Are You a C.E.O. of Something? NYT Interview w/Mark Pincus

Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga, a provider of online social games, shares thoughts on management.

Q. How has your leadership style evolved, given your experience running several companies?

A. You can manage 50 people through the strength of your personality and lack of sleep. You can touch them all in a week and make sure they’re all pointed in the right direction. By 150, it’s clear that that’s not going to scale, and you’ve got to find some way to keep everybody going in productive directions when you’re not in the room. And that, to me, is a huge amount of what it means to manage. But I went to Harvard Business School and that never occurred to me the whole time. And I’d started a bunch of companies and never gotten to that understanding, even with one company I had that I did take up to over 200 people.

Q. So give me an example of what you did to change that.

A. I’d turn people into C.E.O.’s. One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.” And that way, everyone knows who’s C.E.O. of what and they know whom to ask instead of me. And it was really effective. People liked it. And there was nowhere to hide.

Full Article

Quick List May 15, 2009

The Quick List (QL) is back this week after a short hiatus. I am finally getting caught up from my vacation to the Riviera Maya. It was my first trip to Mexico and I would definitely recommend it! This week list:

• A nice set of online services from Adobe (the PDF people) called Acrobat.com. Sign up for an account and you can test ConnectNow web conferencing service with features like video conferencing, chat, desktop sharing and remote control.


• Skype is free calls, video calls and instant messaging. Easy to install and use. It really simplifies video calls. Also check out Skype mobile.


• For video conference calls check out ooVoo which allows up to 6 webcams in one room


• WebEx Meeting Center is a service used by the NTEA for web\video conferencing


• GoToMeetings is an easy to use web conferencing solution with minimal configuration

There are some interesting questions being asked on twitter. Check out Jeff De Cagna of PI blog who runs #assnchat and the comments here and this followup post.

Question: Do you twitter? If so, how do you use it. (please leave your reply in the comments section)

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I would also like to specifically thank Bridget for her feedback on finding an application for one of the links, Tiny URL, previously mentioned on the QL.

Quick List April 24, 2009

This week the links are mostly about social media. The list is kind of a mixture of topics: A couple of services, informational links, a tool and a new type of search engine. I look forward to implementing some of the ideas I got from the first bullet. Enjoy!

• This was a very informative link for me as I am new to this medium. The 25 styles of blogging…and when to use them. (I think this is style 9)
• A “human-powered search engine” called Mahalo. Not sure what it is? Check out the FAQ
• Some best practices for the new brand pages on Facebook from Marty Collins, a marketing manager for Microsoft Windows marketing group
• Cool service working to localize twitter. Search your zip or read how the service works
  
• A user driven directory for twitter called wefollow
• WriteWith, a workflow system designed to make online word processing work for groups(+2 pts to my fav DBA for the find)

Happy Earth Day 2009!

DYK (Did You Know)- Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment and it was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970.

Each year this day serves as a reminder for me to think green. It provides an opportunity to look at what we have done throughout the year to be environmentally responsible. From an IT perspective this means things like turning off lights when leaving the sever room, buying energy efficient equipment, removing and recycling unused hardware, etc. Today I saw a simple comment on twitter (#earthday) that caught my attention:

“Wake up Tweeps! EVERY day should be earth day.”

It was not a new or original idea, but it had an effect. So I would like to figure out a way to celebrate Earth Day that would have a year-round impact. I am interested in any ideas that would help in an effort to reduce our carbon footprint. (Please leave them in the comments-thx)

PS: Check out another event that you might not have heard of that is growing each year Earth Hour. On March 28, 2009 hundreds of millions of people in over 4,000 cities and towns and 88 countries VOTED EARTH.

What are you doing for Earth Day?

Quick List - April 3, 2009

I missed last week’s Quick List because I was out of the office last Friday thanks to the MHSAA 2009 Basketball Finals. I had a great time and saw some great basketball including, future Spartan, Keith Appling of Detroit Pershing scoring a record 49 points in the Class A championship game. Here is this week’s quick list.

• Want to know more about Twitter. Check out this wiki. I used it to find out what this #hashtag stuff was all about.
• My favorite DBA found this awesome application called Etherpad. It allows real-time collaborative text editing.
• Tiny URL is a web service that shrinks those ridiculously long URL links into short easy to cut and paste links that will not break when emailed. You can also create toolbar button for quick creation of tiny urls from your current web page in one click.
• For those of you that use Digg, check out the new DiggBar
• I mentioned IE8 a couple of weeks ago. I have had a chance to check out and so far so good. Here is a short list of new\improved features:
  · Slices
  · Compatibility View
  · Accelerators
  · Improved Security
  · Color coded tab groups

Friendly reminder: If you have not checked out your new favorite YouTube Channel please do so.

Quick List

Here is a list of a few things I wanted to share. Just links I think are interesting or useful. A few of them are iPhone related:

· IE8 was released Thursday Check it out
· Your New favorite YouTube Channel (NTEA\WTS)
· March Madness on your cell phone Verizon or AT&T
· WebEx iPhone App video
· Google Analytics on the iPhone

First Blog Post

Welcome!



I am finally joining the new blogging venture of the NTEA as tasked by my favorite DBA\Web Services Manager.


Fill in the Blank blog low down:
The topic of this blog will be work related with a heavy influence on technology from my perspective. Sort of comes with being in IT.



Most of the blogs will be about what is happening @ NTEA (general information, new technologies, services, etc...). Hopefully it will be informative and interesting, but I make no promises. This blog is my first adventure into the blogosphere and I will be using it to practice and develop a blogging style. I encourage you to leave your feedback\questions in the comments section as it will help me get an idea of how I can improve.


Thanks for visiting.