Disqus - Latest Comments for David Churbuck

Re: A disappearing act and a myth dispelled

David Churbuck — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 09:48:13 -0000

Hey,
I took the post down because I'm not confident that blogging overtly about Lenovo is the right move for me any more. PErsonal decision, not driven by any request or corporate sponsorship, just one to keep things pure on the blog and personal. If I want to talk about the company more overtly I'll do it on an official corporate blog.

Toilet analogy -- PR and IR are necessary, like lights and phones and septic. An organization needs to manage communications, particularly highly regulated ones, but it doesn't mean that it is particularly valuable beyond defensive.

Re: Publishers: Don’t use crappy ad links

David Churbuck — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:49:40 -0000

Correction -- I was long gone from Forbes.com when they experimented with IntelliTxt/Vibrant. Glad we agree.

Re: Oops! Twitter Reveals My New Job

David Churbuck — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:19:09 -0000

Congratulations. Give my regards to John and company.

Re: Switching Time Machine drives easy but not quick

David Churbuck — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:06:33 -0000

Aaron,
Good post. I'm in the midst of moving and consolidating everything onto a WD MyBookWorld. Not sure of your thoughts, but I am concerned now that all my media and backups are converging on one device, about "how to backup the backup". Any thoughts on online storage services?

Re: Let Beached Whales Die

David Churbuck — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:10:21 -0000

Interesting and contrarian point of view, but something that has troubled me for years since seeing postcards from the turn of the 19th-20th century showing massive pilot whale (blackfish) strandings inside of Cape Cod Bay (where many occur today).

Now the Cape has its own "Stranding Network" -- a great community service that helps rehab cold-stunned turtles, de-tangle right whales from fishing gear, and ... as you say, return beached whales to the water -- only to see them return.

I think a driver of the service mentality is the belief, perhaps guilt driven, that man is responsible for the strandings -- submarine sonar, pollution -- I saw in the local paper an article about the restoration of an injured swan to a local pond, but swans are considered invasive species in the Northeast.

It's human nature to be both cruel and kind to animals, but you hit a fascinating point of when that kindness is out of synch with the natural reality and order of the world.

Re: Sean X on the MicroSite

David Churbuck — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:10:05 -0000

Microsites are Full Employment Acts for agencies. Snore.

James -- great meeting you finally last night. Shame you didn't go for the $300 steak, John would have understood.

Re: The ROI of Measuring Social Media ROI

David Churbuck — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:18:15 -0000

Agreed. I don't think anyone is seriously holding SMM's feet to the profit fires yet. The tactic is viewed in the same ROI bucket as PR imho. Sure, you can attribute some hardcost/revenue to SMM programs, but I suspect the ROI issue will hit when costs are associated: "Hey, CFO, can I have $150,000 to pay for a monitoring service?"
That stuff gets challenged. It's going to be a big DIY year.

<abbr>Check out David Churbuck’s last blog post..Obama Journal</abbr>

Re: Are you a Young Professional on Cape Cod who wants to stay here?

David Churbuck — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:52:57 -0000

Once I was a young professional (being 50 this year that no longer applies) on Cape Cod, moving here from Boston in 1991 at the age of 33 to raise my kids in a special place far from the angry suburbs. Two things stuck with me.
1. The retired mega-exec who questioned my professional integrity by living in a sleepy seaside village and telecommuting by saying, "How can you be a fireman if you don't work near the fire?" That stung, but over time I realized it was a generational thing. Real breadwinners went to an office.
2. The realization that if you want to work a white collar job on Cape Cod you have to either bring the job with you, or find a job that will pay you to come to it. I basically have had to live a good percentage of my life away from my family and in a hotel room in NYC, Zurich, Raleigh, or Beijing to bring home the bacon. There's simply no large scale tech employers on the Cape.

Which begs the question: should there be? What would lure a non-manufacturing, high intellectual capital based employer to Cape Cod? There really not a lot of higher ed here to act as a magnet the way Duke and UNC and NCSU make the Research Triangle a desirable incubator of talent. Cost of living sucks here. Technical infrastructure (who wants to bet FIOS never comes to the Cape?) is lacking. Other than Wood Hole and the science community and the satellite opportunities that spun off from that marine science focus -- there's not much going on here.

So the question should be how to attract and support telecommuters -- to get white collar professionals working on the Cape, supported by a good commuter rail system to get them into the city when they need to make a face to face meeting (with wifi on the train) -- with a decent airport feeding the major hubs in Providence and Boston. With decent broadband (sorry, DSL and cable won't cut it for heavy professional use).

The rest is self-evident -- this is a very attractive place to work, raise a family, and thrive. Invest in the schools, the arts and the technical infrastructure and the demographic you want will come here to raise their families.

Re: Who owns Churbuck’s blog?

David Churbuck — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 06:53:20 -0000

Ha ha very funny. Churbuck.com is owned by the powerful but intensely secretive Churbuck Foundation based in Vaduz, Liechtenstein.

Re: Who owns Churbuck’s blog?

David Churbuck — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:20:13 -0000

um, we have Windows keys now

Re: Anonymous Apple blogger starts up

David Churbuck — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 07:33:58 -0000

The Secret Diary of Steve Job is still living. It died for a little while when its author got freaked from the attention.

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/

Re: 12 Reputations Every Company Should Monitor Online

David Churbuck — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:07:21 -0000

Now you've made me paranoid.
Great post Andy.
dc

Re: Pilgrim’s Picks for April 22 - Earth Day Edition

David Churbuck — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:15:49 -0000

I didn't flip a coin, I flipped out! I hate doing this stuff because it is done to me all the time, but consider this a test of the process.

And yes, I am grateful I do not mow my lawn with a Vonage phone.

David Churbuck's last blog post..Deborah Fallows: Few in China Complain About Internet Controls

Re: Budweiser’s “Swear Jar” Online Ad Hits Viral Pay Dirt

David Churbuck — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:32:12 -0000

Proof that "naughty" is the basis of all good viral.

David Churbuck's last blog post..Links for 2008-06-08 [del.icio.us]

Re: Fake Fake Steve Jobs On Forbes.com

David Churbuck — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:25:13 -0000

Forbes wasn't the only big media company to bid for Dan's work -- when it was anonymous -- probably two or three others were in serious discussions. Forbes got it because Dan eventually had to tell them about it.

Re: I hate notes.

David Churbuck — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:38:57 -0000

How about unlimited email storage? Think that would increase productivity?

Re: Public forums as base for support and knowledge base.

David Churbuck — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 10:02:00 -0000

Peer to peer support works well in opensource environments (I speak from experience of supporting my Wordpress installation from the Wordpress.org knowledge base), but those communities are typically more sophisticated than the average consumer, vsb audience, which oftentimes has difficulties enunciating the problem they are wrestling with. Hence the rise of "troubleshooter" wizards in mainstream systems such as Windows.

The biggest advance, IMHO, is remote service control where the service rep "takes over" the remote PC and diagnoses it rapidly, without waiting for the customer to translate verbal instructions into actions.

I also think the rise of apps such as Yahoo Answers offers some hope for peer based support.

Re: (Linux) thought popping out of my mind

David Churbuck — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 13:42:55 -0000

Stay tuned Esteban. We're working on some Linux plays!

Re: Everything is communication, everything is commerce.

David Churbuck — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 12:17:05 -0000

I wish I could get to human URLS. How do you do it? This is a wordpress blog, yes?

Re: Technorati giving me a hard time and other blog issues.

David Churbuck — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:53:08 -0000

Technorati's pingomatic is notoriously slow
A manual ping is sometimes needed

Re: Lenovo Blogs…

David Churbuck — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 08:53:00 -0000

Nice job. Thanks for pulling this together. If I become aware of any others I'll post them in the comments here.

Re: Free Photoshop?

David Churbuck — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 08:39:15 -0000

Free PhotoShop?
Try the Gimp
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&c...

Re: Fake bloggers beware.

David Churbuck — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 08:47:13 -0000

I'm with Mark. Astroturfing, Sock-Puppets -- everyone gets caught. The only fake blogs I can tolerate are the humor blogs like the Fake Steve Jobs.

Re: Colletive Knowledge vs. Collective Thinking

David Churbuck — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:48:20 -0000

I recommend you read Walter Wriston's The Twilight of Soverignty
very, very important book that did more than any other to shape my thinking of internet economics -- financial and knowledge based
http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Sovereignty-Info...

Re: Raleigh travel log – Day 5

David Churbuck — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:15:23 -0000

Safe travels and sorry I wasn't there to see you off. Thanks so much for the great help this week with our "project" and hope to see you soon in B.A.

Vote early and often on Sunday.

Re: Ubuntu vs. That Other OS

David Churbuck — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:17:19 -0000

Wow. Excellent idea to catch that on film. I am running Gusty Ubuntu on an old Fujitsu Lifebook with a weak Transmeta Crusoe processor and the thing screams. Time to figure out the VPN Notes issues and see if I too can make the transition permanently

Re: Variables beyond control.

David Churbuck — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:01:51 -0000

Great post. I think I can help you make the resolution come true.

Re: Social Media, Metrics, The trap: brain collage (part 3)

David Churbuck — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:12:30 -0000

Wow. Esteban. Where to begin in terms of a comment, other than to quickly agree, and to give respect to you as the person who probably treads between the worlds of left-brained and right-brained marketing more than anyone else.
Classic post.

Re: Long tail, short sleep

David Churbuck — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:05:12 -0000

Esteban -
This is going to be nothing less than one of the coolest thing either one of us does in our lifetimes.

Your dedication and passion behind the first phase of the program -- the solutions you've brought to a complex and ever shifting program are nothing short of miraculous.

I hope you'll use this blog to openly tell the world how it is all coming together.

It's an honor to work with you
dc

Re: So it begins (and it ends)

David Churbuck — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:36:08 -0000

Esteban, this is only the beginning, but I too share some of your wistfulness that months and months of work came to a crescendo eight hours ago in Beijing.

All we can do now is sit back and let the athletes do their thing, there's nothing more to be done after doing so much already.

While you're not here, you are here. Believe me when I say this is a very big thing for you, me, Alan, Tim, Nicole, and all the others who helped in our list of life's accomplishments. Welldone.

Now on to the big stuff. Kicking a certain competitor's ass.

Re: End of madness recap

David Churbuck — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:35:23 -0000

You were an utter hero on this project. When the history books are written, Voices of the Summer Olympics will bear your name. In capital letters.

Great post.

Re: I am breaking this blog

David Churbuck — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:20:50 -0000

Esteban
yeah, like Mark said, I've agonized over this. I look at six consecutive posts about chicken coops, boats, waders, clams, shaving the dog's ass, and a messed up embedded video of a guy confessing to a priest that he has had sex with a sheep .... and then I feel the urge to post about Lenovo and social media.

Steven O'Grady says it's too hard to keep multiple blogs and to just suck it up and write one. I dunno. I find marketing only blogs to be deathly boring, but they do seem to better read than my personal indulgences.

Yours btw, is far better than 99.9 of the rest.

Good luck with the decision