DivaBlog

The Kindness of Strangers...or Good Help is Hard to Find!

I would like to say a few words about the excellence of certain Administrative Assistants. At Sun as in many companies a great AA can make the difference between success and failure. I've just encountered a great AA and I wanted to pass on the story of how helpful she was to me today. Not a technical story, but without helpers where would we be?

A big part of my job is traveling to speak about Open Source. Lately I've been spending a lot of time in Asia, and just now I'm in Seoul, South Korea to speak (yesterday) at a seminar hosted by KIPA.

Speech went fine (although most of the questions I received were from Indian nationals living in Korea, but that makes sense since Open Source is a non-intuitive concept for Koreans still). Anyway, today I decided to check out the local Sun office on the advice of the President of KIPA, who used to be the General Manager of Sun Korea. He wanted me to convey his greetings to the current GM.

Problem is, the front desk staff don't know me from Adam (okay Eve). I have a Sun badge, I have Sun business cards. They are very polite, but don't really understand why I'm standing in their lobby.

"Would I like to activate my SunRay card?" (I said yes).

"Would I care for a beverage?" (I said no).

Finally they do as I ask and call the Assistant to the General Manager. She comes out. Immediately she figures out what I need and sets out to help me. She finds me a flex office. She gets me a local login (in record time). The GM is out, but she finds the next two guys I should talk to (eGovernment Sales and Software Sales). She lets me leave a little note for her boss. All in a few seconds (I'd been standing at the front desk for 15 minutes at that point) she has me in hand. She apologizes in imperfect but charming English for the fact that she is non-technical. She is gracious. She is equipped to handle foreign interlopers. I am *so* grateful.

So if you know a great AA, tell him/her! Don't wait for "Secretaries Day" (I've always wondered whether the Secretaries of State, War and the Interior get flowers on "Secretaries Day"?). Better yet, take that AA out to lunch to thank them for all they do for you.

And that iChat address is...?
Dave Edmondson pointed out in comments that I'd not revealed my iChat ID. Its danese.cooper@mac.com. I'm online most days I'm not traveling (and many days when I am).

Chat me up

So yesterday I was bashing "tribe" communities. Today I'm in the mood to praise iChat. Honestly my whole workday has changed since more Sun employees started chatting. The dawn of this shift traces roughly to two years ago when many of us at Sun traded in our x86 laptops for Macintosh PowerBooks.

Ah the PowerBook! Has there *ever* been a more elegant laptop? I had one of the first Sun-purchased ones but over the course of about 6 months it was plain to see most Sun software executives shyly or proudly toting a new Mac. Once NeoOffice/J came out it was even easier to choose a Mac for your daily work at Sun.

Understand that its not necessarily easy to iChat from within Sun. You have to keep track of proxies and what kind of connection you're using (directly on SWAN or from a VPN connection you have to route iChat prefs to SWAN proxies). But as of about a year ago many Sun employees work much of their week outside a Sun office. All of a sudden, the iChat subculture has become very significant.

Its common for several of us to be on iChat all day long. Meanwhile we're attending meetings (in person or by phone). Say that you and I are each in different meetings, but we are both working on the same initiative. Your name comes up in my meeting..."What does X say about this?". I chat to you and ask for a comment. It takes only a moment to get a response...and you can likewise check with me. Efficiency!

Another big advantage of iChat is something I've noticed occuring at O'Reilly conferences. With critical mass of people iChatting, there is real-time consensus building about a given presenter and his/her topic that drives learning and experience of the session much deeper (at least for me). Even on a small scale, say 3 people chatting during a presentation in an All-Hands meeting, you get a broader critical consideration of the topic (and often better Q&A as a result).

Of course there are downsides to iChat. I know it urks some people to hear typing during a talk (although as a person who speaks for a living I have to say it doesn't bother me). I know there are people who resent having to split their attention/focus between speaker and iChat window(s). But as I grew up with videogames, this feels like making the slow process of meetings a little faster-paced.

So, chat me up in that next long meeting. I'd love to hear from you!

Life of the Party?

Social software is all the rage (and I have been one of the people pushing for blogging and other forms of non-traditional communication software at Sun). But I find I'm torn about participation in communities like LinkedIn, Orkut and the rest of the "tribes" you can join now.

Sure, I was in there with the best of them at the beginning, seeing how many friends I could find and being delighted whenever someone I worked with long ago would out of the blue show up with a link request...but now that all of that has died down I find I'm left with the daily decision whether to link to someone I *really* don't know.

Here's someone with a clever note attached to his request (which is expiring today). He seems sincere. He's just trying to get linked to as many like-minded people as possible. Isn't that okay? Isn't that how Open Source works ultimately (building trust with strangers through common interests, skills, mind?). But somehow it just feels creepy to be solicited for links by strangers in this way. Its like receiving a chain letter or something. On the other hand, what if this person turns out to be the next Sergei Brin? "Oh, yeah, I remember back when I tried to get a link out of you and you refused..."

What I would *love* to see is some kind of community where your friends could recommend friends to you and then at least unsolicited link requests would come with some karma or something attached. I think its gonna be awhile before I'll be pushing Sun to add tribe attributes to java.sun.com.

What do you think? Are the tribes working out for you? Do you accept unsolicited links?