work

Tales From The Non-Compete Crypt

As of about 88 minutes ago I am no longer bound by the terms of the non-compete clause of the shareholder's agreement I signed while an employee at Somnio—the creative agency I helped start in 2002. It has been one full year since I resigned my position there on January 18th 2007. It's been quite an interesting year for me in terms of work and my career. I've experienced a range of emotions while thinking about the events that led up to and included my decision to sever my relationship with the company I had worked worked so hard to build. While I've felt it unnecessary to publicly discuss the circumstances under which I left that position, I would like to share a few of the things I have learned since I decided to "go in a different direction" one year ago.

First, I learned that if you are asked to sign a document that was written by a lawyer who is not your lawyer, it probably contains some language that can severely hinder you in some way, shape or form. No matter how benign it might look, or how sure your best friend is that your newly hired project manager's lawyer-buddy says it's kosher, it's not. Read any and all documents you sign very thoroughly. Have legal counsel read them. Have more than one legal counsels read over them. Question everything in the document. Don't assume you know the law because you don't. Nor, apparently, does your newly hired project manager's lawyer-buddy, despite your best friend and co-worker's adamant belief to the contrary.

Second, understand and embrace two age-old adages: If it looks like garbage, and it smells like garbage and it tastes like garbage then it probably is. Tigers don't change their stripes. If something doesn't feel right, it's probably not. If that something is the behavior of a person, it's probably going to continue and they most likely won't change. If these two things cause you to think that you may need a change of scenery, you probably do. Don't wait around for the tiger to change into a leopard, because it's not. Don't let your well-intentioned but highly gullible and easily fooled co-workers convince you otherwise. If a superior is being confronted about the same problem for the fourth time, it's always going to be a problem. Always.

Finally, have a backup plan. Even if things are seemingly going well and you're not looking for something else, you should be looking at least at what's available. Doesn't mean you have to be looking to leave, just that you know what's out there and know where you'd go and what you would do if you had to. When the decision to make a change comes, and it probably will at some point—and maybe very suddenly like it was for me, be prepared. I wasn't and I paid the price for it.

Fortunately for me, I made it through this experience in one piece and I've got all of my career options once again available to me. Some people never have any to begin with and that fact is not lost on me...ever

Are Competitive Wages Enough?

I just saw a commercial from my local cable television company letting its viewers know that they were looking for "highly motivated individuals" looking for a challenging new career. They, of course, touted their competitive wages, competitive benefits and 401(k). My question is this: What would motivate anyone to take a job where they can get nothing more than competitive? Isn't that sort of like saying "I want you to get excited to come work for me. To get you excited, I'll offer to pay you no more than any of my competitors. I'll offer you no better benefits than my competitors will. The only reason I'm even willing to give you this much is so I can say I'm competitive. Are you excited yet?"

New Host and Domain

It became necessary this week for me to purchase my own domain. I went with the most obvious choice, bryanbartow.com. The process was quite painless thanks to HostMonster. Since I was already mucking around with MySQL and what not, I decided to make the move to WordPress to power my blog. I've been using Blogger for over two years. It is quite good, but I want a little more flexibility with layout and some other elements of the blog. I'm happy with the theme I've picked and I'll be tweaking over the next few days to get it just the way I want it. This site will not only serve as my blog, but also as a hosting place for my work, portfolio, resume and possibly a few other things. Hopefully the transition will be a smooth one.

New Toy

Upon my return from the city that never sleeps, I came to the realization that I had two major problems I needed to solve quickly. First, my trusty Motorola RAZR had serious battery issues, which resulted in less than five minutes of talk time and an hour of standby. I should note that I have absolutely nothing against the phone. It's the best I've ever owned. I believe it was simply in need of a new battery. Second, I had an access problem. Whilst in New York, I was without network access for 8 or more hours per day. Unfortunately, this is not an option in today's business environment. This also isn't an isolated issue. All of my clients are Fortune 500 companies. They all take security seriously. This means no wired or wireless access when visiting them. Being the "kill two birds with one stone" kind of a guy that I am, I set out to find a solution to my quasi-related problems.

I knew such a device existed that could give me "anywhere access" and more than 5 minutes of talk time. I also knew that I would almost assuredly stick with my current provider, T-Mobile. I surveyed the current offerings from T-Mobile and found I had a couple options. I could go with one of the ever popular Blackberry devices or, take a chance on a device I had previously not heard of; the T-Mobile MDA.

Two things instantly drew me to the MDA. First, the device can slide open to reveal the keyboard. I've never liked the Treo or Blackberry because of the keyboards. Yes, I do realize that there is a Blackberry that only has a numbered keypad but, then, how do you type messages with it? Sort of defeats the purpose in my mind. Second, the MDA runs Windows Mobile 5. Our salesforce uses Treos and I've seen their struggles with Outlook integration and synchronization. I know there are far fewer issues with Windows Mobile devices. So off to my local T-Mobile store I went. A few hours later, I was the proud owner of a T-Mobile MDA.

Having owned the phone for about a week now, I can say that it's quickly in its way to supplanting my beloved RAZR as the "best phone I've ever owned". It syncs up with Outlook just beautifully, has Bluetooth, IR and WiFi connectivity options, has great call quality and decent battery life. Combined with T-Mobile's Total Internet service, I have high-speed network access via their EDGE network almost anywhere I go. I can even share the connectivity with my laptop via Bluetooth. Using the qwerty keyboard, I can send emails quickly from anywhere. I have, indeed, killed both birds with one stone.

The phone is certainly not without its flaws, however. My biggest gripe is the lack of a numeric keypad. Of course, I can't really gripe about this. I knew this would be the case going in. It's a small price to pay for all of the features and benefits I've gained by moving to this device. All in all, I'm very pleased with my decision. I reccomend mobile business users who aren't sold on a Blackberry or Treo, for the same reasons I was, to give a Windows Mobile device like the MDA a try.

Tags: T-Mobile MDA, MDA, RAZR, Motorola, Motorola RAZR, Blackberry, RIM, Treo, Palm, Palm Treo, New York, Bluetooth, EDGE, Outlook. Windows Mobile, Bryan Bartow, spudnik187

It’s Been a While

I've been terribly busy with work over the past 6 - 8 weeks. Much has been happening since my last regular postings. Hopefully, I can pick it back up.

Eating Your Own Dogfood

I have spent the better part of the last 6 months extolling the virtues of blogging, podcasting, RSS aggregation and all other manner of popular technologies to our clients and asking them to explore the possibilities of using them to enhance their businesses.

Whilst in a meeting today, I was asked how my company was harnassing the power of these technologies to improve our communications with our customers. I was dumbfounded that I had to answer that we weren't. In our haste to sell someone something, we forgot to try it ourselves. It hadn't even occured to me until today that we don't have a company blog set up. We don't do a lot of the things we tell our customers to do. That's a very sobering thought, but one we're going to change. The company blog goes up tomorrow.

Isn't there an inherent problem in selling something you don't use yourself? I'd love to hear thoughts on this one.

Tags: blog, RSS, podcast, spudnik187, Bryan Bartow

Road Weary

It's been over a week since I've posted. I've been in beautiful San Jose, California on business. I managed to write a quasi-thorough review of Microsoft Word 2007 Beta 2 whilst traveling. I'll post it shortly and hope to have a screen cast of the review up tonight or tomorrow.

While the weather in San Jose was awesome, my wireless internet experience was not. I'm shocked that I can go to one of the most wired cities in the world and stay at a hotel where I don't have access to wireless internet. I'm not going to rat out the offending hotel (well known, upscale chain), but I was disappointed to have to string an ethernet cable around the room to get access. And don't get me started on the $10 a day price, either. Makes me wish I could afford one of these.

Tags: travel, San Jose, California, wireless, Microsoft, Microsoft Word, Bryan Bartow, spudnik187

What’s in a Name, Part II

So, we finally decided on a name for the company. SOMNIO, which is Latin for to dream. Very fitting for a creative agency, I think. We have overhauled our branding and refined our story to be more indicative of who we are. So far, our customers have responded favorably, which is really the only thing that matters.

What’s in a name?

I now know why companies spend so much time and money to come up with the perfect name. A bad or, mismatched, name can give a company serious problems in the mind share department. We've been trying to come up with a name that is more descriptive of and appropriate for our business. It's very difficult to find just the right name. Someone can always find something wrong with the name, which is really the point. At some level you have to create brand value by driving value to your customer. The name means everything but, at the same time, means very little. By the way, we had to go outside of the english language to find something we liked. I can't say what it is now but, I will when the time is right.

Been a while….

Hard to find time to do anything, much less write in a blog, when you're working 16 hours a day. Here's that latest:

Bryce is getting big.
Work is good and bad.
My wife is lovely.
The Texas Longhorn football team is 60 minutes away from the Big Prize.

Company Dog and Pony was tonight. It's always interesting to see how people explain things they didn't create to other people. Food was good.

More to come soon, including an exciting look at the hottest holiday gift you won't have under the tree.