Path.To Debuts for Meaningful Career Endorsements

With LinkedIn having established its central role for online business networkers, a flurry of startups have emerged to let people present a new, and often prettier, face to their work profiles - including About.me, Zerply (who I covered back in May), and starting today, Path.to, a network that aims to let you customize your business profile and tap into the power of your network for meaningful endorsements that will help you stand out from the crowd.

Like Zerply, Path.to starts with the new user pulling in their data from an previously-created profile elsewhere on the Web, and then prompts you to fill out the missing gaps in your profile to better tell the story in the way that you want it to be told, with as much information or as little as you like. Rather than simply listing the places you've worked and the titles you've held at various points in your career, Path.to gains value when you list particular skills that you have used at each stop, setting up the opportunity for your network to endorse you based on your shared experience.

My Path.To Profile: http://path.to/louisgray

But there's a little touch of magic behind the scenes at Path.to, which makes the endorsement game more than just a vote counter. Darren Bounds, who you also know from projects like Cliqset and Glow.io, writes, "In Path.To all endorsements are not created equal. We’ve built an algorithm that constantly reevaluates and scores each individual in the system. This scoring helps drive the weight of your endorsement within the system."

Endorsing Darren on Path.to

The Project Management Leaderboard on Path.to

Without diving to deep into that, which sounds a lot like how Klout assumes a certain value to each individual, Path.to hopes that its endorsement structure and leaderboards will surface the best and most qualified people at every skill, from product management to blogging. The site continually pushes users to get endorsed, saying, "Skill endorsements are the currency of Path.To. They help distinguish you from the crowd by increasing your weighting in and around the site."

Connections on Path.To

For beautiful looking glamor photos and a short personal description, About.me works well. But Zerply and Path.to are all about endorsements and an attractive UI that puts your resume in a friendly light. You can find my Path.to profile here: http://path.to/louisgray

Real Valley Stories: Should Working Faster be Penalized?

Editor's Note: Part 5 in an irregular series of stories from my 12 years in Silicon Valley. Part 4 talked about how I once nearly quit over ugly URLs. This week, debating speed and quality versus budgets.

With more than a decade embedded in the Valley, I've led and participated in more than my fair share of product launches and website redesigns. Over time, as is common, one finds vendors they work extremely well with, who can consistently deliver high quality work quickly, as if the two of you are in lockstep. Back in 2001, as I switched jobs, I immediately signed up my favorite web designer as a vendor at my new company.

Our initial task - to launch a new website in 30 days at a price less than a third of the existing firm's proposal, was met ahead of schedule, and for the next several years, I had his firm on speed dial for projects big and small. Unfortunately, this relationship was put in jeopardy thanks to one of the frequent management changes at the company, and one day I unexpectedly found myself challenged by my new boss over the costs of a project I had assumed was executed exactly to scope.

In 2003, as the company had grown, our website had gotten increasingly complex, and one of the to-do items assigned me was to rearchitect our partners page. Once a simple array of logos and one-paragraph descriptions, it had grown unwieldy and ugly. I proposed we engage our web design firm to make a proposal and recode the page in its entirety. As was customary, they provided a quote well within our budget, I made a purchase order, and the two of us got to work. Within two days, we had agreed on a design, and two days after that, the final code was delivered and pushed to production. I was pleased, and moved on to the next task.

The following week, as I sat down for my regular one on one with my boss, and reviewed the project, I was challenged on how quickly it had been completed. Coming from a Big Five consulting background, they had come to expect that dollar allotments were closely tied to how long it took to complete a project, and the longer the project took to complete, the more we should have spent. As she admonished me, saying that I should spend the company's money as if it were my own, I responded that I had, in selecting the best quality work, combined with a fast delivery schedule.

As I responded, I asked if we should charge more for computers and servers that did jobs less quickly, or that cars that drove faster than others should actually be worth less. I was incredulous that a quality job done quickly would actually be devalued over a more meandering, less direct approach. Obviously, my response was not the manager's favorite, and I had to work very carefully with the same vendors and others going forward - needing to directly tie the number of hours on a project to the purchase order amount and a practically arbitrary assigned dollar per hour value. It drove me nuts.

The debate to me clearly marked the divide between a fast-moving and flexible startup culture versus a stodgy corporate view, where process was practically as important as the destination. The debate surprised me and disappointed me, but also taught to know the aspects of a project important to other decision makers that could impact me or our business positively or negatively. As for the vendor? I continued work with him for another six years, well after that manager had since left. They didn't work out.

Sporting the Noogler Beanie (Photo)

This afternoon is the public hazing of all Nooglers. I am not exempt. Do you guys dig my Noogler beanie?

/via My Google+ Profile.

The Time I Asked Steve Jobs an iPod Support Question

What would you do if you unexpectedly came face to face with Apple's world-famous CEO, Steve Jobs, who had been credited with launching or assisting with most of the major transformational events in personal computing over the last thirty years? Shake his hand? Tell him how much you love Macs? Ask to take a picture? If you're me, you try to play coy and ask if he could help you with a support question - because that's exactly what I did in my first run-in with the revered, yet reportedly mercurial Apple exec, who as you know, announced he was resigning his post as Apple CEO yesterday, moving up to the chairman of the board role.

Back in 2002, Apple was just getting started with the company's retail store initiative, and among the first stores to debut was the venue in Palo Alto on University Avenue. Living in Belmont, not too far north of the shop, I thought I would lazily take a Saturday afternoon and check out the newest Mac laptops. Like any good Mac fan, even if I wasn't exactly in the market to upgrade, I felt it my civic duty to check them out and get familiar. But when I entered the store and glanced past the display of white laptops, I spotted something much more interesting - as Steve Jobs himself was in the store, having a conversation with the store manager. From what I gathered, the pair were talking about contingency plans of what to do if the weather went bad - and how the worst thing you could do was have to shut down the store. The world has heard how Steve got involved in the little nuances of many of the company's products, so it's no surprise the retail store launch was much different.

As you can imagine, trying out new trackpads and screen resolutions on Macbooks immediately seemed less important. So I positioned myself with my back to Steve and fussed around with the closest computer's dock, clicking aimlessly while I wondered if I would get a chance to talk to Steve myself. After a few minutes, the manager parted, to the back of the store, and I turned around to talk to Steve. Not wanting to be a complete fanboy and putting him at unease, I coyly asked if he was a "Certified iPod genius"... a play on the store's Mac geniuses. Looking at me somewhat amused, knowing that I knew who he was, no doubt, he said, "As a matter of fact, I am."

I then told him how I had been one of the first to purchased the company's initial white 5 GB iPod MP3 players, and that no matter how much charging I did of the device, battery life was atrocious and had gotten to the point I was considering taking it back or getting it repaired. I asked what I should do. He said that the issue was a "known bug" and that a fix was going to be rolled out shortly. Having recently seen an iPod update that was recently recalled, I asked him if that was the one he meant, which had been "rolled back". He said yes. In the meantime, he told me that I should leave my iPod unplugged overnight until it ran down to zero, and then charge it up, and all would be well.

By this time, the store's manager had returned, and was standing nervously next to Steve. It seemed he was concerned Steve had been exposed to the common visitor and clearly couldn't wait to step in and continue their conversation. So I told Steve thanks, adding, "thanks for all you do", a knowing nod to his history without gushing about it, and I left the store. After meeting Steve, no laptop or box software could have been more fulfilling.

Steve Jobs' news yesterday is being read as the latest bad news in a series of bad news stemming from his much-discussed health issues over the last few years. His job change is by no means an obituary, but many are seeing it as the end of an era - the PC industry's elder statesman and one of the world's top visionaries and creative minds stepping further into the shadows. I once wrote that I wished Steve Jobs were immortal and that I would teach my children about Steve Jobs as they grew up. For what we have seen as users is a hero and a real legend in our lifetime who changed the world, something we can all hope to do in a very much smaller way. But the man is still with us and I hope this isn't the last we see of Steve Jobs, the legend who was humble enough to expose a smile and answer some 24 year old's iPod support question on a rainy day in Palo Alto.

Good luck, Apple, and thanks, Steve.