Tiering, ILM, HSM and WGAF

In 2004, SNIA defined Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) as comprising the policies, processes, practices, and tools used to align the business value of information with the most appropriate and cost effective IT infrastructure (I would have added 'for its placement' but the ILMers at SNIA are wicked fussy about inferring that ILM has ANYTHING to do with storage. –Ed.) from the time information is conceived through its final disposition. Information is aligned with business processes through management policies and service levels associated with applications, metadata, information, and data.

I like that definition – in fact, I was hanging around SNIA a lot back then kick starting the CDP working group, and may have contributed to that definition. Who knows, sounds like something I might have written- lots of warm air whooshing around those words…

In January of 2005, an unattributed author at TechTarget opined that: Tiered storage is the assignment of different categories of data to different types of storage media in order to reduce total storage cost. Categories may be based on levels of protection needed, performance requirements, frequency of use, and other considerations.

In early 2006, SNIA added that "ILM is more than Tiered Storage" and went on to suggest the need for a complex set of data classification capabilities. Whoops – too little too soon? All the data classification start-ups I knew blew up or died on the vine.

Then, according to someone unnamed author at TechTarget back in March, 2006 the definition of Information life cycle management (ILM) became:

"A comprehensive approach to managing the flow of an information system's data and associated metadata from creation and initial storage to the time when it becomes obsolete and is deleted."

I'm not as crazy about that definition – final disposition not always being obsolescence and deletion and all...

The same unknown author went on to add:

"Unlike earlier approaches to data storage management, ILM involves all aspects of dealing with data, starting with user practices, rather than just automating storage procedures, as for example, hierarchical storage management (HSM) does. Also in contrast to older systems, ILM enables more complex criteria for storage management than data age and frequency of access."

I guess I don't really understand what 'all aspects of dealing with data starting with user practices' means. Do you? I do appreciate that ILM can use more complex criteria than age and access frequency, but I didn't realize that HSM couldn't…

According to the same source, this time written in July 2001 by Gaston Navea, the definition of Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) is:

Policy-based management of file backup and archiving in a way that uses storage devices economically and without the user needing to be aware of when files are being retrieved from backup storage media.

Gaston then adds that policies might include age or access, but also states that executables might be excluded, inferring at least that 'type' metadata is also a valid differentiator. But for me, Gaston puts the stake in the heart of HSM when he goes on to say, "The apparently available files are known as stubs and point to the real location of the file in backup storage." No wonder HSM flopped. Stubs are a nightmare. Disconnecting the location from the payload is a huge strategic mistake. Either is useless without the other, the opportunities for disconnections are ample, and the cost of disconnect is horrific. So HSM is out.

Back to the ILMers at SNIA. They believe ILM represents a holistic approach to information management. I suppose you have to appreciate anything that represents a holistic approach. But then they go on to introduce ILM 2.0 which re-introduces the concept of Information Lifecycle Management with accompanying processes and procedures absent from earlier days. I personally hate all 2.0 terminology, but that's just me.

And they warn us, even with ILM 2.0, to: Make no mistake; Information Lifecycle Management is still a difficult and challenging proposition. They go on to define ILM 2.0 as: a service management style framework for cost-effectively aligning datacenter storage, security, services, applications, and infrastructure with the business requirements for the organization's information. This model, by the way, as 100 individual elements, and comes with a checklist of 21 specific steps to follow to achieve it.

As Andy Azula says in the recent UPS whiteboard commercial, "Is anyone else getting thirsty?"

Referring to an article by George Crump on file virtualization, my F5 colleague, Don MacVittie wrote, "The other thing that made me a throw up a little in the back of my throat was his use of the dread phrase "ILM" (Information Lifecycle Management). I shudder when our marketing organization uses it too." This is memorable, and pretty witty if you ask me, especially considering that Don is officially in marketing at F5… That snark aside, Don's core point is that many of the better elements of the ILM concept have survived the gooey-glop-ulization of the term itself in the form of real solutions to actual customer problems. This takes us back to Tiering.

Tiering works. Plain and simple. If you don't believe me, watch this short powerful video of one of our customers, RHWL Architects, discussing what tiering did for them. He says something like, "All our storage problems disappeared overnight". Pretty powerful and not goo-gloppy at all. I happen to know that these folks did not follow any 21 step, 100 element service management style framework to solve 'all their storage problems overnight'. They implemented an ARX file virtualization appliance and tiered their storage – that's all.

How could anything be that simple? Ah, heck, we storage marketers have been complexifying and goo-glopping this whole issue for a decade or more. Somewhere along the line, somebody got the idea that if we make it hard, complex, and scary, then we can charge more money to fix it. (maybe this is all really my fault afterall.)

Look it's really not complicated. Sort your files. Then put some of them on one array and some on another. The rest starts to take care of itself after that. Sort them anyway you like, by age, size, owner, extension, type, whatever. Most people use 'last modified date' first, and then get more granular later, but you will figure that out on your own as you get smarter about tiering.

Tiering is sort of akin to contributing to your 401K (in USA that's a retirement savings account). You don't need to think about it too hard. Just do it. Not doing it is really stupid, and anyone who tells you not to is an idiot or worse. You don't need to have a perfectly balanced investment strategy, and a complete understanding of your financial risk profile, before you sign up for payroll deductions. All you need to know is it saves you money on taxes and gets you started on a nest egg. Once you start building up experience (and capital) you can add more finesse. Same here.

Just do it. Sort, Tier, Save. Simple – does not require arguments about definitions, and will not make you throw up in the back of your throat.

PS – Make sure you use a solid solution - like the F5 ARX - to do it. Don't use stubs. Don't use half-baked hybrid clunkers that go in and out of band (and rely on stubs even if they say they don't). Investing in a 401K works, letting Bernie Madoff manage it doesn't. Be smart. Do the right thing.

PPS - I am leaving it to you to figure out the WGAF acronym. Use your imagination.

PPPS - Admit it, you didn't know who Andy Azula is did you? See, you always learn something reading this blog...maybe not about storage, but something...

The Character of Clouds: Ethics Matter More for Service Providers

Here's an important reminder for cloud service providers: character counts.

Ethics, Values, and Trust are table stakes – for anyone who wants to succeed in business long term – but especially for cloud service providers.

As a cloud customer, I am not simply buying/renting your hardware and software. I am grafting my company onto yours. We are intermingling our corporate DNA. I am loading my databases on your disk drives. I am modifying my internal processes to map to your services.

If you suddenly grow 3 heads, I cannot easily cut and run. Who you are matters. How you behave matters. What you believe in matters - more so than what your service actually does for me - a damn sight more.

Don't believe me? Think that's Barney talking…? Think it's all about the infrastructure, managing your capital, maintaining the buzz, keeping the pipes pinging…?

Engage me for a moment in this nearly true to life tragic tale of the CEO of a small venture backed cloud service vendor, and how he single-handedly blew a huge deal out of the water by forgetting that character comes first. (Names and circumstances changed to protect all involved).

You blew it, Jon. No one else.

Not your sales people.

Not your sales manager.

Not your lawyer.

You, Mr. CEO.

You Mr. President.

Here's a quick recap of the events of the last 48 hours of your deal from my perspective. Keep in mind that when I say "my" I am again speaking AS THE CUSTOMER, Jon.

Everything was moving along with the deal. We had a solid understanding of your service. We felt it would work for us. We had the money. Jon, think about that. We had the money budgeted. The check was written, buddy. All you had to do was take it to the bank and cash it.

How in heaven's name did you blow this?

As we got near the close, my team started getting weird vibes from your sales rep. He was playing games, dumb rookie stuff - divide and conquer, 'we can only ensure this discount if you sign today', skeesy Glengarry Glen Ross nonsense stuff.

I heard my folks complaining about him, but ignored them. Probably shouldn't have. His skeaziness was a big bright red flag waving in my face. A lighthouse beacon warning me to keep off the rocks of doing business with you. A canary in the coal mine…oh, heck…you get the idea.

I was brought into the deal at the last minute when our lawyer and your lawyer bumped into a glitch in the contract that they couldn't sort out. My team wanted quick resolution, so they asked me to step in.

We were readying plans to start implementing your service next week, Jon. This dumb legal wrangle was nothing to lose a deal over, Jon. It could have been sorted out in 10 mins. Once I understood the issue, I probably I would have talked to my lawyer, we would have deemed it a business risk we were willing to take, and we'd be shakin' and signin'.

Next week. $$$…all yours, Jon. All yours.

Now, as feuding lawyers do, these guys were each squawking that the other lawyer was being unreasonable. Squawking and sputtering. Jon, that's what lawyers do sometimes…they squawk and sputter.

So you and I are supposed to jump on the phone and sort it out. That's what us business guys do…they sort stuff out.

At this point, I'm just trying to figure out what all the squawking is about. It's pretty confusing, and pretty technical. I am listening.

Then all of the sudden my radar starts beeping.

You are getting all hot and bothered. Jon, my heavens, now, you're squawking…

"In all my years, I've never had a client ask for anything so outrageous!"

You are squawking pretty good, Jon.

"None of my other (name drop, name drop, name drop) clients have ever raised this as an issue! This is absurd. You can't be serious!"

Why are you squawking, Jon?

"I am not signing any contract that has this clause in it! We may as well not have a contract at all."

Aren't we supposed to be sorting stuff out, Jon? Business guys don't squawk, do they? I sure don't, squawk, much, Jon.

I am finding your reaction…troubling…

I am not listening anymore. I am wondering what you will act like when the brown stuff inevitably really hits the fan later. Stuff always hits the fan, eventually, Jon. And business guys sort it out…if we don't, it gets really messy…

But you are squawking…not sorting…

I am sitting across the table from my lawyer. So what if he squawks a little? He's a guy I know and trust. Heck, we pay him to sometimes squawk a little.

I don't know you from Adam, Jon. You're a voice on the speakerphone.

And, I barely understand the twisted legal edge-case condition that both lawyer guys are squawking about. Heck, Jon, I haven't even looked at the contract.

But, Jon, I'm hearing something in your voice on that speaker phone that makes me nervous. I am hearing you squawking not sorting.

Then I think I hear you say something about how we might act in bad faith. Seems to me you are worried about us being dishonest. What?? We don't act in bad faith. We are as freaking honest as the day is freaking long and then some…

I don't even know you. I haven't opened my mouth other than to say, Hi how are Ya, and you are accusing me of dishonesty? I begin thinking maybe you are just a little bit dishonest, yourself, Jon.

This is getting way more troubling…$$$, Jon…slipping from your fingers…flittering right out the window…going up in smoke…flushing down the…ah heck, you know what I'm getting at here…

I end the call. I'm feeling like I need to take a shower.

A couple of minutes later I get a follow-up email from you. You think my lawyer is being unreasonable and you want me to replace him with outside counsel. What? You want me to throw a respected peer and colleague under the bus so you can get your deal done? What??

Claxon horns are blaring in my head. My stomach is doing back-flips.

I tell my team that I am uncomfortable doing business with you. They ask me to sleep on it.

I wake up the next morning absolutely sure I don't want to do business with you. I try to tell myself it was the gruel – just a bad dream. I vow to be more open minded and give you a chance.

I get to work that morning and find an email from you telling me you did in fact talk to an outside counsel, and he (surprise) agrees with you that my lawyer is being completely unreasonable (squawk) – you share that your outside council is vehement and is using strong language to say we are being unreasonable and our concern is 'absurd' and doesn't deserve the dignity of a response (squawk, squawk, squawk…!)

I go with my gut and cancel further discussion. We are not doing business with you.

I squirt some hand sanitizer into my palms and feel marginally better.

Then I happen to read the rest of your email – really only by chance – and an unbelievable window is opened onto the soul of your company culture, its values, and your personal ethics.

You have accidentally attached a string of emails between you, your lawyers, your sales reps, and your sales managers…the string reveals unethical behavior apparently condoned by management, and a fundamental disrespect for customers that is so powerful it makes me want to gag. All described in vivid tone and tenor.

I realize I have just dodged a bullet – an armor piercing bullet.

My hands are shaking and I have trouble concentrating for the rest of the day.

You know the rest of the story, Jon. Your pitiful attempts to reengage. Your realization that you attached those horrible emails. Your mistaken conclusion that it was your flub of attaching the emails that sent me over the edge. Finally, your abortive, sad, and frankly creepy apology. (Seriously Jon, a guy like you shouldn't be teaching Sunday school…)

You blew it, Jon. The buck stops with you. Rail all you want about my lawyer being unreasonable. Blame me if it makes you feel better. Make excuses if you must.

But take this to your now empty bank:

It was never about the contract, Jon. It was about you and your company. I was both ready and able to accept some business risk, but once you revealed your true self, I certainly was not willing to share my business's DNA with you.

Yes, sure, to do business with enterprises, cloud providers must have enterprise quality infrastructures – safeguards, systems, processes, quality people all count. We are not going to run our core business applications on infrastructure that does not meet the business standards we've developed to run in-house.

And there must be a compelling ROI to move these core applications outside the safety of our four walls.

BUT – big but – that is not enough. In addition to the hard technical and financial standards, we also need assurance that you can be trusted, just like we trust our own employees, in fact, even more.

For a cloud service provider to succeed, it must deeply internalize that:

Character counts.

Trust comes before contracts.

Ethics matter.

And that, Jon, is both the God's honest truth and your $$$ lesson for today.

Rule 1: OSG is always right

Rule #2 - if you think right is wrong, you're not paying attention.

Regardless of who pays for it, healthcare is a set of goods and services that must be delivered by others to you.

Like if or not, there is not enough 'healthcare' to go around. Everyone cannot and will not get all the 'healthcare' they need or want.

This is just a reality, not a political statement.

When you let the government pay - the government has to decide who will get how much. Since government represent everyone equally, government payment systems requires 'fairness'. This means the government has to decide who gets treatment and who doesn't.

Some form of the following:

Life expectancy (age) X quality of life (defined how exactly??) X effectiveness of treatment / Cost of treatment

is used to determine whether you (or your kids or your parents) get the treatment.

Hey - wake up - this isn't some philosophical argument. Today - right now - Australia has what so many of you seem to want - nationalized medicine. There aren't enough cancer drugs to go around in Australia - and Australia has a panel of experts called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee who perform this economic analysis on cancer drugs to determine who will get them.

This is a direct quote from their website:

"Users should be encouraged to understand the costs, benefits and risks of medicines, and wherever possible the public benefit of provision of medicines should be achieved through the regulated marketplace...it can be difficult to meet the community’s expectations regarding subsidised access to all available treatments. Both the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the treatments need to be considered in making decisions about subsidisation...(we must assure) access to necessary medicines occurs at a cost the community as a whole can afford, particularly in the context of pressures such as the development of new high cost medicines and Australia’s ageing population...."

READ THAT AGAIN!

Cost...effectiveness...regulated...access...decisions about subsidisation...afford...new medicine... aging population...

What? Hello?

As I said - healthcare isn't a right, it's a good. Goods must be distributed. In nationalized (socialist) systems the government uses fairness to determine distribution.

Meaning - sick, old people don't get no chemo.

Tell mom that was the hope and change she believed in...

(oops, that was a political statement, sorry, just slipped out...)

Save a Socialist, Ride a Cowboy

I rejected your comment because I found it insulting, and it's my blog, so tough noogies. But, here's my attempt to respond objectively.

Your 'right' cannot ever be granted by taking property away from others. Rights are just that, rights - you have the right to life (I can't kill you), liberty (I can't enslave you), the pursuit of happiness (whatever that means). You don't - in western society anyway - have the right to take my stuff.

You don't have a right to eat my food. You have a right to earn your own darn food.

The blanket statement - "in western society, health care is a right not a good" is intellectually dishonest.

It ignores the fact that health care is in fact a set of things - services, drugs, machinery, facilities - that must be created, are in limited supply, and must be distributed. It is not some unalienable, god-given right. Health care must be paid for - if not by the patient consuming the service, then by all of society.

Let me repeat. Health care is not free. It is a service delivered by people to people. Somehow that service - that set of goods - ultimately has to be paid for by someone. Health insurance is only an abstration layer that spreads the risk - it doesn't remove the necessity to pay for the service eventually.

So we are back to an argument over the proper method for distribution of this service. You say it's a right - meaning that it must be provided in full to anyone who wants it whenever they want it. Think about that for a minute. There is not enough of 'it' to go around - never will be - so how exactly, with intellectual honesty, do you propose to distribute the services that deliver this 'right'?

Doh...

My position is that distribution in this society - whether you or I like it or not - is inherently and by design decided by merit - by value created as measured by wealth.

You can argue rationally and with intellectual honesty that this is unfair. Could not agree more. In fact, it is totally unfair - purposefully unfair if by fair you mean equal or common to all. Meritocracy is not fair.

You can also argue rationally that according to your value system, you find this system of distribution wrong - it tweaks your sense of injustice! OK. Nothing intellectually dishonest with saying that. You're simply stating that your personal value system is different than the one the founding father's established.

Lots of people will agree with you. In emotional terms, people who espose this beleif are often associated with socialism. In extreme forms, some people do not believe in individual property rights at all - they beleive that all goods belong to the collective group. In emotional terms, people who belieive this are usually called communists.

Then again, lots of people don't...agree with you, that is...

Blind Faith, Dashed Hope, and Unequal Justic

Been thinking about justice lately.

Left sees injustice in the fact that some people are wealthy and others are not.

Right sees injustice in the government taking away their property and giving it to others.

Healthcare Reformers see injustice in wealth determining access to medical services.

Kanye West sees injustice in Taylor Swift winning an award instead of Beyonce.

When we sense the order of things is out of whack, we get a visceral mental reaction. We hate injustice! We are even willing to fight wars to right injustices if they are menacing enough.

But what is injustice, exactly? And why do we so violently disagree on what is just or isn’t?

Justice is all about the proper ordering of things in a society – the distribution of stuff. We sense injustice has occurred when we encounter what we believe is the wrong distribution of stuff – primarily wealth, power, and respect in all their forms.

The trick here is the ‘we believe’ part. What’s fair? How should stuff be distributed?

The ultimate distribution of power is freedom vs. slavery. We struggled with that for a while in this society before creating laws to neutralize it. There is no limit on the amount of freedom we can have, so laws guaranteeing absolute freedom for everyone are rational and enforceable.

Not so for wealth. It is a basic law of the distribution of goods that there is not enough wealth for everyone to have everything they want or need. There are many theories on which method is most ‘fair’ for distribution. Communism, Socialism, Capitalism are all essentially methods of distribution of wealth.

Our society was founded on the principle of meritocracy. Here in America, stuff is distributed based on the value a person creates for society. It’s an imperfect system, but roughly translated, the wealth you accumulate equals the value you create. Goods are distributed based on that wealth. If you create an enormous amount of value for society, you and your ancestors will benefit from the accumulated wealth.

The founders created laws to protect property rights and other unalienable rights in order to protect this system. In meritocracy’s purest form, all goods would be distributed this way - food, shelter, and water among them. And originally this was the case. You were jailed for debt. If you didn’t work, you and your family starved.

But we aren't monsters, so as society developed we created safety nets for those who could not create value themselves - the old, infirm, etc (note - however there was no patience or mercy for the lazy, addicted, criminal, or otherwise self-afflicted –those people were punished or jailed or worse.)

At first we freely offered our wealth to those in need, usually based on religious convictions. Eventually, we softened further creating welfare societies and other social programs to help those who found themselves in need. Eventually government intervened to create these safety nets, taking wealth by force through taxes from those who created it and giving to those who did not.

In western society, as we move across the scale from freely earned meritocracy and charity to forced distribution, we begin to run afoul of our visceral human desire for justice. And therein, lies the root of the current problem.

There is not enough wealth to go around. Taking it from those that create it and giving it to those that do not in order to affect an equal distribution has proven a doomed social strategy – and is so antithetical to the American spirit that any serious attempt to do so now would surely meet massive resistance and ultimately revolution. Even the hint of it has half the population in a panic today.

When taxes are raised high enough, our sense of injustice is stimulated and, as we saw in 1776, all hell breaks loose.

Universal distribution systems may seem fair from afar. Everyone gets the same ration. But they never work. The human spirit is not programmed to excel in order to share, or to involuntarily give up wealth. Innovation grows from desire. It cannot be mandated.

Healthcare wealth is no different than any other form of wealth – it’s just a much more emotional microcosm. There is simply not enough medical care to go around. Not enough doctors, hospital beds, machines, drugs – not enough of any of it, and there very likely never will be. This isn’t freedom, we can’t just mandate that everyone gets healthcare and that’s that. Healthcare is a good –plain and simple. It has to come from somewhere. Hard as that is for the more sensitive and caring of us to accept. It is a good that is, must, and probably always will be distributed unequally. Like we always have, as a society we will gladly provide for those truly in need, but expecting full equal distribution is irrational.

Forced equal distribution of healthcare through universal healthcare such as Canada and the UK is especially problematic. Healthcare resources are a limited commodity. Use of these resources is not evenly divisible. Expensive drugs, procedures, and machinery consume healthcare resources unevenly. Therefore methods of prioritization must be applied. Quality of life and life expectancy are variables often used for prioritization. Again, our sense of justice combines with concerns for personal welfare and that of our families to create a very potent political cocktail.

The method for distribution of goods at the core of this society's DNA is merit measured by value created or more imprecisely, wealth. Every other method of distribution raises our sense of injustice – sometimes to the level of complaining to a friend, fighting with a family member, calling a radio talk show, attending a tea party, or even marching on Washington. And, as we saw in 1776, sometimes it raises our sense of injustice to the point of declaring independence from the oppressing government. Now, luckily we just vote them out.

Hey, we’re Americans, it’s how we roll.

Ah…whippersnapper…

like you, I have attended many trade shows. More than you, perhaps? We are no longer taught to respect the wisdom of our elders in this culture. However, perspective is very hard to acquire.

Sure, some things have changed since I wrote the rules on technical trade show strategy in 2007. Ironically, I wrote that at the urging of the sponsors of your upcoming all-natural show who were flumuxed about how my little startups always got so much attention while other huge sponsors went lacking.

In North America, people no longer come to technical trade shows to have thoughtful discussions with technical experts at exhibit booths. Nowadays, in North America people come to technical trade shows to get drunk in the hotel bar, hang out with their peers, ogle the unattainable and collect stuff. Oh, and if they see something cool, maybe take a look and pass info on to some other people who didn’t come back home to justify the trip. They don’t have the patience or the attention span in a crowd of thousands to follow a live demo. They do not line up at your booth so that you plant a tree for them. Ask the lonely dark booth full of bored shuffling technical experts in the back corner of the next show you visit.

Whippersnapper…at the last SNW, were those your lonely sore little feet in that lonely little booth in the back row?

Bright shiny loud things attract a crowd – even today in our current all natural, politically correct, sensitive new age, anti-plastic, pro-environment, gender-neutral, healthy, crunchy, flaky, non-deodorized society.

Politically correct or not, sexual attraction is still the strongest and fastest human response. Now, even I, the OSG, have been beaten into submission on the subject of booth babes. OK. OK. Hot guys DO work just as well as hot girls. I give. I give. Use both sexes. Here’s why – and it’s not what you think.

Technical experts are basically almost always shy. Sales people prowling like wolves scare skitterish attendees away before you even start a conversation. Babes are different – they bridge the gap. They are confident. They smile. They come bearing gifts – ok, make the damn chotchkee an all-cotton, child-labor-free tee-shirt, dyed with natural fruit based ink – it’s still a gift - an tiny little enticement to stop and pay attention. There… we’ve broken the ice and created a sense of obligation on the attendee’s part to ask, “So, what does your company do, anyway?” Gotcha. That’s what it’s all about. With BB’s you get conversations, without them you don’t.

By the way, BB’s do not have to be from a modeling agency. Our most successful BB’s have been the least kitten and boy toy ish. Anyone can be a BB – they just have to be confident, outgoing, smiley, and understand their job.

As for uniforms – if you can’t stand out in the crowd, you become one of the crowd – a tree lost in a forest. Ok, so nurse’s, schoolgirls, strippers, alien goddesses and those infamous twister girls are over the top – nuts, pointless and rude. I am not talking about that nonsense. I am talking about making sure that everyone who sees you knows you are their representing your company, and you are ready and willing to have a conversation. Whatever that takes, do it. I personally like bright shirts because they work. My team likes black shirts with red logos – I got tired of fighting about it. I’ve proved my point too many times.

As for purpose and strategy - trade shows are a bad investment for vendors who want real sales opportunities. The numbers just don’t work anymore – customers get their information online now. That’s why shows are shrinking, failing, consolidating, and closing by the dozen. Big vendors don’t need more lists of attendees; they have finely tuned marketing databases. If you’re a startup, Jigsaw gets you any name, phone number, and email you could ever want, practically for free. Besides you don’t have the resources to sort through the haystack of tradeshow leads to find real opportunities anyway so why do you want them? See my comments on LEADS SUCK – nothing’s changed there – lead management technology is better, sure, but tradeshow leads still suck.

Tradeshows are not so much about demand generation anymore, and if you are spending your tiny little startup marketing budget on them, whippersnapper, you’re going to crash and burn before you get that puppy off the ground.

Tradeshows are useful for positing a new concept into a market – speaking at them if it doesn’t cost you’re a fortune – is how you get this done. The speaker should be the CTO, not the VPM. The topic is the new concept or idea, not your product or service. You are trying to open up new concepts for debate and buzz.

Tradeshows are also useful for finding and talking to other vendors you might want to partner with – this is done at the aforementioned hotel bar after 10pm. Ditto industry analysts, although time moves to after midnight.

Tradeshows can be ok for (re)positioning your brand in the market – getting on the radar screen if you are small, or repositioning yourself into larger markets if you are bigger. This is done with keynotes or major announcements.

Mostly tradeshows are about connecting with friends, colleagues, peers, competitors, and the industry in general. So go have some fun, come by the booth and say hi, get yourself another tee shirt for your significant other to sleep in, or a big red bouncy ball to take home to the kids.

And for heaven’s sake, whippersnapper, lighten up before you pop something.

Stephen's Graduation Party Speech

Everything's Changing - Nothing Much Has Changed

Putting together a video compilation for Stephen's graduation party was a bitter sweet experience. It was fun to find so many old video tapes of Stephen as a baby, but sad to realize that 20 years has passed so fast.

Stephen was born without incident - the obstetrician’s first words were “I’ve delivered lots of babies, and let me tell you, that is one good-looking kid” – nothing much has changed much there.

Stephens’s first and favorite toys were balls - he had a set of crystal plastic balls with shiny spinners inside - slept with them in his crib. Went to sleep with his balls in his hands every night. – nothing much has changed there - still sleeps with his balls in his hands.

One summer at my parents house on Cape Cod, Stephen learned to hit a baseball - hit it over the roof of the house almost as soon as he learned to swing - certainly nothing much has changed there.

When he learned to ride a bike without training wheels, I was proud and excited - but as I watched him ride down the street, my stomach twisted in a knot - it was a selfish knot - I didn’t want him to grow up - I didn’t want him to not need me...but, I forced a smile, gave him a high five, and we moved on to the next pressing thing.

It seems looking back, that Stephen's entire childhood was condensed into 40 minutes of rushing to practice, hurrying to games, and popping McNuggets while tying skates in the back seat. I still have scars on my hands from pulling those laces, 'tighter, daddy, tighter’.

Then one day, he tied his own skates - and that ugly twisty-stomach feeling came back.

When Stephen's beloved coach, Steve Henley, died suddenly our parenting skills were put to the test. I thought my job as a Dad was to make pain go away - clean the booboo, put a band-aid on it, and kiss it all better. But there was nothing I could do or say to make this all better. I've never felt quite so inadequate as a father – all I could do is be with him as he struggled with his grief and mourned his loss. Those of you with kids know there is no pain worse than your kid’s pain - and there is nothing worse than not being able to make your kid’s pain go away.

Then one he drove himself to practice - and for a minute I was relieved because driving him everywhere was really a pain. Then as Pam and I were driving alone to his game that weekend, that twisty thing was back in my stomach.

But whether he needed us or not, we went. Pam never missed a game, and I went whenever I could. Although Stephen would never admit it, he always looked to see if we were there in the stands. Of course, he didn’t wave or anything - that wouldn’t be cool, but we knew he knew and that was enough.

Then one game when I wasn't there, tragedy struck. I was standing on the San Diego shoreline watching the most beautiful sunset when the call came. I will never forget Pam's voice, Stephen was hurt - badly hurt – might never play again. I dropped the cell phone, and balled my eyes out.

Stephen's stoic determination and courage in facing that injury still amazes me - he never complained, never pitied himself, never looked back - he marched on, and the results speak for themselves. He used the same strength in breaking into social and academic life at BB&N, and I know he will draw from it to succeed at Holy Cross and beyond.

People often come up to us - complete strangers sometimes - to tell us that we should be proud to have such great kids. We do have great kids - strong, smart, good-looking, sweet, kind, courageous, and tough. We are proud of them, yes, and we are privileged to have been the job of raising them - to have been allowed to be their mom and dad.

So now that Stephen is a grown man, we can look at the sum of our collective parenting of him, the hours, the talks, the money!, and the accounting shows a very, very positive return on investment.

As he is preparing to ride down that road towards his own life, his own freedom, and his own future - I have to tell you, that very selfish, very twisty feeling is back with a vengeance. I am proud, bursting with pride, excited at his accomplishments, and I very much do and do not want him to go...

Stephen, son, I love you very much – and nothing much will ever change there.