Nicholas Goodman on Business Intelligence

Zipcar and Flexcar are both car sharing companies. For background on the concept, read about it here.

My wife and I share one car for a variety of reasons and it works out really well. We end up walking a bunch more. We take the bus downtown. I work from a home office so I don’t need a car for a daily commute. Foregoing expense of a car used only once or twice a week. Lots of reasons. Car sharing has been a great way to have the “extra car” when we need it. If I need a car in the middle of the day, I reserve one online for a couple of hours, run my errands, come back and drop it off. My wife and I LOVE the concept for so many reasons.

Now that I’ve buried the lead:

I’m THRILLED that Zipcar is acquiring Flexcar. Why? Completely selfish reasons.

I lived in Boston so my first car sharing experience was with Zipcar. I thought their “execution” on the operations side was excellent. Great website. Great card/entry system. Great refueling. Great phone interface. Great billing system (can see when I used what). Everything was great. Then I moved to Seattle.

Zipcar wasn’t in Seattle, but Flexcar was. I signed up with Flexcar and have been solidly underwhelmed with their operation. Sure, it’s the same sort of thing and its been quite similar but hands down Zipcar was much much better. Flexcar had weird lock boxes and keypads. Refueling numbers on your reservation. Flexcar website doesn’t do positional location of cars (you have to know your neighborhood). Flexcar requires you use your Member ID (2039884) to login instead of a username (ngoodman). I’ve used Flexcar for the past three years and, well, it was adequate.

The news that Flexcar has been acquired (release says merged, but Zipcar is x3 the size of Flexcar) by Zipcar is AWESOME. As a customer of BOTH companies I’m absolutely thrilled that I’ll be able to get the same Boston experience I’ve been missing here in Seattle.

Woo Woo Zipcar.

Or why Speakeasy now sucks.

Let’s set this up (and tune out if you’re not in for a customer service rant).

Cable companies have historically done an exceptionally poor job about treating customers well. Chalk it up to a condoned monopoly, stagnant business model, etc. We’d all heard the horror stories about the cable appointments missed, must be there between 8am to 5pm three weeks from today, etc.

Speakeasy, a rather hip DSL provider (VOIP, data solutions, and DSL service) has always had grand service. Call them and they are helpful and smart. The other people on the end of the line aren’t people reading scripts taking orders, these are people that know what they’re doing. I first became a speakeasy customer in 2000 and have recommended them to several people.

Speakeasy, or more specifically COVAD (their subcontractor for doing installations), muffed up my DSL installation order when I recently moved. Suffice to say that the COVAD dispatcher who berated me for not being available for an appointment that I never knew about was what unfortunately the deciding factor to leave a company that I had, otherwise, had a good experience with. So, having spent approximately 5000 USD over my lifetime as a customer (I get their top shelf DSL with all the bells and whistles) I had to say no more I’ll make other arrangements. Called and cancelled the move.

I was surprised then to find the 49.00 “order charge” on my last invoice for the cancelled order. Clearly they’re not going to charge me for having an awful customer experience which already caused me to cancel my service with them. Yup! Called to ask to have it removed. Nope. Pointed out that I’ve been one of their top shelf DSL clients. No dice. So, here a company which used to be savvy, hip, and customer focused is now trading 50USD administrative fees for happy big spending customer satisfaction (5000 USD).

Speakeasy; you had much potential to be different. But, like other phone/utility providers you’ve crossed over and you pretty much blow. Sold your soul to the nickel and diming “concession this and administration that” fees.

The irony is that when I called the Cable company who has historically done exceptionally poor in terms of responsiveness and customer support they responded exactly the way I would have expected the new, hip company to. Called two days before my installation, asked if they could do Internet in addition to Cable. No problem. 10am (when they said they’d be here) they showed up, polite, courteous, helpful, and 30 minutes later Cable + Internet up and running.

There you have it. Old companies can renew their service focus and end up wowing a customer. New companies can let their service slide and lose customers over silly stuff. Goes to show that a focus on the customer is the thing that matters more than the size and age of the providers. It’s timeless for new and old.

My workday goes much smoother because I listen to a variety of Online Radio stations. Today they all went silent or played public awareness campaigns from SaveNetRadio.org. People have been wondering if anyone will notice. Well, like the title says: I noticed!

I don’t know all the mechanics, but it comes to this. A lot of these small, boutique-ish online radio stations will shut down because the cost structure of the compensation will be, in their opinion, unsuitable.

I, for one, being a proponent of open content, software, and standards think there must be some underlying disconnect between the “Copyright Royalty Board” and broadcasters.

These small, hobbyist online broadcasters are part of larger shift in broadcasting/economies. Web 2.0-ish user generated content and participatory systems of consumer and producer.

The CRB probably needs to take another look at what it’s doing to see if it’s just trying to hang on to old ideologies in a new world.

I support Net Radio. You should too.

Has anyone ever experienced “Bloggers Block?”  You know, where you have plenty of things to write about, but are unable to select a topic and put some metaphorical pen to paper?  I’ve been experiencing this since my return from extended holiday.

I arrived back and started work again at Pentaho.  There’s been a bunch of developments at Pentaho (more open source features, key customer successes, etc), there’s been some interesting open source moves (licenses, alliances, etc), some interesting BI moves (vertica, hyperion acquisition, etc).  Basically, I have a Blog Backlog of probably 25 or so juicy, page plusers.  Things I would dig into, opine about, and hopefully help disseminate some useful information.

So… What’s the problem? 

I just can’t.  I’ve sat down and I look at my blog client and I just can’t seem to pick one, and write it.  None of it seems worthy enough to be the first, or most interesting, or … Pick any reason, I’ve come up with it for why not to write on a subject. 

Now that I’ve committed the cardinal sin of Apologetic Blogging (I aboslutely HATE reading blog posts entitled:  Sorry I haven’t posted in a while) perhaps I should just turn it in.  In fact, with so many people blogging these days it’s almost refreshing to hear “I don’t blog anymore.” 

So I ask myself the question honestly: Am I done blogging?  Is it worth the time?  Is it worthwhile?  Do I receive enough enjoyment from the writing to continue?

I don’t know.  However, implicitly my next (possible) blog will answer that question, yes?

After a wonderfully refreshing extended holiday to South America, I’m back. 

I sit today in front of my laptop, looking out the window at a swarthy, rainy Seattle day.  The surprise?  I’m kind of excited to get back to work, connect up with all my coworkers/partners/customers, and check out the new Pentaho releases while I was gone (Kettle 2.4.0, yippee).

Just sooooo much to blog about!  Best get through that Inbox so I can do some real work tomorrow. 

Someone once said

If you want to clear your mind go for a long walk.  The longer the walk, the clearer the mind.

That’s good advice I say, and some that my wife and I are taking.  Not that we need to clear our minds, but it’s our honeymoon of sorts we’ve been planning for almost two years.

We’re headed off for a two month trip to South America (Argentina and Chile).  We won’t be checking emails, blogs, phone messages.

Signing off the Matrix for two months.  Catch y’all in March!

Pentaho, being a family orientated company, is big on kids holidays.  The design team dropped an easter egg on our homepage today.

Can you find it?

My soon to be wife and I got totally HOOKED on Lost. 

Season 2 was just released on DVD and we’ve picked it up from our local Target at a bargain price.  Now the tough part is, with a mad amount of work and a wedding to prepare do we have the willpower to resist? 

I’m getting married in just under two weeks! 

So very excited about a hundred or so people from all over the world flying to Lake Crescent here in Washington state.  It’s a lot of work and we’re coming down the home stretch.  If I appear to be “missing” for the next few weeks it is, well, because I AM!  I’ll be working like made wrapping up some work at Pentaho and then off for a couple of weeks for the wedding.

September will likely be pretty “dark” on the blog… 

I’m engaged to be married… Kathy and I are getting married this September at a lodge on the shores of a small lake in a beautiful part of the USA (Olympic National Park in Washington State).

We’ve just hired a band to play our wedding and I can say, without reservation, I’m absolutely thrilled they’ll be playing for our friends and family. They are an exceptional group of artists from Vancouver, BC and they are well known throughout the world as “The Paperboys.”

Some of their songs (original works):
Molinos
After the First
If I could

What do YOU think of their Spanish/Celtic/folksy sound?