iThink Blog

I love to read.

But it wasn’t always that way.

As a kid I loved car magazines, newspapers and biography/history books. Fiction and literature eluded me. During my first semester at Lee College, I was lucky enough to have Dr. Janet Rahamut for several courses.  She taught me to read with not only my mind, but my heart and soul. She changed my life.

What can you say about your favorite professor? Did they inspire you to think? To justify your thoughts? Did they make you a better student and a better person? That’s what Janet Rahamut did for me. Each time I pick up a book, I say a word of thanks for having been her student.

One book I never would have ...

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend two conferences, each anchored at opposite ends of the CRM product lifecycle spectrum.

On Wednesday, I drove down to Washington, D.C. for Cloudforce, a regional Salesforce.com conference; on Thursday and Friday, I exhibited and presented at the College Board’s Recruitment PLUS User Group.

Both conferences relied heavily on “environmental” metaphors: Cloudforce, as its name suggests, promoted the future of “cloud” computing, while the College Board conference focused on the “sun-setting” of the Recruitment PLUS CRM.

The tone of Cloudforce could best be described as buoyant.  With projectors illuminating the Salesforce cloud logo on every wall, there was an almost tangible sense of floating among the clouds as participants flitted from room to room: Social networking. ...

A few weeks ago, I learned that my Saturn Vue runs on a Honda engine.

Not being a “Car Guy,” I sort of twisted my head and said, “Huh?  Whattya mean it has a Honda Engine?  Doesn’t it have a Saturn engine?”

Nope.  No Saturn engine.  Just a Honda engine.  And actually, a really good one to boot.

It took me a few minutes, however, to get my head around that:  so all this time I’ve been driving a Honda?

Well, sort of.  I mean, most of what I love about my car is very Saturn-y — the interior, the stereo, the controls, the design, the roominess.

But the Honda engine gives my car its power.  It’s what allows me to make those road trips ...

[With apologies to the Corrs...]

When I was in High School, my parents bought a treadmill.

It was sleek and black and had a big important-looking console on it.

It felt powerful.  Like you could lose weight just by being near it.  My parents had big plans for it and bigger dreams for themselves.

My father said, “It’ll be great.  I can watch Seinfeld and lose weight at the same time.”  And my mother: “I don’t have to worry about the cold winter weather, because I can exercise in comfort right here in the basement!”

Just like in a million other homes across America, however, it wasn’t too long before the treadmill was forgotten — relegated to a second life as a glorified laundry rack.  ...

When I first started in Admissions, I lived in an apartment a few blocks from campus in good ol’ Scranton, PA.  I had a short commute (a 5 minute walk to work) and quiet neighbors, but because my apartment was carved out of an old house, there weren’t a lot of other fringe benefits.

Across town, my colleague, Adrienne Bartlett (who also started her illustrious career with me in Admissions), lived in a sleek apartment complex.  Adrienne’s rent was less than mine and she had on-site laundry, an in-ground pool, workout facilities, and — best of all — included cable!

The staff on-hand at Adrienne’s complex would mow the lawns, shovel the parking lot, clean the pool, and replace the workout machines.  ...