Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

Fourth of July weekend is a great time to do major infrastructure migrations but also a time where even I get to take some time off and reflect on what I’m doing. I was, to say the least, struggling last week with work and all of my hobbies that turned into profitable lines of business and I talked to my mentor Albert who had this brilliant tidbit:

Albert: Are you making money?

Vlad: Yes…?

Albert: Then you’re not going to enjoy it. When you’re making money it is a job and you will have to deal with it even when you don’t want to.

Over the last year I’ve had the pleasure of doing a lot of fun things but many of those have had such phenomenal success, beyond my wildest expectations, that I now must find new venues to have fun with because the old “fun” has come not just with the incredible nagging but also with an occasional spit in my face. Such as this weekend, 218 email messages asking if I’m alive. 218 people wondering, among other things, where I’m at, how I’m doing, when the next SBS Show will be available, etc. For those of you lifeless bastards here is a little picture. It’s called “the outside”:

This is the picture of space shuttle Discovery taking flight. Seeing the launch of a Space Shuttle is not one of the things you see often and with the way things are going over at NASA perhaps the last time a space shuttle has ever left Florida for space. This is very inspiring, not just for me but also for the community that heavilly relies on the space program.

Last week I had an enormous pleasure of hanging out with my partners and customers in South Florida. At one point I was attacked with a slew of features that they wanted in my product – I drove back home at 10 PM and between 3 AM and morning I had that functionality integrated into ExchangeDefender. I’ve shared before that one of the greatest pleasures I have is seeing people that benefit from my hard work and that actually solve problems. Code really is poetry, and when it all works as designed reliably and efficiently… it’s quite an amazing sight.

Now about this blog…

Vladville is both a blessing and a curse.

On one hand there are roughly 38,000 of you reading this page every day, excluding SBS Show and Vladville. One thing I do know is that we do not have 38,000 customers. Add another thousand or so downloads of the SBS Show a day and an ungodly number of RSS hits and you’ve got one big… Well, thats up to discussion but its quite clear I need to step up my game as far as articles are concerned, I’m glad they are helping so many of you.

It’s going to change…

As I have mentioned before this site came from the mailing list I ran for roughly 5,000+ partners Own Web Now Corp has. I’m not a fake person, to the extent that you know exactly what I think of you within 30 seconds into the conversation. I believe in honesty, call me crazy.

Over the past year or so I’ve covered major technology events, brought you some of the biggest movers and shakers in the SMB space and given you some op-ed pieces so you know how I’m lining up my business with the changing landscape of this industry. Every little bit of insight helps.

Close to a year ago I spoke to a friend of mine, let’s call her Beatrice for example, and she didn’t quite agree with my community ideas. There is nothing wrong with sharing, but at some point you need to get something in return too. How much work goes into becoming an MCSE? How much studying, books, videos and lab experiments does it take? How much time? And people expect you to give it away for free?

I shook that off because I honestly believed that by encouraging people they will turn around and become contributors. I also imagined I’d get something in return as well. Well, the SBS Show dental plan rocks but it does not pay the bandwidth bills. Still, I pushed forward.

But friend after friend came up and just smacked me in my face. Bryan, Scott, Scott R, Bob Belon, one guy after another seeing what happens to me when I hit these events and get surrounded by a bunch of leeches. They tried they hardest to ask me, Hey, are you blind?

Well, apparently I was. What kind of broke the back were the endless open hand asking for the next SBS Show, asking where I was, asking for help…. but never looking to do business with me. What’s worse is that there were even some with the decensy to call me and ask me to beat some competitive programs to ExchangeDefender…. You have no idea how much fun it is to hear this:

Oh, I love the SBS Show. I love all you do, it’s great. But you know, this is business, I have to do what’s best for the customer.

Anotherwords, screw you for doing all that free work and helping me out – I need to look out for myself.

No more talk

I’m done telling people that they need to be true professionals in this business. I am done with invitations to the local TS2 events. I’m done trying to constantly promote people and in Indy/TS2’s words: I’m not his daddy.

So as Vladville goes into its second year I’m going to work a little harder on actual professional content and less on talking about what is not professional, what is required to become one, what to avoid, etc. I’m going to work harder on more articles, some video stuff, meaningful event coverage, etc. But I’m also not going to let some of this stuff be taken for granted. Make no mistake, Vladville is not a business. But when there are business topics to be discussed you can rest assured they will only be open to the Own Web Now Corp partners and customers. I’m very dedicated to my business and very willing to help you get better at yours. But for that to happen this needs to be a two way street. In 2006/2007 Vladville just expect a little more, and if you’re with me, expect a lot more.