MarketWatch
Stories from my career at MarketWatch and musings on the media business. I recall dinner with former colleagues, share anecdotes about forecasting and describe the “Two Second Test” for news websites.
MarketWatch Acquired by Dow Jones
News hot off the wire! MarketWatch is being purchased by Dow Jones. Still very early. It’s great news on many fronts with lots of open questions still to be figured out.
Death by Meeting
While I was on vacation I wanted to read a light-hearted business book. I like to have something to spin around in my head during the downtime. Death by Meeting was recommended to me and it fit the bill just right.
First of all, this book is a business fable and some may find that really annoying. It’s a very fast read. Even though it weighs in at over 200 pages you flip through them very quickly.
The basic premise of this is that most meetings are not worthwhile and the author suggests how to make them more productive. To cut to the chase he suggests that meetings neet to have an intent that is more defined. Ultimately coming to four types of meetings that a company or division should have on different schedules. It’s interesting and I know I have personally seem many of the problems that the author points out about existing meetings.
I found it particularly interesting to read this after reading Agile Software Development with Scrum. I found a lot of what Scrum talks about to be more of a discussion of the dynamics of people in the workplace, and much of what Death by Meeting goes over is similar – both in problem and solution. For example, Death by Meeting suggests that teams meet every day for a 5 minute “check-in” meeting. This is identical in nature and intent to a daily Scrum meeting. Similar problems, similar solutions.
I won’t go into great detail on the book. Like I said, it’s a quick read and if you find the topic interesting I think it’s worth reading. I may try to take some of the concepts proposed and try to bring that into our environment at MarketWatch.
MarketWatch Golf Outing
We just got done with the annual MarketWatch golf outing today. It was a great day.
North Col of Everest or Bust
One of the guys at MarketWatch in our New York office, Rowan Hajaj, recently took off to go to the North Col of Everest. It’s funny because I had met him a couple of times and the main thing that I was struck with was his British accent, not a spirit for adventure! :-) Obviously I was wrong.
Anyway, he has a blog from his trip. It’s a good read, he’s a much better writer than I.
I’ve several times thought it would be great to go to the Everest region. But whenever I hear the details I seem to change my mind.