Mozart Mania

You have, no doubt, heard there was a new piece of classical music recently discovered. The Allegro Molto in C Major, allegedly written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was found stuffed in an old notebook. Though only a copy and not in his original hand, scholars attribute it to him and think he wrote it when he was 11 years old.

Music is one of the things I truly love. I can enjoy listening to performances from the modern artists of today to the classics of old including everything in between. I have an extremely eclectic collection of albums (yes, made of vinyl) and CDs. Of course the vinyl dates back to my earlier days while the CDs are more recent, although now I purchase everything on-line.

Growing up my house was always filled with music. My father played the saxophone and clarinet. He was an orchestra leader with a small group of regulars that played popular tunes from the 40's and 50's. My brother was a drummer in a rock band and my sister dabbled in piano. My son inherited the music genes, performing in musicals on stage in high school and later an a Capella group in college. Today he is managing editor for a popular indie rock web site. (That's where I get all my tips on who's going to be hot. )

My library contains music from original artists I've met in social networks and in person along with all the stars of today and yesteryear. Whether you prefer jazz, country, rock or opera, you can find something to suit your taste. I even have a rock-opera. When I tune in on services like Slacker or Spotify it's anybody's guess what you are going to hear. The same is true of my satellite radio presets in the car. You are just as likely to hear music from the top 40 as from 1840.

All other things being equal, when I am alone I tend to listen to classical music, including opera. In this genre, Mozart is my favorite hands down. A few years ago I bought the entire collection of his works. It is a box of well over 100 CDs that contain every piece of music the man wrote, except the Allegro Molto in C Major. So, you can imagine my delight when this new piece was posted all over the social networks. I've played it so many times I think I may wear out the bits.

But it also made me think what if this music genius had been born today? What if Mozart could write a piece of music, record it and immediately post it to iTunes or YouTube? This video of the first recording has been viewed over 54,000 times. In his day, there were no recordings, no radio or television. It would have taken months to reach an audience of this size.

I wonder if he would have been the Madonna, Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber of the day? Would his records have gone platinum and his videos gone viral? Would his concerts have been a sell-out and would be have gone into television or hit the big screen?

Of course, it's equally likely the school systems would have stifled his creativity, texting might have ruined his manual dexterity and television bored him to distraction.

Maybe that's why we don't have any musical geniuses today.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

How Am I Doing?

There is an age old management axiom that goes, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." Having more than just a feeling, subjective or anecdotal feedback is critical to knowing how performance is being perceived.

This is particularly important in places where you directly interface with your customers, internal or external. Of course when you are buying service you include in the provider agreement or contract certain performance guarantees. These service level agreements are targets your providers must achieve or suffer some financial penalty. For example, your data communications vendor must provide better than 99.5% availability or accrue credits equal to the cost of one day of service for every tenth of a point below.

If your business involves providing services to your customers, you may have SLAs that you must live up to or your customers will either penalize you or worse, vote with their feet. Satisfaction levels will be pretty evident and easy to detect. You are likely to invest in software monitors which will alarm when response times degrade or systems become unavailable.

The question is how to know if your internal customers are happy? They may be a captive audience and incur no direct costs for the infrastructure you provide. How do we tell if their level of satisfaction is increasing or falling out of bed.

One solution I would recommend is to periodically issue a survey. The absolute level of satisfaction at any one point is less important than knowing if things are improving or need attention. Continuous polling will provide the raw data you need for a proper analysis.

At one large company where I was in charge the help desk software was configured to automatically poll a person once their trouble ticket was closed. The survey would gather just a few facts such as whether the problem had been resolved in a timely manner or to their satisfaction. Were staff members helpful and courteous. Were multiple calls required or was it resolved on the first go around.

The surveys that were returned were aggregated and used to produce scores which were reviewed monthly. Ratings could be reviewed by type and frequency of problem. This allowed us to highlight areas where the software could be improved or training was needed. Surveys also provided a measure of productivity of the help desk staff. Consistently low scores and negative comments for usually researched and addressed accordingly.

The high level statistics were posted and shared with staff, management and the company. Everyone knew their feedback was important and that we were genuinely concerned with the level of service we provided to them.

Similar techniques may be used for business analysts, developers and training staff. If you take the time to ask people for feedback, collect and process this information, you will always know exactly where you stand.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Drinking From A Firehose

One of the most frequent questions I am asked by friends, colleagues and almost always during interviews is how do you keep up with all the changes and new developments in your industry.  There is no easy or short answer to this question.

Technology moves at the speed of light. New hardware, software and communication products are introduced every day. Products become services and services evolve into products. Software gets embedded in hardware while hardware becomes virtual. Just when you think you know everything about how data can move from here to there, someone introduces a faster, cheaper and more reliable method.

Certainly there is no shortage of information sources. Whether in print, audio or video format, there is a never-ending stream of news stories, opinions, vendor announcements and other content physically or electronically delivered to you. My preference is a healthy mix of tech and business publications. You have to scan a  Computerworld or Information Week, and read CIO Magazine. But you should also be reading Fortune or Forbes and top publications in your industry or vertical. For example, when I was in construction it was important to scan through ENR each week. If you are in finance you should be reading the Wall Street Journal.

The internet and aggregators make it relatively to assemble stories from multiple sources. Whether you employ your own rules using alerts, RSS or other tools to pull stories, or you rely on the judgement of others to highlight content of interest, you do not have to go to each original source. Web sites like Topsy show content that is trending while electronic newspapers collect links based on custom rules. Applications like Flipboard are very popular because they pull information from all your sources and present you with a personal magazine.

Additionally, social networks are a place where people know you and are happy to share links to content they think will be of interest to you. Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Plus all have streams of original content and links to published material. Twitter let's you choose the people or companies you consider interesting or well informed. By following your favorite thought leaders or industry pundits, you can have links to relevant content handed to you all day long. Companies now Tweet in addition to issuing a press release or other forms of announcement.

It does not end there. In fact, all of this is incidental and often random while other means of keeping up are more deliberate.

Attending conferences and seminars is important in order to hear and interact with presenters. But the real value at these events is the interaction with peers. This is where you hear what has been working and what to avoid from others who have had experience with various solutions. This is where you can run an idea up the flag pole and get the kind of open and honest feedback you need to avoid disaster.

These conferences, like the publications, should not be confined to technology. I will be the first to admit I hate to miss the annual Forrester meeting but I also want to attend general business or educational functions for my vertical as well.

Lastly, the people in your company are an invaluable source of information and you should be deeply immersed in frequent  information exchanges with people at all levels.

So, how can one possibly find the time for all of this, have a normal social life and also do your job? Well, I said right at the outset, there really is no easy answer.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

What Makes Something Go Viral

I happen to catch a post in my Google Plus stream by film and TV star Jeri Ryan. She was reminding everyone that her TV show Body of Proof had a two-part episode called "Going Viral" that would air tonight. It reminded me of the apparently unanswerable question; what makes something on the internet go viral?

Some months back, my friend Mike Downes happened to catch a video of an obnoxious person on the underground. For reasons neither of us could fathom, this video received millions of views within hours of it hitting YouTube.

We all know the hit song Friday Friday by Rebecca Black. This was a low budget video which somehow caught on and was shared and re-shared until it was viewed by over 10s of millions of people.

More recently the KONY 2012 video was smattered all over the internet and, in fact, was picked up by television, radio and print news media propelling it further into the public's eye.What made these videos stand out?

There are so many more examples of this phenomenon but few concrete explanations.

I had an uncanny experience as well. Beyond my column each day for months, I have posted a number of other interesting or amusing items. But none ever gained the kind of traction this post did the other day.

My son emailed me a graphic which I thought was worth sharing and so I posted it on Google Plus. Much to my surprise three days later people are still commenting or sharing it. It has been shared over 700 times, accumulated 1100 plus ones and almost 200 comments. Was this three by three matrix so novel or so controversial that it could stimulate this level of interaction?

This simple graphic somehow sparked an initial reaction that snowballed and drew more and more people into the fray. I don't know if we'll ever truly understand the underlying cause or if, in fact, it is just one of those random combinations of events that lead to this outcome.

I'll keep looking for content to evoke this kind of reaction again.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

How Do you Handle Stress

Whether you have a job or not, it is important to network with your peers to stay current,  informed and connected with your industry. People in the technology space often have to do double duty. By that I mean you have to be aware of trends in technology and also remain in tune with changes in your business vertical.

Health care, for example, is undergoing huge changes. New database technologies, imaging, video conferencing or tele-medicine, social networks and mobile computing have been driving development schedules for years. More recently, new legislation and even the pending Supreme Court decision will change all the rules and put even more pressure on the need to change. Later in the year, election results could change it all again.

Just keeping up can lead to high levels of stress on the job. But when you add the anxiety of seeking a new job it can become almost too much to bear.

At our last meeting , the Westport Group, one of the local network support organizations to which I belong, invited Frank Basler to conduct a workshop on managing stress. He introduced us to a short and simple exercise that allowed the participants to discover and share some of their own techniques. The members of this group are all senior managers currently between full time roles. In other words, unemployed.

We were each paired with another member and spent ten minutes or so listening to stories evoked by a carefully designed question. The goal was to talk about stressful situations you have been in and how they were overcome. The departure from the usual lecture or question and answer format was refreshing. It was genuinely nice to just chat with a colleague with whom, in my case, I have spent hours week after week in these meetings for months but never really got to know.

Apart from just discussing the findings of various stress management techniques, we were encouraged to seek other members and have more one on one sessions like this. It turns out leveraging relationships, such as the ones in this group, was high on the list.

Some of the other activities that surfaced included being well organized, taking long walks in the woods perhaps with a pet, working out, and just having patience and confidence in one's abilities. Using humor or doing volunteer work were also suggested. Frank added some other constructive outlets he encountered over the years. There is, of course, no right answer. It's best to do whatever works well for you.

One guy is apparently writing a daily blog. That sounds like a good approach to me.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC