The End Of Our Brightest Chapter

You wouldn't be surprised to learn that carting around a 200-lb. dog can be cumbersome. Making such a big boy clamber in-and-out of an SUV can take a while and always looks mildly ridiculous... But, you might be surprised to learn that when you own a mastiff, you happily ignore such challenges and take him with you EVERYWHERE. That's what we did with Owen. We brought him to the coffeeshop, to Home Depot, to restaurants, to the grocery store, to Carmel-by-the-Sea, to the top of Mount Diablo: basically, whenever we hopped in the car, our bosom companion joined us, panting and farting and drooling with quiet joy. Such a perfect dog.

Long time readers will remember Owen from the "funny" post and the "not so funny" post. This will be the last post.

On Friday, Sept. 2, we realized that Owen's degenerative bone disorder was making life too difficult; to keep him alive any longer would have been selfishness. He was in pain, and no amount of surgery would make him better. He was just 2.5 years old, a baby - our big, hairy baby.

It's hard to write with any eloquence about this subject. To write about how we rattle around the house ... about how we tested a score of different wind-chimes before we found a deep, resonant tone that will remind us of his huge soul with every breeze ...

It all sounds silly; such fuss over a dog. In fact, it is quite easy and rational to step back and say, "Thank God our family is healthy... and imagine what the people in New Orleans are going through, with Hurricane Katrina ..." It's all relative, I guess. For now, for a while, this is the pain that is closest to us, and we're just muddling through ...

Farewell, old friend.

Shiny Object Syndrome

A client came in the other day, fretting about getting the program to the next level.

The ink has been pretty darn good, actually, and a recent analyst tour was a great success... program elements which, for all my talk of sales results, are obviously still important. So what's the problem, exactly?

"I am worried that we're not paying enough attention to blogs," he said.

I excuse myself to check in with the team. They confirm that this fella is obsessed with the blogosphere. In fact, he'll go a day or two without responding to genuine editorial opportunities, but, tell him that a dude in Iowa mentioned the company in a (barely-read) blog, and he jumps all over it.

Why?

'Cuz "blogging" is "cool."

Perfect example of Shiny Object Syndrome. Some clients lack the confidence in their company, skills, product or story to do what's right for the program, and instead rely on chasing after every buzzword, in hopes of cresting at least one of the emerging hype waves.

This goes for PR stuff but is even more dangerous when the client is willing to change their entire raison d'etre in order to appear hip. Remember when the hosted model first became a big deal; when Salesforce.com told us that "Software is dead"? Remember how alluvasudden a third of your clients started scrambling to describe their solution as "hosted"? - How some even went to the trouble of re-architecting their software to be able to make the claim? - How some decided that a subscription model like Salesforce.com's was the way to go, even when they had plenty of lucrative-but-traditional licensing deals in the pipeline?

I won't be so extreme as to suggest that a company should never re-examine its way of doing things: that's healthy and to be expected. All we ask for is a rational approach. Shiny Object Syndrome is marked by a headlong and heedless rush; but, lasting businesses are built when business and PR plans are carefully plotted and sculpted - not thrown against the wall to see what sticks.