And Vijay Says…

My last employer, IBM, had a term for online reputation – it was referred to as “Digital Eminence” at big blue. Many colleagues there struggled to figure out what it meant and how they can improve their digital eminence. My way of explaining this to my mentees was “How well does google know you?” .

I did not gain any online reputation by following a plan. Google knows me well enough now – so if you search for my name, I think you can find what I write.  I started blogging several years ago on SCN, then started tweeting and 3 years ago I started this blog. I am grateful that I have a little more readership than friends and immediate family 🙂

People tell me all the time – including twice today – that they don’t have the time to be on twitter, or post a blog. Some of them ask me if there is a plan or schedule that I follow.  Some others ask me how I do SEO. Yet others ask me if I get paid for my blogs.

While I am genuinely flattered by these questions – the truth is kind of boring. Or as Bjoern Goerke says – #NOFUNWHATSOEVER .

I have no schedule to blog. If something picks my interest – I blog, usually from my iPhone.I am usually too lazy to open up my ipad or laptop 🙂 . Unlike with documents I deal with at work – I do not proof read or spell check or do any kind of QA. I tried keeping draft blogs to see if I can finish a thought later. More often than not – I just delete the drafts. So for me – writing something spontaneous is what works best.

I usually blog during plane rides. Or over the weekends, on a reclining sofa with a cold beverage in hand with TV playing an Indian movie, following a cricket match on my iPad and with my two retrievers at my feet. Recently a friend told me that Tuesday and Thursday mornings work best for getting maximum readership. I can never publish something more than a minute after I finished typing – so mine usually go out over the weekend or late nights.

I really don’t know how to do SEO – I have seen long articles on it, and thought it was too complex to deal with it. Same with adwords – someone pointed me to info on how to make money off a blog using adwords. Again, too lazy to do something of that kind. In fact till few months ago, my blog had a black background and white font – and it took a lot of friends and readers to convince me to get another scheme. And lazy me – I just found the first theme I could read without glasses and adopted it. So now you know how serious a blogger I am 🙂

As many of you know – I grew up in the consulting business. My reputation in that world was strictly on my tech abilities, and operational abilities – like managing big projects, selling multi million dollar deals, high customer satisfaction and so on. I have some linkedin recommendations from past managers and clients that can attest to this. People who knew me closely also knew me for not holding back my opinion on some topics. And that is a reputation built over many years of blood sweat and tears. I treasure that .

However, in the last few years – more people know me as a blogger than for my real skills and experience. In fact in my job at SAP ( and six months have passed already in this job) – I think I get introduced to colleagues as a blogger more often than as a guy who is trying to drive Hana adoption. And this leads to weird, often funny reactions .

A small percentage of people just tune out immediately . They probably have no reason to discuss their pressing issues with a blogger – I guess if roles were reversed, I could occasionally be easily accused of this behavior  too. Some others are fascinated – and will engage in a good conversation about social media, current affairs, latest consumer tech and so on – anything except the topic at hand. And the rest ignore the blogger part and discuss normal work stuff and other pressing issues. These days – I almost bet with myself on which of these categories will my next interaction fall into 🙂 . I have also had a few colleagues ask me to blog about stuff they are working on – mostly because they don’t think they can blog themselves. If I get my way – SAP will have a lot more bloggers very soon.

Not everything is funny – there are some real personal and professional advantages too being a blogger. The last international trip I took – I was recognized by someone as “aren’t you the guy who wrote that …..” at every airport I flew in and out of – every single time. I was ten feet tall 🙂 . That was an incredible experience. And roughly every second customer meeting – someone would have read something I posted, and will break the ice broaching that topic. So yes – it definitely has its blessings.

In short – don’t try to blog like I do. Just do what feels right to you – don’t ever let it become a chore. If you don’t enjoy blogging and tweeting – don’t do it. If you like something – you will find time for it. If you like working out – you will hit the gym no matter what. If you like to eat – you won’t mind driving an hour to your favorite restaurant.

Now if you indeed want a role model – there are plenty of peeps who do it well like Den Howlett, Jon Reed, Matthias Steiner, Frank Scavo, Bjoern Goerke , Vinnie Mirchandani and so on. Read several of them and see if something inspires you. And then just start typing – few posts later, you will be a blogger. Google will know you well at some point – and important people will tune you out the moment you are referred to as a blogger. That is the moment of truth – you have arrived !

The whole news about PRISM is pretty depressing – but after thinking through the weekend, I am not as depressed as I was when I first heard it. Sure it is still very evil, but has a few positives as well . The evil part is pretty obvious , so I am just calling out the not so evil things that partly balances it out . Who knows, my opinion could still change as I think more .

The most obvious positive is that there is a chance this does help government keep us safer to some degree .Bad guys are bad – but sadly they are not stupid . They already should know that law enforcement is checking emails and phones . A part of me wants to believe that PRISM is just a leak to further deter the bad guys 🙂

Irrespective of political leaning , Government will over reach . Neither Bush nor Obama has any moral superiority that their administration can claim when it comes to privacy invasion. And this is as good a reason as any to stop following either party blindly the next time people vote them to power .

We compromise privacy all the time – by disclosing personal data in social networks , by using loyalty cards , by online commerce and so on . Experts have warned us a million times to be careful – yet not much has changed . If private companies can hold our data and target us – what is the big deal if government does the same ? Or do we trust capitalist companies to do less evil than an elected government ?

If PRISM has to live up to its great expectations – government probably does not have all the tech it needs in house . This means a lot of companies – big and small will make good business creating that tech . And then those technologies will be repurposed for enterprises and consumers – in good and bad ways . Irrespective – this in general should help an advancement of technology and economy in general .

Same with hardware – a lot more disks, flash, DRAM etc need to be produced to keep up with the big data that the government needs . That is good for the semiconductor industry in general , and should further increase affordability and quality of HW for the rest of us .

Even with all of these , the evil is not nearly balanced by positives. and it could get a lot worse . Aggregation of data is generally considered a good thing in enterprise world – for things like 360 degree view of the customer , end to end supply chain visibility etc . The limiting factor in achieving that goal is that enterprises do not have much access outside their intranets . But if governments can gain access to enterprise servers and get business information – now they can indeed have nearly 360 degree information on everyone . Or god forbid – government could have an API for companies to get some parts of the data from government repositories . It can get even more real evil real soon .

Privacy matters in more ways than most people realize . I don’t know if anything much would change – but the least we can all do is raise awareness so that we keep the damages to a minimum .

I missed watching Seth Godin’s keynote in person couple of weeks ago in Orlando, and ended up watching the recording later. http://www.asugonline.com/asug-annual-conference/videos/keynote-persentation/?catid=asug-annual-conference-keynotes&slg=2013-asug-annual-conference-keynote

I don’t read his blog regularly, but every time someone I follow on twitter tweets out one of his posts – I tend to check it out hoping that it is something I can relate to and learn from. Unfortunately, the keynote replay did not exactly excite me – I tuned out along the way, around the time he explained what a Fermata is to his audience. I am not an expert in western music theory, but I had a very different idea of what a Fermata is compared to what Godin said..But I digress…

There is a part of the keynote that made sense to me – the need to be very good at what you do, to market effectively and so on. But the rest of it generally didn’t sound relevant to me in the context of my work in enterprise software.

I am as big a fan of innovation as the next guy – but I firmly believe that we have enough examples around us to indicate that not everyone can or should innovate. Enterprise Software business is largely made up of fast followers and a minority of innovators ( or inventors) . However, industry wide we spend a lot of time trying to democratize innovation – although with limited success. Shouldn’t we know better by now?

Innovation is a high risk and high reward game most of the time – with characteristics like failure, chaos, disruption etc to go with it. And for a company (especially a big company) to afford innovation, they need to be masters of industrialization . Although not an exact statement – a company that can afford to put 20% of time and effort on innovation, needs the other 80% to be an efficiency machine to innovate on a sustaining basis.

Startup companies are usually in an “all in” mode – since there is no cushion from a portfolio of offerings when you are in a new business. On the plus side, everyone is motivated and will do their best. On the flip side, vast majority of start ups fold without making a tangible impact. However, VCs etc who take a portfolio approach and invest in many startups (usually with opposing risk characteristics) generally have better chance of surviving and thriving.

Big companies typically follow some version of the 80-20 rule. 80 percent runs at high efficiency and pays the bills for the 20% of innovation experiments. And depending on cushion available – as soon as innovations look viable, they try to industrialize partly or fully. And if it is not panning out as planned, they can move out and focus on next big idea without going bust.

I think this model is what we will continue to see for a while – enterprise customers love innovation, but they can’t usually stand an over dose of disruption and chaos. So in my opinion , the vendor part of the ecosystem will need to constantly up their games and compete harder to remain relevant. And that won’t happen by everyone innovating – it will only happen by a minority innovating, and a majority industrializing in a fast follower model. Otherwise the amount of chaos, the cost of innovation etc will make sure the so called innovation will die without adoption.

This also means the leaders in the industry have to constantly watch their backs – when fast followers get their act right, the leader will find it harder and harder to keep their lead. Enterprise software only needs to look at consumer electronics companies to know what that means.

It is time that our industry recognized its unsung heroes who make sure that their counterparts have the cushion/opportunity to innovate. Stop looking down on them – appreciate them – A LOT.