Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sometimes, a business makes a conscious decision to dump a customer segment.  It just got dumped by VRBO.  I am not bitter.  They did a reasonable job of signaling their intentions and providing notice of their changes.  But I am not sure it makes sense.

My wife and I have been in the cottage rental business on Catawba Island Ohio since 1986.  In those early days, we advertised in area newspapers and all correspondence relied on the USPS.  All that was painful.  Then VRBO came along and was perfect.  Based on a flat annual subscription, they provided an advertising platform and purpose-built application for conveying property information, rates, availability, and responding to inquiries.  Templates helped with all the repeatable emails like “Your Money is Due” or “Thanks for Renting with Us”.

HomeAway acquired VRBO in 2006 and in a roll-up strategy of many vacation rental websites.  They created a dominant marketplace with shared rental listings.  As a paid subscriber, VRBO continued to get better under HomeAway and I grew more satisfied as they rolled out new features.

In 2015 Expedia acquired HomeAway/VRBO.  And things began to change.  Alas, they began making it a booking platform and not an advertising platform.  That is, they wanted to be like AirBnB.  Initially, VRBO offered an option to pay more for an annual subscription to bypass their requirement to book through them.  However, they optimized their search results based on listings where they were getting booking fees.  Some customers got frustrated.  But I was OK because I really wasn’t that dependent on their search results…renters looking for Gem Beach only have a few options.

In 2016 they added additional service fees to the traveler.  Now I was frustrated!  My prospects were frustrated.  So I began to look for other options.

Today, my contract with VRBO expired.  For the same cost as their old annual subscription, I have my own website – www.gembeachvacationhome.com – with all the same functionality that VRBO provided me.  I use a dedicated gmail account for all correspondence and can display my property availability using the gmail calendar.  Everything is functionally working the same although I know I will have a bit of work to overcome VRBO’s SEO prowess in search results.

See you later VRBO.  It was a nice ride.  As you can see, I am doing fine.  I hope your shift to become a booking platform works out for you.

Last week, my good friend Stefanie Lightman and I blogged about the expression “bus driver” to better describe the all-important project leader.  Evidently, political cartoonist Jeff Stahler agrees with us based on his political cartoon today describing Ohio’s newly elected governor.  In researching our piece on bus drivers, I stumbled upon www.urbandictionary.com which has some very funny but NSFW expressions.  That triggered some more thoughts about SFW metaphors and expressions that creep into our (my) business language.  Here are a few that make me smile.

Fred Brooks Move Over

Fred Brooks could have titled his famous book, “Nine Women Can’t Have a Baby in a Month”, instead of the “Mythical Man Month”.  As much as we may be tempted to correct the zealousness of software engineers, product managers and marketers, there is this thing called a critical path whereby adding more people to a project won’t make it go any faster.  I guess there are only so many seats on that bus.

From my Canadian Friends

“The dead moose on the table.” I’ve only heard this expression in Canada.  Here in Ohio, and I think in the rest of the world, the equivalent expression for an “awkward meeting topic” is “Elephant in the room”.   I’m curious why the Canadians felt the need to localize this expression.  Just like Canada, we don’t have elephants in Ohio, but that didn’t compel us to localize this expression to “The flattened deer on the side of the road” just to work in an indigenous animal.

“Bob’s Your Uncle” is an expression I heard used as a concluding remark after a passionate speech.  My first thought was “But I don’t have an uncle named Bob.”  I didn’t admit at the time that I had no clue what this meant, so after the meeting, I looked it up and learned that this expression is used in all the commonwealth countries.  It seems the more common equivalent is “I rest my case”.

Random

I learned “I turn in to a pumpkin in one hour” from my former colleague George Florentine.  It is a great way to tell your colleagues that they better finish their business with you in one hour because you aren’t hanging around even if they have more to discuss or say.

“I am cornfused” is an expression I recall from a high-school coach and teacher.  Most people just think you’re illiterate and cannot pronounce the word “confused”.

“Ping me” is another common expression that means contact me via any means possible – email, txting, mobile, or yelling out the window.  It has its roots both as a network test between two computers and in sonar detection in naval warfare.

“Just sayin” seems to get lots of use lately.  Add this to the end of all your highly offensive or insulting remarks to take the edge off.

Feel free to share any of your favorites that I’ve missed.  SFW only please!

Before Twitter.

I was an early adopter of myYahoo.  I built highly organized tabbed pages on all things that were important to me.  It didn’t bother me at the time that I had to decide what was important to me.  In fact, I felt empowered that I got to decide rather than some pre-historic layout editor deciding for me.  This was revolutionary for our industry.

My tabbed pages included included headline news, business news, technology news, news on specific companies including their stock price, score of my favorite sports teams, weather in locations that I frequent or where business friends live, and some cartoons.  My myYahooo page became habitual.  I would look at it once a day – either first thing in the morning or last thing before signing off.  It was embedded in my daily routine.   It was the tool that answered the question, “what is going on around me that I care about”?  It was the ultimate of what Yahoo wants to accomplish with their information services.

After Twitter.

Well, I just realized that myYahoo is no longer habitual.  I only go there now for Yahoo Finance where I have nicely organized portfolios of every public company in every software industry segment.  Yahoo Finance still does a great job with drill down into public company specifics.

Twitter is the new habit that has replaced myYahoo as the information service that answers the question “whats going on around me?”.  And unlike myYahoo, I don’t even have to decide the topics or sources.  I just follow people in Twitter from a variety of different disciplines whose opinions and insights I value.  That is so simple and easy.  So as they tweet on topics important to them, those same topics are likely to be important to me.  I feel better informed now using this service than I was previously using myYahoo.

Given the success of Twitter, and my own experience of willingly delegating “importance” to those that I follow, I have to conclude that relationships are a better source of importance than my own judgment.

Game Theory is Not Game Studies

I’m encouraged that I’ve been encountering confusion between game theory and game studies.  Encouraged, as I’m hopeful this confusion is a result of both disciplines gaining exposure.  Since its just language getting in the way, perhaps some comparison and contrast will help.

Game theory is a branch of mathematics used to predict and optimize outcomes.  Game studies is the discipline of designing games to increase engagement.

Game theory is often applied to business strategy.  Game studies is applied to increase engagement with customers or in corporate training.

If you’ve ever bluffed in poker, you’re applying game theory.  If you play Farmville or use Foursquare, then you are using products that apply game studies.

This blog post from Mind Your Decisions is a great summary of business and everyday applications and articles about game theory.  This HBR guest blog post, from a leading video game designer, contains excellent insights into game studies.

If you were CEO of a video game company, you’re applying game studies in your products.  If you’re that same CEO trying to decide what action to pursue about software piracy of your games, you need game theory.

Game theory and game studies are both sciences about human behavior.  Game theory is rooted in mathematics.  Game studies is rooted in most of the “ologies” like psychology and anthropology.

I represent Priiva Consulting, a consulting firm that specializes in the application of game theory for strategic decision making.  I recently met Rini Das, CEO of PAKRA, a remarkable firm with a SaaS offering that specializes in the application of games to improve learning, engagement, and efficiency in business processes for sales and support.

If I was an advocate of game studies, I might have formulated this post as a game to increase engagement and learning.  I haven’t.  So just stay tuned here…this is the first in a series of posts to share my experience and the enormous potential of game theory in strategy.

Welcome to There is No Someday. If you have ever started a sentence with “Someday, …”, then this blog is for you.

This past year, I eliminated one of my Somedays by starting a second career. I had spent 29 years in enterprise software and was ready for a change. I didn’t complain (much) during those 29 years. And if I did, it was about traveling so much and missing my family. I couldn’t have asked for a better 29 years. I was fortunate to begin my career as a senior in college with some visionaries at Battelle who developed software to support research and library environments. We had some very nice success in the early eighties. Our software ran well on Digital’s VAX computer system and lots of research departments shunned mainframes and bought VAXs in that era. We were a commercialization darling of Battelle who spun us out as a wholly owned subsidiary Information Dimensions, Inc. (IDI).

We mostly hired kids right out of college. Mix young enthusiasm X right product X right time and you get an incredible result. The eighties were an awesome ride upward. But when Digital smashed into a brick wall in 1990, IDI caught its own turbulence of tough times and ownership changes before eventually joining forces with Open Text Corporation in 1998 which allowed employees and customers to take another ride upward. From that time, the growth oriented Open Text grew from $60M to $1B. That was a lot of fun and I feel blessed to have had such a great opportunity provided to me.

Nevertheless, the itch to try something new and revolutionary prevailed, and my career change is now in full gear. I am a strategy consultant for Priiva, a boutique consulting firm that specializes in applying game theory to decision-making. I am focused on finding companies facing huge decisions yet lacking a robust decision process. Hopefully, I’ll find most of those companies here in Ohio and I’ll loose my Super Platinum Elite United Marriott status.

My ambition for this blog is to share my experiences in strategy and planning, both in business and personal life, that might help companies, families, friends, or individuals eliminate a Someday or two of their own.