The Big 5 0

Bear with me here, this is a ramble on kind of post. Nothing like this one was.

Never thought I would be an author, but the chance came along, I took it and I have an author's page on Amazon.

I never made it to the cover of Rolling Stone, actually I never made the cover of any magazine. However, I was included in articles in CIO magazine and many other websites over the years.

Had some newspaper articles written about me, got included as a case study in how to grow a community on Linkedin in an executives book.

Turns out I wrote a few IBM Redbooks with people over the years, in return IBM made me a Redbooks Thought Leader. We did the first Redbooks video from the community to IBM at the time, because I wanted to give back for all the help I had received over the years.

Somehow I have written over 1,100 blog posts. When the muse is loose, run with it.

Got my name in Playbills, actually quite a few times, while I worked on Broadway. Best time of my life, aside from Ron Perlman (at the time doing A Few Good Men)looking like he was going to kill me when he was running to 2nd base during the Broadway show softball game. Stories of people I met while on Broadway could fill many posts, it was also when the Berlin wall came down.

Traveled all over South America and Europe, thanks Citibank and IBM.

Got sent to Venice, Italy, for work, not once, but twice. Best place on Earth, I proposed to my wife Vanessa while there with her, not on business.

Live tweeted the Palm Beach Opera, for 2 seasons, that was fun and free, hope it helped their ticket sales.

I miss my '62 vette, should never have sold it. I also miss the 3000GT.

Worked on Wall Street for a few years with Bankers Trust which became Deutsche Bank and in the World Trade Center on the 44th floor for Bank of America. The Wolf of Wall Street movie was pretty accurate for that time period.

Lived in London for 3 years while working for Lotus and wrote a Pantomime that was performed, I played the Godfather character. Had a great boss at Lotus and friend who recently after 49 years left IBM for HCL. I should never have let him down and left the team, but that is how life works out sometimes.

Moved to Boca Raton to be near my grandparents and mom after leaving IBM, got cable TV installed just as the 2nd plane hit the World Trade Center.

Started a business that was going to do $3 million in sales until our supplier stopped working with small companies. I tried to buy them in an auction, I lost to a VC firm by $25million. They turned around and sold it for $900 million. No thanks to GE capital who would only offer $50M. Yeah that hurt.

Worked with Burger King at their World Headquarters, twice in Miami, the 2nd time because my name was still on the names.nsf log from years prior.

I was in Caracas, Venezuela just weeks before Chavez took over.

Been on planes that engines stopped, caught fire, parts fell off, and had bomb threats, just another day of traveling when you are a road/air warrior.

Survived my teenage years and my college life, somehow, pretty sure a few people never thought I would, I never gave it any thought but to those that worried, surprise!

Worked the field at FIRST Robotics events as a robot inspector and helping kids understand there is more to life than the internet, school or work inside of them.

Mentored startups at MASSChallenge Israel the last 2 years and saw some of them get to the finals, others get funded and more succeed beyond their wildest dreams. It is a great feeling knowing you helped in some small way.

I was fortunate enough to be an IBM Champion since 2013. And thus listed on Wikipedia. My kids are impressed, the rest of the world, not so much.

My 3 kids have no idea what life was like before they came onto the scene. It is like a different world, times change, some things stay the same. I used to make an awesome Beef Wellington.

Never thought I would Home School my kids, but I did for 2 years. They claim to remember things I taught them so it was not all wasted time.

Brewed beer once because everyone should do it, but my friends who still get to do it regularly are living the dream and I am happy for them all.

It was while home schooling that I started the Daf Yomi as they started the new cycle, and 7.5 years later it will finish next January. You can have your marathons and mountain biking, this is mine.

Owned Amazon stock in their early days and sold it after it doubled. HUGE mistake.

Once parked my car up a staircase.

Tequila bowling in college. Sorry to the guys at the end of the hall.

One of my first public presentations was in front of thousands of people at Lotusphere Europe and I have enjoyed every presentation I have given over the years since then, be they business, technical or educational in person or online.

For better or worse I have worked for myself all these years since college, aside from 3 years at IBM, 2 years with an IBM Business Partner and usually from the comfort of my home.

I have all the trappings of young startup offices, Pinball Machine, books, loud music, my dog at my desk, open fridge and bar, video games, MAME and puzzles and games.

I have moved countries 4 times and pretty sure I am staying put here in Israel, but I can commute to anywhere in Europe pretty easily so what's not to like?

Even volunteered for army duty for a week because that is what you do in a country where every person matters.

If you made it this far and still reading, you probably have stories from my past we shared together and hopefully we will get to share more of them over the next 50 years or more and some of you I will see soon in San Francisco.

Thanks to Vanessa and my kids for trying to keep my young and fun.

What is your Candy Corn?

For those not familiar with the reference, Candy Corn is a sweet confectionery candy which is quite sugary and shaped like a triangle with 3 colors in it. Wikipedia explains it this way. The picture below is from Wikipedia as well.

I could eat a mound of it and not think twice about it. To me Candy Corn is one of the best candies. It is a happy candy, for me, and I enjoy eating them, in many ways which I will not bore you with here. Sadly for me the only Kosher ones I know of are from the Jelly Belly company. When I shared space with my friend that had a candy business, the smell from a freshly opened 10 pound bag was just heaven. Like being in a doughnut shop when the first ones come out of the oven.

When you get sucked down by the world, what makes it brighter for you? As a parent, the natural answer would be my kids, but being realistic, we all want something to brighten our days that just exists. Coffee is not my thing, chocolate is okay, peanut butter cups are a crutch for me, but I have been known to go way, way, way, out of my way, just to snag some candy corn, and keep it for when I need it most.

But it is not always available. Thus, it becomes a really big treat when it is available. Like having my own time machine to just be a kid again.

It does not provide creativity, my friends provide more than enough for me. It does help bring the fun, the kid in me wants to have that the adult in me may not have time for always.

What sparks you to do something? What helps you get your work done? What makes your boss disappear?If you don't have something that brightens your day, what do you do to get through it? The goal, the item, whatever it might be that works for you, keep that with you always.

Be a kid! Have fun! If YOLO then you should enjoy as much as you can.

Job Hunting Time

As of a few days ago I am newly available.

A free agent on the scene looking for a company to call home.

Sure I'd love to restore an old corvette or another pinball machine, but not enough money in those hobbies for the average person with a family.

What I can do is restore customer service departments or service delivery organizations to award level status.

Over the last year and a half, I was managing the delivery of services for over 500,000 people, prior to taking on the role of Director of Marketing with the same organization.

While managing the group, we began to document everything, we discussed managing their time and meetings properly, reporting to both the customer, and ourselves, when something was amiss, and have a little time left over for some skunk works projects.

I was empowering my worldwide team to let them police their own work and provide proper documentation across all projects. The real test was if I could complete their task if, God forbid, they were hit by a bus. Luckily, I never had to do this, but many times the details were available when we needed to report on the data.

Once I felt I had completed my efforts, I wanted a harder challenge, marketing was that challenge. Although I laid out quite a plan, had 2 months of blog posts planned, analysts lined up and bloggers ready to go, it was not to be at this juncture.

And so my friends, I am searching for a new role. A role that lets me do what I do best, solve problems, restore services to a golden age when service to a customer meant something to them, and us. Along the way providing social media content for my staff and company to get found and recognized as a great team is just an added benefit.

Tweet/Call/Email/Skype me from this blog or my http://about.me/keithbrooks page.

Did That A-ha Moment Pass You By?

No matter your age, location, job status or religion you always have an opportunity.

Sometimes we do not see a light at the end of tunnel.

But it is really no different than trying to install a piece of software that is giving you a hard time and you just need that one little extra push or tweak to make it work.

Your life is the same.

While it's true, you regret the choices not selected, you always have time to make them.

Maybe not today or tomorrow, but this week, next weekend.

Your friends and family want to help you, no matter how weird an idea or plan, but you have to have one.

What if you don't have one? Not to worry, one will come to you.

Maybe you:
Have an application idea, there are people that can help you with it.
Want to write a book or play or movie, editors are standing by
Should spend more time with your kids, ask them what they want to do
Should also spend more time with your spouse or significant other, let them know

No matter what it is, you can do it.

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

It Was 2 years ago today

That this blog, as it appears now, was started.

A few false starts along the way, but I basically found what I wanted to write about, in between bouts of technical enlightenment.

Some posts have been more fun than others and Fridays always brings new readers and some great comments, but 369 posts later, I still can't believe that averages out to one every other day, there are still things I want to post about.

Over the next month or so I expect to complete a revamp to this blog, in fact it is moving to a Domino Blog template finally. The domain name is booked and loaded, just trying to make the template more "me" but friendly to you as well.

Most likely the FudBuster Fridays posts(started 8/8/08), after I hit #52 will be stopping. I decided I wanted to write a year of them, sometimes they are about Lotus, Microsoft, Google, Sales and/or Business, sometimes just a quick note for your weekend like #42. Were it not for some ex-MS people Fudbuster Fridays would never have started in the first place. Maybe I will continue them, maybe not time will tell.

Some vital statistics for this blog:
1 baby of ours was born during this time and she is the cutest.

The pinball machine was finally rebuilt and played....and played...AND PLAYED.
I picked up an Ideapad S10e and that's our #2 laptop here in London and it is the best thing I bought last year.

Not sure what language "Unknown" is, but it's my 4th largest readership behind English, German and French(maybe it's all the Microsoft people). For you and others I hope the Google translation works "good enough".

Browser? Firefox 3 beats everybody by FAR... IE7, IE6, Chrome, Safari in that order follow.

Since tracking this site with Woopra from 11/2008 it's had almost 15,000 hits. For some that is a day or a month but while I endeavor to find more readers, I also am happy anyone reads it. After all who really wants to read a blog about Lotus, right? :-)

According to the great and powerful Planetlotus.org I have somehow managed to reach the top 10 +/- blogs in total hits for my posts. Go figure, I never did think I would get that far, after all who cares about what us admins think anyway?

Looking forward to the future and seeing everyone in Orlando or sooner if our paths can cross. Now on to my Domino 851 server to work on that blog template.