Tech in the Trenches

Carl T. Holscher fights for the customers.

Author: Carl Page 105 of 152

The web is made of people

By

On March 21, 2014

In Observations

The best thing you can do for your customers is to stop thinking of them as customers.

Think of us as people.

You are helping people. You are serving people. You are a people yourself. A specific people. A person. You are a person. I am a person.

We’re all persons. Each of us have feelings. We can hurt. We get angry. We are sad. We take things out on strange people because we don’t know them.

We are all people. Think about that when you see the tweet mention you or your company. Think about that when an email comes in. It was sent from a person.

It’s easy to forget that we’re all people sitting at our keyboards or smartphones. The words and pictures aren’t generated by computers or monkeys. It all comes from people.

People who can hurt. People who are irrational. People who have bad days.

We’re not replying to eyeballs. We’re not talking to clicks. A page view has never dissed you on Twitter. Every interaction you have is with a real live person. Treat them like people!

We are not users.
We are not customers.
We are not clicks, page views or eyeballs.
We are people.
And deserve to be treated that way.

How far we haven’t come

By

On March 20, 2014

In Observations

Recently, my wife and I visited the Newseum. I revisited the Berlin Wall exhibit. Going through it, I also watched the video about the reporters responding to the 9/11 attacks. Seeing the antenna from the top of the World Trade Center and parts of the debris brought it home.

Our history is not that old. The Civil Rights movement is only 50 years old. And still ongoing. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The September 11th Attacks were in 2001. Our country’s pain is not old.

There was an extensive photo exhibit from John F. Kennedy’s photographer and a great video montage of his brief presidency. He was before my time. But he was not in the distant past.

Our history is real and living. It affects us today. We do not live in a bubble. We are influenced by our past. We get to build our future into what we’d like it to be. It’s a future that will have many amazing events and people. It will be filled with terrible times and people. It will mirror our past.

History doesn’t feel real from the pages of history books or television programs. History feels real when I can reach out and touch the Berlin Wall. I can imagine myself living beneath the watchful, murderous eye of the tower guards. To live apart from family and friends. To not see loved ones for decades. What would that feel like?

The Civil Rights Movement. It’s not a done deal. It’s the start to a long, hard road. A road being walked by those who want to love who they want. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Everyone wants to be loved and to love. Everyone wants to live inside their own house and their own lives.

There are lessons the past has to teach us. But instead, we insist on re-learning the same
painful lessons. We’ve done a pretty terrible job of allowing everyone to share the rights of straight, white men. I don’t remember anyone voting for my right to marry. Rights are not a finite resource.

Women have to fight for equal rights.
African-Americans have to fight for equal rights.
Gays have to fight for equal rights.

Our history is not a collection of old, dead stories from books. Our history is now. Our history is yesterday. And tomorrow is a new chance to write it.

Why I’m not renewing my Washington Post Sunday-Only Subscription

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On March 19, 2014

In Observations

I was really enjoying the paper for a while. It had a lot of good coupons and the paper itself helped when making paper logs and camp fires.

I saved money. I started fires. I covered the floor when working on painting or projects that would get messy. It was a perfect typeset drop cloth. The newspaper served its purpose and served it well. I even read it periodically to see what the Internet hadn’t talked about days earlier.

But eventually, I realized no one reads the newspaper anymore. It’s not hip. My friends aren’t posting shout-outs in the classifieds section. It’s all news and events in DC. I can get that elsewhere, including the online version of the same paper. I don’t need it in print.

After Jeff Bezos bought the paper last year, I don’t know if I know where the paper’s priorities are anymore. I don’t know if it’s the same thing I bought into when I originally subscribed.

I don’t use the paper for anything anymore. And I have plenty of access to the archives in a pile in a closet so I’m more than ready for camping season.

I hope it continues to do well. I’ll check in on it from time to time. They still have an old Linotype machine in front of the building.

Hero Worship

By

On March 3, 2014

In Introspection

I don’t understand the draw of celebrity. I have never wanted to meet someone famous because they’re famous. They’re just people like me who happen to have public jobs.

The closest thing I would have to a celebrity hero is Trent Reznor. His music has been the soundtrack to my life for two decades. I have seen Nine Inch Nails play live six times and How to Destroy Angela once.

But if I were to meet Trent in a cafe what would I say to him? Would I even interrupt his day? I may go up to him very briefly and say thank you. Perhaps as he was leaving.

But he doesn’t need me to bother him. He’s a guy who makes music. He writes songs. He plays concerts. He writes soundtracks. He’s a guy who writes music a lot of people listen to and enjoy.

What right does that give me to interrupt his life? I don’t care about him as a person. I don’t need to talk to him. I don’t have a connection with him. We are not friends.

He’s a guy. Doing a job. That a lot of people get to watch him do.

This extends to professional athletes, actors, authors and musicians. They do great work. But I don’t need to meet them or be in their life at all.

www.madebyvadim.com from Unsplash.com

Embrace your tools

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On February 28, 2014

In Observations

It’s exciting to work with people who see technology as a tool to do great work. It’s exciting to see them embrace a new tool for what it can do. For what they can do that before was impossible. It’s exhilarating to be a part of that excitement.

So often I see people nitpicking software for what it can’t do. You didn’t use the right tool. That’s a bad solution. This and this and these are all better.

You know what? Having a tool for the job and using that tool to do a great job is all you need. Use the tools you have. Stop pining for a slightly better version of what you have.

Stop criticizing the tool for what it can’t do. Do great work with the tools you have. They can be bent and molded in surprising ways.

Your meeting platform can be turned u to a video teleconference system. A previously inaccessible event can be made available to the public. No longer would it require air travel and interrupting your life.

We can bring the events of an auditorium in Washington DC to people around the country. And that is magical.

It is so easy to get caught up in the debate about tools. But that’s a losing play. It doesn’t matter what tools you have. It matters what you do with the tools you have. And if you can make something great then do it!

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