The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Before I go run out and enjoy this somewhat chilly Friday evening, I

thought I’d make one more entry, and this one goes out to anyone who’s

got shares in Tucows. I don’t know if any of the shareholders — who

were directed here from the Raging Bull site as a result of my Mark Cuban entry — are still reading this blog, but at half a million pageviews a month, there’s always a chance.

In the comments to the “I am Ten Scobles!” entry, I posed some questions but didn’t get any particularly useful answers. I’ll pose the questions again and see what I get.

What would you like to see from Tucows?

• More active PR concerning our activities?
• Would

  you like to be directly contacted, say via email if new developments

  arise? Would you want to be notified during the “soft launch” or when

  the launch is made generally public?

• A more official channel of communications for shareholders to voice their opinions and concerns?
• All of the above?
• Something else?

Let me know in the comments (or if you prefer, privately via email at jdevilla@tucows.com) and I’ll pass it along. I happen to be a pretty persuasive guy.

Just in case you’re attending a party this weekend and are the sort of

person to end up in a deep philosophical conversation at 2:30 a.m. in

the kitchen over the last of the nachos: the What is Your World View? quiz might be a good source of conversational fodder.

My result:

You scored as Cultural Creative.

Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm.

You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion

but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You

are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning

outside of the rational.

Here’s what the quiz says are my percentage matches with the possible world view results:

• Cultural Creative: 81%
• Postmodernist: 75%
• Idealist: 75%

• Existentialist: 63%

• Modernist: 50%

• Romanticist: 50%

• Materialist: 38%

• Fundamentalist: 38%

Give the test a try, and if you feel like sharing, post your results in the comments!

Update: Be sure to read these comments from an earlier entry.

“Ah, the unofficial investor relations department,” said a Barry

White-like voice approaching my desk. Since Barry White is not wont to

hang out at the Tucows offices, I had to assume it  Greg Weir,

Kahuna of the Content division.

“I know why the investors are commenting on your blog.,” he said. “Go to Raging Bull and check out the Tucows discussion.”

I did just that and suddenly, the cryptic remark in this comment

— “I’ve posted your link someplace else where Tucow [sic] investors gather

in their dark hole where no one listens” — made sense. A couple of the

most recent postings linked directly to my Mark Cuban posting, which resulted in the interesting comment thread.

I passed the news along to Elliot, who responded. It’s kind of amusing

and flattering that the investors consider me a guy with an inside

track with the high-muckity-mucks…

Figure 1. An example of high muckity-mucks in an organization.

…and doubly so that the CEO and investors are having a conversation via my blog.

But hey, communication is what blogs are for, and if it’s good for the

company, good for our customers and good for our investors, that’s cool

by me.

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For those investors who are curious about who I am and what my role in the company is, here’s a quick run-down:

I work in the Research and Innovation department, of which “Boss Ross”

Rader is the Director. I hold the longest job title in the company: Technical Community Development Coordinator

(sixteen syllables, one short of a haiku), and my broad mandate is to

build a community of developers, encourage them to build applications

on the Tucows platform. and be the Tucows “goodwill ambassador” to the

developers. Simply put, I’m a programmer who also likes to “shake hands

and kiss babies”, as they say in political campaigns. While I do have

an interest in the “suit” aspects of the company — and really, any

employee who doesn’t look at least occasionally to such issues in their

company is casting their fate to the winds — it’s not my area of

expertise or influence. My primary value to the company is as a

technologist with wide interests, an ability to communicate, a sizable

readership and “mad accordion skillz”.

I just happen to be an enthusiastic employee with a blog.

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After reading the comments on Raging Bull, it dawned on me that I had now crossed into Scoble Country. For those of you, Robert Scoble

is a technical evangelist at Microsoft. While his primary

responsibility is to talk to developers, people come to him about all

sorts of non-technical issues concerning Microsoft, and he often

comments on them on his personal blog, which like mine is not an official company organ.

At the same time, Elliot passed by my desk, and I said, taking inspiration from the Diesel Sweeties punch line, “I am ten ninjas”…

This is available as a T-shirt from the Diesel Sweeties web comic site. Click to see the order page.

“Hey, Elliot! I have a new mantra for this year: I am Ten Scobles!“

He got a laugh out of that.

Yesterday’s Achewood tickled my funny bone. First, a funny-because-it’s-true poke at Volvo owners…

…followed by a little fun at the expense of Trent Reznor, Mr. Nine Inch Nails…

I myself drove a brown Volvo 245DL station wagon when I was in high

school, commonly known to my friends as “The Deathmobile” (named after the car used in the final prank in Animal House).