facebook

As many of you know, I love facebook. I spend a lot of time on it, post my pictures there, re-post my blog there, etc. In fact, the other members of the Poken team are pretty big facebook fans too, as exhibited by this video that our Chief Architect posted of me doing one-armed push-ups (the day after working out my chest, OUCH!) today.

Yesterday, however, my relationship with facebook soured a little. We received notification from our lawyers that facebook was opposing our “Poken” trademark. Apparently they have trademarked the term “poke,” which seems awfully generic/untrademarkable to me. While I am honored that the facebook Goliath would even take notice of our organization, I’m disappointed that this is our first contact from them. In that we hope to bring them and their users a lot of value by being their extension into the real world, I hope they are open to engaging us instead of just opposing us.
As with all things, we shall see. In the meantime we will stay focused on building a better product to better serve our users (who are now hitting our site 40,000 times/month).

First Real Snow of 2009

Many of you may remember my blog entry last year about the surprise of snow falling one morning. That came on March 5th but this year I woke up to snow much earlier: this morning!

I spent Saturday in Basel at Startup Camp, a get-together for Switzerland’s entrepreneurs. The Poken team showed up en masse and we really had a great time. What’s more, fully 2/3 of the attendees bought Pokens and used them to connect with people, exchange contact details, etc. While we’ve known for a while that Poken can be very useful at a conference, this meeting was particularly suited for it because so many of the members use new social media such as twitter, blogging, social networks, etc. So the standard details included on a business card (name, email, phone, address) were less relevant than all of the new media identity information included on the Poken digital card. Cool! We were glad to facilitate people connecting.

GNR Rocks!

What a week it has been: 12-hour days, no recovery from jet lag (I arrived Monday AM on the red-eye from Houston.), a dev team that seems to be gelling/productive, lots of new orders coming in (We hit 30,000 website hits/month today.), trying to master the present while also planning out the future (a quickly moving target!), doing yoga in the conference room, sleeping in the conference room . . . Awesome!

I’m working on plans right now for our upcoming API that should really help us expand. In the background I’m playing the Guns N’ Roses discography–chronologically, of course! I can’t believe how strongly they entered the market! Appetite For Destruction is so chock full of awesomeness, it’s a wonder that 1987 was able to handle it. I should get to Chinese Democracy sometime this weekend–we’ll see how that stacks up!
My “life” outside of Poken was exceptional for two reasons today. 1. I suggessfully procured treatment for athlete’s foot at a pharmacy in French, and 2. I discovered that my gym has Wii Sports! Given that my life is already pretty much exclusively Poken + the gym, the Wii shouldn’t make too much of a difference in my daily routine.
This Saturday I will be in Basel for a Startup Camp event. I’ll have a chance to see the owner of my IMD Startup Project, Sobees, and some classmates. Speaking of IMD, today was the Class of 2009’s mini-Integrative Exercise, which I blogged about this time last year. It seems like MUCH longer than a year ago! My heart and support goes out to the IMD MBA Class of 2009!

Back in H-Town

Before signing on with Poken in December I had a previous obligation to attend an Association of Rice Alumni board meeting in Houston January 23 – 24. I could have nipped back for just a quick weekend but the airfare was literally an order of magnitude less expensive to come back for the entire week.

The flight over was good and featured stunning views of the snow-capped and fog-enshrouded Alps. I spent most of the flight working and planning out Poken’s Web UI refresh, which is coming in February. Once on the ground, my wingman and I had Niko Niko’s (the best Greek food around), watched Zoolander, and crashed.
Saturday night was a wonderful time. Four of my best friends in Houston had a guy’s night. We ate lots of red meat (buffalo, mmmm), drank some great wine, and played Wii until the wee (no pun intended) hours of the morning. Wii games included tennis, curling, left-handed bowling, and light saber duels, complete with light saber remote accessories!
The week has been an intense march of Poken work. We have so many improvements to the site and new features we want to offer our users that just wrapping my head around all of it is a major task. Plus, with the team back in Europe, communication is more difficult too. Fortunately the team is composed of really smart, highly qualified individuals and I know that they will rise to the challenge, no matter how hard the tasks are that we throw at them.
On Wednesday Larry McMurtry, one of Rice’s most accomplished literary alumni, gave a talk on-campus. I wanted to go but opted to focus on Poken work instead. Yesterday I managed to make time for a meeting with another distinguished Rice alum, the CEO of El Paso Energy. We had a good chat about the energy industry, the economy, and Houston’s future. While it is clear that dark financial times are ahead of us, it is hard not to feel optimistic after Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday.
It also hard not to feel optimistic about Poken as we now have over 20,000 website hits each month. There are challenges and competitors entering the market but I’m confident that, if we keep our focus on serving our users, we really can re-personalize the world of online social networking.

Google Tech Talk

Yesterday, a small group of us from Poken traveled to Google to give a Tech Talk about our product. It was cool to be invited and it was fun to discuss our design and future directions with Googlers. Several of them now have Pokens of their own so we’ll see what ideas they come up with!

We hung out at the Zurich office for a little while after the talk and this was notable for two reasons.
1. I played my first ping pong of 2009. It didn’t last very long and it didn’t elevate to Smash Ball status, but it was fun just to pick up the paddles again.
2. I played Rock Band for the first time and actually did pretty well. According to our host, I “rocked it like a hurricane,” which is appropriate on many levels. It’s kind of addictive; I have no idea how people get things done there!
Many thanks to Rupert et al for organizing the talk; we look forward to a tighter relationship with Google as we become more OpenSocial-friendly!

Parlez-vous Francais?

Another day, another milestone. Today was the first day that I conducted over half of my conversations at work in French. Woohoo! Or make that le woohoo! Note that I didn’t claim that it was good French. Of course, no Frenchman would claim that any of the French spoken on this side of Lac Leman is “good.” C’est la vie!

Today I also started re-reading J.R.R. Tolkien‘s The Silmarillion as the beginning of a chronological read-through of Middle Earth. Next will be The Book of Lost Tales, The Hobbit, and then The Lord of the Rings. Thanks so much to Lee and Sam for lending me The Hobbit oh so long ago! Of course I should really be spec’ing out the new Poken Web UI, defining our forthcoming API, and putting together the PowerPoint slides for Wednesday’s Google Tech Talk. I guess Tolkien will have to wait.

A Bad Week for the NFL

Blogger’s note: I no longer use the term “Redskins” but am leaving my prior references intact in the spirit of learning.

This was a terrible, terrible week for the NFL! It started when Peyton Manning was knocked out of the playoffs. With no Peyton, no Favre, and no Redskins, what possible interest do I have in the postseason? And speaking of the Redskins, they had major layoffs this week and my favorite employee of theirs was among the casualties. Boooooooo! To top it all off, the Texans fired legendary strength coach, Dan Riley.

Dan was essentially the originator of modern strength training in the NFL. He supported the Redskins through three Superbowl victories and I first met him at Art Monk Football Camp back in the early 90’s. Even then he was way ahead of his time, constantly using science to produce better and more effective strength programs. His goal wasn’t to make his players stronger; it was to help them reach the maximum strength allowable by their genetic potential–and time and time again he achieved his goal.
He is simply the best and another team’s gain will be the Texans’ loss.

My Diet

My daily diet can be summed up in two staple food groups:

1. bread
2. stuff you put on bread
Now before you think my diet is boring, let me clarify that there is a LOT of stuff you can put on bread! In the past few days alone, I have eaten bread topped with the following:
honey
cheese
smoked salmon
Nutella
chicken curry sauce
arugula
mangoes
papayas
and pretty much every combination thereof. It’s nice living across the street from Globus, which has the most Whole Foods/Central Market-like grocery store that I’ve found in Lausanne. They have several whole grain selections and the bread is always fresh, crusty, and delicious. Until I’m moved into a more permanent apartment with the means to boil water for pasta, bread will probably remain my main source of complex carbs.
Of course, I don’t eat exclusively bread-based meals. I also eat dark chocolate. 🙂 The Swiss swear that it’s good for you and I am happy to accept that as gospel without trying to verify it.
Today was a milestone for me: I successfully responded to a request for directions from a lost couple on the streets of Lausanne–and in French!
This week will mark another milestone: on Wednesday I and some other members of the Poken team are headed to Google’s Zurich office to present a Tech Talk. It was just a couple of months ago that I was there interviewing!

What a Week

We are off and running! Poken is really taking off in several key areas. We are now adding ~5 new Poken accounts each hour and our website traffic is growing exponentially. Although our uptake has been mostly in Europe so far, we are receiving phone calls and emails from people around the world interested in distributing and selling, so look out, Poken could be coming soon to a store near you!

However, our philosphy is to focus on getting it right and serving our existing customers before we put too much emphasis on expansion. For example, we have a great group of users in the Netherlands who are providing valuable feedback and ideas every day. The last thing we would do is abandon them.
As product manager, my job is to manage the development of the product so that it becomes more valuable to them and other users. I’ve spent this week putting a comprehensive development plan in place and will be working all weekend to configure Jira, a system to help us implement it. This will help keep my mind off the fact that I’m in the wrong time zone to watch NFL playoffs!
Speaking of which, I spent an hour on the treadmill this evening. To keep my mind off the cardio, I flipped through the channels on the screen in front of me and settled on . . . ski jumping and biathlon! Winter sports, here I come; I’m becoming more Swiss every day!