Giving You The Business

Today is the Day!

In my state if you receive a severance package, you cannot receive unemployment benefits until the severance period has passed. In other words, I received roughly eight weeks of severance pay so I could not receive unemployment until eight weeks after my last day of work. I met that threshold and today is the day I received my first unemployment check. Back in November I assumed I would find something before my benefits kicked in. Clearly I underestimated how bad things are out in the job market. Still I cannot help but feel like a failure for not being back at work yet. In the meantime, the benefits are nice to have.

I Am One of "The One in Ten"

It has been quite some time since your humble author posted here at Giving You The Business. When we last spoke I was wishing you a happy new year even as mine was filed with uncertainty. You see, I have joined what one of my friends calls the “One In Ten”, meaning the unemployed. On November 18, my manager arrived in the RDU area to plan for 2010, or so I was told. However, he was looking quite pained the entire time we were eating lunch and I finally asked him to go ahead and tell me what was on his mind. He let me know that the decision had been made to eliminate all the Partner Account Manager positions within the company for 2010. As I was a Partner Account Manager, I immediately got his drift. Revenues were flat for 2009, and the company  needed to show profitability. One of the ways to do that was to cut headcount. Cuts were being made in other geographies and now some had to be made in the Americas. An overlay sales position such as mine, which is hard to track from a revenue perspective, was something the company could no longer afford. It did not matter that I was leading my peers in attainment at that time. The decision was not made by my manager and he was not happy about it. He is a class act and I felt for him as we went through this process. It was as if he was shooting one of his beloved hunting dogs. You’re a good guy Jerry. I would work for you again in a heartbeat.

The company was very fair in the severance they paid me. They also, at the behest of my manager and the VP of Sales, paid my year end bonus. Good people all. I was also informed in November so I could get a head start on my job search which again, was very good of them.

I would certainly miss the small company  atmosphere. It felt like I was losing more than a job, I was losing family. Other than the obvious, that is what i would miss most about no longer being part of the company.

But despite all the positives about the way I was let go, the cold hard fact was that I would be unemployed at the end of the year. And that is where this journey begins…

Happy New Year to all of you. May 2010 be better than 2009 in every way!

Small Batteries and Stuff or How I Long for Windows 7

The battery on my Lenovo X61 tablet PC finally died after two years of hard use. It was the 6-cell extended battery and gave me 3-3.5 hours of runtime when it was fresh even with Windows Vista constantly spinning away on the hard drive. I never thought of how important having a battery in a notebook computer was before mine died.  Since we are close to returning this back to Lenovo, my IT department decided to purchase the smaller and cheaper 4-cell battery. What a difference. I am able to drain the battery in 1-1.5 hours. I am stunned by how quickly I am out of juice and now understand how much of a power hog Vista is with the constant indexing and the endless boot and shutdowns that drain the battery quite a bit even before I am using the system. My disappointment in the short battery life and with my IT department for "cheaping out" is tempered by the fact that for the roughly 10 days before I had a new battery, I was tethered to one place. Essentially I had a 12.1" screen desktop. One takes for granted the mobility a notebook computer offers you. This incident also makes me long for Windows 7. If a netbook can get great battery life using it, then the O/S should be great for my needs as well. At least I hope so.

He's Back...

Me that is. It has been quite a while since I have posted anything on this blog. The reason is simple, I am traveling so much that it is almost impossible to find the time to post. This post finds me in the air flying on Delta from Memphis to Atlanta. The first leg of a trip that will find me landing at RDU late this evening. I am not using the in-flight WiFi. It is a short flight and it is far to expensive to use it for such a short period of time. What have I noticed so far this year? So far, most of the vendors I meet are actually doing pretty well. The company I am working for certainly is hitting the targets we have set for 2009. It will be close as far as hitting my personal number but I feel great about next year. we are building a pipeline of our new products and I think the payoff will really come during the education buying season.

So, how has your year been going?

Thoughts On Cash For Clunkers

In observing the Cash for Clunkers nonsense this week several thoughts come to mind. First, while I am still waiting to be shown the part of the Constitution that authorizes such a program, I know that the horse has already left the barn on that one.

Second, as pointed out at Hot Air, many of these "clunkers" are perfectly usable automobiles that are being destroyed. What a waste. They could be better used providing inexpensive transportation to those with real need. Deliberately destroying these vehicles, many of them fairly late models, is a horrific waste, all in the name of becoming more "Green".

Last night Bruce Williams made an excellent point; if you want this to be a program that stimulates the economy, do away with the "Green" nonsense and provide the credits to everyone that wants to purchase a car. If you are going to have a giveaway, give it to everyone.

It also occurs to me that since the credits are for the purchase of a new vehicle, we are in most instances subsidizing the new car purchase of someone who could afford it without our help. These purchasers need to be able to handle a car payment so they are likely far from impoverished. I thought of this as I sat in front to my old 27" tube TV and realized that many of those I am helping subsidize have a large screen TV on the wall. They are driving a "clunker" because of priorities they have chosen. Yet I am forced to help pay for their vehicle. I bet I do not even get a thank you let alone a reach-around!

What are your thoughts?

The Netbook Is A Great Tool For Adventurers

There has been much written about the boom created by Netbooks and why people are using them. This is mainly because they are small, light, have a keyboard you can type on and are inexpensive. They also accomplish most of the basic computer functions that most of us really need a computer for; web surfing, blogging and email. However, one place that I have noticed the Netbook phenomenon taking off is in the adventure space. With the coming of warm weather, bike tourers are starting off on their journeys. Many of them keep online journals at places like Crazyguyonabike or blogs. A common thread is the use of the Netbook. When you are carrying everything on a bicycle, small size and light weight is vital. And here the small size and light weight of the Netbook shines. With the on-board WiFi, it is also fairly easy to find a place to connect whether it is a library, campground or home of a host. The low price means that if something happens to the Netbook, it is much less traumatic than if it were a $1,300 Mac Book.

In the past few days, I have read at least six cycling journals and all of them post using a Netbook. One can easily imagine that this will also be the case with hikers, vacationers and other travelers that want to keep in touch with the outside world and post to blogs and journals.

Do you use a Netbook? How?

Let The Nationalization Begin!

Via Drudge, President Obama to propose compensation caps on financial services firms to include banks. That ought to help bring back the banking sector and the markets!

Bloomberg reports that the heads of Citibank, Bank of American and JP Morgan are also pointing out the problems this will cause with the recovery. Per the story,

“The work we have all done to try to stabilize the financial system and to get this economy moving again would be significantly set back if we lose our talented people because Congress imposes a special tax on financial services employees,” Pandit said in the memo, whose contents were confirmed by a Citigroup spokesman.

Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades is half-convinced that this is part of a plan to tank the financial system and set it up for nationalization. It is either that or incompetence at a level we have not seen since the day of Jimmy Carter.

Cross-posted at The Opinionator.

Web Meetings Versus Person-to-Person Meetings; Advantages And Limitations

In this posting from Chief Ingredient, they discuss how web meetings have all but replaced face-to-face meetings with their clients. This works well for them and from my reading, the clients are active participants in the meetings. I can see some benefits to this, namely that they can be held without a lot of lead time, meetings can also be held at odd hours and there are obvious cost savings. The company I work for delivers a lot of training via Adobe Connect and it seems to be very popular.

It is my experience that this method also has serious limitations. For instance, when delivering training and presentations to groups you have a serious likelihood that people are multi-tasking during your presentation. Additionally, you are missing visual cues from your audience that you receive from a live audience that helps you know whether you need to speed up or slow down as well as whether your audience is bored or tuning out.. There is also the advantage of a face-to-face meeting to initiate the partnership. This develops trust. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that we need to meet in person before we dive into a business relationship. Chief Ingredient is using technology for customer meetings but I venture to guess that many of these client relationships were kicked off with an in-person meeting.

Organizations that would like to increase their usage of web meetings need to also change their reward systems to be in line with this goal. If Management Objectives (MBO's) or bonuses are tied to face-to-face meetings then adaptation of the web as a tool will not take place. People are coin operated and will do what they are paid to accomplish.

In summary, today's technology gives us the opportunity to meet with clients in ways that are very efficient from a time and money standpoint. This can be ideal for growing and maintaining a relationship with clients. However, we are a long way from displacing the on-site meeting.

Web Meetings Versus Person-to-Person Meetings | Chief Ingredient, Inc.

Markets Drop On Obama Inauguration

The markets suffered the largest Inauguration Day drop in history. Let's hope that is not a sign to come.