Jason Alexander

State of the Enterprise

The Admin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:49:00 GMT

Continuing my reflection of the past 5 years, one of the experiences I really enjoyed was working with the many large organizations out there, such as Intel, EA, Conde Nast, Dell and others.

It was really interesting to be able to work with them to understand their challenges as an organization. Many organizations faced the same challenges. In some cases, some of these companies had thousands of employees spread across the entire globe. Over the years, some of these sub-organizations had built their own competencies, their own domain expertise and, in some cases, had begun to operate as wholly separate entities.

One group in California might start working on a design for their particular product, and not realize that they're reinventing the wheel in some cases. Another engineer in the UK just months before designed and manufactured a particular chipset or circuit board that the previous team could use.

In other cases, you would find that different departments and leaders within the company had created (whether intentionally or not) little empires within their department. Those groups would work almost against the company, in some cases. Or would have partialties to certain groups.

And, ultimately, and what was the most interesting to me, was to see specific individuals or groups within an organization that just "got it". They were the company's biggest advocates, most skilled in the space and did everything right, historically. But, somehow they had gone unnoticed or were squealched by other people or groups.

Now, that's not to say that any of these organizations were broken. These are companies that are tried and true, and have done business successfully for many, many years. But, with anything, over time organizations just become more complex. Things slip. Business continues, but it's just not possible for for them to directly manage everything as it evolves and grows, over many years.

Has your organization started feeling these growing pains? I went through many rounds of these at Telligent over the past 5 years as we continued to grow from 2 employees, Rob and I, to 140 employees total. Luckily, we were able to maintain our efficiencies throughout the growth spurts, but not everyone can be so lucky.

Are you able to do it? And, how? Brute force? Technology? Process?

Freedom has many faces.

The Admin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:14:00 GMT

While I've been lucky enough to have found my next big thing, I can't help but look back over the past 3 weeks and reflect.

This was the first time I had ever left the safety of a job without already knowing where I would go next. And, quite frankly, it scared me to death.

Sure, I've always been confident in my abilities, my experience and my network to be able to (usually) find something when I set my mind to it. But, here the recession was a big x-factor and I just had no idea what it all meant. Would this be the one time, the one thing that would knock me on my butt after 12 years of continuously knocking it over the fence?

It was enough to want to paralyze most people with fear. And, it did me too. For a few days.

After a few days I realized that I shouldn't be scared, I should be liberated. I was truly free to explore all possibilities. That's what it was all about...

Freedom.

You see, freedom means so much. It's not just the liberties and values we all love today, but can be applied to so much. Some people freeze up with blank canvasses, I actually really enjoyed it. It gave me time to look in, evaluate what the past 5 years meant and move forward.

I see this with Social Networking today, too. It's liberating, expressive and freeing of the previous versions of the web. Before, the internet was so utilitarian. So many applications, lines of business, sites with specific uses. That's great and all, but it had no personality. Now, the possibilities are endless, and the usability is compounded.

The last 5 years have been simply amazing. The next 5 years? I think it'll blow our minds.

I, for one, can't wait.

New Graffiti Theme: Keep It Simple

The Admin — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:13:18 GMT

One thing I've found is that once you find yourself jobless, it's amazing how important social networks and media become. Suddenly, the fact that you haven't been blogging regularly and building your readership is slapping you in the face.

That, of course, is a topic for another day but one way that always gets me re-energized to blog more is updating my blog theme!

I spent many days just pouring over all the various themes out there, and just couldn't find anything I really loved. Neils has a great style, so I pinged him and he pointed me at Keep It Simple on styleshout. Wow, what a great theme!

So, I spent the past few days converting it to Graffiti, and you can see it up on my site now!

A few notes:

Nifty little javascript at the bottom that pulls my pictures from Flickr and displays them at the bottom
Included Disqus integration for comments and discussions, with the fallback to Graffiti commenting for older posts.
Those older posts include Gravatar support, as well

I still have quite a bit to do with it to get everything cleaned up, and make it nice and configurable. But, if you're interested let me know and I may do that and release it.

And, be looking for some upcoming posts!

Last Day at Telligent

The Admin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:02:50 GMT

So, yesterday (2/12/2009) was my last day at Telligent.

It was a very, very sad day for me. Telligent has been one of those experiences that you will never forget, and that leave you with lasting impressions and considerable new talents and experiences. I made so many friends, and (as I said in my exit email) I considered many of the Telligenti my extended family. I will truly miss everyone there.

I look back at so many great memories, I can't help but smile and beam with pride. So many incredible people in one place.

Some things I remember:

Sitting in the new offices in the floor, laptop propped up on a box. We had ordered furniture, but didn't realize there were certain rules on when it could be delivered. There we were on our first day, sitting in the floor. Total awesomeness.
On the phone in the server room with a buddy trying to reset the password on a Cisco switch we bought off of eBay. We were working with shoestring budgets at Telligent, and were always so fiscally responsible - we always went shopping at eBay.
Sitting next to Rob, every time we got an email from the store saying someone bought a license Rob and I would both go, "CHA CHING!" and just giggle like little girls.
Ado's, now infamous, jumping the football with the scooter. Needless to say, he didn't make it and Ado was never seen on a scooter again. Jim later made an animated gif of it, and while it was funny it was also painful to watch. Later, the insurance actuaries would just cringe at the scooters parked around the office.
The day that everyone moved my office into the hall on my birthday. Or, the day that everyone moved my stuff back to my old office. I've never been so mad, but I just had to laugh.
Tom pegging me in the face with a football. Suddenly, my old highschool temper flared and I had the urge to rip his face off. Tom apologized to me daily for weeks. :)
Shutting down and playing Counter-Strike every day at 4pm. It was so great, the whole company would get into it. The best was when Terry would get ticked, scream, pound his desk, log out and you would hear his door slam. We'd all just laugh.
Being in a meeting and coming out after they had opened up the hall to the rest of the new offices. That hall was HUGE... it was like an Escher painting. So freaky.

Anyways, i could go on forever. So many great memories. Thank you, everyone.

What's next for me? I'm not sure yet. I'm talking to a few people and just thinking through everything. As I told a few people, I've been in a 5-year sprint at Telligent. I'm going to take a few weeks to just stop and catch my breath and re-group.

But, if you know of something or want to chat just drop me a line - jason.alexander at gmail dot com.

Come have a beer with us!

The Admin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:50:22 GMT

Check it out:

http://simpable.com/code/pragmatic-beer-dallas/

We're going to try to get everyone out, have a few beers and just get geeky. If you're around, come hang out with us!

Moving Video Providers

The Admin — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:15:05 GMT

Thanks for everyone's responses - so far, the overwhelming response has been:

1.) You guys don't mind that I ramble. Good!

2.) The video isn't working in most RSS readers.

I talked with ScottW about this a little, and it sounds like it just requires making sure you're using a trusted video provider. I've found a good link on Google Reader that talks about their embedded support, so it sounds like I just need to someone else.

Any recommendations? I'm going to play with them a bit today, and will try one out this week.

Thanks again for everyone's feedback!

I'm going to ramble!

The Admin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:35:29 GMT

As my video talks about, I'm still rough at this. It's so hard to be able to look at yourself and listen to yourself, that I'm still stuttering a bit with my presentation. It's going to improve, so please be patient with me.

Meanwhile, if you guys are reading this in RSS readers and don't see a video shoot me an email at jalexander at telligent dot com and I will see what's going on. Worst case, come hit my site in the browser and watch the videos.

Next phase of my blog!

The Admin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:18:00 GMT

Original posted at http://jasona.net/personal/next-phase-of-my-blog/

Intel Capital invests $20M in Telligent

The Admin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:21:00 GMT

So, I've been kinda quiet here. Not for lack of wanting, but strictly because I've been a little busy. We can finally talk about all the craziness here at Telligent, too:

http://telligent.com/news-and-events/news/intel-capital-to-acquire-20-million-stake-in-telligent/

"Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment organization, today announced an agreement to acquire a $20 million stake in Telligent Systems, makers of social computing solutions and business intelligence tools. Based in Dallas, Telligent will utilize the funds to expand its sales teams and territories, including growth in international markets, as well as increase its marketing and advertising initiatives and product development plans."

Rob and I from the start never really wanted to take any investment. People would interview with us and would ask us, "What's your 5 year vision for Telligent?" "What's your end goal?" etc, and it always came back to "We want to create a great company, and some great products." We were lucky enough to be on the forefront of the social networking revolution as one of the first players in the space. And, in the past 12 months we found that in order to stay competitive and be able to continue to do the things we want to do as fast as we wanted to do them, this became very necessary.

Luckily, as we started talking to more and more companies about funding we found that Intel Capital was one of the greatest to work with. They shared our vision and our team, and have really given us the ability to just stretch our wings and execute with a bit more "umph!" behind it.

The coming years are going to be fun. Hold on to your hats!

Graffiti CMS & asp.NETPRO Reader's Choice

The Admin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:52:10 GMT

Just a quick note...

We're up on the ballot this year with our new product, Graffiti CMS. If you haven't played with it, take a look, and if you have: GO VOTE FOR US, PLEASE! :)

Ok, enough of the shameless plugs. Sorry!