Tuesday, October 28, 2003

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Pointless Abstraction About ten years ago, when I worked for Otis Elevator, we got a new VP of Manufacturing. During his "honeymoon" period, he would meet with each department to introduce himself and his manufacturing philosophies. One of the first things he would do is ask "What business are we in?" The elevator business? No. Vertical Transportation? No. Building Systems? No; the correct answer was: we are in the customer satisfaction business. I found that formulation to be a pointless abstraction. Utterly un-motivating. 'Cause if we don't get off our butts and start building some really good elevators, we aren't going to have any satisfied customers. Now I work for a mortgage company. So I was pleased, today, when our new Managing Director asked what defines our businesses. The right answer was: markets and capital. Still pretty abstract, but within the bounds of reason. He emphasized this point by repeating "markets and capital. Not peanut butter. You want to make peanut butter, you need to work somewhere else." 8:30:58 PM    comment []

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Fascination with Thin Interfaces, An Opportunity for Microsoft Jon Udell: "Now Microsoft is pitching a Windows-only UI renderer that targets 2006-era desktops and notebooks, while allowing MSIE to stagnate. I can see how and why they arrived at this strategy, but it doesn't seem to be the kind of Web/GUI convergence I'm looking for." My favorite topic--the inadequacy of mainstream, thin-client GUIs. I've been flabbergasted that users have put up with them over the past 5 years. I think the industry's collective embrace of the mediocre, at best, web-based GUI experience has left this kind of gaping hole for Microsoft to ultimately exploit. 8:22:14 PM    comment []