The Ponderings of Woodrow

Reunited and it feels so good

It feels good to be back.

For the sake of my all-too-fragile ego, I'm going to assume many of you noticed I haven't been blogging. In fact, I stepped away from the blogosphere for the entire month of August. What started as simply being a hiatus born out of a lot of real-world developments (more on these later); turned into a cathartic exercise in self denial.

My Problems with the Blogosphere

Truth is, I began to lose my passion for all things blog-related. Writing the blog started to feel more like a job than a way to stretch my intellectual muscles in creative ways. I began to fret that the days I wasn't able to pen something, I had somehow let down my subscribers (many of which are friends and colleagues of some sort). Once I realized I had over 50 half-written blarticles, it just became untenable. But my self-imposed stresses of writing the blog were matched equally by my loss of appreciation for those blogs I was reading.

At the end of July, I had over 600 active feeds coming into my reader. At some point, the collective value of the information began to be superseded by the feeling of noise, redundancy and rhetoric. It seemed like I was reading 50 people's opinions on the credit crunch; and as a result, none felt original. The great voices within the blogosphere were being drowned by the mundane. In the tech world, I began to feel like I was reading the same stories in ten different forms. There are great aggregation blogs and sites which cast a pretty wide net; so why have many of those individual blogs also coming into my reader?

Solution #1: Culling the Wheat from the Chaff

As I type this, I now have 105 blogs in my Google Reader. Down from well over 600. The process was surprisingly easy; and I can't recommend enough the value of pruning your own blogroll. Here were my steps:

• Walk away for 30 days -- Does absence make the heart grow fonder? I was going to find out.
• Remove any blog I couldn't remember -- There were blogs in my reader I simply couldn't remember anything about upon my return; they were the first to get the axe
• Remove any "dead" blog -- Some bloggers just stop blogging (some of you may have put me into that category by now :) ). So anyone that hadn't posted at least once in the last three months is gone [with one exception, Neil!]
• Remove most aggregation/list blogs -- We live in a long tail world. I'm all for smart people calling my attention to things I might have otherwise missed. But enough already with list blogs. I have my own del.icio.us account. I have my own Technorati favorites. I use my own aggregation tools. So if a person's blog was largely for linking to other people's stuff; it's gone.
• Remove Valleywag, TechCrunch, Engadget, Scoble -- Given their readerships, I somehow think they'll manage to survive. But the truth is, it's been a long time since I felt I was getting incremental value for the time spent reading stuff that wasn't germane to me.
• Remove 80% of the financial/investing blogs -- For some reason, I've found far less satisfaction reading about what other investors are doing/thinking/saying than I do reading about what other technologists are up to.

What's left you might ask?

• The Enterprise Irregulars -- The vast majority of my fellow EIs made the cut; and if there's anything I most regret over the last month it's the lessened frequency of my interaction with all of them both personally and through our blogs
• Techmeme -- For my needs, Techmeme is the king of aggregation. Gabe hits on the things I care most about; and I never feel like I'm missing out on a major tech story by visiting the Meme a few times a day
• TechDirt -- Mike and his team are SMART, thoughtful and hard-working people. For my money, TechDirt + Techmeme are basically the perfect daily infusion of what's relevant in the tech landscape
• SeekingAlpha Alerts -- SeekingAlpha is an incredibly ambitious financial aggregation service that's doing exceptionally well. I've come to know David Jackson (I was a SeekingAlpha contributor in their early days) and think he's building something terrific. SA provides me the tools to get news from the blogosphere that I want, and nothing else. As a stock-specific investor, this is far more valuable to me than the myriad trading oriented blogs I see on so many people's "best of" lists
• Investment Blogs: Roger, Mish, DealBook, Barry, Ed, AllAboutAlpha, Jeff Matthews -- That's the sum total of my investment-focused blogroll
• VC Blogs: Brad, Fred Wilson, AskTheVC, Ed Sim, Peter Rip, Paul K   -- A lot of VCs used to be on this list, very few remain
• Technology Blogs: There are really too many to name here, but they include the ZDNet guys, Eric Savitz at Barrons, Bill Burnham, Sandhill, Om, Marc, Michael, Don, and Ben to name a select few.

Solution #2: Enjoying the Conversation

If I'm to believe my Feedburner statistics, I actually added almost 300 new readers over the five+ weeks I wasn't blogging. I'm guessing that means the key to my cracking the Technorati Top 100 would be to extend my sabbatical for another 17.3 years. :) The point being, seeing that made me remember that my sole reason for blogging is to extend the conversation. I could care less if 50 or 50,000 people read any given post, as long as it a) gets me thinking, b) fosters discussion among my friends and colleagues, and c) invites one or two new people into my sphere of influence that I might never have met otherwise. In 18 months blogging, I've met at least 100 people that I would probably never have otherwise. If I can come away with another 100 over the next 18 months, I've hit the lottery.

But with that realization comes my own "new" self-imposed blogging rules:

• Sometimes I'm going to have a lot to say
• Sometimes I'm going to have very little to say
• Sometimes I'm not going to have anything to say

If there's a subject you want my opinion on, there are ways to approach me. Email always works, or you can leave a comment on my blog, or best yet, you can offer to say hello the next time we're at the same venue.

Alright folks, that's all for now. I'm looking forward to catching up with you all. Although the summer is quiet in many respects, the technology and investing worlds certainly didn't slow down. Time to jump back into the fray and see how my views alter the equation.

Two bloggers that deserve your attention...

I have upwards of 400 blogs in my RSS reader, and try to turnover my feeds with a fair amount of frequency. There are, of course, a core group of mainstays and it's always a very gratifying experience when I come across a new blogger that is such a find, I feel compelled to spread the word.

Today, I have not one but two bloggers to call attention to:

• Marc Andreessen -- Chances are if you're reading The Ponderings of Woodrow, you are already reading Marc's blog, too. You also don't need an introduction to Marc, who helped create a little something called the web browser and more recently co-founded Opsware (OPSW) and Ning. Andreessen is off to a world-class start with a series of deep, lengthy and thoughtful posts that run the gamut of topics. His Facebook Platform analysis first caught my attention, but I'm still waiting for him to write a post that could be classified as fluff. Another personal favorite, his analogy to big enterprise and Moby Dick.

• John Hagel -- Hat tip to Charlie Wood for this one, but John Hagel has been blogging for almost a year. He's not a frequent blogger, but he falls into the quality over quantity camp. Hagel recently accepted a position with Deloitte to establish a new research center in the Silicon Valley, examining the intersection of IT and business strategy. Hagel's most recent missive, Unanswered Questions at Supernova 2007, helps set the groundwork for the questions he'll be looking to answer in the coming days, months, and weeks.

Note: This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security, but is merely a personal analysis to foster discussion for informational purposes only. At the time of this writing, I and/or funds I maintain discretionary control over, did not maintain a position (long or short) in OPSW.

andreessen hagel blogging recommendations woodrow enterprise+irregulars

The Dark Side of "Social" Media...

I don't know Kathy Sierra personally, but I certainly respect her work as a blogger and feel ashamed that our happy little social media collective otherwise known as the blogosphere has come to this point. For those who don't know, Kathy has been the recipient of lewd and lascivious personal attacks as well as outright death threats.

• Kathy Sierra: Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech"

The outpouring of support for Kathy and the other victimized blogger has been tremendous; which is good to see in a blogosphere that of late seems more focused on protecting one's turf and flame wars than the communal "one for all, all for one" aspects that drew so many early bloggers into the medium.

While I certainly wish Kathy well and hope her tormentors are brought to justice in whatever way the law allows, I must admit some apprehension in blogging about this topic. Looking at Techmeme today, I can't help but wonder if we're doing EXACTLY what Kathy's hecklers wanted in the first place.

Are we feeding the frenzy? There's truth to the adage "never let them see you sweat" and I wonder if the attention this situation garners ultimately does more harm than good?  I hope not.

Blogging is about the conversation; or at least it should be. If stories like this continue to crop up it's going to have far-reaching negative consequences:

1. People new to blogging are going to potentially be put off from jumping into the blogosphere
2. Established voices, many of our most intelligent and creative, are going to leave or, at the very least, become less active
3. The conversational aspects of blogging [i.e., trackbacks, comments, cross-linking] are going to become more regulated

As the reach of social media expands beyond early adoption into near omnipresence, we unfortunately have no choice but to brace ourselves for the darker side of human interaction; or INhuman interaction as the case may be. But let's not let that ills of a relative few curtail the power of the many.

To Kathy and all my fellow bloggers, be well.

kathy sierra blogging dark side social media best wishes woodrow

Myth Busting Software Rules...

Hat tip to Vinnie for bringing this article to my attention:

8 Rules of Software that Need to Be Broken [Optimize Magazine]

• Rule #1: Seat-licensing is the best way to price business software by Bob Fecteau, CIO, BAE Systems
• Rule #2: Rising software-maintenance fees are just a cost of doing business by Eric Wilson, CIO, Raley's
• Rule # 3: Customizing software is the only way for buyers to get what they want by Steven Peltzman, CIO, MoMA
• Rule #4: Software service and support quality decrease over the lifetime of the contract by Rebecca Wettemann, VP, Nucleus Research
• Rule #5: Software must be financed from the capital-expense budget by Greg Gianforte, CEO, RightNow Technologies
• Rule #6: The on-demand model is better suited for small businesses by Jason Maynard, Software Analyst, Credit Suisse
• Rule #7: Customers must accept fewer choices as a result of software-industry consolidation by Bruce Guptill, Managing Director, Saugatuck Technology Inc.
• Rule #8: Bugs and poor quality are to be expected in early releases of software by Mike Dimyan, Lead Technology Analyst, Time Warner Inc.

Vinnie adds a few of his own rules to the list. [Update: Just to make sure there's no confusion, the "rules" I list below are ones I DO NOT agree with...I rather endorse the opposite viewpoint...I've had one too many emails today presuming differently]...

Indulge me as I do the same:

1. The CIO must have complete control over the selection and deployment of software within the enterprise
2. Customers will pay for component architectures simply because ERP vendors ask them to
3. Open source has proven itself as a profitable, long-term business model at the apps layer
4. The mid-market can be owned by the same companies that dominate the Global 1000
5. 3rd party maintenance is a substantive concern for established apps vendors in the next 3-5 years
6. Multi-tenancy isn't secure, nor does it scale
7. Software procurement is 100% rational and ROI-driven
8. Software applications and tools, by themselves, can give a company competitive advantage
9. CRM is a misnomer
10. Business intelligence is ripe for further consolidation
11. Blogs and wikis aren't ready for enterprise ubiquity

I would love to hear where you agree or disagree with any of the aforementioned points; particularly my own. :)

optimize rules myths vinnie software mirchandani enterprise irregulars woodrow

 

Back from Hiatus: Introducing 90 in 30

Did you miss me? Yes, it's hard to believe that it's been exactly one month since I last blogged. After a solid 15 months of blogging, on average, one post per day, I decided to take some time off and the month of February seemed like a reasonably long enough period to really let me assess a number of aspects of this blog.

It's been harder than I thought to stay away from my WYSIWYG editor; and literally hundreds of interesting topics have crossed my mind that would've been worthy fodder to write about. But as the month wore on it became almost cathartic to NOT write.  I had begun to feel like blogging was almost an obligation, and my inability to write about all the things I felt warranted my attention began to simply take the fun out of the process.

But that's all over now, and I've never felt more centered on both the time and energy I can and will allocate to Ponderings.  Simply put, I'm going to blog about technology and investing issues that I feel passionate about, and not worry about the rest. Seems simple enough, but I had lost sight of that.

Before I explain what "90 in 30" means, let me say a collective thanks to all of my friends, colleagues and other readers who cared enough about to inquire about when I was going to get off my ass and start blogging again. Have no fear, I'm back with a vengeance!  The fact that so many of you missed my blog enough to reach out is flattering to be sure.

Now, onto "90 in 30"...this is my way of making up for lost time. Having not blogged for 30 days, I'm now committing to NINETY (90) blog posts in THIRTY (30) days. Yes, an average of three posts per day. 90 posts (this is #1) by March 31st or else. Or else what? For every post short of my goal, I will donate $100 to charity. To spice things up, I will allow my readers to pick charities for my donations if I do in fact miss my goal. A few ground rules...1) simply linking to someone else's post does NOT count toward the 90, and 2) it does not have to be three posts per day, it's only the cumulative total that matters.

So start counting, and come along for the ride as I push for 90-in-30...

ponderings blogging 90in30 woodrow

I've really seen it all now...

I thought I had really and truly heard everything when this story made it's way into my Inbox:

• German shares higher at midday led by SAP amid rumours of takeover bid by Oracle [Forbes.com]

But then I realized that, in fact, I hadn't really seen everything:

• Henry Blodget on why investors shouldn't pay attention to Jim Cramer [Slate.com]

What's next?

sap oracle software blodget cramer seen everything humor woodrow

Super Bowl pool for a good cause...

Charlie O'Donnell [with a nod from Fred Wilson] has an interesting take on the tried and true Super Bowl office pool going, and it's for a good cause. He's set up a wiki called 100 Bloggers, 100 Boxes with the goal of getting 100 bloggers to fork over $10 each in the name of their favorite charity.

Goal: Get 100 different bloggers to sponsor 100 different Superbowl boxes, with the winnings going to their charities of choice. Please tag/digg/link to this so that we can ensure that we fill these out by the end of the week.

It's a pretty simple concept...fill in your information on the wiki, Paypal Charlie your $10, and then check back to see which numbers you get for the Super Bowl. The payouts are typical of these types of pools:

• 10% to 1st Quarter Winner
• 25% to Halftime Winner
• 15% to 3rd Quarter Winner
• 50% to Final Score (If game goes into OT, Final Score is final at end of game)

At the very least, you get to expose a worthwhile charity to 99 other bloggers and their readership. I'm throwing my hat (and $10) into the ring for the National Association for Gifted Children.

super bowl pool nagc charity wiki national association for gifted children pool woodrow

AskTheVC launches...

Congratulations to fellow Enterprise Irregular Brad Feld and his partner Jason Mendelson who have launched a great new service, AskTheVC, which effectively institutionalizes a lot of the VC-work they've been doing on their own blogs for years. If you're interested in learning more about the VC industry, or simply have a question you want to throw at them, I encourage you to check out their site and add the feed to your reader.

Brad assures me that my question (submitted about a few days ago) is in the queue and will be a topic of discussion in the near future. I don't want to steal their thunder but suffice to say it involves the growing trend of hedge funds as co-investors in venture deals.

askthevc brad feld jason mendelson blog enterprise irregulars woodrow

Revisiting my 2006 predications...

Happy New Year, it's been a few slow weeks for the Ponderings as I took some time to concentrate on my analog responsibilities, most importantly family and my funds. The good, no great news is that 2006 was a banner year on all fronts and as a proponent of trend spotting, I'm sure 2007 bodes even more rewarding personally and professionally.

I've been actively soliciting feedback from my extended network and have some clear ideas on how to make Ponderings more rewarding for my readers and, in turn, myself. More details on what I've got planned in the next few days.

Today, I want to start with the first of a series of 2006 review posts. Last year, like any good blogger, I made some predictions about how 2006 would unfold. All in all, I'm pleased with how they turned out, particularly because my crystal ball was in the shop the day I typed these up.

2006 Predictions:

• NetSuite will either come public OR be acquired by Oracle [Larry Ellison is the majority shareholder in privately-held NetSuite]...I was a little early, but it's a foregone certainty in 2007
• Readen Commerce might also make its way to the public markets...this didn't happen, although the Amex partnership was clearly a step in that direction
• Oracle will become heavy-handed in their marketing message behind SaaS, proclaiming themselves as the "leader" in On-Demand software applications. They will make this claim thanks to the combination of Siebel OnDemand, Peoplesoft OnDemand and their own ASP-rooted efforts...Oracle made the claims, although I'm not sure anyone took them seriously
• SAP will take a measured approach to this market, as they recognize the limitations of offering hosted solutions in large enterprises for core transactional applications that encompass much of the mySAP suite...knocked this one out of the park like Ryan Howard at Citizen's Bank
• A number of second-tier public software companies will try to ride the SaaS wave by announcing new hosted versions of their software...but a closer inspection will show them to lack the true multi-tenant functionality needed...check
  
• The VC lovefest for SaaS will continue apace, with announcements of more and more "me too" investments muddying the SaaS landscape...check, although I saw more innovation on the SaaS front than my initial skepticism would've thought
• Dave Duffield's Workday will garner some attention, and he'll likely acquire his way into a broader suite of functionality than the HR/Payroll early forecasters envision...Dave, Aneel and friends certainly helped my batting average
• Supply chain software will rise from the ashes...i2 is back on the map, Manugistics is recapitalized, Aspen has a new story to tell
• Maintenance revenues will become the new battlefront between customer and vendor...Anecdotally this is happening; as many CIOs told me in conversations over the years; but as a meme this has yet to really reach a crescendo
• Indian outsourcing firms will become the primary lever for trends in application development, QA and testing...Not sure I saw enough evidence of this to claim a win; maybe in 2007
• M&A will continue to be a prominent theme among enterprise software vendors and investors...slam dunk
• Microsoft will be omnipresent...in retrospect, this wasn't a very aggressive prediction. I was right, but 2007 is shaping up to be the Year of Vista, whereas 2006 was the Year of Vista Delays
• Business intelligence will engender a slowdown after a torrid 24 months...this certainly happened, although rampant BI M&A rumors kept the space (and stocks) in play
• Open source still won't be ready for prime-time among enterprise-class applications vendors...if I was wrong on this one, the open source apps firms need to do a better job of PR

Up next: 1) 2006 Year-in-Review, 2) 2006 Software Stock Retrospective & 3) 2007 Predictions

Note: At the time of this writing I, and/or funds I maintain discretionary control over, maintained long equity positions in CRM, MSFT and SAP but did not maintain a position (long or short) in ORCL, ITWO, MANU or AZPN. We also may, at times, carry derivative options on underlying positions as a hedge.

predictions 2006 software irregulars enterprise irregulars review woodrow

Blog Tag: Five Things You Didn't Know About Me...

I first heard of this Blog Tag thing on Jeff Pulver's blog...and since a few Irregulars have jumped into the fray.

• Tebbo has been tagged
• Den has been tagged
• Tom has been tagged

I haven't been tagged yet, but figured I would start the ball rolling on another round...'tis the season after all

5 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Me...

• I have survived not one, but two car accidents involving 18-wheelers...

Incident 1: Two months after turning 17, I decided to see how fast my father's Corvette would go and proceeded to slam into the side of a truck while going 120 mph. Fiberglass shreds, completely. But somehow my dumb ass comes out unscathed (save for one irate father).

Incident 2: Junior year in college, my buddies clunker is on its last legs, we're hugging the shoulder trying to get to the next offramp. I'm sitting in the backseat and this feeling of encroachment comes over me. I turn and look out the back window and see bright truck lights RIGHT upon us and scream out, "oh shit! a truck!." Next thing I know I'm in an ambulance on the way to a local hospital. The verdict? Shattered jaw, some knocked out teeth, some bumps and bruises. All in all, not too bad considering.

• My father is a renowned decoy carver...

For those unaware, decoy carving is a true American folk art with its roots in the Delaware Valley. Over time, it's become a highly collectible niche where pieces can go for hundreds of thousands at auction. My father, who apprenticed under Bob White, is considered one of the better modern carvers, and he's particularly noted for his decorative painting techniques. Here's some of his stuff.

• I grew six inches in my freshman year of college...

When I said adieu to my high school classmates, I was 5'9" (about the same as my father). When I got home for the summer, I was 6'3".  To this day (even at 32 years old!) I'll occasionally run into a classmate from high school and they'll ask if I've gotten taller. Must be the platform shoes.

• I know far too much about Marvel Comics...

The inner geekboy in me holds my head up high here. If you ever want to know how the film versions of X-Men or Spider-Man differ from the comic histories, I'm your guy.

• I have a penchant for re-reading books...

Intellectually, I know there are so many fantastic books in the world to consume, it seems ridiculous to re-read books with any frequency. But I get just as much joy (in fact, more) in reading old favorites as I do experiencing new works.

OK, now it's time to tag five of my blog friends...

• Niel Robertson
• Jeff Nolan
• Vinnie Mirchandani
• Charlie Wood...Charlie's List
• Charles Zedlewski

Cheers!

blog tag 5 things niel robertson jeff nolan vinnie mirchandani charlie wood charles zedlewski irregulars enterprise irregulars woodrow