Archive for December, 2009
Keep An Open Mind
32 years ago
by David van Sunder
in People
From Blocks to Bucks
Several days ago, my son was playing with his toys when he decided to push a few through a cutout in the back of one of the kitchen chairs. Once they were all through, he decided that he wanted them back. So, he reached through the cutout and started pulling them back through, one at a time. The first couple were small and passed through easily. The last toy though was a wooden block that was almost the size of the hole. When he tried to pull it through, his hand got stuck because the hole wasn’t large enough to accommodate his fist as long as it held the block. I watched him struggle to pull the block through until he cried out in frustration, then showed him that he could reach around the chair back and get the block back that way. Then I took his hand and had him do the same. Once he had the block, he pushed all the toys back through the hole and the scene repeated itself. For some reason, he really wanted that block to come back through the hole the same way the other toys had, instead of the way I had shown him.
Now a lot of you might be wondering why I brought that story up. “Is this a daddy blog in disguise?” some of you might be asking. If that has you worried, relax. If you are excited that I brought my son up, well…he might come up from time to time. The reason for that is simple. Some situations that we encounter seem daunting because there are so many factors at play. If you boil a situation down to something simpler though, it becomes easier to understand. So, rather than start off with a complex business issue, what could be simpler than the issue of a toddler? (more…)
Inaugural Post
32 years ago
by David van Sunder
in General
Hello, everyone! I'm David van Sunder. Nice to meet you all.
I was going to jump right in and start posting articles, but I decided that it would be better to put together a post welcoming anyone that decides to stop in and read the blog. This post is not just to thank anyone that stops in for spending some time with me. It is also an opportunity for me to define what this blog will be about. That way I can crystallize the blog’s purpose, which helps to focus future articles and lets you know what to expect. All too often, bloggers fail to do that and their blogs wander aimlessly because of it. Sometimes, that journey is enjoyable. Other times it is annoying or, worse yet, wastes the reader’s time. That is one thing I don’t want to do. Everyone’s time is valuable. If you aren’t reading this blog, you can be doing any of a number of things. So, I want to make sure that whenever you stop by, that you leave feeling like it was time well spent.
So, what’s the purpose of this blog already?
The purpose of this blog is to share knowledge that I have acquired, either through research or experience. I will often cover topics that you have seen covered elsewhere, but my goal is to cover those topics a little differently than you have seen in the past. That way you should take something away that you had not known before. That might be a fact, a different point of view, or an insight into how I or someone else thinks that sheds some light on a situation in your own life. Now that’s the point of the blog, but what is its focus?
What topics will I cover?
I will focus on my passions, which are technology, business and people. I can’t say which of those areas I’m most passionate about, but I do feel that technology and people often intersect in business, which is why I listed those topics in that order. I find it interesting to talk about all of those areas separately, but I don’t feel that doing that does justice to any of them. Those topics are enriched by exploring how they interact with each other and that is something I am deeply interested in: How people, businesses and technology interact. I pride myself on investigating how things fit. That’s probably the result of the combination of my curiosity, my education at Santa Clara University and my time as a Big 5 consultant when I worked at Accenture. (more…)