buzznovation

A very sad day...

On February 22, my friend Tom LeVine called as he was driving in San Jose headed to Ojai, California. Tom was the CEO of Pop!Tech and one of my dearest and most wonderful friends in my life. Tom had had a series of meetings in Silicon Valley, and was headed to Ojai to see his parents. Tom talked about how well the meetings had gone, and mentioned in passing that he had eaten sushi the night before (sushi being his favorite dish), and said that it must have been bad sushi, but as he said, when he got to Ojai, his mother would tuck him in and feed him some chicken soup, and life would be good again .

 

Saturday night, 57 days later, Tom died of Glioblastoma at age 56.

 

He died quietly, surrounded by women who loved him, his wife Valerie, his mother Joyce and his sister Lizabeth. His wonderful children Chloe and Remy were also at his bedside.

 

When I was first told of the diagnosis, I did some quick research, only to learn that if the diagnosis was correct, that Tom had won the lottery, only the wrong one. I waited anxiously for a confirmation that the diagnosis was incorrect only to learn that it was. Only 2-3 cases exist per 100,000 people in America.

 

Then I learned that Tom was being moved home, as there was nothing more that could be done.

 

 I immediately made plans to go to his home in Maine to see him.

 

The morning I arrived, Tom was lying in a hospital bed. He was very frail, but when he learned that I had arrived, he reached up and hugged me. Moments later, a mechanic arrived to change his hospital bed. I realized that Tom would need to be moved. And then I realized that my purpose in life was to be there at that moment, to carefully lift my friend, first to move him to a day bed, and then to gently move him back.

 

Over the course of the next five days I spent about 15 hours at his bed side, and during that time it seemed that perhaps he was conscious of my presence for perhaps 30 minutes. By the second day I was Maine, the women in his life, his wife, mother and sister, had completely taken over. And he was surrounded by loving women. The image I will forever have in mind is that of Christ being taken down from the cross, and bathed and prepared for burial by the women in his life.

 

On another day, when I arrived to sit at his bedside, his mother told him I was there. He spoke, and told his mother about our friendship, and of a wonderful time we had had, and then drifted off. I told him that I loved him, and I am sure he heard me.

 

It was as if he was saying good bye to me, as he was not conscious again while I was there.

 

Each day since I have prayed for Tom, I have prayed for those caring for him.

 

This morning, which was cold, gray, and raining, I awoke thinking about Tom.  Moments later I got a call from Tom's great friend Alex Hyman telling me of Tom's death. We spoke briefly, sharing stories of our times Tom.

 

In our lives, we have regrets, as for my time with Tom, I have but one. We had planned to go skiing this winter, and we didn't.  In my mind and in my dreams, Tom will be flying down the best of God’s mountains, And one day we will meet up and ski together.

 

Each day I will miss him, I will miss our time together, our conversations, laughing and talking. My only regret will be that we didn’t have even more fun.

 

One of the persons that I wrote to about Tom, wrote me back, “Life is precious, and time is short…” 

 

Amen.

The Productivity Software Subscription Model...some thoughts on...

For a number of years we have been selling a version of ActiveWords that we call the ActiveWords for the Enterprise. The price is basically $30 per seat per year. We have a fair number of customers, and would always like to have more.

We carefully outline the difference between the two versions. We provide more tools for this version, and try to make sure that enterprises understand why this is a better tool for them. I know our logic has always been that building a subscription base business would be better for everyone, for us and for our customers. This type of model would allow us to have steady cash flow, and at the same time insure that the customer always has the latest version of what we are building.

I was just reading an article in the online version of the WSJ related to Microsoft’s “Albany” offering by which Microsoft plans to allow for a subscription based version of Office. It will be interesting to see what is included in the offering. There is no mention in the article as to the pricing, etc.

When I gave a talk at the Office 2.0 conference last fall, my thesis was that unless offerings like this offer more than what is typically offered, I am not sure what the incentive is for the software buyer. There are a lot of very smart people at Microsoft, and it will be interesting to see what direction they go. Their success will provide guidance for those of us who would like to see this model succeed.

When I have talked to a number of our customers, most are very reluctant to use on-line versions of productivity type applications. Their logic being that if they have say 30 employees, and one computer is down, then they have a problem, but if the network is down, particularly when it is running network applications, they have 30 problems, and their employees begin to doubt the thinking of leadership, and things unravel from their.

All have told me that that would wait a couple of years before ever adopting these kinds of tools.

It should be interesting to see what happens as these types of tools are introduced by Microsoft, Google and others.

 

Your name/face in lights, e.g. MindManager to the rescue...

 My wonderful pals at Mindjet, asked me a while back to write about their product. I did as I think it is a brilliant product, and they have kindly “published” my take on MindManager.

MindManager is a great piece of software. I use it all the time, and yet think that I have only touched the surface.

I would make using MindManager a requirement for anyone in college, and then in business.

Just seeing a MindMap, and having the visual presentation of your ideas on a single page, to me is a wonderful idea.

 

A book you should read, "The Dip"

My pal Ernie the Attorney recently pointed me to a very interesting little, e.g. as in 90 page book. It is by Seth Godin, and he has a blog about the book here!

I spent about an hour reading it at the book store the other day, but plan to go back an buy it. The book is about the art of “intelligent quitting” and understanding that “smart people know when to quit”, which is an art that I have never come close to mastering. I have always chosen to stick with ideas, projects, companies, clients and people until the end, and on occasion I would say the “bitter” end.

There was one quote that stuck with me, e.g. on page 64, Godin writes:

“Never quit something with great long term potential because you can’t  deal the with stress of the moment.”

What I need to figure out is to how to better understand what does or doesn’t have great long term potential, as I think Godin is exactly right, and a lesson that we all need to learn.