During my recent Network World online chat, I specifically praised two vendor blogs. One was Dave Kellogg's. Dave is CEO of Mark Logic, a vendor of XML database/custom publishing software; not coincidentally, his blog is called Mark Logic CEO.*
*Dave is also Exhibit A for my theory that it's hard to have a completely qualified VP of Marketing, because if you do, s/he will also be qualified for and eventually move on to a CEO job, something that is less true of Sales VPs, who may understand technology well enough, and also less true of Engineering VPs, who may not understand coin-operated salespeople well enough ... but I digress.
Dave does several different things in his blog, all of them well.
Of course Dave is biased, but in many posts he does a good job of modularizing his biases away from some fairly dispassionate analysis.
Blog name: Mark Logic CEO
URL: http://marklogic.blogspot.com/
Editor/Author: Dave Kellogg, CEO of Mark Logic Corporation
Archives go back to: 2005
Post frequency: 10-25/month
Look and feel: Generic Blogspot (blech)
Topics: See above
Strength: Good analysis, especially of issues on the boundary of technology and (from a vendor perspective) business
Weakness: Corporate bias
This is part of a series highlighting blogs that may be of interest to NetworkWorld.com readers. A list of all the blogs covered may be found at the bottom of the introductory post to the series.
Curt Monash is a leading analyst of and strategic advisor to the software industry. Praised by Lawrence J. Ellison for his "unmatched insight into technology and marketplace trends," Curt was the software/services industry's #1 ranked stock analyst while at PaineWebber, Inc., where he served as a First Vice President until 1987. He subsequently co-founded Evernet, Inc., a $40 million networking systems integrator. Since 1990, he has owned and operated Monash Research, an analysis and advisory firm covering software-intensive sectors of the technology industry. In that period he also has been co-founder, president, or chairman of several other technology startups.
Curt has served as a strategic advisor to many well-known firms, including Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, AOL, CA, and Netezza. Curt earned a Ph.D. in mathematics (Game Theory) from Harvard University. He has held faculty positions in mathematics, economics and public policy at Harvard, Yale, and Suffolk universities.
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Theory of "completely qualified VP of Marketing"
I would love to hear more about your theory of completely qualified Marketing VP's. Have you written about it?
Ann,
Ann,
I forget whether I've written that argument down anywhere except in email, but the basic idea is:
1. A marketing VP's ultimate job is to facilitate sales. Hence, she needs to understand sales.
2. Indeed, a marketing VP usually winds up being one of the company's top sales support individual contributors.
3. A marketing VP sets a fair amount of strategy.
4. A marketing VP should understand the technology pretty well.
5. A marketing VP has at least some administrative responsibilities.
Best,
CAM