Red Sky in Mourning
A Broadband of Brothers
One of the funniest things I have ever witnessed was sitting in an emergency room with a sick daughter when they wheeled in an ambulance gurney holding a severely injured teen who had jumped out of a moving pick-up truck. When the on-call doctor heard that the boy had voluntarily jumped out of an otherwise safe vehicle at 45 miles an hour, he asked, “Why in the world would you do that?” The boy was momentarily stuck for an answer, then shrugged and said, “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
The most remarkable realization about so-called Golden Hindsight is that rather than experiencing an increased visual acuity after the fact, we are amazed, analyzing in retrospect, at how blind we chose to be in an attempt to make our actions seem rational during that distant past; that sadly distorted reality.
And, in those 50 words, I give you the Dot.com Boom and Bust. Let others write books of excuses and condemnations about the Digital Superhighway’s Conceptual Goldrush. I see it as acute career myopia.
I went through the Dot.com disorder of the late ’90s, but I can’t remember why I thought it made sense. I still laugh at this inane response, but perhaps the laugh is more a snicker of recognition that, if asked about my career-ending decisions, I would have to give the same answer. Less bloody but just as stupid.
For instance: Why would an otherwise intelligent man leave an extremely satisfying creative career at Microsoft - especially during a time when his salary and bonuses, special projects, and freelance work supplied him and his family with a very comfortable life? And where there were wonderful social and recreational opportunities at every turn?
But that’s precisely what I did.
And in seeing through this temporary “good idea,” I uprooted my family, moved to the San Francisco Bay area, thought nothing of a taking on a $3,500./mo. mortgage, quaffing $7. cups of dessert-sweet coffee, and a accepting an upper management position in a high-flying Electronic Media company run by an ex-juggler – a guy whose main claim to fame was tossing balls in the air?
What WAS I thinking?
But I made the move and sitting in my glass-enclosed office, in a designer-renovated and earthquake-reinforced, 100 year old brick Historical Landmark building in the trendiest part of town, I felt an enormous surge of “me.”
That buzz seemed to be in everybody’s bonnet.
Not creativity, not loyalty to my partner, who also left Microsoft so we would remain a team, not a sense of pride in my new employer (the wunderkind of online ad and entertainment companies), not a sense of irony that I was sitting in the very office of an Advertising Industry giant who had turned me down as an employee years before. Before he moved on to a bigger building and Ad world superstardom when he got the “Got Milk” gotcha’.
All I sensed was that I was in the catbird seat to do something. But try as I might, no one seemed interested in “making things.”
Several times during the `90’s there had been an upheaval in the tech industries – “Broadband is here! Everything will change! New millionaires will rise! Old business models will die! Dinosaurs are dropping like flies!
WATCH YOUR TOES! HOT SOUP!
But, within a month or so, the brainfever would pass, the con artists and scammers would creep back into the woodwork, and everyone would go back to work, making the best of our limited bandwidth and infrastructure: jittery animations and choppy audio tacks. Stuff that, given today’s amateur benchmarks, would rate more than a dozen views on YouTube.
Sure. it got a little better, bit-by-bit. That wasn’t the problem. But everyone was looking for the official start, the pistol report, the Green Flag of the Broadband Revolution before joining in whole-hog (the most appropriate use of that cliché phrase I have ever made).
So, like blue-skinned swimmers in the Polar Bear Club, every year or so, all the so-called bleeding-edge companies would strip down and poke a toe in the icy water. But unlike the hardy fools who actually dove into frigid waves to freeze and frolic, the computer and Internet crowd shivered, put their clothes back on, and headed over to where the dessert coffee’s were now $8. a cup and had a screw-the-environment corrugated sleeve that did nothing more than protect one’s delicate fingies from the hot cup.
Years later, McDonalds would scratch off a check for millions for not being so… savvy?
But knowing we were due for another Industry false alarm, I urged Upper Management to begin producing Broadband projects without regard to the puny bandwidth and infrastructure – after all, you didn’t need highways and gas stations to invent and develop cars. We knew what the final demands would be on our products, so why not get the jump on other developers by building Broadband, owning the category, and waiting for everyone else to either emulate us or employ us?
To my surprise, they agreed. Not to do as I described, but to agree with what I described and still do nothing. After all, they had $38 million in the bank. Why break the interest by making things we could sell? Better to wait until the market was safe and saturated so the risks would be smaller and mistakes more easily excused.
I mentioned above that the Honcho (I forget what grand title for himself he finally settled on – it was Chief Strategist for a while, but since he had no strategies, just Chief sounded like Jimmy Olsen talking to Perry White. And Chief Strategist really cheesed-off the company’s actual strategists, who did have strategies, but were, like myself, simultaneously respected and ignored. It was The Battle for an Impressive Title and the Privilege of Being Neutered as a job description.
The Honcho – Mr. Juggler – had two important items mounted in his office. The larger of the two was a plexiglass cube in which he had installed a wire-frame model of his ass, mounted on a wooden base to hold a pair of his old cut-off, patch-sewn, embroidered, hippy bluejean hotpant jeans, along with a photo of him on a unicycle, juggling Indian Clubs on the University of California, Berkeley Quad – wearing very same jeans! His other treasure was an MBA diploma from University of California, Berkeley in a futuristic all-glass frame, hung on the glass office wall, at eye-level, directly above his head when he sat at his desk.
While working at Red Sky, I saw him juggle like a champ and do business like a guy who would build a shrine to his ass and make employees and clients look at it when they came to his office.
In the Spring of 2000, I lead a team to sell Nissan an $11 million dollar online marketing system – including an owner-accessible desktop application that monitored their car through OBD port under the dashboard. I saw the finished product when it was brought to the market by AUDI in 2006. Not MY concept - The Juggler killed that at the conclusion of the pitch meeting by being an arrogant jerk to the Japanese execs who met us at Nissan, Los Angeles.
Audi was simply providing the next logical step in owner / factory / dealer relations – six years after we were all over it.
I proposed a low-cost way to participate in Film and Animation Festivals, network with Hollywood Production companies and Stars, to grow a reputation in Entertainment. But the Juggler demanded a business proposal he could “believe in” before he would spend a cent.
The biggest online Ad firm in South Korea can to S.F. to kiss our feet and give us their market – 14 million online users - as a test bed for our business and advertising developments. The Juggler tossed their ritual meeting gifts – gorgeous Korean art pieces – back in their faces and stormed out of the room, shouting, “You’re here to rip me off.”
You’re right. It was more than enough to show me that this was a terrible career choice. I told him that if we didn’t start a project – any project – I was gone. And that I would pull the better people on my team with me even if they had to go on unemployment until we could find another agency.
He said, ”Is that really what you want?”
“Right. A project or the door.”
He nodded. “Fine. I’m going to call an “all-hands” meeting after lunch.
I got back to my office and his email was already there. Addressed to all 200 people in the S.F. office. “All-hands at 2 p.m. in the second floor play space.” That was where he kept his unicycle and juggling props.
By the time I got there, a buzz had already moved through the crowd. Everyone – best friends and annoying fuck-offs – were smiling at me. Now, when you see this kind of multilateral-yet-uniform reaction, you KNOW the crap is about to hit the fan.
Tim juggled to WOW the crowd until all the stragglers arrived, then set the balls aside and launched right into it.
“As most of you know, Marty has been annoying everybody about doing “some projects” and if we don’t let him, he’s going to leave.”
Some of my co-worker actually said NO! out loud.
“So, as of right now, I’m promoting Marty to Director of Red Sky’s Broadband Practice and giving him Carte Blanche to make any Broadband projects he’d like.”
Everybody, bless `em all, everyone applauded, whistled or called out an encouraging word or two. I was not happy.
The Art Director – my friend from Microsoft – leaned over and whispered “it’s more money and a lot more control.”
I said, “Yup. And where have we heard `Broadband is here!’ before?” He knew what I was going to say.
“Thank you, Tim. And thank you all. I’m sure everyone here will have at least a piece of the Broadband Project to call their own.”
Cheers, all `round.
“But we might as well call it the Rocking Chair project, because there is no bandwidth or infrastructure to support what we’ll be doing right now. So, we’ll produce proto-Broadband projects – films, animations, online devices and entertainments. Then, when the floodgates open “out there” we’ll be at the top of the heap to take the first mover advantage.”
They all got it and there was a smattering of applause and backslapping congratulations, but I knew what was coming. Through the glass walls of the hallway leading back to his office I could see Tim shaking his head, while two of his favorite sycophants scuttled a step or two behind him.
We never made anything that would have given us a shot at success, or even survival. Tim had no intention of letting me do what I wanted. His gambit was to give me a title and some money for a position that didn’t exist and hold me to the “Broadband” category and string me out for months or years.
The dessert coffees had become cloyingly sweet. I estimated that my glass office would need 29,920 gallons of water to allow me to safely dive from the top of my bookcase and swim under my desk, and that not making anything at Red Sky made the whole exercise in futility look like I was pretty blind in retrospect.
I was blind, and refusing the White Cane.
So you see, hindsight, although golden, can also be rather disappointing.
And if you do have the balls, you better know how to do more than juggle them.
- end -
Copyright 2006
Martin Higgins
all rights reserved
The most remarkable realization about so-called Golden Hindsight is that rather than experiencing an increased visual acuity after the fact, we are amazed, analyzing in retrospect, at how blind we chose to be in an attempt to make our actions seem rational during that distant past; that sadly distorted reality.
And, in those 50 words, I give you the Dot.com Boom and Bust. Let others write books of excuses and condemnations about the Digital Superhighway’s Conceptual Goldrush. I see it as acute career myopia.
I went through the Dot.com disorder of the late ’90s, but I can’t remember why I thought it made sense. I still laugh at this inane response, but perhaps the laugh is more a snicker of recognition that, if asked about my career-ending decisions, I would have to give the same answer. Less bloody but just as stupid.
For instance: Why would an otherwise intelligent man leave an extremely satisfying creative career at Microsoft - especially during a time when his salary and bonuses, special projects, and freelance work supplied him and his family with a very comfortable life? And where there were wonderful social and recreational opportunities at every turn?
But that’s precisely what I did.
And in seeing through this temporary “good idea,” I uprooted my family, moved to the San Francisco Bay area, thought nothing of a taking on a $3,500./mo. mortgage, quaffing $7. cups of dessert-sweet coffee, and a accepting an upper management position in a high-flying Electronic Media company run by an ex-juggler – a guy whose main claim to fame was tossing balls in the air?
What WAS I thinking?
But I made the move and sitting in my glass-enclosed office, in a designer-renovated and earthquake-reinforced, 100 year old brick Historical Landmark building in the trendiest part of town, I felt an enormous surge of “me.”
That buzz seemed to be in everybody’s bonnet.
Not creativity, not loyalty to my partner, who also left Microsoft so we would remain a team, not a sense of pride in my new employer (the wunderkind of online ad and entertainment companies), not a sense of irony that I was sitting in the very office of an Advertising Industry giant who had turned me down as an employee years before. Before he moved on to a bigger building and Ad world superstardom when he got the “Got Milk” gotcha’.
All I sensed was that I was in the catbird seat to do something. But try as I might, no one seemed interested in “making things.”
Several times during the `90’s there had been an upheaval in the tech industries – “Broadband is here! Everything will change! New millionaires will rise! Old business models will die! Dinosaurs are dropping like flies!
WATCH YOUR TOES! HOT SOUP!
But, within a month or so, the brainfever would pass, the con artists and scammers would creep back into the woodwork, and everyone would go back to work, making the best of our limited bandwidth and infrastructure: jittery animations and choppy audio tacks. Stuff that, given today’s amateur benchmarks, would rate more than a dozen views on YouTube.
Sure. it got a little better, bit-by-bit. That wasn’t the problem. But everyone was looking for the official start, the pistol report, the Green Flag of the Broadband Revolution before joining in whole-hog (the most appropriate use of that cliché phrase I have ever made).
So, like blue-skinned swimmers in the Polar Bear Club, every year or so, all the so-called bleeding-edge companies would strip down and poke a toe in the icy water. But unlike the hardy fools who actually dove into frigid waves to freeze and frolic, the computer and Internet crowd shivered, put their clothes back on, and headed over to where the dessert coffee’s were now $8. a cup and had a screw-the-environment corrugated sleeve that did nothing more than protect one’s delicate fingies from the hot cup.
Years later, McDonalds would scratch off a check for millions for not being so… savvy?
But knowing we were due for another Industry false alarm, I urged Upper Management to begin producing Broadband projects without regard to the puny bandwidth and infrastructure – after all, you didn’t need highways and gas stations to invent and develop cars. We knew what the final demands would be on our products, so why not get the jump on other developers by building Broadband, owning the category, and waiting for everyone else to either emulate us or employ us?
To my surprise, they agreed. Not to do as I described, but to agree with what I described and still do nothing. After all, they had $38 million in the bank. Why break the interest by making things we could sell? Better to wait until the market was safe and saturated so the risks would be smaller and mistakes more easily excused.
I mentioned above that the Honcho (I forget what grand title for himself he finally settled on – it was Chief Strategist for a while, but since he had no strategies, just Chief sounded like Jimmy Olsen talking to Perry White. And Chief Strategist really cheesed-off the company’s actual strategists, who did have strategies, but were, like myself, simultaneously respected and ignored. It was The Battle for an Impressive Title and the Privilege of Being Neutered as a job description.
The Honcho – Mr. Juggler – had two important items mounted in his office. The larger of the two was a plexiglass cube in which he had installed a wire-frame model of his ass, mounted on a wooden base to hold a pair of his old cut-off, patch-sewn, embroidered, hippy bluejean hotpant jeans, along with a photo of him on a unicycle, juggling Indian Clubs on the University of California, Berkeley Quad – wearing very same jeans! His other treasure was an MBA diploma from University of California, Berkeley in a futuristic all-glass frame, hung on the glass office wall, at eye-level, directly above his head when he sat at his desk.
While working at Red Sky, I saw him juggle like a champ and do business like a guy who would build a shrine to his ass and make employees and clients look at it when they came to his office.
In the Spring of 2000, I lead a team to sell Nissan an $11 million dollar online marketing system – including an owner-accessible desktop application that monitored their car through OBD port under the dashboard. I saw the finished product when it was brought to the market by AUDI in 2006. Not MY concept - The Juggler killed that at the conclusion of the pitch meeting by being an arrogant jerk to the Japanese execs who met us at Nissan, Los Angeles.
Audi was simply providing the next logical step in owner / factory / dealer relations – six years after we were all over it.
I proposed a low-cost way to participate in Film and Animation Festivals, network with Hollywood Production companies and Stars, to grow a reputation in Entertainment. But the Juggler demanded a business proposal he could “believe in” before he would spend a cent.
The biggest online Ad firm in South Korea can to S.F. to kiss our feet and give us their market – 14 million online users - as a test bed for our business and advertising developments. The Juggler tossed their ritual meeting gifts – gorgeous Korean art pieces – back in their faces and stormed out of the room, shouting, “You’re here to rip me off.”
You’re right. It was more than enough to show me that this was a terrible career choice. I told him that if we didn’t start a project – any project – I was gone. And that I would pull the better people on my team with me even if they had to go on unemployment until we could find another agency.
He said, ”Is that really what you want?”
“Right. A project or the door.”
He nodded. “Fine. I’m going to call an “all-hands” meeting after lunch.
I got back to my office and his email was already there. Addressed to all 200 people in the S.F. office. “All-hands at 2 p.m. in the second floor play space.” That was where he kept his unicycle and juggling props.
By the time I got there, a buzz had already moved through the crowd. Everyone – best friends and annoying fuck-offs – were smiling at me. Now, when you see this kind of multilateral-yet-uniform reaction, you KNOW the crap is about to hit the fan.
Tim juggled to WOW the crowd until all the stragglers arrived, then set the balls aside and launched right into it.
“As most of you know, Marty has been annoying everybody about doing “some projects” and if we don’t let him, he’s going to leave.”
Some of my co-worker actually said NO! out loud.
“So, as of right now, I’m promoting Marty to Director of Red Sky’s Broadband Practice and giving him Carte Blanche to make any Broadband projects he’d like.”
Everybody, bless `em all, everyone applauded, whistled or called out an encouraging word or two. I was not happy.
The Art Director – my friend from Microsoft – leaned over and whispered “it’s more money and a lot more control.”
I said, “Yup. And where have we heard `Broadband is here!’ before?” He knew what I was going to say.
“Thank you, Tim. And thank you all. I’m sure everyone here will have at least a piece of the Broadband Project to call their own.”
Cheers, all `round.
“But we might as well call it the Rocking Chair project, because there is no bandwidth or infrastructure to support what we’ll be doing right now. So, we’ll produce proto-Broadband projects – films, animations, online devices and entertainments. Then, when the floodgates open “out there” we’ll be at the top of the heap to take the first mover advantage.”
They all got it and there was a smattering of applause and backslapping congratulations, but I knew what was coming. Through the glass walls of the hallway leading back to his office I could see Tim shaking his head, while two of his favorite sycophants scuttled a step or two behind him.
We never made anything that would have given us a shot at success, or even survival. Tim had no intention of letting me do what I wanted. His gambit was to give me a title and some money for a position that didn’t exist and hold me to the “Broadband” category and string me out for months or years.
The dessert coffees had become cloyingly sweet. I estimated that my glass office would need 29,920 gallons of water to allow me to safely dive from the top of my bookcase and swim under my desk, and that not making anything at Red Sky made the whole exercise in futility look like I was pretty blind in retrospect.
I was blind, and refusing the White Cane.
So you see, hindsight, although golden, can also be rather disappointing.
And if you do have the balls, you better know how to do more than juggle them.
- end -
Copyright 2006
Martin Higgins
all rights reserved