I know what I did this summer (The tl;dr version)

It’s been a helluva summer.

I haven’t blogged in a few weeks – and I hope to get back to my regular cadence. But here’s a tl;dr version of what I’ve been up to.

Outside of work

Staircase in our new home

At the end of June, my family and I closed on a new home, after a whirlwind of real estate transactions. We love our neighborhood and street, so we bought our next door neighbor’s larger condo and sold ours. Don’t kid yourself, a move next door is still a move.

We took a quick vacation to the Cape, then started on a small set of renovations in the new place. mrDiva traveled for work in the weeks before and after vacation, while I shifted into heavy-duty prep-for-VMworld mode.

Family vacation on the Cape

We moved into our new home, spent a few days in the Adirondacks with mrDiva’s family, then he traveled again, while I managed a sick dog and leaky ceiling. Oh, did I mention that at some point in there our car was damaged and in the shop for several weeks? And that our favorite babysitter moved away to Denver, our dog stayed sick for weeks, and our fridge broke?

But it was a #firstworldproblems kind of summer – we are so lucky to have a beautiful new home, two amazing careers, and most importantly, a healthy babyDiva who is talking up a storm and learning by leaps and bounds.

At work

The work I put into prepping for VMworld was unlike anything I’ve ever done professionally. VMworld is the biggest tradeshow my company participates in each year – 20,000+ attendees, all of our competitors and partners, and this year, our opportunity to launch version 2.0 of our product.

Leading up to VMworld here were the major projects I was involved in:

Training the entire booth staff on our messaging, our product’s new features, and how to talk with prospects about common objections.
Designing the demo of our product we were showing in the booth. Fortunately, we have amazingly awesome (is there where I’d use the word “amazeballs”?) technical people who wrote the software and set up the demo systems, so all I had to do was determine how we wanted to tell the story.
Working with our technical leaders to write our deck for Tech Field Day, a unique event during VMworld where we can present our story to top bloggers and customers.
Writing new collateral to support our major use cases.
Writing new messaging to describe our 2.0 product value.
Writing content for our new website, launched to support our product launch.

Phew. It was late nights, weekends, work on vacation, and more iterations than I care to remember. And yes, I am going to the spa tomorrow. But I would not have traded it for anything. Having this level of impact is exactly why I went to a startup. And coming out of VMworld with all this having executed successfully I am (#humblebrag) appreciating what I’m able to accomplish with hard work.

At VMworld show floor

What I learned

I learned a lot and I’m sure that over time I’ll assimilate even more of it. Here’s my first pass.

1. Events like this are a force function for articulating strategic direction. Our senior technical leadership is unbelievably talented, and has a great vision for the company. However, getting it out of each of their heads and creating a single message for the company’s direction isn’t something we’d have spent time on unless we needed it. Having done it, there are so many derivative assets and projects we can follow-up with now that we have a clear, written articulation of where we are in the market and where we are going.

2. It’s really hard to switch between marketing for the broadest audience and marketing for the most sophisticated audience in short time. Our booth staff training and our website marketing has to be accessible and educational. Our marketing for TFD is predicated on having an audience who already has a strong baseline of the industry, the newest technologies, and even what we do. Knowing one’s audience is necessary for great marketing, but that doesn’t make it easy to create content for two divergent audiences at the same time.

3. I am beginning to appreciate more dimensions of what it means to be at a startup. My personal work is very visibly impacting our company’s success. We are in a segment of the market that is definitely forming right now – we’re one of only two or three vendors who is successfully executing I/O optimization software, and customers and press are paying attention. What we put on our website and say in the booth and put in our press releases is actually shaping this part of the industry.

4. Absolutely nothing is a substitute for a hard working team. I have never ever worked with a team who worked as hard as our staff did during VMworld. We demoed until we were hoarse, kept going long after official show hours closed, pitched people in elevators and taxis. Our salesguys were indefatigable – not looking at their watches, phones, or even breaking for lunch when there were customers around. I was so proud to work for Infinio and so excited to see how busy our booth was and how many great conversations we had.

5. Being a working mom is awesome. babyDiva is just over a year and a half old, and I am so excited to see her grow up. Nothing gives me perspective on a long day at work like discovering she’s learned new words (“plate” “stroller” “melon” “thankyou”) and can’t wait to use them. Or grabbing a granola bar to stick in my bag and seeing her do a happy little ‘granola bar’ dance. I don’t feel torn, I don’t wish I were home all the time, but I love having a life where I can have both.

My memory of this summer will be one where the stars of work and home life aligned. I have no illusions that it will always feel this way, but I’m happy to enjoy it

What would have happened if I had live-tweeted my first hour using a standing desk

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Here we go! @UpLiftDesk #standingdesk #insoles

This is cool. Are my ergonomics right? Maybe @mjbrender knows.

Ok, I think it’s the right height. #sweet #feelingproductive

Googling for an article on standing deck health benefiits.

Googling for an article on standing desk productivity benefits

Googling for an article on healthcare cost reduction for standing desk

RT @kimkardashian So sexy! My husband on the cover of GQ shot by Patrick Demarchelier!!! http://instagram.com/p/qnjpg5OS9L/

Back to work #lovemystandingdesk

.@vintageneel do you think we need Reebok ball for balance

I’m so short – @vmcarrie’s desk is the only one shorter than mine. @mjbrender and @alanwordguy keep their desks so high

Soooo productive on my new standing desk!

It’s only been 8 minutes? Wow – shoulders hurt a little #pushingthrough #timeflies

OK, working on my #VMworld deck. This is so cool to be standing.

Where’s everyone staying for #VMworld? #vBeers anyone?

Will anyone notice if I take my shoes off?

Something about a standing desk makes me feel powerful – opening a few new windows on my desktop #productivity #GSD #workinghard

So easy to see @TweetDeck and @Feedly and email at the same time as Word and PowerPoint when I’m standing

.@vmcarrie back at her desk. Wearing heels today. How does she do #standingdesk with heels? #power #betterwomanthanI

Should my desk be a little higher?

Should my desk be a little lower?

My back is starting to hurt #pushingthrough #standingdesk #productivity

Off to a staff meeting #firstdaystnadingdesk #productivity

Hey tweeps, anyone use a treadmill desk?

How is a zebra different from a basketball hoop?

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Three months ago, I wrote about how quickly the storage industry was changing. I commented on how the fundamental concepts you need to know to be in a conversation about storage are really different than they were just 3 or 5 years ago.

Last week I attended BriForum (great event focused on virtual desktop technology) and was reminded again of how quickly things change. It came in the form of questions from prospects who came by our tradeshow booth.

Earlier in the year, the questions we got the most were:

“So what do you guys do?”

“Oh, so you’re like ABC?”

Except it’s like we’re selling zebras and ABC is basketball hoops. Prospects had no sense of our part of the industry and a large part of our interaction with them was around education.

Now – just a few months later – it’s:

“What makes you different from XYZ?”

“Oh, so you’re like ABC?”

It’s a good sign for us, because now ABC is horses. We’re selling zebras, and someone’s saying, “oh, I know what zebras are, they’re like horses, right?” XYZ is cows. We’re being asked how zebras are different from cows.

The technologies we’re being compared to are in our space. This is good news.

It means we’re in a maturing part of the industry, one that is sussing out who the players are, and what the right technical solutions are. A part of the industry that is determining how we talk about value and what category our solutions fall into. It means our customers are getting better educated before they find us. A lot of things make Infinio different from our competitors and now that can be a larger part of our discussions with customers.

It’s been really interesting to actually see this happen; previously I had always sold and marketed technologies that were already part of existing industries. It’s also been challenging to keep up with the marketing as the industry matures. We have to quickly shift from “this is what server-side caching is” to “this is why our technology is better.”

I’m holding on for the ride.

Would you eat that bagel?

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I used to work across the street from a well-known franchised bagel store. I ate there because it was convenient. But the food was prepared terribly!! Cream cheese an inch thick across the entire bagel, hole and all. Tuna spread across the bagel unevenly, extra in the hole it seemed.

I always used to think to myself, “Do these people even look at the food before wrapping it up? Would they serve themselves, their spouse, their child this food? I think not!”

The other day mrDiva and I had One Of Those Days. Carsick babyDiva, accidental separation of adults at the beach, dead car battery. We got home, looked at the food in the fridge, and said (nearly simultaneously) “delivery.”

He really wanted Papa Razzi pasta, so I called to find out who provided delivery services for them. Turned out it was Dining In, so we placed an order with them.

Except from the time we started our order and the time it took to correct their misbehaving web form that wouldn’t take our credit card, the delivery time changed by 45 minutes.

We weren’t having any of it.

mrDiva called Dining In and I daresay his hackles were up. But their customer service rep was delightfully human.

“That doesn’t sound good,” she said, “that sounds like a long time!” She went on to work some magic that had our food delivered sooner.

Over orichette and penne, we discussed what was so good about her service. It was that she was human in her response, while still doing her job and not disparaging her company. She was exactly the opposite of the bagel sandwich-makers – she gave us her honest reaction while working to resolve our problem. She was herself.

I don’t think this happens enough in sales and customer service. Service is so script-oriented that rarely do you get an actual human reaction to a complaint or request. And this experience was more than just empathy or assistance, it was a real person on the other end of the phone showing me that she was a real person who was also trying to solve my problem. Having that interaction made me really like Dining In.

(And no, there’s no WAY you’d eat that bagel.)

How to have a professional network

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Here is a strategy for how to have a professional network:

Step One: Get a job at a big company
Step Two: Work there for a long time
Step Three: Note when people start to leave the company
Step Four: Leave the company

Congratulations – you now have a big network across your industry.

When I was at the Massachusetts Conference for Women last year, I went to a “women in technology” break-out. A young woman asked about how to manage building a network if you are at a big company. Then she seemed a little panicked about what to do with said built network if you leave your job. Seasoned industry veteran that I am (ha!) I commented that you will end up with a big network just by staying in a big company because eventually those people go work somewhere else, and so will you.

Granted, you have to work your network – stay in touch with people, engage in conversation, solicit advice – but if you have one at a big company, you’ll eventually have one in your industry.

Yesterday I attended the VTUG Summer Slam in Maine. It’s a great annual event for virtualization users in New England, and this year was no exception.

I couldn’t believe how many people I knew there on the vendor side. It was exactly my point on networking: former colleagues of mine were at XIO, Pure Storage, Citrix, Datacore, CommVault, and Veeam. These were all people I could call up and have lunch with, not just acquaintances.

I had a great time catching up with everyone, hearing how they were doing, and learning about their technologies. Already looking forward to VMworld.

Brainstorming

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Last week was an exercise in brainstorming.

Our biggest tradeshow of the year is coming up, and we didn’t have the right story yet. So Alan, Carrie, and I met to come up with something. Then we met again. Then again.

And it was like that episode of the West Wing when the President is deciding whether to kill a known terrorist, and it’s in the situation room, and the joint chiefs of staff are presenting him with all the info, and they’re ready to take this guy out, and the president looks at them and says,

“You haven’t got it.”

And we didn’t have it. So back to the brainstorming we went. And eventually, we got it. But it had me thinking about brainstorming all weekend.

A few months ago, I read an article that indicated that brainstorming in a group is not more effective than just thinking alone. I can’t find the exact article, but a cursory google led to hundreds of pages on “ground rules for brainstorming” “the myth of the brainstorming session” “sometimes it’s better to brainstorm alone” – in short, there are myriad articles on how brainstorming is not all it’s cracked up to be and how to make it more effective.

I’m an old-school brainstormer. I believe in taking every idea that comes up and putting it up somewhere that everyone can see it. I think seeing ideas helps generate more ideas. And the whole point is to generate as many ideas as possible, then weed through them after.

I’ve always found that if you have enough ideas eventually you’ll hit a good one. Sure, there’s a process of debate and valuation and examination, but getting the raw ideas is the most important part.

You know why this is hard? And you know why I love doing it? It’s for the same reason that asking dumb questions is hard. And the same reason I love asking dumb questions. You have to put aside your pride, put aside your well-honed ability to self-censor the random thoughts that pop into your head, put aside your carefully cultivated professionalism.

You have to say things out loud that may already sound terrible in your head. You say things out loud that sound good in your head but terrible out loud.

But, eventually, you get it.

Book Review: Lean Startup

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(cross posted at sherylsbooklist.blogspot.com)

This is probably the top business book that has been recommended to me since I joined a startup. Now that I have read it, I can understand why – it ought to be required reading for anyone coming from a big company into a fast-paced startup. I had many a “a-ha” moment reading this, like “Oh, that’s why we are shipping a product that seems incomplete…it’s on purpose!”

The concept of Lean Manufacturing grew out of the Toyota Production Systems innovations of the mid-20th century. This comprised the idea of constantly improving systems, measuring more important things, and driving organizational learning. In grad school, I remember learning about this, and about its influence on the software industry. Agile/scrum development seems to have its roots in Lean.

So all this forms the backdrop for the ideas in this book – that companies and projects in general can use a lot of the same concepts that have fundamentally improved Manufacturing and Software Development. There’s a real focus on learning and structuring the product development process to increase the speed with which everyone learns. (And it is worth pointing out that like Innovator’s Dilemma, this is relevant for innovative parts of big companies, not just startups.) Two items stuck with me the most:

1. Vanity Metrics – Ries argues strongly against using vanity metrics when evaluating a change to a product. He says that too often metrics are chosen that look like improvements when really they aren’t, like number of downloads (without number of repeat customers) or number of repeat customers (without number of paying customers.) He says you really need to know what you are measuring and why.

2. Experiments – Ries gives several examples of how you want to run experiments about your product in real life with real customers. If your audience is big enough, A/B test actual features. Release great products without all their features to see if you have Andreesen’s elusive product/market fit. Ask focus group customers the right questions, not question your existing assumptions.

It’s his examples that I liked the most – they were perfectly relevant and constructive. He’s delightfully honest about how hard it is to learn this way by sharing his experiences at his company IMVU. In any case, this is a MUST-READ for people interested in the model for success in technical innovation in the next decade. It’s in my mental bookshelf next to “Innovator’s Dilemma” “Good to Great” and “Crossing the Chasm.”

Best Laid Plans

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I’ll get the door, Mama.

Yesterday was supposed to be a productive day.

I had a plan.

On Sunday night, I got ready. I wrote a blog post for Monday, packed my lunch for the week, packed babyDiva’s lunch for the week, cleaned out my personal email inbox, and cleaned out my work email inbox. I wanted to be ready for Monday morning.

Top of my list for Monday was to work on some new messaging in preparation for our big tradeshow, VMworld. I also owed some collateral to our Demand Gen Director for last week’s webinars. Finally, I had planned a meeting with Alan to talk about some changes to the website.

That plan imploded at 8:40.

At 8:40, I was emerging from the Kendall T stop, steeling my willpower against the bakeries on my walk to work. The phone rings. It’s babyDiva’s day care. It’s clearly one of two things. One, I forgot her lunch/diapers/jacket/sunblock. Two, she’s sick and needed to be picked up.

You guessed it, it was “two.”

mrDiva was traveling for work, so back on the T I went, back to the bus I went, back to daycare I went, and off to the doctor.

It was the first time I had to miss work for a sick kid. My day was filled with “itsy bitsy spider” instead of messaging, board books instead of collateral, and a walk to the library instead of work on the website.

It’s taken me a long time to adjust to being a mom. For some women it seems to come naturally, for me it didn’t. Mostly, I had a hard time adjusting to a new set of responsibilities where I didn’t feel competent. I wasn’t used to someone relying on me entirely. Like, entirely.

But yesterday I was in full-on Mom-mode. Snack, bath toys, sippy cups, sticky fingers (how are they sticky ALL THE TIME?), and Goodnight Moon.

Today I’m back to work.

Forming, storming, norming, storming, norming….

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about Bruce Tuckman’s model of how groups develop:

Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing

The idea is that first groups form. Forming is when everyone gets to know each other and starts to understand the capabilities, goals, and gaps.

Then they storm. Storming is the natural friction that arises as a team is coming together and people bring all their previous preferences, skills, and styles into the group and drop them in a big, messy pile.

After that, teams norm. That is, the members figure out how they will work together to get things done, and learn how to communicate.

Only after those stages can a team perform.

It’s a cool model, and one that I think holds up pretty well even 50+ years later. I definitely saw it in practice at Dell. Once when I built a team from scratch, hiring quickly, and again when I returned from maternity leave to a team that had doubled in size.

What’s funny about it at a startup, though, is that it can feel like we’re in the “Storming” and “Norming” stages repeatedly. It’s not that we’re not performing – we are! – but the team composition changes so quickly that we need to keep evolving how we work together.

When I joined Infinio, it was about the same time as a Director of Demand Generation joined. We’ve all been focused together in Marketing to get a working model of how we do things.

Fast forward two months, and Scott Davis joins as our CTO. Not an official member of Marketing, but a huge influence on the company and the messaging. OK, so we figure that out.
Fast forward a few more weeks, and Matt joins my team. Here we go again

At a startup it’s just all happening too fast to ever really “norm” – “norming” just has to include adjusting for new members and configurations on a constant basis, rather than having that trigger the entire process all over again.

Cornucopia of social media

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Over at I Tech Therefore I Am, Matt talks about how he decides where to post what kind of content. It’s an interesting analysis of how to manage a single human being through the lens of different audiences.

On a micro(blogging) scale, I’ve been thinking about the same things – when do I post something on Twitter, when Facebook, and when LinkedIn.

Originally, it was simple. I put things related to work on Twitter and things related to my personal life on Facebook. I didn’t post anything to LinkedIn, save an ill-conceived week when I copied my Twitter feed to LinkedIn.

Then I started sharing more of my personality on Twitter – articles I thought were interesting, pictures of babyDiva, other items that rounded out @storageDiva to be more personal.

When I started to look for a job, I wanted to be more active on LinkedIn, so many of the items I posted on Twitter I also posted on LinkedIn. I didn’t post totally personal things on LinkedIn – like photos – but I did post articles of technical interest.

(And I’ll pause here for a second to say that if it weren’t for Buffer none of this would work. They make it so easy to manage all of this!! In fact, in their live #bufferchat I shared my favorite productivity apps:

Every morning, I get my news from Feedly, I syndicate things I think are interesting through Buffer, and I save longer reads for later with Pocket.)

Anyway, back to my strategy. When I was at Dell, I was maniacal about keeping Facebook private – I didn’t friend my friends at work, and I didn’t post much about Dell. Now I feel a little different about that, and I syndicate this blog on all three platforms. Plus, I’m tiring a little of Facebook – too many ads, and too much curation of my News Feed.

All of this is to say, it feels good to have a system and a strategy. And I think I am figuring out what the right stuff is to put where. I hit the Buffer button, and for each article, picture, etc., choose which social networks it belongs on. This blog, however, has been challenging for exactly this reason. I do send it to all three channels, although the people I know through each channel are very different audiences.

Facebook is everyone from high school acquaintances and camp friends I barely remember to cousins and my mother.
LinkedIn is people I know professionally.
Twitter is a weird mix of those two, plus people I meet randomly in the twittersphere, and the only place where I know some people online before I know them in real life. It’s where I post most Infinio stuff, too.

So “know your audience” is not helpful – I do know it, and it’s too broad to find a lot of what I post relevant. I feel good about the tweets and articles I put through these three channels, but I know it’s not working as well for this blog.