Steven Milstein’s Blog Onboarding folks onto social software, 10 minutes at a time.

Connecting the dots – Part 2

There is no plan... well, maybe a little one.

Garr Reynolds' 'Career Advice '08' - Page 99

In my previous post, Connecting the dots - Part 1, I provided three sources of inspiration for this three part series.

While I may not share much in common with Steve Jobs - aside from a first name, I do feel I have to stop trying to connect my dots looking forward. I've been in the business of software development for over 25 years now. Truth be told, if I had to do it all over again, I would still be in this business - but I'd do things a little different. There's nothing I love more than creating things. And the only thing more exhilarating that thinking

Wouldn't it be great if you could... yada yada yada"

is actually bringing it to life.

Back in the dot com days, I was fortunate enough to get asked to join a start-up. We put together an e-learning solution & without going into too much detail, I have yet seen anything better. But as you may have guessed, it was a dot com & it suffered the same fate as many. I held on for three years, despite only being paid for one & picking up the odd contract here & there. Others, for their own reasons, clung on to hope even longer. For myself, with a wife (Anna), two kids (Sara & Alex) and many of the other things that come along with them, it was the hardest lesson I ever learned. It was also the best time of my life. From early morning conference calls to one's that stretched into Sara's soccer games, or, Alex' bottle, to working through the night feeling quilty while Anna was alone watching TV, or asleep in bed. We were at it 24x7 and would gladly have worked more if we could have only found a way.

What started from a 10-minute phone call, went to whiteboard, proof-of-concept, alpha, beta and live. For the first time in my development life, I actually understood and contributed to the value of marketing, sales, service & support. It was the best & the worst all neatly bound together. But my dot (com) s were not going to connect as dreamed.

Within a few months, I was fortunate to get a much appreciated job with IBM Canada's Montreal Rational Software Lab. And while it was a great experience, I never really felt my dots would all of a sudden start aligning. And so, as Seth Godin might say, it was a good Dip-dot, but a dot nonetheless.

And so, here I am. If you've seen any of my last few posts, then you may know I've been trying to build a case for the shared services of a Community Product Manager. To be quite honest, it's been a tough sale. Not so much because the concept lacks merit, but more so because it's difficult to only talk about delivering value. Today, you have to deliver value first and then build on that in order to get the business. Unfortunately, the cost of delivering first and selling later - in this particular case, is just too high for me. So I'm going to consider this a little Dip-dot and simply move on.

My next and final post in this three-part series will lay the foundation for my next dot. In the meantime, it'd be nice if any of you could share some of your own dot-stories here.