Author: marionvermazen

I am a traveler, hiker, avid reader, Sun alumnus, computer geek, Spanish and French language student, knitter and genealogist. I am retired after working for almost 30 years in the Computer Industry. I live in Reno, Nevada with my husband Duke.

Blogging Birthday

My anniversary of blogging was last week. My very first blog entry was September 16, 2004. It has really been a fun year. I’ve learned a lot. Here’s my list of some of the blog related things I’ve learned.

  1. I’ve learned that I like to write and I like  conversations. I’ve had many thought provoking and interesting conversations with some very interesting people that I wouldn’t have met or talked to  otherwise.
  2. I’ve learned that blogging inside a company that endorses blogging and encourages it is different and in many ways easier than blogging as an individual. They both  are fun and they both allow you to express yourself but blogging from within a corporate community of bloggers which includes the leaders of the company is a very nurturing experience.
  3. I’ve learned that blogging consistently takes discipline. I think it must be like the advice I have read to aspiring writers who want to improve. You have to write every day whether you feel like it or not. I obviously haven’t developed the discipline yet but I’m working on it.
  4. I’ve learned that one of the best ways to meet fellow bloggers and make new contacts and friends is to comment on other people’s blogs and link to them from mine. I’ve connected with or reconnected with people like Chuq, James, Jon, ThinGuy and Geoff.
  5. I’ve learned that you never know who is reading your Blog. A lot of of people including family, friends and coworkers read my blog. Of course I’ve also learned that a lot of people don’t read blogs.
  6. I’ve learned that reading blogs can be as big a time sync as writing a blog.
  7. I’ve learned that writing a blog can help you define who you are when you are looking for a job.
  8. I’ve learned a heck of a lot about the mechanics of blogging. I’ve learned tools like Typepad, Roller,  and Bloglines.

Here are my goals for my next blog year.

  1. Post better quality and more often. I posted something like 161 posts last year in my two blogs. Before the 50 I published in this blog I published about 111 entries in my Sun blog.  Some of the entries were better than others.  I hope to make even better written more interesting entries next year.
  2. Start the PortfolioMinder blog. PortfolioMinder is the new Intuit product for which I am the Customer Care Manager. It will be  a product blog with many authors so it will be interesting to see how we can make it really interesting, useful, thought provoking and well read. I’m looking forward to learning about how a product blog is different than a personal blog.
  3. Build the PortfolioMinder community. This is more than just a blog thing. I am really excited about helping to build a PortfolioMinder community. I’ve even got The Cluetrain Manifesto posted on the wall of my office.
  4. Become better educated about Intuit and write not just about PortfolioMinder but also about all the other cool things that Intuit is doing and about how impressed I am with the company.  I also need to develop a better sense of what it is OK to publish and what it is not OK to publish.
  5. Keep a good balance of postings on both work and non work subjects.
  6. Be interesting
  7. Continue to meet and engage with new bloggers.
  8. Have fun!

PortfolioMinder

I took a job at Intuit back in June and since then have been working on PortfolioMinder, new software for financial planners that Intuit is coming out with. Our Marketing web site just went live. We are introducing the product at the Financial Planning Association  annual meeting  in San Diego this week. I’m really looking forward to talking about he product to planners at the convention.  The web gives a very good overview of the PortfolioMInder Product.

I’m the customer care manager for PortfolioMinder. I am having a blast being involved in the launch of a new product. Many years ago I was the customer care manager for another brand new product. The company was called Ansa and the product was Paradox. I saw then and I really believe now that the customer care organization can have a big impact on the success of a product.

We’ll be starting the PortfolioMinder Blog and Forum soon. I am looking forward to the learning experience of seeing how a product focused blog works and how blogs and forums can interact. I think that maybe a forum can replace the comment part of blogging. We’ll see.

Piano Lessons

I take piano lessons. I took lessons briefly as a kid and started again in March of 1999. I have very little if any natural talent and even after 6 years of lessons I don’t think I’m very good but that’s not the point. I really enjoy the whole process. I play for myself.

I am a firm believer that almost anything can be learned if you work hard enough at it. Algebra comes easy to me but to a lot of people it doesn’t. I have some talent at Algebra but even someone with no natural Algebra talent can learn Algebra . It is that way with me and music. I’ll never be great but as I take lessons and practice regularly I am constantly improving. I love seeing the  progress.

I find that playing the piano takes total concentration so not only am I learning music but I am also learning how to stay focused. And most of all I just enjoy it.

I also believe that taking piano lessons is good for me. There was an article in the New Scientist a few months ago called 11 Steps to a Better Brain. It is a very interesting article but the point that is relevant to this  blog entry is that music lessons may improve your brain. I can believe it. But the bottom line is playing the piano is just plain fun.

 

Dunkirk

As I read about New Orleans and the failure of the evacuation efforts I am reminded of Dunkirk. If you don’t know the story it is an inspiring one. At the beginning of WW II the British and French Armies were  trapped by the Germans at Dunkirk in North-East France. What happened still gives me chills when I think of it. An army of military and civilian boats, many of them small pleasure and fishing boats captained by fishermen and  private citizens evacuated over 330,000 Allied troops across the English Channel. I urge you to read this account.

When our Dunkirk happened and the citizens of New Orleans were trapped by the rising waters or even before that when the poor needed evacuating before the hurricane, imagine if the mayor or the governor had called for a citizen army to help evacuate New Orleans. There is no doubt in my mind that a call for an American Dunkirk response would have resulted in awesome results. We would have risen to the occasion. If the English government had not called for every small boat available to help evacuate Dunkirk, Dunkirk would have been a New Orleans kind of disaster instead of one of Britain’s finest hours.

A Somewhat irrelevant Question

When I read this blog entry about Google arrogance that Dan Gillmor posted  on Bayosphere  it made me think of a question I have been asking myself every time I drive by the Google headquarters in Mountain View. The Google headquarters is in the former Silicon Graphics building on Amphitheatre Parkway just down the street from Intuit. At each entrance to their parking they have a uniformed guard posted. The guard  checks cars as they drive into the parking lot. I wonder why their parking lot needs guards? Maybe there are other corporate headquarters building in Silicon Valley that have parking lot guards but I don’t know of any.