DavePayne.com

VMware is becoming a big boy now, a very big boy.  Two billion is a big number.

$2,000,000,000

Two thousand million.

or better, for the geek inclined, and to make it look really big, how about in binary, appropriate for a technology company:

2 000 000 000.00 = 0b1110111001101011001010000000000

I used google calculator to do that conversion.  notice the 'b', it gave up. Can't find many calculators that do binary to the billions,  must be a big number.

When I started working with VMware in 2003, they were not a big company relative to today.  I think revenues were in the $150M range or so.  There were maybe a couple hundred employees.  Certainly a respectable size for a software company, but no Oracle/Microsoft/Symantec/CA/Citrix competitor.  I admit that I fell in love with the technology at the time and became quite an evangelist for them.

I remember going to a partner conference for Citrix in Feb 2004.  Mark Templeton, Citrix CEO, gave a big rah rah speech and spoke about how the vision of the company was to become a $1,000,000,000 (1 billion) dollar company.  Citrix had been around for nearly 15 years at that point had achieved revenues of nearly $600,000,000 (600 million duckets).  As a partner I didn't care a bit for that vision, but whatever, if it gets Citrix excited, sure.  They almost made it by the end of 2005 with $900M, and overachieved in 2006 with $1.2B.  It took them over 16 years to get there.  And the last push was driven solely by revenue from many acquisitions, if you remember, Citrix was on the acquisition warpath for several years.  They had to get away from being the one trick remote access pony to becoming a total platform of sorts.

VMware has followed a similar path, but has done it twice as fast, with broader adoption and acceptance marketwide in my opinion than Citrix has ever been.  Many of the loyal Citrix fanboys all changed religion to VMware, in fact many of the VMware SEs in the early days were Citrix turncoats.

So a little rambling today to say to VMware "CONGRATULATIONS".  And an even bigger congratulations to EMC, who really gets to enjoy the financial success of VMware.  Citrix grew to a mega-software company by acquiring companies to get there.  VMware did that too, but achieved the biggest momentum push from being acquired by EMC in 2004.

I still believe that the EMC acquisition is the single largest factor that accelerated VMware's growth.  Certainly VMware had fantastic products, genius level engineers and was one of the most innovative companies at the time.  But none of that was getting recognized by the market at large.  As a guy that was on the street evangelizing the message at the time, take it from me, I saw it first hand.  The technophiles were passionately in love with the technology, but Joe Customer had other things to do than take a risk by running his servers in these "virtual-whatever-they-are's".  Post EMC acquisition in 2004, VMware became a household name overnight.  The EMC machine for lighting up a worldwide campaign that drives brand recognition, credibility, distribution and anything else needed to grow was all VMware lacked to hit it big.

And hit it big they have.  $2B in revenue and $200M of that is pure profit.  Smartest $625M EMC ever spent.

Perspective

---> If I could put things in perspective however...VMware/Citrix/EMC and the rest of them have labored and toiled for many years to become billion dollar software giants.  And with the wave of a magic goverment issued pen, our weasely elected officials spend that away as if it fell out of the sky from a money fairy.  A billion dollars appears as a larger than life number when you are a startup company dreaming of becoming what Citrix and VMware have become.  It is a nearly insurmountable goal.  As a bureaucrat, who has likely barely balanced a checkbook in their lifetime personally, a billion dollars is something that gets spent as a minor earmark to some other piece of legislation.  It's not enough to even upset lunch at the Press Club with.  Wave it away....gggrrrrr.....we work too hard for that type of disconnected leadership....




-dave

 In the first post on this subject, I spoke about how I've been able to arrange my home so I can effectively work from home.  The major focus of that post is on the physical side of the equation, with the most effective element being the door bar, a device that not only bars the door shut, but communicates to the family when I'm working and when I'm free.


Once I was able to conquer the physical barriers to working from home, I had to tackle the technical barriers.  A major challenge to working at home is the fact that you are physically separated from the people you work with.  Obviously this is why we typically trudge into an office every day, so we can bug each other much easier than we could otherwise.  With the right approach, we can invite our peers into our world to bug us on our schedule, and it's almost as convenient as being there in person.

Now, just like working in a corporate office, there are pros and cons to working from home.  The fact that you are physically separated from your colleagues, be they co-workers, clients, partners, etc, presents a benefit and challenge.  Benefit?  It's much more difficult for others to bug you at random.  Challenge?  Ad hoc communication and general socializing can suffer. 

Fortunately there are several technologies which make the world a much smaller place and mitigate some of these communication gaps that come from the distance.

There are some obvious technologies I use whether I'm at home or the office.  I won't cover these since they are ubiquitous (high speed Internet, email, cell phone, etc, blah, etc).  Let's focus on the stuff that makes working from home as good, or better, than working from the office.

1.  Skype
Benefits:  Cheap calls, Free Video Conferencing, IM included

I'm a big fan of Skype.  Free calls around the world.  Easy, decent quality, free video conferencing between 2 people.  I use the paid version of Skype that gives me an actual number and let's me call land lines from my computer.  Since Sprint is the anti productivity network w/ crappy coverage at my house, I generally use Skype for most of my calling from the home office.

Now Skype is cool, but you also need coolio headphones to use with Skype.  Of course you could use some speaker/mic combo on your laptop or computer, but a way better option is to get something built for communication.  Nothing better for rich 2 way audio than the stuff designed for gamers.  I use a Fatal1ty over the ear headset with a detachable mic. 

It's great for having a conversation where you hear everything evenly in both ears.  The quality is great.  I'd say 95% of the time Skype does me right with great voice clarity.  That's probably as good as any cell phone as far as I'm concerned.

2. IVDesk
Benefits:  Access anywhere, anytime, from any computer; Everything protected with no work on my part

I've been working with IVDesk for a couple of years now.   They have a fantastic solution for eliminating much of the pain associated with running corporate IT.  Their offering, essentially IT as a service, or I've heard them call it, Service as a Service.  IVDesk is short for Internet Virtual Desktop. They simply do it all for you and let you access your corporate desktop via an internet connection.  The desktop runs in their datacenter with all the functionality you'd expect, Windows, Office, Internet browsing, file sharing, Exchange/Outlook mail, etc.  Everything is there, monitored and protected 24x7 by their professional support staff.  I met IVDesk a while back when we were searching for a home for
Covalent Financial's Hosted Quickbooks service.
IVDesk became the provider for hosting this service for my friend Chuck Palmer.  They have provided fantastic service, always on uptime, and been a very good partner for him and me.

So I have a desktop that lives in the IVDesk cloud.  I can connect to it from any machine with a remote desktop client (which means any Mac/Windows/Linux/iPhone/Palm Pre/and others).  What's cool is not only do I not have to do any maintenance on this thing, it is always there.  If my machine takes a one way trip to the dump, I just find another machine and connect back to my session.  It picks up right where I left off, not skipping a beat.  No worries about losing data at all, it's all protected from the mishaps so common with PCs and laptops.  Plus, it's always fast.  If my machine is dogging for whatever reason, my IVDesk just zooms along since it runs from dedicated server hardware and is connected to a really really fast internet connection.

If you had an IVDesk connection that you used for work, think about how nice that would be on those days in Minnesota where it drops a foot of snow while you're sleeping.  You wake up and say, oh well, instead of driving for 3 hours through that junk, I'll just log into to my IVDesk from home and get right to work while those other poor souls battle it out on the freeways.  Very nice, very convenient.

3.  TokBox
Benefits:  FREE Multiuser video chat and video conferencing

I have to mention this snazzy service I just discovered a few weeks ago.  Situation:  I was to collaborate with some colleagues over at Agosto on a client presentation.  We were planning on running through the presentation all together.  I couldn't make it onsite, so planned to dial in and listen over the phone.  Not as good as being there, but at least I could listen in.  Then Eric Bandy invites me in to a TokBox session.  Wicked cool.  A flash based site that let's you have up to 20 video streams participate in a realtime video conference for the low low price of nothing.  Eric pointed his laptop at the presenter and I was at the presentation. 
Super cool.  I'm sure it would be useful for doing remote presentations, team meetings, and chatting with friends/family.  Certainly a great way to make collaborating with the team easier when you're working from the home office.  (Just make sure you dress appropriately...)

4.  Pandora
Benefits:  Freakishly genius music stations customized just for me

I know Pandora really doesn't have much to do with making working from home any better than working from the office, but I tend to use it ALL the time when I'm in the home office.  In the corporate office, if I listened to music, it was with headphones.  So I typically wouldn't because I didn't always have some nearby and I'd constantly be taking them off to talk to someone or make a call.  At home, I have speakers plugged into the notebook and I can crank music as loud as I want, muting it for calls when needed.

Pandora makes the music experience delectable.  It learns my tastes and finds stuff I'll likely enjoy.  For instance, when I'm doing work that requires serious thought, I play my "Thinking" station.  It's preloaded with classical, acoustic and movie scores from composers like John Williams and Hans Zimmer.  When I'm doing less serious stuff, let'er rip with anything from Jack Johnson to Eddie Vetter.

5.  Shower
Benefits:  I don't smell; I feel like a pro

Silly I know, but hells bells man, you gotta take a shower once in a while!  When I work from home, it's most tempting to jump right into work straight out of bed.  No harm there, but I certainly feel much more like a civilized human being when I shower/shave/get dressed in something decent even if I'm not going to see anyone else that day.  I always get more done from home when I dress appropriately.  Call me a behaviorist - Feelings follow behavior.  Dress professionally, feel professional, be professional.

If you have any other killer ideas for making work from home less work, drop a comment below.


-dave

If you have known me at all since 2002, you probably are aware of the company I founded Xcedex.  I recently left the company and have moved on to other things.  This change has prompted quite a change in my daily work life.  One big change is the fact that I don't work from a corporate office anymore, but am working from my home office.
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I've never worked exclusively from a home office since I've entered the professional world.  Doesn't mean I don't work from home, I've worked from home, from a plane, while driving through Roanoke Virginia on a laptop and cell phone while eating a Chalupa.  I pretty much work 24x7 from anywhere it seems.  But my official office has always been a cube or physical office somewhere.  As a consultant, I've grown accustomed to being able to pack up my "toolbox" and take work with me wherever I go.  I have a handy leather bag with subtly installed wheels for this purpose (save the shoulder from dislocating).  Nonetheless, the docking station and multiple monitors have always lived at the corporate office, not at home.

The transition to a home based worker has been interesting.  I hear the ads and see the flyers on street corners all the time promoting the idea of working from home.  For me, that has always been a nightmare.  Rather than bliss, it's been blah.  It means working on the couch with a laptop cooking my
thighs, conference calls being joined by screaming 3 year olds, and animals walking on my keyboard.  Basically home is home, and not suited for work.  The only way I could get real work done at home was after everyone was konked out for the night.  So I'd be up from 10:30P till who knows what crazy hour I'd finish up.  That translates into a rough morning the next day.

Good news is, I solve problems.  And this is a problem like any other.  I didn't have a space that was conducive to getting real work done.  When I say "real work", I mean the kind of work where your brain is actually working, thinking, creating, innovating.  The kind that requires you slip into that mode where you've completely immersed in the subject.  For me, as a confessed single tasker, this is the only way I can really get stuff done.  My most genius work comes out of this mode.  And I could never do it at home.  Now I can.

To be honest, I couldn't really do my best work in a corporate office that often either, even when I used the shut the door type of techniques.  When I'd be working on a big design for a client or creating some badness diagram or seminar presentation, I would have to disappear into a place where no one could reach me.  That meant either I had to be in a seat at 36,000 feet or hiding in a library cubicle in an undisclosed location with my phone off and no email or IM.

As a public service, I decided to share some tips I've discovered for making a spot in my home into a place where I could be effective in my work, whatever that would be.

As I've thought about this posting, there is a lot more too it than I originally thought.  So I'm breaking this train of thought into two posts.  This first post will deal with the physical side of a home office experience.  The second will deal with the virtual side, some ideas and technologies that make working from home as good, or sometimes better, than working from an office.

Without further ado, here it goes, the how I created a paradisiacal office space within my home.


Here's a quick list of categories that I needed to address to make House of Payne into Home Office of Payne:

• Private Space
• Workable Desk
• Place to store paper stuff
• How to get rid of paper stuff
• Printing
• Whiteboard
• Technology
• Light
• Place to chill
• And my favorite invention, "The Anti-Distraction Device" - Interruptions low, thinking high

Private Space
First of all, I have an advantage that many people don't, and that is a room I could dedicate to an office.  And it's a room with doors that shut off access to everyone else in the house.  This is a big step that leads to privacy pretty quick, and I realize others don't have the luxury.  If you need something like that I can recommend a good home remodeler.

Ultimately I think the way to achieve a good office space at home has to create privacy for you.  This is somewhat obvious, but really important.  As I stated earlier, the best work comes from a mind that is able to deeply concentrate.  I read an incredibly insightful book on this topic from /\ndy Hunt, the pragmatic programmer.  His latest book as of this posting is "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware".  He speaks as a software developer, who of all people have a job that is nothing but a thinking based activity.  However I believe the content is universally application to any person that wants to use the blob of flesh in their skull for something greater than filling the space between your ears.  Andy Hunt talks a lot about how to create the right environment to tap into your own cognitive abilities.  This is the book that got me into doing mindmaps for organizing thought.  If anyone has enjoyed a seminar, presentation or most any other complete work I've produced in the last couple of years, thank Andy for arming me with some extra thinking tools.

My buddy Jeremy Pries recently did some actual remodeling in his home office space to create the privacy he needed to get work done.  I know he put an extra wall in his loft and some other goodies, including some funky yellow paint or something.  Maybe he'll post a writeup on that and show some pics.

Workable Desk

2nd issue to deal with is a good desk.  I happened to run a company that moved offices a couple of times.  In our last move, we shed much of our furniture, so I was able to take a desk and move it to the home office.  In the past, I built a similar U shaped wrap around desk with inexpensive materials from the Homer D. Pot.  I like lots of space on my desk.  I want to be able to spread out materials so I can see everything I'm working on.  And I need room to throw a server on the desk and tear it apart or fix Mom's busted PC or something.  So I like the U shape wrap around desks where I sit in the middle in a swivel chair.  Maybe its just that I idolize Captain James Tiberius Kirk and have always wanted to sit at the helm of the Enterprise in his awesome swivel throne.  I am the Captain of my home office..."Sulu, Warp factor 7, engage".

The executive office chair is nice.  But I like to work with my feet up on something.  Not necessarily up on the desk, but just elevated above the ground.  I had various things under my desk for a while that I'd rest my feet on.  But one day I had enough and decided to get serious about a foot rest!  So out to the garage I went.  I rounded up some wood, carpet, glue, screws, staples and 20 minutes later I had myself the perfect footrest.







Place to store paper stuff
I sat down one day a few months ago and decided it was time to get my office organized.  I had a couple of file cabinets with paper docs from every job and venture I'd been involved in.  I also had various piles of stuff that was cluttering my life.  I don't know about you, but my brain doesn't work well when I've got clutter everywhere.  So the first step I took was to pull out all of the files and trash everything I could.  A quick trip to Office something led me to a $50 paper shredder and a means to dispose of most of it.  I got some of those file boxes for stuff that I actually needed to keep for a while.  The rest went through the shredder and into recycling.  Amazing how much paper can accumulate over time.  Once I was done however, I had freed up a lot of space and had plenty of room for files that I'd need to have on hand for my new ventures.

How to get rid of paper stuff

The other thing I started doing was scanning documents and storing them digitally.  I use an Epson Artisan 800 scanner/printer for this work.  Pretty slick autofeeder system that scans to PDF over a network.  I'm not a paperless office fanatic, nothing against paper, I use the right tool for the job.  But if I can scan and store I do.

Printing

Sometimes the little things really end up bugging me and just have to be dealt with.  Printing was this way for me.  I don't want a printer on my desk, takes up too much real estate that I want for working.  But I didn't have a better place in my office for one.  So I went out and found a little side table that I could make a printing station.  This works well, it sits in the corner, holds the printer and all the extra paper that I need.  Out of the way but easily reachable when needed.

Whiteboard

I love using whiteboards.  Rarely can I have a technical conversation and resist the urge to jump on the whiteboard and draw my ideas.  I think this is because my whole technical world is largely abstract in nature.  Pictures really do speak thousands of words.  Drawing out concepts helps me communicate not only to others but myself what it is I'm thinking about.
Naturally I needed some good whiteboard space in the home office.  Now, there are several options here.  Some are fairly simple: buy whiteboard, hang whiteboard, done.  Others are much more involved, but really cool (IdeaPaint).  I didn't want to invest a mint in whiteboards nor did I have clearance from the Queen of my home to start painting walls, so I took a simple out.  My doors are glass.  Dry erase markers draw on glass really well.  Problem solved.


Last step to whiteboard bliss is markers.  Requirement:
- Arms reach from the whiteboard.
- Out of reach of kids hands.
- Permanent home so they don't get lost.

Done.

Technology

I live in the world if IT.  For those of you that just had nightmare visions of a demon like clown stalking children rural towns, I'm not talking about the world of that evil clown Pennywise from Stephen King's book, I'm talking about IT as in Information Technology.  Tangent alert:  that movie terrified me as a kid. shook me to my bones.  Clowns are just evil.  I read another book that solidified my anti-clownness, Life Expentancy by Dean Koontz.  Great read, clever story, love Koontz, hate clowns.

Back on track.  Much of my professional life revolves around all types of IT stuff, servers, storage, PCs, network gear, software, virtualization etc, etc, etc.  All the stuff we use to automate and accelerate the mundane and repeatable in our lives.  Naturally I need some room in the home office to interact with this junk.  The common element amongst most ever modern day piece of technology is...you guessed it, electricity.  Need lots of it and it needs to be accessible.  When I designed the house, I made sure the contractors put extra power in every room including sockets in the floor.  Beyond that, I've got extra power strips hidden in the underside of my desk and around the office so I've always got a plug available when needed.  A little battery backup/UPS supplements when I not only need power, but clean power to protect expensive junk from getting hurt by jumpy power.  Point is, I've got power within 3 feet of anywhere I'm likely to need it in the office.  You should see my garage, tons of power sockets.  Like a dose of good luck, you can never have too much access to power.

A have various actual technology devices in the office as well of course.  I think I'll cover those in the follow up post to this.  More to come on that topic.

Light

If you can't see, you can't use your eyes.  If you try to use your eyes without the right light, you'll break them and now you're in bad shape.  So get light, lots of it and good light at that.  I have a halogen light above incorporated into the ceiling fan.  Another stand up lamp that projects extra light fairly evenly throughout the room.  Then a desk lamp that spotlights the working area right in front of me.  This reminds me that I need to get another LED flashlight that plugs into the wall with a rechargeable battery in it.  Those are great devices, they always stay charged.  When the power goes out, they turn on automatically.  Avoids the problem of no power and dead batteries in the flashlight.  That is the last piece of my lighting needs in the home office, I'll stick that under the desk in the out of the way power socket.  Easy access to a bright light to highlight when I'm looking for a jumper I've dropped on the carpet or digging into a motherboard.

Place to chill

Sometimes I need to get out of the desk chair and kick up the feet, read, or just take a nap.  Gotta have a couch in the office for this purpose.


"The Anti-Distraction Device" 
-- Interruptions low, thinking high

This is my favorite feature in the home office.  I love this idea the most because it is a great example of systems based thinking, and underscores the point that a system doesn't have to be a complicated technology.

My problem was that I couldn't be in my office without being interrupted by someone barging into the room with some distraction.  Coaxing, yelling, asking, persuading, screaming, cajoling...I tried them all and for some reason my 2 year old wouldn't listen.  A shut door may as well be invisible in my house.  And while tranquilizer guns are effective, the ammunition is expensive.  So I had to come up with something else.

A simple lock on the door would prevent people from coming in, but they would just bang on the door till I relented or popped a fuse.  I don't have a lock anyway on these doors.  It dawned on me that the medieval castle architects had it right.  If I created a slab that would link the doorknobs together, no one could come in.  Further, they can see through the glass doors so they would know the lock is on.

I went a little further with this idea.  I knew that my lady would object to anything that didn't look professionally made, (my office sits next to the entrance to our home, so she has some veto power over how crazy I get).  So I had to make it look nice, while still being effective.  So I designed a simple bar that I sanded, painted and attached a handle to that matches the other hardware in the house.



It is thin enough to fit over the door handles, but thick enough that it wedges in really tight.  I painted it red for 2 reasons.  [1] it needed to look finished, [2] Red means stop.  The color is the communication system to anyone outside the office that work is in progress inside so "Stop!" and let dad work.  This single device has made the biggest difference in successfully working from home.  Now when the 2 year old sees the red bar on the door, she knows I'm working and there is no way to get in.  After a day of trying unsuccessfully to get in, she now just moves on to something else.  The moment I take the bar off, they know work is done and I'm free game.  It's an effective, and very inexpensive system to create and maintain.


What am I still missing?

- I don't have a mini refrigerator in the office, that would be nice.  Keep in on super cold so drinks are just above the freezing point, and get slushy when you open them.

- Exercise equipment?  Pull up/push up bar.  A little something to get the blood pumping, but nothing as obnoxious as a stationary bike.  Although, it would be nice to have a treadmill in the office.  I like to pace while I talk on the phone, this would do the trick.  Plus there are some clever thinkers that have created walking office environments.  My friend John Folkestad, CEO of Salo, LLC participated in a study with the Mayo clinic where they had stand up desks made from treadmills.  Everyone lost weight and seemed to enjoy the extra exercise.  That group went on to found Muve, where another friend, Tom Hudson, is now the CEO.

- A urinal.  Call me crazy, but I've always thought that it would be really awesome to have a urinal in my office.  Maybe a bit unsanitary at first glance, but really handy.

- How about a projector and 100" drop down screen as a "secondary" monitor?  Makes spreadsheets much easier to see, among other things.

What else my dear reader?  Any tips on making my office more paradisiacal?  What have you done to make working from home less...work?

Stay tuned for a follow up on some sweet tech I use to make my home office functionally equivalent, even superior, to a corporate office.




-dave