Microsoft Live Mesh is Excellent

Of all the Microsoft products launched in the past decade, I think Live Mesh is the best. It is currently in Beta but seems to be working just great.

The basic concept is that you download a small Live Mesh app to each of your devices (PC's but someday other devices such as Macs and smart phones) and your files stay in sync across all of those devices. It also provides the ability to remote desktop into any of your machines. Last but not least, it includes a Live Mesh Desktop online where you can access all of your sync'd files through your browser. I highly recommend trying it out!

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at what a age were you "successful"?

"Successful" is certainly a relative term. I successfully started my first business and turned a profit at age 20. Successfully graduated from IU at 22. I was successfully married at 22. Successfully had my first child at 25 (at least my wife did but I was involved). There are a few more but these stand out in my mind as most important. I've also certainly had my share of failures which I consider ammunition that helps me to be more successful by making better decisions moving forward.

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what is the best snowboarding mountain in the U.S.?

Good question! I'm definitely a fan of the Rockies and in recent years my best runs have been snowboarding the bowls at Aspen Highlands. I also love Beaver Creek and Vail. Come to think of it, anywhere I can find powder is my favorite at that moment!

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A Million Steps in the Right Direction

This afternoon I was thinking about all of the progress we have made at Bostech since I rejoined as CEO last July. I then quickly shifted to thinking about all of the opportunities and challenges that we face moving forward to realize our full potential. I believe the key to building high performance companies is to make progress every day - realize that it will take A MILLION STEPS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION to achieve your goal. There is no silver bullet strategy for building a high performance business. All too often, I see entrepreneurs who are constantly leaping from one silver bullet idea to the next. I think this approach is incredibly unproductive and ultimately creates a hollow, unstable organization. It creates a culture where everyone is detached from reality and where morale bottoms out each and every time the silver bullet of that week or month fails to hit the target.

Admiral James Stockdale was the master of this approach. The strongest evidence of this can be found in the reason he provides for surviving years in isolation as a POW in Vietnam. Here is what he said:

"I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade."[4]

When Collins asked who didn't make it out, Stockdale replied:

"Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart."

Stockdale then added:

"This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Discovering Google Labs in GMail

Maybe you know this already, but if you go into Settings then click on the Labs tab in GMail, you can enable loads of cool features. One that I am using right now, which requires use of the custom url feature, is posting to my blog through GMail. I might actually blog more than once a month now!

Another cool feature I enables was sending text messages through an IM-like gadget within GMail. Super cool.

A Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures

I was talking to my friend Bob Braun of Revelant Technologies a couple weeks ago while we were reviewing a new presentation our marketing team at Bostech had been working on for our ChainBulder Labs solution.  I am big on using infographics rather than lots of bullets to convey important points and concepts in presentations so in this ChainBuilder Labs presentation we were looking at an infographic illustrating what the product does for labs and healthcare providers.  Bob made some positive remarks and provided some feedback on ways to improve the infographic (thanks Bob). 

Somewhere along the line I said, "a picture is worth a thousand words Bob" (totally cliche) and Bob replied (wisely), "...and Brad, most importantly, a word is worth a thousand pictures." 

Bob is right.  When you hear someone say something - like the word "compression" - you have your own thoughts and beliefs related to that word.  For every thousand people, there are a thousand different thoughts they may come away with if you put a slide full of bullets and text in front of them.

With a picture (fancy word is infographic) you capture the message instantly in a way that is consistently understood.  And the bottom line is, if you don't capture your audience in the first 60 seconds, you never will...

This topic came up again today with Bill Johnson and he recommended the book "Back of the Napkin" which apparently is about the art and science of developing infographics. 

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If you had a chance to ask anybody anything you want, who and what question would it be?

That answer would depend on the moment, but right now I may ask Epictetus for some pointers on the practice of stoic philosophy. Or perhaps why I am still awake...

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