Though I’ve never understood why, my father – the original sog – has been known to stop by this space from time to time. In the event he happens by, please join me in wishing him a Happy Birthday. Everything I know in business, I learned from him – although you can’t really blame him for the stuff I didn’t pick up.
The really interesting thing, which I hadn’t realized until talking to my Mom about it today, is that my Dad’s also taught me a lot about the intersection of community and business. He’d probably reject any formal term such as “community building”, preferring to describe it as just doing favors for people, but ultimately that’s what he’s been doing more or less his whole career.
Whether you’re on Wall St or in the technology industry, your success or failure is going to depend heavily on the people around you; building and fostering relationships without being overly concerned with the immediate returns, therefore, is a crucially important task. Although I only just realized it, much of the way that I interact with open source communities and the like was borrowed more or less wholesale from the example he’s set for me. We have different styles, use different tools, and we’re in a very different industry – but the principles are the same.
Anyway, thanks Dad and hope you have a Happy Birthday.
