Dave Sobel

The road gets your mind engaged. I’m on an airplane to my third trade show in six days, sitting in another airplane running around the country. The airports become familiar, as it becomes easier to weave your way through to your gate when you even know which spot to grab some food on the way. […]

I love metrics. I love having data at my fingertips that tells me relevant information on what I’m working on. If you’ve ever seen me do a presentation, you know that I always start off with some data to help set an expectation of what I’m going to talk about. Metrics have made a powerful […]

I was asked on one of my more recent travels what apps were on my iPhone and iPad. I blinked a little, wondering why anyone would care what apps were on my two devices, and he then added “You seem to get a lot done with those devices. You must have something good on there!” […]

We’ve been talking a lot about “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” – BHAGs, for short. For those not familiar, from Wikipedia: “The term Big Hairy Audacious Goal ("BHAG") was proposed by James Collins and Jerry Porras in their 1996 article entitled Building Your Company’s Vision. A BHAG encourages companies to define visionary goals that are more […]

Recently I went down at the HTG Summit in Dallas—four days of deep dives into my business, my colleagues’ businesses and training sessions related to becoming a better businessman. The free sharing of ideas is what draws me most to these events, allowing me to really learn more about our industry and business, and do […]

Volcanic ash. I never thought that I’d make this statement, but “Volcanic ash has affected my business”. With my involvement with Heartland Technology Groups (HTG), I am coordinating the meeting agenda for HTG11, made up of solution providers from the United Kingdom and Ireland. And with their flights starting on Saturday to the United States, […]

I’ve been on a gadget spree in the last few weeks, wrapping up two “home” projects as I write this.  First, I’m redoing my home network, retiring the servers I had in my home and replacing them with a new Windows Home Server and a SheevaPlug, which will handle all the tasks that a virtualization […]

I spent my weekend with my seven-year-old nephew and five-year-old niece out in the “country” at a farm with plenty of kids activities. An Easter Egg hunt, time in the “Corn Bin,” a giantmaze, and a massive inflatable balloon for jumping on. I then took them out for dinner, filled them up with junk food, […]

I felt like the dumbest kid in the class.  And that’s a good thing.  I had the opportunity this week to help out the NPR station WAMU in Washington, D.C., by serving on their Community Advisory panel as an IT professional talking about Cyber Security.  The panel was quite distinguished. The Director of the SANS […]

The subject line was very catchy – “Free Broadband from the Government Good/Bad”. One of the discussion groups I’m on lit up with a discussion about the government and a broadband plan. Since my office has a reasonably nice view of the US Marine Corps Memorial, and my morning commute gives me a nice view […]

Messaging is an incredibly important consideration when going into the market.  As a solution provider, we don’t have the budget to have massive “branding” efforts, so for us, every small decision is a big one. The little touches are the best ways we can present our message into the market. That means choosing the right […]

I had lunch today with an old friend from college, who works for a very large enterprise.  I used to do consulting in that space and so it’s fun to compare notes and talk shop at a different level than the pure SMB level I deal with day-to-day. He wanted to pick my brain a […]