And now, I’m getting busier.  This week starts the pilot of the EMC ControlCenter Online User Community I mentioned earlier this year.  I’m going to be heavily involved in trying to keep it thriving.  There’s also the fact that we’re all trying to do more with less.  As I find myself taking work home, I find myself having less time (and inclination) to fine tune a blog post at 10 PM.  And as much as I love my readers, you don’t pay my salary :).

Finally, of course, we’re heading into the holiday season.  It’s a time when I try to spend my spare hours with my family, and not in front of the computer.

So I’m slowing down a bit.  I’ll make an effort to post weekly, and I’ll occasionally drop in with a mid-week post when something interests me.  Heck, you’ll probably find a Casual Friday post or two showing up.  But I’m not looking for rigid scheduled posting, right now.

If you absolutely need your Dave Talks Shop fix, follow me on twitter.  You’ll learn all my secrets….

Work life and personal life aren’t always “two great tastes that taste great together.”  But in today’s workplace, it is inevitable that they will mix.  A recent post on Management Issues asked how much personal time was allowable during the workday, as many workers confessed to spending up to two hours a day on maintaining their personal lives.

The gut reaction you seem to get from that is surprise at people spending 25% of their work day on personal distractions.  But I think it’s important to challenge that reaction, for a number of reasons.

1. 25% is misleading. Our work days are no longer 9-5, and haven’t been for some time.
2. This isn’t the world of a half-century ago, with rigid roles for family members.  When both spouses work, one of them is going to have to take time out of the work day to deal with life events that require maintenance during business hours.
3. How much of that time is made up by decreased availability in what was once sacred personal time?  We carry our Blackberries to our kids’ little league games, we answer emails before our commutes and after our dinners.
4. The lines between personal and professional “maintenance” can get very blurry these days.  As I write this post, am I working late on a Sunday night, or choosing an odd form of recreation?  My boss might think this activity is not work-related, but I bet my wife (currently feeding the baby in the other room) would feel differently.  Similarly, when I drafted my Atmos post on company time, was I goofing off or working?

All this fades in importance to my most important factor, however.  I believe in professionalism. I believe in trusting professionals to perform their jobs, and I want my management to trust me to as a professional as well.  I tell my team members this, explicitly.  I don’t require someone to take personal time if they have to come in late because of a doctor’s appointment, but I also know that when a hot customer issue comes in on a Friday I can expect that same person to babysit the problem over the weekend.

I don’t know if this world is better or worse than the world where the company owned you from 9 to 5 and you owned your time the remainder of the day.  But I do know that the end result is the same — talented and professional individuals will rise to the top and become known as productive team members.  If they happen to spend 2 hours a day emailing their family members and paying their credit card bills online, and still shine bright, I’m more than happy to enable that success.

(Some of my faithful readers may think I’m contradicting myself.  In the past I’ve spoken about defining clear lines between personal time and work time.  I still believe this is important, but not every day.  I still leave my Blackberry at home when I go on a dinner date, just like I’ll ask my wife not to call when I’m locked in my office working on performance reviews.  Part of being a professional is knowing when the boundaries need to be rigid, and knowing when they are flexible.)

How does this relate to EMC?  Well, we have developed an incredible internal community site for collaboration and conversation.  The early adopters (it’s been a year, are we still considered early?) have come to enjoy new ways of doing business, new ways of communicating. But not everyone is there, not everyone is on board (yet).

It’s no secret to my readers that sometimes life in a big corporation can be frustrating.  The interesting side effect with EMC|ONE is that we have begun to assume the entire company works the same way the early adopters do.  When this doesn’t hold true, some people get confused, even angry.  It’s healthy, but it can be difficult to see up close.  The general attitude seems to be, “You gave us an inch, now we want a mile.”  But this isn’t about selfishness, it’s about ideals.  We’ve proven to our employees that the company can be run this way.  So now, they hold us accountable to that.

I think it’s great.  It shows that the platform is working, that people are beginning to take this type of change for granted, to demand changes to match their expectations.  I’m proud to work at a company that embraces that challenge.

It’s going to be an interesting ride.  I look forward to checking back on this post in a year to see how those heightened expectations have panned out … on both fronts!

I’m a technical guy, but I was pretty far outside the loop on Atmos.  So I’m not here to talk about the product itself, but rather about my view of the launch, from the sidelines.  Obviously I’d heard of the product in its early stages, back when it had a tropical codename.  But I was in the dark about its current progress until I received an invitation to a conference call which took place on Halloween morning.  On the line were a handful of EMC bloggers whose names you’d recognize, as well as some big names from the Atmos product team.  They were talking about the product launch and answering questions so that the bloggers could get an early start on bringing things from press release into real discussion.

Being on that call was one of the cooler things I’ve done recently here.  You might wonder what I was doing there.  I guess my “blogger disguise” was working that Halloween, as nobody kicked me out.  Since I rarely blog about technology or products, I knew I would have little if anything to say about Atmos from a product standpoint.  But I couldn’t resist attending anyway. When it comes to this kind of thing, I try not to hit “decline” on the invite unless I need to.

A lot happened at that meeting.  Some people asked some really pointed questions, and some incredible followup conversation took place on our internal collaboration platform, EMC|ONE.  By Monday, a couple bloggers were already seeking comments on the technical accuracy of things they were planning to say at today’s launch.  It was rapid-fire collaboration, with a week to go.  It was really cool to have been in on the kickoff meeting and be able to watch the discussions take off in full view of the rest of the company, with everyone’s input accepted.

Now, nothing about my job changed because of that meeting. But just being there, knowing if I had a question or a statement it would be heard by some heavy-hitting decision-makers, was a great feeling.  This obviously was not the first time I’ve “stumbled” onto potential opportunities due to the contacts I’ve made by being active online at EMC. They don’t all turn into something amazing, but you never know when one will.

It’s also interesting to know that when the press releases go out this morning, lots of my co-workers will have no idea we were announcing a product today, even though plenty of people have been talking about it nonstop for over a week.  The opportunities and the information are all out there, but not everyone has found a way to integrate that into their busy working days.

People are just starting to figure out how to take advantage of all the new networks we’re building with each other. Being an early adopter is something with high potential. Do not underestimate it, whether you’re at EMC or somewhere else.

I’m not here to endorse a candidate.  I’m here to endorse the process of voting.  Regardless of how you feel about the presidential race, there are real issues being decided in hundreds of local elections across the country tomorrow.  Sometimes issues like these are decided by a handful of votes.  Staying home because you’re apathetic about the president, or because you know your vote won’t change your state’s “color” on the CNN map Tuesday night is a mistake.

Even if “your” candidate or cause loses tomorrow, you’ve taken a step to being more involved.  You’re not just watching from the sidelines, you’re participating.  There’s a reason we’re all active here online — and those reasons apply just as much in person as they do here with the ones and zeroes.

So come in to work an hour late, leave an hour early, whatever, and get to the polls.

This is just one symptom of something you see all over the place.  Start a discussion about what version of Windows to buy, and you’ll get people telling you to install Linux (that link was the second google hit for “which version of windows to buy”).  They could well be right, but that’s not what you came to talk about, is it?

The problem is that at first, these people seem cool.  They even attract followers, because people enjoy feeling like they know someone who is counter-culture, or “in the know.”  But in the end, they’re a net drain on the conversation.  They haunt your cafeteria lunch tables, your twitter stream, and your Internet forums.  They’re trolls who don’t even realize they’re trolling.

Don’t be that guy.  Don’t give in to the easy targets.

You only have so many hours in your day.  Why spend those hours tearing someone down when you could spend them building someone up instead?  Don’t waste your time telling someone their idea is stupid — find someone with a good idea and tell them it’s good.  Write a thank-you note, not a blame-them note.

It’s hard sometimes to resist the urge, but you’ll feel better in the end if you do.  And this isn’t just about being a better person — it’s about building a reputation as an enabler, a creator, a contributor.  Because especially in this tough economy, grizzled malcontents are a dime a dozen.  Enthusiastic enablers are a bit more scarce.

(webcomic courtesy of and hosted by xkcd.com, and used in compliance with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.)

It got me thinking, of course, about the scope of innovation here at EMC, and at other businesses.  What makes an idea innovative?  If you simply take something you’re already doing and execute against it better, are you innovating?  Or are you just trimming fat?  Is innovation something we’ll know when we see?

A good example of this is the “People’s Choice” award given to one of the 30 finalists at this year’s conference.  Employees were invited to vote on which of the ideas “best exemplifies the kind of innovation that is most valuable to EMC.”    Their answer, as described in EMC’s press release, was “A semantic search approach to mining internal company data, making it simple for employees to access information quickly and easily and in efficient formats.”  This choice fascinates me and tells me (and our customers and competitors) a lot about the world inside EMC.  EMC employees, given the choice of 30 really innovative ideas, thought the best use of our brainpower and budget was improving the ability for employees (not customers, not partners) to search our internal knowledge base.

I don’t doubt that the ideas and technology behind the idea are innovative.  But I do think the choice sends a clear message upstream — our employees are aware of problems that need innovative solutions, and these problems aren’t necessarily anything to do with opening new markets or even beating our competition in existing markets.  They have to do with removing obstacles to our executing against our already-defined goals.  That is where our folks “in the trenches” want us to concentrate.

I don’t have a problem with this, not at all.  I would love to see that same level of innovative thought applied at every level in our organization.  We need to be creative and save money at every level, especially in this economy.  But I’m also glad that the conference judges chose finalists which were a bit more aggressive in terms of their reach.  It makes me proud to know that we have a mechanism in place so that when someone thinks of something “high concept,” they have a way to bubble the idea up and out of their own immediate environment (where people may only be interested in innovation in the context of improving execution).

Because if everyone in the company spends all their time coming up with ways to execute more rapidly, we’ll be really really good at everything we’re already pretty good at … and while that has value, it’s not the way to grow by leaps and bounds into new markets and new horizons.

He’s obviously writing about this from the standpoint of improving the quality of your code and your organization from a security standpoint, but I wanted to add another dimension to this: growth.

As a manager, I spend a lot of time doing work which is necessary but not always rewarding.  Someone needs to attend meetings, identify and track dependencies, monitor metrics, track goals, and all that.  But there are times where the job is incredibly rewarding and one of those is when you can help someone grow.

So when I read Fred’s post, I don’t think, “Oh, that would definitely make a team more effective.”  I think, “Wow, what a great opportunity that would be for someone.”  Think about the sort of demands being in the role Fred describes would make upon someone.  Think about the sorts of skills necessary to do well in that role.  Finally, think about the sorts of things you want a developing talent within your engineering organization to have.  Now, try to tell me this isn’t a perfect growth opportunity.

One of the ugly truths of managing employee growth is that there aren’t always business opportunities which align to someone’s developmental needs.  So when something like this comes along, your eyes should light up.

Even today’s video games are about the people.  The most vastly successful games are massively multiplayer, and even game consoles (long the holdout of those who wanted to stay alone in their basements) are online and designed around networks of friends.

It used to be, networking was about meeting new people face to face and exchanging business cards.  These days, you’re often “meeting” people for the first time (face to face) after dealing with them online for months or even years.  It presents a slew of new challenges, but opens many new doors.

In the past couple months, I’ve had dinner with co-workers, carved pumpkins with geocaching enthusiasts, and enjoyed live music at a pub with fellow video gamers.  In all three instances, the people I met were people I “knew” from the network, but had never met face to face.  To quote Ferris Bueller, “If you have the means, I highly recommend” adding the “real life” dimension to some of your online contacts.  It’s a good way to deepen your network instead of just widening it.

And, in honor of today’s topic, there are a couple changes to the site:

• You can now subscribe via email
• I’m experimenting with using delicious.com to share interesting links
• I’ve added a blogroll of EMC people you might want to follow

I lived my youth in conditions which are considered poverty in the US.  Single parent, government subsidized housing project, food stamps, giant blocks of orange cheese, food bank, etc.  My grandfather was a butcher and would often get us meat (for free) which was about to expire.  My grandmother bought me school clothes at the start of every year.  We got by.

But this is truly a land of great opportunity, and I made the most of those opportunities and am living a very different life now.  Many people don’t get those opportunities.  I think sometimes of how my life would be different if my mother had been an alcoholic, if my grandparents hadn’t been around, or if my state benefits were worse.  I read stories like Gina’s and realize just how more complex the issue can be than it was for me.

And yet, even this is not the true story of global poverty.  There are people who would kill for the chance to live the childhood I had.

It’s an easy problem to get overwhelmed by.  I tend to concentrate my efforts on the problems closest to me, the problems which impact my family, my community, even my nation.  And it’s good to do that.  It’s necessary.  But the stories I’m reading today are moving me, and reminding me that you can take small steps on a global level just as you can on a local one.

And so, I’d like to thank and pass along links to the following excellent blog stories from people I follow, on the subject of poverty.

• Steve Todd
• Lifehacker
• Jeff Darcy
• Deepa Prabhu (on poverty of spirit!)
• Get Rich Slowly

Maybe they’ll inspire you to make a different decision today, this month, this year….