Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

I stand corrected: Jonathan Scwhartz can use sports analogies, and use them appropriately, without scripting or coaching, in real time. Jonathan gave his keynote at today's Customer Engineering Conference event sporting a stylin' Dallas Mavericks jersey. To be fair, it was part sight gag, part good fun in return for bringing 3,000 Sun engineers to work on a Saturday morning. For an hour, he answered employee questions about everything from how we deal with partners old and new to how we make funding priorization decisions to how long it takes to effect change in the market. His opening comment was that the only thing he had in common with the Dallas Mavericks is that he and the Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban are both bloggers.

One of the themes that Jonathan repeated was that blogging allows him to reach a worldwide audience on a regular basis: it's not advertising, it's not editorial content, it's a mass communications vehicle. You hear exactly what Jonathan - or Mark Cuban - may be thinking on any topic.

What Jonathan did in handling Q&A, however, lets me draw another parallel between him and He Fine Me: they listen to their employees. After buying the Mavs, Cuban decided to invest in keeping his players happy. In a simple locker room improvement, Cuban invested in oversized, high-quality towels for his players. When you're pushing seven feet on the vertical axis, your standard Bed, Bath and Beyond issue doesn't work, no matter how much "beyond" you reach for. Large-scale towels have a certain cachet, so much that they appear in the visitor's locker room as well. And for those that are appropriated along the way: it's free advertising. Like a visual blog.

Now that I've had my fun, it's only a matter of time until Jonathan suggests that I do a guest stint with the Mavericks ManiAACs. Or I get skewered in his blog. Either way, it's free advertising.

Thanks to Bill Walker's blog I've discovered some new toys for my desktop. It's cool to be a snowman, but I'm merely a monochromatic guy -- this USB snowman is a bleedin' quad-chromatic (to borrow a line from Roger Daltrey).

I wonder if it's an FAA-approved electronic device?

Unless you worked for DEC for many years, you don't get to see things from a reverse perspective (that was a byte-swapping joke, folks, the best I can do at 7:00 am local time). Today is the opening event of CEC05, and I got to spend about an hour backstage. As usual, we had to produce a slick, interesting set on a tight budget, so the cool props this year are these multi-color light bars The lighting tricks are driven by LEDs coupled with colored glass,
the same technology in the new super-bright traffic signals and car headlights. It's a great effect with very little heat dissapated, which is wonderful when you're on stage. It's no fun feeling like you're in an EZ-Bake oven powered by 10,000 watts of light bulbs.

T minus 40 minutes: Jim Baty and I arrive, I take some pictures while we rehearse our executive introductions. Nothing worse than making good jokes and then stumbling on your own boss' name.

T minus 20 minutes: Bob MacRitchie and Marissa Peterson, who not only are our direct managers but also pay for the event, arrive and walk the stage.

T minus 15 minutes: I realize as I'm greeting Marissa that my microphone is turned on and fed through the house audio system, so I'm reverberating through an empty Moscone center. Fun turns to terror as I realize it's time for a last-minute potty run and I really don't want to redefine "engineering peer" (funnier with a Boston accent, I promise) over the public address system.

T minus 10 minutes: House doors open, people start streaming in from breakfast. Music is up, video is rolling. Jim and I get to relax in the "green room". I'm reminded of the scene in This is Spinal Tap where the band gets lost under the stage. It's pre-show ritual for me to holler out "Hello Cleveland!" before going on stage, my own way of shaking off stage fright.

T minus 5 minutes: Marissa is nervous. Don't tell her I told. House is filling, only the wings of the right and left sections have empty seats. This is cool.

Showtime: Opening video, produced by the attendees, for the attendees (think nerdly FuBu), rolls. Laughs 90 seconds in, which is good -- the audience is warming up. Jim and I better not suck.

T plus 15 minutes: Show is moving, keynote speakers are on the stage, time for coffee and breakfast. Next job: introducing Jonathan. There's no business like (technical) show business.