Wireless routers – it’s all about positioning

by ezs | Dec 12, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

I wrote yesterday about the terrible bandwidth problems I’m having in London – tonight my wireless signal in the house was dreadful. I’m used to the attenuating effect of Victorian masonry (we lived in an old house when we were in England) – but surely it was never this bad. It was almost like having a century old Faraday cage built into the house.

I thought about this some – and realised that things had only changed in the last day; no it’s not my laptop; no there’s no new software.. what could it be?

Ah – the wireless router has been place ‘out of sight’ behind a steel filing cabinet.. Hmm.

I repositioned it – and full signal restored 🙂

Bandwidth – it’s all relative!

by ezs | Dec 11, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

I just arrived in London at the start of a week of customer visits. I am staying with Granias family for a day or so (saves on expenses – and it’s also really good to see them!)

Grandpa has wireless internet – and it’s good and fast – it’s just not fast enough.

Latency is not the problem – just bandwidth – 1MB is just not a lot after being used to speeds of 7MB at home.

I guess this just goes to prove that we’re all disatisfied when it comes to speed.

Product Management naming

by ezs | Dec 10, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

My team solved the ‘what are we called’ dilemma.

“Identity Products Business Team” – that encompasses the variety of skills and strengths within the team.

Product Management roles

by ezs | Dec 7, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

For the last few months I’ve been focussed on a slightly different role – Outbound Product Management for Novell ZENworks and now for the entire Identity and Access Management product lines.

One challenge is defining and naming the team roles.

There are many nomeclatures in use for defining inbound and outbound roles – Product Management, Product Marketing, Program Management, Pre-sales support – lots of names and roles.

There is an interesting article on Marketing Professionals here – lots of detail on some of the roles. It’s a little inflexible and really focused on the smaller development organisation. Pragmatic Marketing have always been active in selling training on defining these roles and mentoring people through the process; they have a good article here and a nice visual of the process:

My own view is that in a larger, more mature organisation – such as Novell – there is a place for another role; the outbound product manager. This role encompasses:

• evangelist
• subject matter expert
• knowledge transfer
• competitive expert
• conduit of requirements to engineering and inbound product management
• etc

Befuddling Tivo

by ezs | Dec 6, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

Everytime family come and visit they befuddle the Tivo.

What do I mean?

I mean that two weeks of [insert favoured family viewing] really confuses our preferences. Instead of Pingu, Thomas, foreign language films and BBC crime dramas – we end up with US cop shows, WWII documentaries, romantic comedies and the weather channel.

Snow, I15, Gin and Cranberry

by ezs | Dec 6, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

First real winter storm of the year.

I was working in Provo at strategy meetings until late; I didn’t leave the office until 6pm.

I-15 was a nightmare. My usual thirty minute commute took almost two hours. Several inches of freezing snow on the freeway and the usual bad Utah driving.

Got home, cleared some snow and settled in. No tonic; so had to resort to gin and cranberry juice. Quite palatable actually.

World AIDS day

by ezs | Dec 1, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

Time to take a moment and reflect.