Article posted on May 31
A common thread on this blog has been me jumping on a soapbox about the need to educate our children better. Not just more math, not just more science… yes, I am very happy that Timmy can determine the fluid volume of a five foot dodecahedron… but more than that. Our kids need to learn practical skills. They need to see that they ca have ideas… that they can succeed. We need to grow the next entrepreneurs, and for those who chose not to be entrepreneurial, they need to know that they CHOSE to do what they do, not that they just did what they had to.
So when I saw a post today by Briana regarding Hot Shot Business, a safe, entrepreneurial game for kids put out by Disney, and the Kauffman Foundation (looks very similar to VMK for those of you who have kids) I was ecstatic! I know one game that my children will be playing during the summer break. Thanks to Funding Universe for making sure we saw this gem!
Article posted on May 30
The Utah Tech Spotlight is pleased to announce that we will be Spotlighting Ryan Money, and Mark Newman from HireVue on Friday, June 15th at the Bohemian. If you haven’t been out to a Utah Tech Spotlight event, let us fill you in: It’s free, no membership required. Free drinks, a relaxed atmosphere, and a chance to learn about some cool Utah Technologies for an hour on a Friday afternoon.
Rather it’s your first time, or you’re a regular, we welcome you to join us as HireVue talks to us about how they are using technology to make the hiring process better, and more cost effective. HireVue has recently receive recognition from the likes of: USA today, the New York Post, TIME Magazine, Marketwatch, and many others.
Date: Friday, June 15th
Time: 3:00 – 4:00
Location: Bohemian Brewery And Grill
(94 East and 7200 South, right off of State Street, SLC)
RSVP
Article posted on May 25
For those of you who could not attend, the turnout for Seth Godin at 
the Salt Palace last night was a HUGE success. Kudos go out to the whole wordmob team for all they did (I’ll put a full list of folks up later this afternoon.) Special thanks go out to Phil Burns, for having the guts to put this whole thing together, and to Matthew at Voxpop who was constantly turning around top-notch creative for the event under impossible timelines.
As for the event itself, I really enjoyed hearing Seth. For those of you who have children, you’ll know that one of the most amazing moments of being a parent is when your toddler looks up and makes an observation. There are times, when these observations are so astute… so stunning in their ability to cut through all of the crap that blinds us all every day, that all you can do is gape open-mouthed for a moment and wonder how all of us, other than your toddler, could be so stupid.
Listening to Seth is kinda like that. When he is asked questions, you sit eagerly with pen in hand for an answer that you are sure is going to be as insightful, and complex as the theory of relativity. But instead he throws out the business equivalent of the song “just put one foot in front of the other” that they used to sing in that old Christmas special (the one where they teach the winter wizard to walk.) You sit there open mouthed, and realize that it really is just that plain, just that simple.
Very nice event. I look forward to reading the book.
For some good pictures and Video of the event, Check out this post by Phil.
Article posted on May 23
Thanks to everyone who made it out to the event on May 18th to hear Eric Smith from Control 4. For those who might have missed the event, or those of you who attended and would like to hear more from Eric, have a listen to the following podcast. Eric and I speak at length about Control4, and how they home automation solutions allow you to have access to all of your media from on on-screen menu on the Television… How to watch all of your movies without ever having to touch your DVD’s again… How to access your MP3 shares, adjust the temperature, control your lights, make your family safer, and all sorts of other really slick stuff. We also touch on what Eric has been up to with Charter schools here in Utah, and what Eric and his partner, Will West have done with their companies, and how they are giving back to Utah.
Listen Now (34.2 MB, MP3)
Article posted on May 17
What can I say but “Wow”? Today Bruce Law from Sprout Marketing led a really great breakout session sponsored by the UTC. I have met Bruce at several UTC events, and have always been impressed with his quiet, but confident and competent demeanor (as opposed to those of us who sometimes just talk too much 
), but I had never really had the chance to hear Bruce speak about Marketing. The session was great. Bruce really went into a lot of detail about smart, inexpensive ways to get your message out. A real key point of his presentation was Guru’s, how to get them behind you, and how really key they can be to your success without having to blow a huge marketing budget. Any further synopsis I try to give on the presentation would surely not do it justice. Bruce, you should write a book (and if you have, and I am not aware of it, I apologize in advance ).
Review:
Location: 9 (plenty of seating… lots of whiteboards)
Caliber of people: a mix… very high caliber people from a more diverse, background than any other event I have been to… 9
Presentation: 9.5
Discussion: 9.5
OVERALL: 9.5 This was really stellar.
Article posted on May 17
Wednesday, May 16th I was pleased to attend a CEO peer to peer event put on by the UTC. Richard and his crew always do a great job with these events. The jist of this weeks VEO P2P was around how to build a stellar team. There was a short presentation by the Canopy group which was somewhat interesting, and I really appreciate him coming and presenting… but I am finding that when VC’s present at events like this, that it tends to get a bit repetitive… it’s “all the stuff you already knew” about VC’s: We like to see a strong team, we like repeat performances, etc.
Converse to that, I really respected the presenters statement regarding how Canopy views the role of an entrepreneur in a liquidity event… There has been some tension on local blogs lately between VC’s and entrepreneurs, alleging that VC’s in Utah attempt to get an unfair share. I don’t know the truth of it personally, but I can say that the presenter said things that implied that Canopy is not that way.
There was also a lot of discussion regarding recruiting in Utah, and some of the hurdles to getting good talent to come here, as well as how to inspire and incent current teams. All good stuff.
A couple of notable attendees to me were Jeremy Hanks, from Doba (I don’t know that much about his company, but hearing him describe the environment… it sounds great), and the folks from iWorld (In the old Wagon Master building on Vine Street… sorry, I don’t have a url). This is not to imply that everyone wasn’t notable… just these two and what they had to say was especially interesting to me.
Summary:
Location: 9
Caliber of people: 9
Presentation: 8
discussion: 8
OVERALL: 8.5 (and in my book that’s REALLY GOOD)
Nice Job Richard, keep up the good work.
Article posted on May 15
Dangit… I have missed the last TWO Utah Technology Council events that have have been 
 registered for. So I cannot write a firsthand review for last week’s CTO Peer to Peer (Although I am definitely scheduled for the event tomorrow on “Building a Highly-Successful Executive Teamâ€Â as well as the event Thursday on “Getting the Most out of your Marketing Budget.â€Â
For the event last week hoever, we will be referring to a very smart guy, Ken Knapton, who was in attendance. The event last week was designed for CTO’s, and really focussed on Architecture. Key in Ken’s writeup on this presentation are the differences, similarities, and overlap between Technical Architects, Product Architects, and the Product Manager. ÂÂ
For those who may not follow Ken’s blog regularly, there tends to be a lot of good content around this subject.ÂÂ
Look for my reviews of the other two UTC events in the coming days, and in the meantime, here are some links to a few other of Ken’s gems on this topic (or similar):
The train has left the station (how to put product out consistently in a timely fashion)
Why do Software Projects fail?
Article posted on May 10
The primary goal of the Utah Tech Spotlight is to bring more exposure and awareness to 
the Utah Tech community about the Utah Tech community. As such, we are very excited to have had the opportunity to conduct the following interview with Ken Knapton, CTO of Content Watch and Net Nanny, and the Utah CTO of the year. I apologize in advance for the length of the post, but I think you will agree that it is great stuff.
1: Utah is obviously a state with significant ties to the Church and morality. Additionally, it has a very young population. However, when the issue of protecting our children on the web comes up most parents are currently not taking steps, but seem eager for advice. What do you feel is the hurdle out there that has prevented more significant adoption of protective technologies?
[Ken]: We recently worked very closely with Microsoft as they developed their Parental Contols on the Windows Vista platform. This topic came up in our discussions. Surprisingly, their research indicated that roughly 80% of parents wanted better parental controls, but only 10% indicated that they would implement them. I found this dichotomy very ironic. As parents, we are all concerned about the dangers on the Internet, but for some reason we are not willing to put in the effort to research our options and implement a solution.
As I have thought about this, I believe there are two main reasons for this nationally, with a third reason which is specifically applicable to Utah residents:
1. Parents who are technically-savvy know that any filter solution will sit between their browser and the Internet, and may slow down thier browsing experience. We pay for fast bandwidth, and are concerned about anything that might slow it down. They also know that a technical solution is not perfect, and will either block too much or too little, so they simply don’t implement it – possibly waiting for a more perfected technology to appear.
2. Those that are not technically-savvy usually don’t know enough about the technical solutions to know that there is even an option. Many of them even turn the administration of the computer over to their children, and what child will say “Hey mom- let’s put a filter on the computer”. Since these parents are not very technical, they have to rely on the advice of thier children, or their technically-savvy friends, who all tell them that a filter is a pain to install and maintain. This is not true, but they don’t know it.
3. Here in Utah we tend to have a “not in my backyard” mentality. While we believe that there are dangers on the Internet, we don’t believe that our children would succumb to them. Because of our strong religious background, we beleive that our children will shun these “bad” things if they happen to run accross them online. Unfortunately, even the best and most up-standing adults can fall into addiction from a single look at pornography – and our children are not immune either. As of today, according to Google Trends, Salt Lake City is #2 in the world for searches of “Pornography”. Lest you think that this is due to “research” of the topic, Salt Lake is also #1 for “Hot Girls”, and is in the top 10 for several other searches that lead directly to pornographic content. This is most definitely in our backyard.
2- You comment in your blog about technology not being the silver bullet to protecting our children, that there are additional steps that need to be taken. What do you see as one of the key “non-technology†areas where many parents fall down?
[Ken]: I will give you three key non-technical things that parents can do to protect their children:
1. Move the computer out of bedrooms. There is never a valid reason to have a computer in a bedroom. When asked about this topic, our Attorney General Mark Shurtleff stated that you should look for the place in your home where the carpet is most worn, and place the computer there. When the computer is in a location where anyone can see what people are doing, they are much less likely to wander into the dark byways of the Internet, or to linger there if they stumble upon it.
2. Take an interest in your children’s online activities. Know what they are doing online, and where they spend their time. Tal to them about what they do online, and follow this up by simply looking at the browser history. If there is no History, this is a sign that someone is trying to hide something. Know what chat rooms your children frequent, and who is on their Instant Message list. A study by the FBI recently declared that if you “frequent” chat rooms, there is a 100% chance of interacting with an online predator – parents need to be aware of these dangers. As parents, we need to know the difference between chat rooms and Instant Messaging, and we need to know with whom our children are communicating while online. Several online games these days have chat capabilities, and these are filled with child predators.
3. Teach them about the dangers of the Internet. Children need to know that they cannot trust everyone they meet online. Some predators will spend months gaining a child’s trust online before attempting to engage in inappropriate behavior (of course, some will jump right into it almost immediately as well). Write up the “Internet Usage Rules” for your home, and post them next to the monitor – include things like “never give out your last name, address, phone number” and “If you see something inappropriate, turn off the monitor and get mom or dad”.
3- Most of us have accidentally hit a porn site before, and have seen on Dateline how predators are hunting children in chat rooms . What do you see as the key danger to our children that tends to be overlooked?
[Ken]: That’s easy: Google. The “Safe Search” helps, but is far from perfect, and even with strict safe search turned on, many extremely innappropriate images can appear. Without Safe Search, it is a veritable mine field of pornography. Recently a customer of ours told us of a search term which, when entered into Google Image Search with safe search turned on, would bring up a hard-core pornographic image as the first search result. The search term itself was not sexual in nature, and one would never think it would lead to pornography, yet there it was. Google has been accused of being the largest purveyor of pornography on the Internet, and I have to believe that it is close to the truth. Unfortunately, our children turn to Google Image Search when working on research papers, and much of the time parents have no idea what their children are seeing in the results.
Here again, a little prevention in the way of blocking/monitoring software can help, and reviewing where your children went online would uncover exposure to pornography – whether accidental or not. Talking to them upfront, and asking them to come to you when they see something inappropriate is key. Notice I said “when”, not “if” – if they spend any significant amount of time online, they will see something inappropriate.
A close second with regard to dangers would be Chat rooms. They are extremely dangerous, and most parents don’t even know it. Letting your child into a chat room is like allowing them to enter a bar in every city throughout the world at the same time. Personally, I believe that children under 18 should be banned from every chat room. Even chat rooms that cater to children are dangerous, as child predators know that this is where to meet children. Stick to Instant Messaging, and know who is on your child’s “buddy” list.
4- On your blog you talk about the “Agile based process.†Can you give us an overview of how you have implemented that into your culture, and how it might seem converse to what companies generally do naturally?
[Ken]: Interesting question. In the “old days” of software development (which, in reality is not all that long ago) development happened in a serial fashion: the marketing team would spend months preparing tons of documentation regarding a software product, and then would negotiate with development regarding what is possible and what is not, then the development team would spend months (or years) implementing it. Once the code was written, the test team would get involved and make sure that the code the developers wrote matched up with what marketing documented. Finally, a product would emerge to the public – and usually this bear only minimal resemblance to what marketing originally envisioned. Even when it did match what marketing documented, enough time had passed that customers no longer actually wanted it.
The agile process is a way for all of the groups to work together to produce software much faster, and to meet customer needs in a more timely fashion. There is much less documentation, and more functioning programs that evolve to meet customers needs in real-time. At ContentWatch, we have averaged a customer release every 5 weeks for the past 2 years – each one with some bug fixes and some enhancements/new features. By using this methodology, we can listen to customers and respond to them very quickly. This is extrememly important in our field, since technology is always changing. For example, MySpace recently launched an Instant Messaging application. Our product will allow/deny access to Instant Messaging applications, and will log all IM conversations. However, when MySpace launched their new application, it was a surprise to us (and everyone else), and it was based on its own proprietary protocol, which our software did not recognize. Using the agile processes, we were able to identify this as a problem, research and develop a fix, and get this fix into the next version of our software (due out toward the end of this month).
As for the details regaring our implementation of these “agile” concepts, you will have to watch my blog for those – there is way too much to go into here. Suffice it to say that we operate much like an express train: if your feature is ready when the train leaves the station, it makes it into the next release. If not, you wait for the next train. It is surprising how well the analogy holds up with regard to software development processes – I expect this to be a blog topic in the near future, as many people have been asking me about this recently.
5- WordPerfect, CyberPath, Intel, AccessData, Content Watch, and now CTO of the year. Wow. What’s next? Where do you see yourself in the coming years?
[Ken]: It is such a different world from the prior generation, where people would work for the same company for 30+ years. When I finally made it into development at WordPerfect, I knew I had arrived in my dream job and that I would retire as a developer from there. I honestly thought that I would work at WordPerfect for my entire career. Man, was I wrong. It is a fast-paced industry we work in.
I have had a fun career thus far. Each company has had its share of challenges, and I have had the pleasure of working with some extremely talented individuals. I really don’t know where it will lead me, but I am having great fun on the ride. As for where I see myself in the coming years, the answer is “right here in Utah”. I have had many opportunities to move out of state, but simply didn’t want to leave. I know that this has limited my career in some ways, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love Utah, and I love being a small part of the High Tech industry here.
Article posted on May 08
One of the local folks that I really enjoy reading from time to time is Jason Alba. 
For those of you who don’t know Jason, he has a platform call JibberJobber which is essentially, your personal CRM. It’s where you keep a list of the relationships you have that may or may not have to do with work, and are owned by you, not your employer. That way you have your own personal view that stays with you no matter how many times you change jobs, and it lets you track those relationships and your interaction to always help you find a better job.
As a business owner I initially was not all that interested in looking at Jason’s product… but as I started following his writing, I found that what he really writes about is not job searching, it’s about relationships. It’s about how to build them, how to keep them fresh, and how important they are.ÂÂ
In this vein, I want to mention Linked In. I have it installed. I accept when people want to add me. I run Plaxo also. So what. I have to admit that I have never really leveraged these tools. They sit there, but quite frankly I get little or no value from them. But Jason did a really good post recently about Linked In, and an interesting way (and time) to use it. So I wanted to pass it on.
I also wanted to say that Jason tends to put out these little bite-sized gems of knowledge fairly often. Definitely a blog worth following.
Article posted on May 07
Okay, so I gotta tell ya, when I walked in to the offices of Control4 and they started showing  me what exactly they were up to, I think I lost a bit of my objectivity as my credit card instantly leapt into my hand. This stuff is neat. Unfortunately, they are also pretty darned hard to schedule time with. As such, we had to do some last minute shifting and we will be presenting Ryan Money and Mark Newman from HireVue (who also have extremely neat stuff) in June instead.ÂÂ
So please join us on Friday, May 18th at the Bohemain (one building east of State Street on 7200 south in Salt Lake City) from 3:00-4:00 to listen to Eric Smith from Control4. We have the whole upstairs reserved, and drinks are on us. Bring your friends and co workers. This is a do not miss presentation… I promise it will blow your socks off (as such, Utah Tech Spotlight takes to responsibility due to flip-flops and/or sandals.)ÂÂ
Date: Friday, May 18th
Time: 3:00 – 4:00
Location: Bohemian Brewery And Grill
(94 East and 7200 South, right off of State Street, SLC)
RSVP
