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this is from my mobile.

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I’ve been talking a lot recently about working in technology and how I ended up here. While growing up their were a few people who really helped and encouraged me to continue learning about technology and computers.

1 – My Dad. After he sold a chain of restaurants he owned, he gave me one of the computers that was in a store. It was an Epson XT laptop with a monochrome screen. My dad at that time was a power-user and showed me how to use DOS. I quickly figured out DOS and knew how to launch The Oregon Trail by myself! A few months later, my dad got a Modem for our house and signed up for Prodigy! My first look at online communications. Then I got started using local BBS’s and found the on-line world!

2 – Jim Gall. Years ago, before you could purchase a computer from Wal-Mart, the only way to buy a PC was this place called a clone-shop. That meant an IBM compatible clone. Jim Gall was a very nice older man, who after several careers opened his own clone shop. My dad and I would take our computers every Saturday to Jim’s shop on Saturday morning.

At the shop we would swap shareware and show off all of the cool new hardware and software we each found. Jim shop was called ‘The Micro Computer Center” and it was located in Canton, Ohio. It was there I bought all the upgrades for my computer and Jim would help me install them.

Jim also used to give me old parts he removed for computers that didn’t work, so I could take them apart and experiment with them. This is where I really developed my fondness for computers and everything surrounding them.

3 – Jim Louderback. Even though I have never met Jim Louderback, we have been e-mail buddies since I can remember. Jim is a great guy and he has always been extremely kind about answering whatever questions I had and always encouraging me to try new projects.

4 – Matt Burgoon. My friend, Matt Burgoon was one of the first people I knew from a real tech company (AOL). Matt is a few years older, but we come from the same part of Ohio and graduated from the same high school. Matt has always been awesome about answering my questions about what its like to work for a large tech firm. He was one of the first people to encourage me to become a product manager.

5 – TIE – Thad White, Andy Jagoe, Enlai Chu, Tom Purcell
Thad, Andy, Enlai and Tom are all members of the 3jam team. I’ve only been working with these guys for a few months now. But each one of them has become a friend and answered countless numbers of questions that I’ve had. They have also helped to shape my understanding of the technology business, from their own experiences.

I am truly in great debt to each person on this list. As they have imparted not only technical knowledge but also life long lessons, which I will never forget.

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A few weeks ago I was discussing an offer I received with my boss & friend Andy Jagoe and he made a great point “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.” While that is a principal, I believe everybody should be familiar with, it is important to keep in mind. Especially with the way things rapidly move in technology.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about ‘Web 2.0’
What is ‘Web 2.0’? No one knows exactly.

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One afternoon last spring, I was reading my RSS feeds and saw a post about a cool new text-messaging product called 3jam.

At the time, 3jam was in a semi-private beta. I started trying the product with friends and found it gave me an entirely new reason to send text messages. I could finally get a group of friends on the same page, quickly and easily. No more dividing the calls between a few people, just to figure out a time for dinner.

I also thought, this would be a really cool way for my fraternity to let the brothers know who the designated driver is on a particular night. Beyond the important message about the DD, this gave brothers the opportunity to talk about which bars are busy and fun at that time. Once I realized the unlimited potential for 3jam, I decided to learn more about the company.


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In my blog, I have recently talked a lot about working for 3jam a startup. But what does it mean to be a startup?

Typically startups (in the tech field) are small companies, with a few employees, an idea and some funding to build their product.

A few months ago, I read a really great article about a new startup called Meetro. Meetro aims to combine social networks with messengers. What makes Meetro so exciting is not just their concept but how they have gone about developing it.


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I’ve talked a lot about writing effective e-mails but what about managing all of your incoming communications?

I receive about 15 e-mails a day of varying importance. That number does not include spam. For me, that actually seems like a pretty high number of e-mails everyday. Managing that much e-mail is difficult, some require replies, some require separate actions and a future reply. Some need to be filed and some deleted.

I’m not the most organized person, but like I mentioned before, it is important to handle e-mail in a timely fashion. So I had to find a system.

The solution came from reading blogs, like Omar Shahine’s and 43folders. Omar Shahine and 43folders talk about a method called Getting Things Done. The idea behind GTD is pretty simple; get all of the tasks you have to complete out of your head and into a bucket so you can concentrate on getting things done, not remembering what needs to be done.

GTD is a method developed by David Allen and it is also a book. Allen believes once you have emptied your tasks into these buckets, you can process those buckets into different categories. Like items to do, delegate or defer. As a rule of thumb, anything that can be done in less than two minutes should be done now and not deferred.

Allen has really struck something here. This idea of processing your inbox into how message can be handled is brilliant. Because e-mail programs (both application and web-based) have evolved greatly and now you can now use folders to file messages virtually into the categories discussed above.

I’ve read a great deal about GTD and this seems like the best way to keep up with an inbox and ever-growing list of tasks. This year, I’ve decided my new years resolution is to implement the getting things done methods into my life.

You can learn more about Getting Things Done in the following places:
Amazon.com – buy the book
43folders – Great blog about staying organized in the high-tech world.
Wikipedia – The wikipedia as always has a great article about the GTD system.

Oh and believe it or not, some software is actually designed around the GTD method!

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Example: Blogs Matter!

I read quite a few blogs, which I’m sure is no surprise to you. I actually use a really cool tool called an RSS reader to aggregate all of the posts from blogs I read.

A compiled list of posts makes it much easier to see everything from a given day. That RSS reader is actually what helped me find out about 3jam (but that’s a blog post for later)

Paul Stamatiou is a fantastic technology blogger. Paul is just about my age (a year younger, I think.) From reading his blog, sounds like growing up he did a lot of the same stuff I did. Fixing computers, web development, basically an all-around tech guy.

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In my business communications class, we have talked a lot about learning more about the job you would like to pursue in the future. Last summer, I had one of the most incredible ‘shadow day’ experiences of my life. As I mentioned before in April ’06, I began working with 3jam, a few months later in June, I took my first trip to Silicon Valley to meet with them.

While in Silicon Valley, I spent a few days with Thad White, 3jam’s head of marketing. Before, Thad joined 3jam he was the senior director of product management for Yahoo!’s mobile unit. Meeting Thad was a cool experience by itself, because he managed products I had used before, but it was even cooler that Thad was now my boss!

Our first meeting of the day was at a venture capital firm that helped launch 3jam.  This VC firm was located in Menlo Park on Sand Hills road. We sat down in a conference room with the rest of the team and began brainstorming about 3jam. Working for White Hat, I had attended product development meetings and brainstorming sessions but nothing like what we had at 3jam.

When I sat down at the conference table, I knew I was surrounded by a group of pros. Each item we discussed was recorded in a metric that included extra info that helped prioritize the different ideas. Even though brainstorming always seems a bit chaotic, this was quite the opposite. Our conversation was well directed and productive.

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In the past few years, Microsoft has really made a name for itself in the blogosphere. For a few years, having people like Robert Scoble and Omar Shaine at Microsoft and in the blogosphere helped to explain how Microsoft works and really made them a more human company. After all, if you do things that excite your employees enough to blog you are doing something right.

And when you read their blogs and implement their suggestions people get excited and value their job and employer. I applaud Microsoft’s efforts for reading user and employee blogs for tips on how to improve. When you are a dominant company like Microsoft, people tend to believe you only work to increase your profit margin and ignore the little guys. But that’s not true.

I have one professor Dr. Betty Thorne, who frequently talks about problems with Microsoft Excel’s statistical processes. Dr. Thorne is a brilliant lady, who actually wrote our statistics textbook and she is quite a credible source of information. I’ve thought before, if only I could get her to rant about Excel in a blog post or e-mail, so Microsoft could hear her valid points and help fix the product.

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In my last entry about e-mail, I shared Thad’s tip with you about knowing your audience. Part of knowing you audience also includes, understanding what medium they use to communicate. For example: if you knew your pal had WebTV, you wouldn’t send him a word document, since he can’t read it.

The same thing goes for people you know live and die by their mobile e-mail devices, like a BlackBerry or Treo. If you are looking for a quick response from one of these people, send him or her a short and to the point e-mail. This semester my management professor shared a story with us about someone he knew writing to their boss about an important issue. The secretary told the lady who was sending the message to limit her e-mail to two paragraphs.

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