Monday, January 19, 2009

On Vision...

I met an elderly woman in the United Express check-in line yesterday. Unprompted, she proceeded to tell me how she came all the way from New Mexico to spend a week with a man she had met over the Internet. She had come to Ottawa on blind faith that things would work out. They didn't.

After nearly a year and a half of employment with Embarcadero, it was finally time that I made my inaugural visit to the epicentre of the company's product development. I placed my faith in the pilots and crew of several aircraft over the past day or so, with the expectation that they'd get me safely to Washington, then Vienna, and, eventually, Iasi. They did.

How many of the personal or professional things that you do depend on blind faith? Do you have faith that your doctors are doing all they can do to help preserve your well-being? Do you have faith that your employees are really working when they work from home? Do you have faith that your executive team is taking the company where it needs to go? Some things are out of our hands, but others are not.

At Embarcadero, we don't rely on blind faith to decide where our products are going. We rely on vision. As a program manager, much of my job is about vision. Just as Scott McCloud says, we program managers strive to learn from everyone (especially our Product Advisory Council, or PAC), follow no one, watch for patterns, and work like hell.

As I embark on a week of project planning here in Iasi, and think about what's in store for our customers in 2009, I can't help but be excited about what the future will bring. What are you doing to understand your future? Do you have a vision?

Friday, January 9, 2009

On the Last Year of the Ohties...

Some have started this New Year by posting a list of their most popular blog entries from 2008. I've decided instead to enter (albeit a little late) the last year of the ohties (in this century) with a wordle of my blog.



I guess it's obvious what's occupied my time over the past year. It'll be interesting to see how different it will look a year from now...