Henry's Web Log

Remember my favorite Dilbert, at the beginning of this journey? The Pointy-Haired Boss asks,“So what happened while I was in Iraq for 13 months?” The bitter secretary answers that profits soared, morale skyrocketed, and for the first time, life had meaning.

Well, 11 months after mobilizing, Laureen Fleming and her commercial team have rolled out a great new application, NextThreeDays.com. The concept is simple, showing local bands, sporting events, bar and food specials ; but executed brilliantly. It is similar to MatWeb.com in both the concept and revenue model: very easy to use, free, and valuable information not elsewhere consolidated, with revenue mostly from advertising. But there’s also the franchising opportunity to take this to other towns. The VT Gobblerfest was its premiere, in downtown Blacksburg, and if it’s as well received in other towns, then ACI has built a repeatable product. Almost a CraigsList , but with more pizzazz, ease of use, and mobile-web friendly.

So with great news like MatWeb getting published in a marketing book, and NextThreeDays conceived, built and launched in my absence, maybe I should put in for an extension over here? Well, no, I suppose the Pointy-Haired-Boss does look forward to getting back to tending his cubicle farm.

Stop me if this story sounds familiar: Hank Fish created a database of material properties and made it easy to use, for engineers to find the material specifications they needed. Hank had an audacious thought: why couldn’t the database become the Yahoo of the materials industry? Let engineers such the database for free, and base revenue on advertising as well as spinoff projects.

So goes Chapter 9 of Midas Marketing by Rob Slee, published in March of 2009. In the analysis of this case study, Rob Slee reveals that the database is MatWeb.com and Hank Fish is really Henry Bass. I was honored to be highlighted in one of 20 chapters in Rob’s latest book, focusing on Marketing at the small-business-but-big-thinker level, at what he calls the dawn of the Aggregation Age. This is a follow up to his Midas Managers book, discussing new companies in the Conceptual Age (post 9/11/2001).
Rob will be presenting a Midas seminar at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center on September 22nd, and he has recently opened a Midas Institute at Virginia Tech , addressing the fact that private business generates the majority of the US economy, yet most schools teach management, finance and operations for public companies. Both of his recent books are great case-study books, the rare breed of book that does a small business owner good, while at the same time can be read cover-to-cover in a weekend (and you can still cut the grass, play ball with your kids, and catch a movie). Digesting it and applying it might take a little longer. But it was inspirational, even if I admit to reading the centerfold chapter first!

Last evening, as I headed to dinner, I caught a glimps of the rare cloud-filled sky in Basra. In fact, the clouds were beautifully formed, and I saw a photo opportunity. But I couldn’t just snap a photo of the sky, I needed something “Basra” in it. The air control tower! Perfect. Except I had to drive around the COB until I could line the shot up. It was almost too late, but I think it came out pretty cool.

Fantasy football season crept up on me this year! It may have something to do with being deployed, having almost no Internet, and no TV to keep up with sports. For many, that’s no excuse! Like Major Jim Reis- he has been keeping up with his fantasy sports newsletters and was bugging me to get a good enough Internet connection so that he could do his fantasy draft! “OPI: Other People’s Internet.” Of course, not all fantasy leagues and software require the Internet to draft. [here comes the pitch!] PC Drafter is an application we developed with 4for4.com and Brandie Searle to give fantasy players a tremendous advantage on draft day. PCDrafter not only ranks players based your league’s particular scoring rules, but it also receives updated fantasy projections at the click of a button from the best forecasters in the league: 4for4.com . At this time of year, projections are being updated and released several times a week. What’s more, PC Drafter takes into account the makeup of each of your competitors’ teams, and overall league-wide need for certain positions. It makes each pick count because the software projects if you need to take the standout tight end now, or if he should be there your next go-around so that you can continue grabbing the star running backs and wide receivers.
There’s much more to it, explained at the pcDrafter website. Getting into the statistics and predictive behaviors of fantasy football is exactly what interests me: I couldn’t name 10 standout players right now, but I can draft a fantasy team that will grade out in the top 1 or 2 of even the most experienced league, just by using PCDrafter. Give it a shot if you’ve got the same warrior spirit as our military: it’s all about out-maneuvering your enemies!

The wind changed on Tuesday. It brought with it the humidity of the Persian Gulf, so for the last few days, we’ve had 115 to 120 degrees, with 40% humidity. As one officer pointed out, we're surrounded by sand in 7 of the 8 compass directions, and wouldn't you know it, the wind is now coming from the one direction that carries the ocean humidity!
I know this first started Tuesday, because that’s when I went for a morning run and first noticed it...about 5 seconds after stepping outside my CHU! Normally, when I run I’ll sweat a little bit, so little that the heat often evaporates it before it dampens my shirt. Not Tuesday! As the photo tries to show, I was drenched after a 5K run around the COB at 5:30am.

In temperatures like this, there’s a critical laundry issue: it takes 2 days to get your laundry back, but if you’ve got a normal amount of t-shirts and underwear in your laundry bag, 2 uniforms in your bag puts you over the weight limit. Which means that if you’re going through 1 uniform a day, but only getting 1 back every two days, you’re destined to run out of uniforms! Some soldiers have two laundry bags, but not everyone. Not just any laundry bag will do, unlike other bases such as Adder. You have to have the official heavy-mesh bag, with a color-coded numbered tag. They started running out of bags as the base grew last April & May.