Comments on: Quought for the Day #28 – Mitch Matthews

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 02:46:33 +0000

Hi Murali,
Thank you for your kind comments. Please send me an email offline with your contact details and we will take it up from there.
You can click on the email link to get my email address.
Best,
Raj

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 02:00:46 +0000

Hi Mr. Raj,
My name is Murali and iam very glad to have read all your postings in 2006. I came across your blog accidently through another Link (Kiruba from the barcamp chennai) in mid 2006 around June /July.
Iam a techie in my mid thirties and going through mid career blues. I frequently updated my tech skills until my early thirties and then ventured to do different things like PM, business analysis and now Iam BI/DW professional working for one of GE groups.
After reading your book, it totally changed my perspective and iam on a personal brand building exercise.
I would like to have a meaningful conversation with you. Having read your blog and understood you to a certain extent, i believe that i need to really bring vaue to the conversation keeping your ROII factor in mind.
Please let me know how can i have 30 minutes of your time
(by email, chat , phone or other means) or do you prefer posting the questions?
Thanks with Regards
Murali

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 20:09:36 +0000

Thanks Mitch for sharing the story.
Best,
Raj

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 20:04:15 +0000

That is very kind of you to say that Suresh. Thank you and you have a wonderful year ahead!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 19:19:18 +0000

Rajesh -
I agree… I had a lot of great surprises in 2006 and you are one of them. I love this idea… plus it’s an honor to get to participate in the project. So… thank you!
Another person who is coming to mind as I think through this question is guy named Mick. I met him last year.
He runs a print shop. It’s kind of a hole in the wall kind of place. It has that heavy smell of ink and paper… maybe even a little smoke in the air.
Mick printed our prototypes for Q. Mick and his team are good… they’re fast… and they’re cheap. And, since we were on a tight budget and a tight schedule… we needed all of that.
Well, as I was walking him through the basics of the print job, Mick listened. We sat in the break room of the shop. Coffee was brewing and the printers were humming.
Mick heard about the kind of design I wanted and he heard about the type of paper… but I hadn’t really shared the concept of the game or any of the questions.
Finally, we came to layout. I pulled out one of the pages that had a number of questions from the game posted on it. As I was talking… he looked down at the page.
Then he looked up at the ceiling… and then he sat back in his chair. He was thinking. At the time, I didn’t know about what… but he was thinking.
Then, out of the blue he said, “I don’t know who my friend was when I was 5.” Now, I should have known that he had read one of the questions from the game, but I was so wrapped up in task mode… it took me a second to shift gears and figure out what he was talking about. But then I got it.
I just shut up… sat back… and listened.
He started talking again… “I’m seventy years old now… so that’s a tough one. Well, I’d have to say it was…” and he continued on for about 5 minutes telling me about where he grew up… who his friend was… and what that meant to him. It was beautiful.
As he wrapped up his story… it was like he was coming back from taking a trip.
Then he got a serious look on his tough old face. He leaned forward and looked me in the eye and he simply said, “Kid… this game has got to happen. I haven’t thought about that in over 20 years. My kids need to hear this story. You need to do this.”
I sat there stunned.
I knew that we were on to somthing… but it was just beautiful to see it happen in a break room… in the back of an old print shop.
I agree with Raj. Questions are powerful. Especially, because we’ve all got stories to tell. And… we all want to tell them.
So, I have to say that even though I was in high-task-high-speed-mode that day… Mick surprised me and brought me back to what was important about this whole thing.
To know… and to be known.
It’s all good.
Thanks Mick!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 18:28:32 +0000

Rajesh, as it happens I came across your blog in 2006 and benefited from reading it. So, that is certainly one thing that surprised me in a good way in 2006. Thanks for the good work you are doing!