Tidbits and Check this Guy out

I read this article a couple of weeks ago and thought about one of our field test partners (telecom) because they had some political issues shipping us some data due to (very legitimate) privacy concerns – as in their CSO going “are you guys out of your f$##$ing minds?!?”.  

As it turns out, there are several data obfuscation tools out there on the market, including DMSuite’s offering as described in this article. I’m curious if most companies’ privacy policies make an exception for data that’s been altered by such a tool and if so, is there some sort of standard or certification these tools must meet?  If you know anything about that, I’d appreciate some insight.

I didn’t know until last night that there actually is a CIQP Certification.  What is CIQP you ask? Come on, get with the program!  Everyone knows what a Certified Information Quality Professional is!  There is a whole website dedicated to DQ as well.  I had never heard about this professional category.  If anyone reading this happens to be in that category and/or CIQP Certified, I’d love to chat with you and learn more about it.

For those of you who think the economy really sucks, your deduction is likely valid.  Nevertheless, BI and on-demand software market indexes seem pretty healthy to me as this article demonstrates.  My conclusion: I’d rather be in the “avant-garde” BI enterprise software sector than working for SAP or Oracle at this point J

I discovered Guy Kawasaki’s Entrepreneurial Lectures delivered at Stanford in 2003-2004 via this videocast series and sat there mesmerized listening to every single clip for hours.   

Guy (who now runs this blog and this company) successfully evangelized the Mac in the mid-80s and now runs a VC firm called Garage Technology Ventures.  His reputation and track record are legendary.  In the clips, he lectures young Stanford engineers-to-be on how to become successful entrepreneurs, change the world, and keep their soul in the process.  These are the points (or quotes) from his lectures that were etched on my mind:

• Make meaning and make the world a better place.
  
• Don’t write a mission statement, write a Mantra.
  
• If your product is not unique and adds no value, you’re doing something stupid.
  
• Don’t ask people [customers] to do things you wouldn’t do.
  
• Be a Mensch.
  
• Hire infected people.
  
• Suck down.  The higher you go in the enterprise, the thinner the oxygen.
  
• A milestone is something that increases the valuation of your company.
  
• The valuation formula for a startup is: add $500,000 per engineer and subtract $250,000 per MBA.
  

All these points are perfectly in line with my personal experience.  But I’d never heard anyone formalize them in such an entertaining way before! And I don’t know that any comment can properly decorate any of these either. It’s one of those “you either get it or you don’t” kind of things.  It can’t be taught or inculcated by anything else than passion-driven experience.