Sandy Hamilton - Perspectives

When Assets Have Feet

I had the chance to catch up with Carl Fitch the other day. Carl owns a company called Statera (www.statera.com) with his partner and long time business associate/friend Brad Wyedert. I've known both Carl and Brad for a couple of years now - through a round about way - golf and poker! Both are great guys but most importantly they know how to run a business. Statera is a consulting company. Basically, they have talented developers in a number of different areas (Microsoft platforms, BEA, Oracle, TIBCO, Vignette, etc) and they put them on projects for various companies throughout the country/world (they did a bunch of work at the past Olympics in Athens).

I say that these guys know how to run a business because what they do is not easy. It's a resource management competency that they've built up over the years while at the same time building a reputation for excellent project management work as well as delivering a high quality product. And...they've done it through some of the most challenging times ever (they started Statera in 2001) and are now north of 100 people. They started another company in the same business years ago and sold it to Raymond James Consulting in the late 90's before starting Statera. That too was successful in part because it was built upon the same guiding principles that Statera was built on "Help businesses succeed by delivering the right combination of technology, process and personnel." Pretty simple huh? For those of you that have been in the "consultants game" (I dare not call it "body shop") you know that's it's not easy balancing Project Scheduling with Quality with the Right Resources with the Right Price and keeping everyone happy while you do it - customers, employees, etc. Oh, yea - and make money while you're doing it. These guys get it and have been successful time and time again. Congrats to Carl & Brad!

Throwing My Hat In The Ring

......more like throwing a really good hat over a big wall - so I can get to the other side - and not knowing how I'm going to get it (i.e. I have NO idea what I'm getting myself into). BLOGS or for those of you that are new to this, weB LOGs are becoming more and more mainstream as a way of sharing ideas, experiences, your life! I don't consider myself a "techie"  but more an early adopter of technology as a way to make a difference in my life and the lives of those around me - plus I like cool things. Blogs and RSS (more on that later) have been around for a couple of years and until recently they have been reserved for those more on the bleeding edge of technology. Bloggers gained momentum during the past twelve months creating some ground swells with the election and then ultimately unveiled to the general public in a big way during the Dan Rather debacle (it was the blog community that uncovered the "truth" around the documents that Rather reported on). Companies like Bloglines and NewsGator (www.newsgator.com) have now made it easier for mere mortals to contribute and sort through the "blogesphere". What's really cool about this is it's an undefined world that's unfolding right before our eyes - and the people, not big industry, are getting to say what it looks like.

So, now onto my blog; One of the things that occurred to me as I start down this path is 1) why blog and 2) what do I want to blog about. This will obviously unfold in whatever direction it does and whatever information I decide to share, either public or private, I hope it makes a difference for those around me - the kind of things that have you say to yourself, "ah, I didn't know that", or  "very cool, useful". The other thing that occurred to me about publishing an on-line journal is that it kind of defines who you are, as a person (or at least it makes it public). It's a way of saying - yup, this is who I am, the good, bad and indifferent.

For those of you in business that are interested in the RSS world, I've also started another blog called Corporate RSS - Applied (http://sandyhamilton.blogs.com/corporate_rss_applied/). This blog will be about the specific applications of RSS inside of business and the benefits of it. The power of RSS is amazing (it's enveloped my life), yet business is just now waking up to it. Applied appropriately - it can really make a difference.

Enough for now.....lets see where this takes me.