“The Bear” on Business

A few years back, Colin Powell told the world that Saddam Hussein had WMD.  This erroneous information cost the world dearly.

A couple days ago, Rob Powell blasted on his blog:

Folks seeking to measure the growth of traffic from online video have to look past the videos viewed and take into account the changing parameters of those videos.  The explosion, if it happens, will come from more videos being viewed at higher average bitrates and for longer times - a triple effect.

What is it about Powell’s and erroneous information?

Triple effect?  Triple?  I repeat triple?  Rob, how could you be so mistaken?  You are a man with spreadsheets.  You have Ike Elliott, a telecom genius, as a friend. You don’t have a day job like me, so you have plenty of time to get your facts right.   Triple?  You know what I’m saying????

Did you take into account the impact of Internet users watching HDTV TV shows?  How about when they wirelessly zap the show onto their 48″ flat screen?  How about live sports?

Triple?   Ike, help him out here and I will let you off the hook for dinner.  Blow up the screen size to a big flat screen.  Make resolution HDTV.  Think about a football game.  My guess is your would have to triple the triple and you’d still have a long ways to go. 

 (Rob, Ike–I love your blogs!)

Rob Powell, are you kidding me with your post measuring online video.  Next thing is that you will be agreeing with Ike Elliott that price decline will offset bit growth, causing the bandwidth market to be flat. 

You see, Rob had the audacity to write:

The explosion, if it happens, will come from more videos being viewed at higher average bitrates and for longer times - a triple effect.

Isn’t this crazy?  Isn’t it nuts?  Isn’t it short-sighted?  I haven’t seen a Powell lose this much credibility since there were no mobile WMD trailors in Iraq. 

Unfortunately I ran out of time to explain.  I’ll pick this up tomorrow.

Envysion and Zayo got together Friday afternoon for a barbeque.  Samantha S. initiated this and did a great job of organizing and getting people there.  Weather cooperated–85 degrees and sunny. 

Just a few short months ago, Zayo and Envysion co-officed.  Now they are only two blocks away from one another.  However, both companies have added lots of new faces–so for many folks, it was the first time they met.  It was good to see them interacting with one another.

Thanks Samantha for organizing.  Also, thanks to everyone who spent a few hours of their afternoon relaxing together.  And Zayo Bandwidth folks– if it wasn’t obvious, Scarano was just kidding when he said anyone at the bq would need to show a half-day vacation day…at least I think he didn’t mean it.

Yesterday, I posed (with Ike Elliott’s help) the question of whether Content is the King of the Network.  To explain my views, I need to travel back in time to the year 1991.  I was working at Ameritech Development at the times, alongside names that will be familiar with many bearonbusiness.com readers:  Lynn Refer, Mitch Moore, Jason Weller, Jason Lee, Dan Foreman, Jeff White, and Mike Callaghan.   Though I enjoyed working with these individuals, I am eternally thankful to Kevin O’Hara for rescuing me from what could have been a 20 year career in the Bell system.

One of my last projects at Ameritech was participating in a review of video strategy.  Should Ameritech invest billions in fiber to the home/node?  Should it use Cable TV’s fiber/coax approach?  Would xDSL suffice?  Should it buy CATV companies and, if so, in region or out-of-region?

The team was divided.  Not equally though.  In fact, the vote was about 8 to 2.  I’ll give you one guess which side of the vote I was on.   

The point of contension was the importance of content.  The Ameritech team was convinced content was the key to value creation.  HBO, CNN, and ESPN–these are eons more important than the network.

I postulated a different view.  I agreed that HBO, CNN, and ESPN were extremely valuable franchises in their own right.  The question in my mind is why were these brands owned by cable TV companies?  Was it coincidence?  Was there a cause and effect?  If so, what was the cause and what was the effect? 

What do you think?   I will complete the story tomorrow. 

In an interview with Europe’s Der Spiegel magazine last week, Warren Buffett commented on the US economy.   The Oracle of Omaha believes we are already in a recession, even if economists don’t yet know.  The richest man in the world warned: ”It will be deeper and last longer than many think.” 

A friend of mine and former (& hopefully future) co-worker is a St. Louis Cardinals fan.  Though this is more forgivable than if he pined for the Chicago White Sox, it is still quite annoying to us Cubs’ fans.  Anyway, I received an email from this wayward baseball fan.  He was kind enough to offer me constructive feedback on this morning’s blog post.  His taste in baseball teams is questionable, but his message was spot on.  

I’ll refer to this guy as John as it is a generic enough name.  To protect his identity, I will change his last name to Idaho. So I’ll call him John Idaho. Wait, that sounds made up.  Let’s see.  How about John Montana.  Yes, that is much better.  So, without further adieu, here is John Montana’s feedback:

While I completely understand your position and why you wrote [it], it can come off to folks as you always thinking ‘if I am working with you there are better uses of my time’ to the employee. This may be intended in many cases but I imagine there are instances where it is in your best interest to spend ongoing time to continue to groom and shape folks as part of their particular career maturation and growth, correct? I guess what I am saying is there may be very purposeful times where you are choosing to work with someone in a positive sense and if they read that bolded sentence they may feel a bit of angst or even resentment knowing that you are only spending time with them because you feel you have to and that you may be quietly thinking ‘I have better things to spend my time on.’

The passage John is referencing is: “So, for all of you involved with me on a professional basis, you heard it here first. If I am deeply involved in how you are doing your job, know I am doing so because I feel it is necessary. Know also that I feel it is a sub-optimal way for me to spend my time. If you complain about my micro-management, you will now hear me utter ‘performance is the price of freedom’. ”

John, thanks for bringing this to my attention.  My words are horrible.  The context of the blog post was situations when I am being perceived to micro-manage employees.  It is where I am being overly involved with suggesting to a person how they should go about doing their job.  Fortunately, I am not often in this situation today.

Telecom and business are my passions.   I love collaborating with employees/team members on all sorts of business topics.  I learn from them–like when Mark Minor took us through what he is doing on Google Maps.  I bounce ideas off of them.  This is why I do what I do. 

I know the mysterious John Montana knows this and again I thank him for bringing my attention to this wording.

Zayo has colocation centers in Minneapolis and Memphis.   The Land of 10,000 Lakes is cold; the home of blues-haven Beale street is quite the opposite.  Though I prefer sun rays to snow plows, it turns out cold is better for the colocation business. 

It’s Too Darn Hot appeared in the March 20th, 2008 edition of Business Week .  The tag-line of Steve Hamm’s piece:  ”The huge cost of powering—and cooling—data centers has the tech industry scrambling for energy efficiency.”  The tiny fishing village of Grindavik, just outside of Iceland’s capital of Reykjavik, is seeking to attract large data centers.  Their advantage: cheeper to compat the heat generated by the servers. 

Though I don’t know if Iceland will be successful, I do understand major data centers are being considered for very cold climates.  

The pilot post in Sandi Mays’ blog covered definitions of financial terms. 

Operational finance is a core strength (in my opinion) of Zayo, Envysion , and other companies where I’m involved.  We put a lot of focus into the processes and reporting.  Clear, consistent definitions of terms are the foundation of effective processes.

Yesterday Ike Elliott posted an interview with Matt Steinfort and Rob Hagens of Envysion.  This Telecosm piece is one of the best, most comprehensive descriptions of what Envysion is up to and why.  Those with a telecom, particularly VoIP, background should be able to see the tie-in between Managed Video as a Service and the Softswitch article. Thanks Ike for taking the time and Telecosm real estate to do this.

Sandi Mays has been part of our team for lots of years.  She played a major role at ICG and is a huge contributor at Zayo.  In addition to her role as my chief of staff, she oversees HR and she drives a lot of the operational finance processes and reporting for the company.   In her spare time, she helps with revenue assurance.

Last week, Sandi launch her own blog.  She will focus on how to apply business tools (such as salesforce.com, google groups, excel, and wordpress) to run a business more efficiently.  She will draw on techniques that we use within Zayo and my other portfolio companies.  I often describe what we do and why; Sandi will describe the how.  For many employees within my companies, her blog will be a great training and career development resource.  Please add www.businesstoolsblog.com to your reader.  Visit it often.  Tell your friends about it.  I think you will get a lot out of it.