He Opened Doors – This week I learned that tech pioneer Clive Sinclair left this mortal coil at age 81. Where not a household name today, back in the 1980’s his inventions including the Timex Sinclair TS1000 and other computers were all the rage for aspiring nerds. It was a small computer with a built-in membrane keyboard that used a TV as a monitor, and was known for overheating. Because of its narrow shape many of my friends called it a door wedge. Beyond computing he was also known for other electronics, including an electric car. Sinclair was on the scene at the time when the consumer tech world was in its infancy, and his nickname of Uncle Clive was only fitting.

Something Positive About Education – I feel every time I hear something about educating our young people it is always negative. This is why I was pleasantly surprised to learn about Student Sponsor Partners an organization in New York City supporting kiddos getting a great education. SSP was the feature of John Stossol’s latest video as he has been directly involved with them. They are student-focused, which means its centered around getting kids into private schools and providing them with mentors. As dealing with the machine that is public education is daunting, such an approach – though not for all – will help some be the best they can be.

Clearly As-A Disservice – There’s a phrase in the tech world, “as-a-service,” which refers to virtual technology rather than having physical servers. This week I learned this has been taken to new lows, as there is now something called PHaaS, or Phishing-as-a-Service. Yes, you, in the privacy of your own Internet connection, can attempt to steal the private information of the masses... ugh.

Clearly a World Class – Have you bought chicken in the last decade? If you are not a vegetarian or vegan, you likely have. If you think this is a silly question, it is, but you may be entitled to a check – seriously. A class-action lawsuit alleges collusion among chicken producers. If you live in one of the nearly 2 dozen states involved in the lawsuit, checked out the aptly named OverchargedForChicken.com and put in for what I am guessing may not even be a dollar per person.

Real-Life Agile Coaching – An important aspect of Agile work frameworks is continuous improvement. This is why roles with the name “coach” in them are pervasive. But do coaches need coaching? The obvious answer to this question is why AgilityIRL started PartnersIRL, a service offering that in a variety of formats . I took my Certified ScrumMaster training from Mike Stuedemann, one of the principals at AgilityIRL, and I know people will collaborate and learn greatly from this service.

My Time of the Year – Fall started this week, which I can’t emphasize enough is my favorite season. With this entry, summer exits.

Ticket Free or Free Tickets? – The NFL kicked off the 2021 season this past weekend, and the local team to me was featured on Monday Night Football. Thanks to my friend Jason Jacobsohn of Propellant Ventures, I was at the game with him and his friends. This game had a lot of firsts, beyond my first regular-season NFL game in a long time , it introduced digital tickets and cashless for concessions. As one might guess, it didn’t go all that well.

After I waited over a half hour to go thru a metal detector, there was nobody there to scan my virtual ticket in my phone app. Had we not sought out someone who was scrambling around to scan the tickets, would we have been in Lambeau Field illegally? I saw online someone I don’t know post they knew people who had gotten more people into the iconic stadium than had digital tickets for because nobody scanned them.

In addition the payment for concessions being by debit or credit card only, the stand I went to at halftime ran out of bratwurst. For Wisconsin, it may have well had ran out of beer or oxygen for that matter. One could blame under-trained employees or poor planning, but this is the juggernaut that is the NFL and I cut them no slack. The next day I got a survey from said football team asking me about my game experience. As most of the questions were focused around safety – physical and viral – perhaps their focus needs to circle back to what they are there for, an escape from the problems of the world.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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One Score Down – Happy business anniversary to my good friend Emily Brackett and her branding and design firm Visible Logic who celebrated its 20th year last Friday on September 10. Yes, she started a business the day before 9/11/2001. Despite this she grew the firm into a force in the space, with all the great work they do, plus unique products like Branding Compass and Mail on the Mark. I got to know Emily when she was in Chicago before relocating to the coast of Maine and we collaborated on several projects. In the Web world there’s a handful of people I wholeheartedly trust, and she is one of them. Cheers to the first 20 and here’s to the future!

Making Malls Mighty – In the last week I learned of 2 projects to convert empty mall stores into athletic facilities. A former Macy’s in Virginia will soon be an indoor 50-meter pool and one proposed in southern Wisconsin for a former Sears will be two ice rinks and a field space. As the shells of these stores are likely still in great physical condition (something I learned about from serving on the local library project advisory board) this is a perfect use for them. Now if we can just get a 50-meter pool at one of the empty stores around me in northeast Wisconsin...!

Training People in Person > Training People Remotely – As part of my job I train users on the Web content management system I support. Where I have conducted over 200 training classes over the years, only one of them was in-person, and it was by chance the participant just happening to be in my office. This past week I conducted my second one to a live, in-person audience, and it was a great experience. Proximity again played into it, and it made me want more in-person events of all types, and soon.

Nothing on Netflix – I was late to learning that 90’s hit TV show Seinfeld is coming to Netflix on October 1. Apparently it was previously streaming on Hulu, but I don’t have it. As much as I enjoyed watching the show when I did, I never saw every episode and can’t quote the show like most people I know. I will binge it.

It’s All About the Case – Presented without further comment is a link to my kiddos’ school system’s newly-launched COVID-19 dashboard. It presents number of cases and the percentages for the approximately 16,000 students in the school system.

Do Frogs Eat Broken Links Too? – Also new to me is the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool. I don’t pretend to know about every Web tool out there, and I am going to try this one out against the Web site platform I support.

Cleaned Out – I learned my favorite dry cleaner ever, Donny on the Spot, is shutting down at the end of September. They were previously a long-standing family-run business and during the lockdowns they pivoted to a purely delivery-based model. I wondered why they didn’t pick-up my cleaning bag this week, and then I saw the note on their Web site. It’s sad to see such a business go, especially one that had friendly, quality service and the nearest competitor being the most expensive dry cleaner I have ever encountered in my life. I wish them all the best of luck on whatever is next.

A Fish Called Carolyn – I get text messages like this all the time. No, my name is not nor was ever Carolyn. I have no idea who had my phone number before me, but maybe it was a Carolyn. And no, I didn’t click on this link. Please delete and block the number from any such texts like this you may get, and see you next time.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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After having run my own business, I learned that for as much of the advice you receive – invited or uninvited – by others, you really need to learn it the hard way in order for it to stick. This experience is priceless, though in some cases you can put a cost to it as you may have lost money in the process of learning it!

Brilliant Breakthroughs for the Small Business Owner Volume 4 is a chronicle of such advice. Each chapter is written by a different person or group of people, and offers hard-learned advice from those who lived to tell the tale. I bought the book as I know one of the authors, Mark Boeder. That being said, I wasn’t going into reading this book with any bias.

So some of you may be saying, why are you reading a book geared towards small business owners, as you aren’t one anymore? Even though I no longer have my own business and am no longer in consulting, I still approach my work as if I was still doing both. This approach has worked generally well for me over the years, and is why I have takeaways from the book. Here’s a few of the key ones that resonated with me the most.

Irreplaceable vs. Indispensable – In the chapter by Mark Boeder is the comparison of irreplaceable versus indispensable. He talks of employees who are irreplaceable are really ones who have positioned themselves to have retained certain knowledge to ensure they keep their job, where those who are indispensable will help you grow. Over the years I have seen both employees and consultants in both of these roles. The former hold their cards close to their chest and are protecting their turf. The latter are there to make you and your organization better, sharing their knowledge and wisdom, and as a result being more likely to be kept by said organization than the other. As you might guess, I strive to be indispensable.

Imposter Syndrome – This was a new term to be, however as I read Mike Raber’s chapter, it is something I was actually familiar with. Imposter syndrome is the sense you are a professional phony. In our society where job descriptions for some reason are supposed to match a candidate’s skills one-to-one, some may feel they are an imposter if their skills don’t match, and the delta to deeper knowledge is crossed with this feeling they are not genuine. “Fake it till you make it” is a common term on the other end of this spectrum. Over the years I have encountered many situations where I didn’t fully know what I was doing going into it. I would be honest about this and do my best – sometimes I was successful, and sometimes not so much. If someone else took the approach I do, I would never consider them an imposter.

Maslow’s Law of the Instrument – Many years ago I heard a quote from former US Army General Wesley Clark, where he said what I found in this book is Maslow’s Law of the Instrument, “... if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” In the chapter by Dennis Hill, he talks of integrating the various tools that are vital to the success and growth of a business. Where I am familiar with psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs from my Management 101 class in college (and used it in figuring how to deal with various DJs on my college radio station!), I didn’t know he also is credited with this quote and concept. It is something I often think about when I pull myself back on a situation and look at it from the Big Picture, especially when what I am doing isn’t working as well as I would like.

Brilliant Breakthroughs for the Small Business Owner Volume 4 is part of a series of books where business advisors and consultants share their wisdom, as well as offer their services. Where there is a sales element to the book, the stories told are genuine and can be taken for what they are – good advice. Though there’s no shortage of such books, I recommend reading this one, as it made me think and introduced approaches to me that I hadn’t thought of before. As I giveaway all books I read, this one was placed in a Little Free Library in a high-profile location, one in which I saw other business books.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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What’s New Is Grey Again – Years ago, I was dealing with what was called a “grey screen issue” when people would open the Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browser and the screen would be solid grey, then display the Web page. Users blamed my Web software for the issue, but it was a well-documented issue with (now) old versions of the IE browser. Lately, I – and others – have been seeing grey flashing using Microsoft’s latest Edge browser. They say there’s something for consistence, right?

A Bad Definition of Content Editing – Listening to the latest Marketing Over Coffee podcast that’s co-hosted by my friend and loyal The Hot Iron reader John Wall, Google is changing the title of some Web pages in search results. You see, you can use an HTML tag of “title” to define the page title. On the Web page you can define headings and subheadings. So the Behemoth Tech search engine may swap out the title you set with a heading. According to this article it’s actually not completely new. As well, it states that the defined titles are getting shorter over time, an intentional setting by Web page creators. I have mixed feelings on this, especially as I know many content editors don’t ever edit the title of a page. Have you?

Wiping Your Tracks As Clean As Possible – If you didn’t know your mobile phone was tracking your every move, please stop reading now, sit down, put a cold towel on your forehead and breathe! Now that you’re back, here’s a nice piece on the type of tracking that is done and how to delete Significant Locations from your Apple device.

A Different Kind of Big House – In a roundabout way, new to me is the TV series Alpha House, which was Amazon’s first original series that debuted in 2013. It’s the tale of 4 Republican US Senators who live in the same house in Washington, D.C. and stars John Goodman. I just finished binging the 2-season series and highly recommend it. Where it’s a political comedy, it pokes fun at all of politics and its arrogance. There was no definitive reason given why Alpha House did not continue beyond 2 seasons, but perhaps the timing of a 3rd beginning in 2016 may have played into it.

Threading The Tunnel – You must see the video in this story about a pilot who flew an airplane through 2 tunnels. Imagine spending a year of preparation to do something like this.

9/10 – Throughout the week I was thinking about where I started the day on September 10, 2001, which was where I am right now. Then I flew back to Boston that night and connected with a friend who was flying in from LA, which interestingly is where he is right now. I have written about 9/11 before and there’s not much more I can add to that. What I will do is tell the story of both 9/10, 9/11 and the days that followed to my kiddos, as they need to hear it firsthand.

What’s Tradition Is Delicious Still – My friend Eric was in my old stomping grounds of Western Massachusetts and I told him to stop in at Red Rose Pizzeria, which was my favorite place for delicious Italian pie when I was growing up. He sent me the picture above, and it was great to have another friend experience what I did. I say again as I have sent many people to the South Main Street restaurant and none have been disappointed.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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As I curate the last few weeks I am wondering what the big deal is about a one Alabama police officer who looks like one actor / former wrestler, especially as I share the look of about a quarter of the people who attend a pro football game on any given Sunday.

Simply Wrong – My last post on the previous 2-week period showed up a week late thanks to my selecting the wrong date. As I was on a road trip with the family, I wasn’t planning on blogging during our trip, so I scheduled the post to go live ahead of time. I guess it’s ok I made the mistake as I slipped into vacation mode?

Somethin’ Honey – On our trip we stopped at a friend’s farm where they have beehives and process and sell honey. It was amazing to hear how it is done, and I learned that you can eat a honeycomb – honey and the wax comb. Who knew? Though it’s ok to spit out the wax instead. It is also said that eating local honey from near where you live can help in fending off seasonal allergies.

A Better Place Than Pie – Pineapple margaritas go great with fresh Atlantic Ocean raw oysters. This is a much better use of the fruit than the sacrilege of putting it on a pizza.

Brand Flashback – When grabbing a bottle of milk for coffee one morning on our trip and, though not yet functionally caffeinated, I made a double-take at the brand on the bottle – Sealtest. I haven’t seen this brand in years, as I have fond memories of Sealtest Maple Walnut ice cream half gallons (when they actually 64 ounces of the dairy treat) in my home freezer as a kid. It turns out the brand is now used in the US only for milk and is bottled in Asheville, North Carolina, and no longer used for ice cream.

Video Flashback – In talking with a colleague about Web promotional videos for products, I recalled this video I produced to promote its internal employee database mobile app for a former employer. Though I don’t look back at my time at that firm with much fondness, this was one of the highlights of my time there.

Gaming The Ads Too – Being in remote areas of the US along our vacation shed light that ads in mobile apps didn’t display when I had no service. Apparently the ads are downloaded over the Internet in real-time, and the lack of service in spots made playing the games a better experience. Putting your mobile device into Airplane Mode will give the same, positive results.

Degoogle Yourself From Maps – One day for some reason I brought up a friend’s address in Google Maps, and I noticed the street view of his house was all blurred out. I made a mental note to ask him about this but forgot to. Then I ran across this article about how to remove your house from the various online map services. If you don’t want your house or license plates on the cars in your driveway to be for all to see – well, at least for those looking to go to your house – then you may want to look into doing this.

New Great Name, Same Great Intent – Congrats to the organizers of the Wisconsin UX (for user experience) Meetup group for rebranding it as Intent + Craft. I love the new name, as it speaks to the thought and work going into a great user experience. I can’t wait for them to resume in-person gatherings, but catch as many of their virtual events as possible.

Do You Signal? – A friend was persuasive in getting me to try Signal, an encrypted alternative to open text messaging. If you know my mobile phone number, you can find me there – go ahead and send me a message!

Ciao Italia – Italian airline Alitalia announced it is shutting down in October. Though I have never flown Alitalia, the brand has been a source of Italian pride and was the airline Popes would fly on. It will be “replaced” by a new airline, ITA, who is buying many of Alitalia’s planes, gates and hiring much of its staff. My guess is they are buying a lot of white paint to cover over a few letters in Alitalia’s logo in the interim.

I Was Working But You Didn’t Know That – When I got back from my vacation this week, I said I was going to be back to work on Thursday. However I was actually “in” on Wednesday, as I took the day as an “incognito day” – I was working, had my out of office messages still active on my email and voicemail, and used the day to catch-up on 2 weeks of emails and activity without anyone bothering me. The only person who knew about this was my director, and I had his blessing. I will do this again, as it made my official return much more orderly and stress-free.

Honest Is The Best Hotel Policy – As I checked into the Hampton Inn in Louisville Kentucky late at night for an overnight stop on my road trip, I noticed this sign at the front desk. At first sight I was expecting something like the legendary Riot House back in the day, it was a nice hotel and perfect for our family to recharge before continuing our trek. But rock stars roaming the hallways would have made for an interesting first stop on the trip.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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