The New Frontier - 2010 In Review
With our holiday travels, I find myself working on 2011 projects - the completion of my second book, the review of my first book in its third edition, and working on my 2011 business plan. Today, though, I'm not feeling the rush to toth future. On the contrary, I felt the tug of the past, especially the last year.
One of the best things about the week between Christmas and New Year is the retrospective programs that are broadcast on television and published by print and web content publishers. There is something visceral and content on the evaluation of what happened in the past twelve months. Our day-to-day life tend to do everything, limiting we have the right-now and the foreseeable future focuson. Retrospectives Give us a chance to pause and consider what is and how and why it did.
Apersonal favorite of mine is the revision of those deceased since the ball last fall. Remembering those people and all they have achieved in life is forcing me to look at time in the broadest and most relevant of the senses - Life. Somehow that perspectiveis establishment and reassuring for me.
With that introduction, I want to say that for me and mine, 2010 was a year of some anda some pretty dramatic changes pretty amazing occurrences. Here are some that come to mind.
To the Cloud and Beyond!
For those who are not sure what "the cloud" means, I will try to shed some light on this phrase and how it - the cloud - actually being used .. The cloud points to computers (usually lots of them, called "servers") that are in remote locations and out there for the purpose of storing your stuff - anything and everything electronic - On them. In essence, they replaced the hard drive of your computer. Everything you need to get your stuff stored on the remote computer ("in / on the cloud") access an Internet connection and a Web browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, or their siblings.
The benefits of cloud computing are many, but the biggest advantage is ready to access your information virtually anywhere in the world of any apparatus or can be connected to the Internet, including a computer, atablet (think iPhone) or a smartphone.
In recent years, both for our business Kayaking (Outdoor Play) and my consulting business (QuietSpacing) moves to the cloud, namely:
Outdoor Play Works on Virtually NetSuite SaaS and Google Apps.
From mid 2009, we (the outdoor play team) started to migrate the systems we use to run our business from a variety of software programs - the custom-built Web site, Mail Order Manager (order and customer management), Cooler E-mail (newsletters), and QuickBooks (financial software) - to a single Software as a Service (SaaS) platform called NetSuite. Although the migration was painful, very painful, we are now Outdoor Play from a cloud-based provider. This means that whether we are offering for sale on the website, sending out a newsletter with coupons to purchase products on our website, processing an order in our warehouse that was received through the website, order products from our suppliers to store in our warehouse and selling our website, pay for the product we ordered from our suppliers, with our great team of people to make all of the above happen, or reviewing our business performance by looking to a P & L or balance, it's all done in one place - NetSuite. NetSuite and is accessed through a browser. And browsers used to view the Internet. So, to run Outdoor play, all we do is sit on any device connected to the Internet, go to the website of NetSuite, login, and all we need is there! (And the cost is about 1 / 2 FTE per year.)
After>
Computer Crash: My notebook crashed in May 2010. I went to the nearest Best Buy and bought a new laptop out of the closet. When I am home, I turned it on, let the first installation to run (about five minutes), the box connected to the Internet, opening a browser and is back to work ... period, ready. Total down time between seeing the blue-screen-of-death on the netbook, and actually paying bills to NetSuite to the new laptop = 1 hour. No software to load, not integration manage to recover no documents, nothing. Up and running and continue with the day. Amazing. Holiday Travel with No laptop - First Time Ever: We traveled to see family during the holidays weekend. We went on Thursday morning and returned Saturday evening. Given the short time and the place of full program planned for our visit, I decided to put my laptop leaving home as an experiment in simplified travel. I did have my iPhone and I was comforted by the knowledge That everywhere we went had a computer connected to the internet for me when needed. The result was, "Wow!" How wonderful it was to have a lot less baggage (the computer case) to carry the entire weekend. Furthermore, Outdoor Play really exists because of the cloud, I was able to fully keep up on all my work. I came home with three or four e-mails that require further attention and a to-do list that seemed I have been at home all the time needed.
Outdoor Play is the more mature of my two companies, plus it has a full-time staff. Everything runs on NetSuite, and Google Apps are efficient. Thiscaused me to look at the QuietSpacing side of the house to see what would be achieved as well.
QuietSpacing dabbles in The Cloud
There are several examples where I dabbled in cloud computing QuietSpacing 2010. The most important migration was an online CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. I eventually chose to go with Zoho CRM after trying a number of other vendors. The main reasons for choosing Zoho CRM were (a) it is free for up to three users and (b) it is fully customizable to include fields that are specific to my needs.
In the next twelve months, I expect to move more and more of my consulting practice to the cloud. The single biggest obstacle right now is the availability of a laptop and a reliable Internet connection when I speak a large audience on the road. You would think that conference facilities would have chosen, not always the case.The butthat real solution is to remove the slide from my real general meeting presentations, but that's not an option during my training. Stay tuned on this!
From Living in MultipleLocations in Living on the Move
One of the major shifts over the last few year thatoccurred Bécam permanently this year - our desire and that of many of our friends, tobe more mobile in how and where we live. And some of our friends went to the extreme.
Viva Las Vegas!
About five years ago, we started our search for new "winter hunting grounds." Between the gray, cold and dark of northwestern Montana and the gray, cold rainy Northwest Oregon, we were done with "real" winter. We moved our way through Tucson, AZ, Reno, NV, and Bend, OR, for trips to Las Vegas. Who'da thunk? But here we are, happily nestled on the western edge of one of the biggest party cities in the whole world.
If we want to head out walking, it is 10 minutes away. If we want to take in some world class entertainment, it's 20 minutes. If we want to fly away in a direct, nonstop flights to hundreds of locations around the world, it is 15 minutes. And if that's not enough, we also get 360 days of sunshine per year and daytime temperatures in the middle the 50s during the coldest winter months. Viva Las Vegas is our motto!
BER-Mobile Lifestyle
Not to be outdone, have three of our friends went beyond having more than a place to live. They have taken to the road and the water in a big way. My business partner (in Outdoor Play) and its financing traveling the Americas in their customized Sprinter van. Checkout www.sprinterlife.com to learn more about that adventure.
And my two best friends Both have taken to the ultra-mobility. People have been living in his Ford F350 Crew Cab pickup with dual dual sliding mobile home, with his cat and dog for the last 18 months or so. We geo-locked friends to be informed of his doings on Facebook updates and intermittent texts and e-mail missives.
And in the vein of Yvon Chouinard's great 180 Degrees South Adventure, the other has taken the high seas in his 35 blue-water sailboat. Tracking him is a matter of whether he is in the Sea of Cortez, along the coast of California, or relax in a sea port in between.
I still feel a bit behind the curve compared with those people!
A renewed perspective and respect for Severity
Appears from the data points I've gathered, that the Great Depression was in decline. The U.S. and the global economy are not healthy in any way, nor will we return to the roaring '00s any time soon. However, both Outdoor Play and QuietSpacing experiencing positive signs of growth. It's so much more pleasant to begin the year the sun comes upratherthan in the dead of night, that's what I remember in December 2009. Will it continue to improve? I think so. Have we learned our lesson about unbridled consumption and only live for today? I hope so.
A peak Around the Corner
As we say goodbye to the last year of experiences, I I am aware of the lessons learned, suffered the trials and successes enjoyed. Looking at 2011, it is with optimism and commitment to team-Outdoor Play and my QuietSpacing clients I march forward.
Happy new year!
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