KeelFish; A Brief History

What's in a name?

When my business partner (who happens to be my darling wife) and I merged our independent consulting firms, we settled on retention of her corporate identity, Windward Software and Consulting.

All the relevant domain names were taken, and we were anxious to extend our internet development practice, so scrambled to find a domain name we liked.

Both being sailors (she crewed and skippered a Laser 2 Class boat in the 1990's) we choose to incorporate the moniker 'Keel' in our brand. I added 'Fish' as a reference back to the days when I would jump under our family scow-hull (skippered by my brother John), grab the keel and 'fly' underwater.

KeelFish was born.

As I work in and observe Corporate America, I often do so from the Keel... under the vessel.

The view from the engine room and cockpit are equally insightful!

I hope your journey is an interesting one.

- KeelFish

It's the Relationship, Silly.

Promoting positive relationships as a key to successful project teams in Corporate America IT while describing my valued readers as "Silly" seems counter-intuitive... if indeed I was describing my readers.

No shame intended, it's my (early career) self I'm describing!

This post will share my POV on the significance of positive working relationships, trust, respect and leadership to overcome the challenges of working in cross-functional teams.

Viewed from my humanistic vantage, positive relations make sense intuitively... it's the right thing to do and feels good. A more calculating approach focuses on the economic value for positive working relationships... they pay benefits in my ability to get things done.

What experiences have you had in Corporate America? Does collaboration work for you?

Stay tuned!

Marketing Services Architecture

In October 2007 my work mate Ben Leonard and I formalized our thinking on SOA adoption within the Enterprise Engagement line of business for Carlson Marketing Worldwide, describing the essentials of a model for our Marketing Services Architecture ©.

Key requirements for our model include:

• Reuse of functionality from our legacy portfolio
• A clear roadmap toward seperation of architectural layers
• Ease of integration for new services
• A supporting implimentation model based on flexibility, reponsiveness and value (aka low cost)

Primary solution implementation candidates for the model focus on employee engagement/loyalty and sales/channel performance incentive Clients across most vertical markets (e.g. financial, technology, telecommunication, pharma, transportation, etc.)

This post will further describe the Marketing Services Architecture © (aka MSA) and document our challenges and (hopeful!) success stories with its adoption.

Stay tuned!