Nontrivial Exercises

The Richards Group - Keeping a Big Company Small

The Dallas Business Journal recently ran a story about the Richards Group, a Dallas-based ad agency that many believe is one of the best in the industry. Stan Richards, the founder and principal, talks with Glenn Hunter of DBJ about his philosophy, his approach to the business of creativity and some of the elements that make the Richards Group such a unique company.

Since its founding (Stan Richards forming an official company in the 1970’s after doing do freelance creative ad work in Dallas since the 1950’s) in the 1970’s, the Richards Group has grown to a 662–employee and $1.1B company. Yet, to read Mr. Richards talk about his company today, one would never guess that it is that big. Richards works hard to make it function like a small, agile company through some very unconventional approaches.

For example, there is a ban on the use of most internal email. Email lends itself to misunderstanding, Richards explains, so he forces people to talk to each other more.

Also, Richards has a four-part criteria when considering a new business opportunity with a client, that he puts in the form of four questions they must answer Yes to:

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My Take on Google Calendar - Give Me 30Boxes

As you probably have seen, Google got into the web2.0–ish calendar game this week with the appropriately yet blandly named Google Calendar. I thought I would give it a look and throw my input into the discussion by specifically comparing it to 30Boxes as I performed a common calendar task – creating a set of events and then sharing them with a group. The bottom line for me – Google Calendar may win over a lot of people just because it’s Google, but 30Boxes (30B) is by far the better solution.

First, a disclaimer: I use Outlook almost exclusively for my calendar needs, since I utilize a Windows platform for work. I’m also using the Outlook 2007 beta, which has some truly significant improvements over Outlook 2003, one of which is support for icalendar (webcal://…) online calendars. So, I consider myself a power-user when it comes to calendars, but my scope is fairly limited to Outlook.

I thought I would put Google Calendar to the test today with the schedule of my son’s t-ball team that I coach. I entered each of the games, opponents, locations, and who was responsible for bringing the snack (the most important part of the game when you’re 6) into a new calendar quite easily.

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I’m A Mac Switcher … Almost

I really do like my Tablet PC. It has truly revolutionized the way I think about my computer and how use my computer in meetings. It has been a significant productivity gain to me in both my work and personal activities that I conduct on my PC.

However, I’ve reached my tipping point with the Microsoft Windows platform. My online life has been slowed down too much, my frustration level has been elevated too high, my twiddling of thumbs while the crazy disk just churns away has become too frequent. I’ve had it. I’m ready to switch to a Mac.

I have been an Apple fan for several years – back from the original Apple II, watching from the sidelines as they developed user-friendly and appealingly-designed computers. I always knew I could use Macs – who can’t? – but when it came to purchasing my own personal computers, a few things have always held me back:

• Availability of useful, quality, equivalent software apps between Mac and Windows
• Price-to-performance ratio was way too high on the Mac. Let’s face it, the overall speed experience even on a Power PC G4 Mac compared to a Windows P4 2 GHz PC was inferior at worst and only close at best, but significant price premium.
• Widespread innovative development took place on the Windows platform, not the Mac. If you wanted to find a freeware or shareware app that did something useful, chances are you could find something on download.com or other sites for Windows, but very few of these existed for the Mac. Freelance developers were writing for the mass market, which was Windows. Also, the cost of entry to be a Mac developer was pretty high compared to Windows, so most beginning developers would take the path of least resistance and most gain and go with Windows.

I could always get more performance for my limited dollars with a Windows box, so my money has always gone to buy Intel machines running Windows. I spent a couple of years running Linux at home, but found it was too tricky to meet the needs of the rest of the family that wanted to use the PC.

But today, when I went to pair my Bluetooth headset with my PC so I could use my VOIP client, I received the all-too-familiar blank windows with an hourglass. Not quite the blue screen of death, but just as frustrating. Some process had simply gone awry and taken over the all-too-precious memory and CPU resources and had effectively crashed my machine.

I’m tired of having to wait 3–5 seconds every time a new window opens on the screen before the cursor is completely responsive. I’m tired of pressing a button to start an app and just waiting. I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of hacking the registry when I need to clean up after old software.

Today my overall Windows OS experience has reached the tipping point of turning negative. There are always checks and balances, good and bad, pros and cons to any platform. For me up to today, Windows has always come out on the positive side - the benefits have outweighed the detriments.

I know that I’m running some beta software – Flock and Office 2007 beta. I know these things can have a negative impact on performance and stability. I know I push my PC to the limit, with some UI enhancement - and CPU resource draining – apps like Object Dock and TopDesk. Sure, if I took off all the software, the machine would be lightening fast.

The bottom line for me right now is that it doesn’t do what I need it to do. It doesn’t keep up with me. It doesn’t offer me a useful and robust interface and a solid platform on which to run my apps. I wouldn’t have to use the Office 2007 beta (Outlook mainly) if I had the UI and functionality in an existing app.

I can get this on a Mac. With the new Intel Core Duo platform, the Macs now have a viable price-to-performance ratio. The UI of OSX is of course an order of magnitude better than anything else anywhere. The stability is very solid, by all accounts I can find. The app development is booming, and there are so many innovative apps developed just with the Mac in mind: SubEthaEdit, MemoryMiner, DeliciousLibrary, OmniGraffle, FrontRow to name just a few. And now, my favorite PC app, the one that would keep me from switching, MindManager, has a beta for Mac.

Yes, I am willing to give up the productivity of a pen and ink on my computer, the great functionality of OneNote 2007 and the promises that Outlook 2007 brings – to trade them in for a Mac.

There’s now just one reason that I haven’t acquired a new MacBook Pro and officially made the switch – a simple matter of $2,500. I just can’t afford it. Apple makes a nice margin on their computers, which they’re certainly entitled to, but it keeps me out of the Mac game. Yes, you get what you pay for; the problem is, I just can’t pay for it.

So, I’ve already switched on the inside, I just have to wait for the finances to catch up. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to make extra money while I wait for my apps to open…

Technorati Tags: mac, windows, mac+switchers, macbookpro, 2500+dollars+is+a+lot+of+money

Want to Know Web 2.0?

If you’re a list-maker or fervent del.icio.us tagger, you may be trying to keep track of some of the newest apps and services that are riding the wave of so-called Web 2.0. I’ve become tired of the Web 2.0 moniker and have decided to avoid using it whenever possible, since it has become such a broad-reaching and very undefined term.

It is precisely because it is broad reaching, undefined, and web-pop-cultureish, however,  that it makes sense to use to name a collection of such apps and services that Christian Mayaud posts on his Sacred Cow Dung blog. This list came to Christian from Bob Stumpel from openBC.

Check out the list of Everything Web 2.0 from Chris’ blog, and find out how many items on the list:

• you have heard of
• whose websites you have visited
• you have registered with / for
• you use regularly

I found some great new stuff already, and plan to work my way through many parts of the list. Be warned: it’s a long list and it will “ruin your weekend” as Chris points out.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, list, mayaud, christianmayaud