is allowed to post anything they wish, correct or incorrect.

There is no interest in moderating the list – Current list owners opinion is that post moderation is the wrong way to go about it, so instead they reply to the threads both online and offline and pile on more junk to the already unreadable discussion list. I offered to moderate the list by only allowing meaningful posts in – I was told that was not going to happen.

There is no interest in removing individuals that are not acting professionally –  The whole list is depreciated by a handful of individuals that tag onto every threat with meaningless warnings about licensing, war stories, and their self-dlilusioned best practices.

So I left and I might add, I am not the first or the most valuable person that has chosen to leave.

It is the fact that I have an opinion that I am not afraid to share thats the problem. I often write on this blog about the importance of having a professional attitude in this world and speaking your mind when you (think) you’re right. I have not censored this blog for Microsoft, Google, IBM, AOL and a slew of other Cease & Desist fans… and I’m not about to start censoring it for my friends feelings.

It is my honest opinion that they are doing a great disservice to the community by allowing the central gathering place for SBSers to become a blog, a ranting ground, source of misleading information. Over the past year that community has gone lower and lower and there is no sign that the moderators are willing to do anything.

So why should I stick around? Consider the following gem from Anne Stanton:

I admire every poster who has the guts to look foolish and post either a question and/or input.

I see, so we’re supposed to be rewarding idiots! Brilliant.

Going Forward

Susan and I have been talking about starting an SBS wiki board but thats about the extent of it. I’m working on the SBS Show newsletter which should be out any day now. That is all I have on the to-do list.

Lot’s of calls on this list to start a moderated group or a board or… Not going to happen. The group and people are already together and all thats needed is some order where there is none. So what may have worked for a few hundred users is not scaling to a few thousand – go figure. Until the owners of this list realize that the changes need to be made the group will tank, as it has for a year, turn away valuable professionals and only entice those looking for a fight. I don’t know about you, but thats not something I’m willing to be a part of. Susan and Wayne are my friends, I trust them to do the right thing. Sometimes you need to kick your friends in the ass to move them in the right direction, I hope thats all this is.

We have fragmented this community into enough lists and groups and the goal of this community ought to be to unite SBSers, not split them apart. I’ll be the first one to volunteer my time towards that goal, but I will not promote, have my name associated or my time wasted on correcting the junk that is allowed to be sent to the list in the first place.