Entries from March 2009 ↓
March 30th, 2009 — Social Media
I’m taking us to our conclusion today, because the idea of narrowing this field down to a single champion seems wrong, somehow. After all, the web isn’t about one company, or one person. Without a sea of individuals and innovative companies, it wouldn’t be a web, would it?
So, let’s collapse our Sweet Sixteen down to a Final Four, and start talking about more interesting topics again, shall we? Since I’ve already talked about each of these competitors multiple times now, I’ll just cut to the chase.
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March 27th, 2009 — Social Media
With the first round completed, half our competitors are left out of the tournament. In the next round we will begin to expose situations where matchups make even less sense than they used to. So it goes. Let’s see where this takes us? Our sweet sixteen awaits….
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March 25th, 2009 — Social Media
(Introduction to series here, round 1 matchups in these previous 3 messages [1, 2, 3])
This is the final set of matchups for the initial round. In this division, celebrities who have made a splash on the social web will face off head to head until a winner is found. I’ll preface this division by saying I based most of these picks off of twitter activity. As always comments on my ridiculous matchups are appreciated.
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March 23rd, 2009 — Social Media
(Introduction to series here, earlier posts in round 1 here and here)
I am falling behind, in comparison to the “real” tournament, but that’s ok. While the companies/websites had very few upsets, I expect to see more shakeups in the people categories, simply because I wasn’t as careful when ranking them in the initial brackets. We’ll start with Division 3, “Industry Contributors.”
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March 20th, 2009 — Social Media
(Introductory post here, Div 1 Rd 1 here)
Time for another 16 teams to face off! This is the second “Company / Website” category. Again, some companies had to be moved around due to being owned by other competitors! And, of course, comments are welcome.
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March 19th, 2009 — Social Media
The “real” tournament starts today, so my silly Web 2.0 one does as well. I’ll start with the 16 competitors in the first “Company / Website” category. Comments welcome!
(As noted in comments yesterday, some changes have taken place in the brackets due to companies being found ineligible.)
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March 18th, 2009 — Social Media
I haven’t been a big fan of college basketball since my days in college, but I can’t resist getting a little excited when everyone starts talking about filling out brackets. So in the spirit of the tournament and all the copycats it generates, I thought I’d produce my own bracket system … the buzzword-compliant “Web 2.0” Madness! With all the seriousness in the industry right now (and heck, in this blog) I thought a few lighthearted posts might be in order.
16 teams in each of 4 divisions, will face off head to head to yield one Champion. Half the entrants are companies or sites, the other half are individuals. I tried to avoid selecting individuals who are already covered by the companies they represent, and tried to avoid companies/sites which are owned by other entrants. I probably failed on both fronts … sorry. This is my first attempt at filling out the 64 competitors, including a really half-baked “ranking” in each division. Trust me, it’s a mess.
Please hit me with some comments on who I forgot, who I should have left out, and why my rankings are awful. If you get your comments in in time, I can modify the brackets or re-order them prior to running the matchups. I’ll publish head-to-head competitions over the course of the next few weeks (or until I lose interest and get distracted by something shiny!), and hopefully I can crown a “Web 2.0 Champion” some time in April.
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March 16th, 2009 — Corporate, Life, Management
I spent some time chatting with extended family members this weekend, after attending a funeral. As tends to happen, the subject of work came up, and we got to talking about difficult times at our workplaces. I’m changing some details to protect some identities, but I thought the stories were interesting enough to share. Though we all find ourselves in different worlds, the major issues we face are very similar. One family member told me that in over 20 years of working, this was the only time he had truly hated going in to work. That’s quite a statement. What sort of environment could cause that?
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March 11th, 2009 — EMC
I don’t usually talk EMC products in this blog, unless it’s a product I’m working directly with, or it lets me tell an interesting story. In this case, it’s the latter.
I got an email last week from Craig Librett, whose name you might recognize from RMSG’s new blog. He wanted to let me know about the announcement being made today about EMC Smarts Server Manager. Since I don’t do much work with Smarts, at first I filed it in my “read this later” category (sorry Craig). But when I looked back at it and saw that it was a big step forward in managing the “virtualized data center”, a little light went off in my head. I had just heard Chris Gahagan’s Q1’09 All-Hands call, and I remembered that exact phrase being used in talking about some long-term strategic direction.
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March 9th, 2009 — Corporate
Last Monday I got on my soapbox and told everyone to review their quarterly goals and their performance reviews, and insinuated that caring managers might do the same for their employees. On Friday, around lunchtime, I finally took my own advice (sort of). I looked over my goals and found two tasks which I had forgotten. I have 3 weeks to complete those, and it shouldn’t be a problem. I’m glad I found them when I did! But I’ll be honest with you; I didn’t find the time to crack open my performance review. I’ll do that at the end of the quarter. And, I didn’t do the exercise with my team members’ goals, just my own. I didn’t have time.
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