Does this resemble your experience?
You go to the local computer store and you buy a new computer from a 25 year old, who answers your questions about how easy it is to learn, and will it be the best purchase over the next three to five years. They look at you like youʼre crazy, they arenʼt really interested in what you want to do with your computer, or your home stereo setup, or your multiple remotes. They just want you to buy the damn computer and go away, so they can get back to updating their Facebook or playing some hot new game youʼve never heard of.
What you really want is someone you can talk with, brainstorm with, someone who wants to know what kind of whacky things you want to do, and someone who knows how to find out how to do those things, or can give you the feedback about the relative effort involved, and can advise you on the do-ability of your dream, given your budget, monetary and time, your relative knowledge of the prerequisites, and the implications of doing or not doing the project will have on your life, the lives of the people youʼre close to, and also to the culture, society, environment, etc.
Sounds crazy, right? Someone who can show you how to do stuff, who you donʼt have to be embarrassed to admit you donʼt know the best way to do something. Someone who wonʼt let you get into or buy something that you probably will regret.
In short, if you are time-poor and cash-rich, you need someone you can trust, who has no vested interest in selling you something, to bounce off the concepts, to work out the bugs, to blue-sky where it might go if you do it right.
Somebody who could do this sounds like an impossibility, right? People like that are in Silicon Valley, or start-ups, schmoozing with VCs and patent lawyers, planning how to get bought by Facebook, Google or Apple, dreaming of the mega-yacht theyʼll buy when the exit plan deal goes through.
Know what? Plenty of my old colleagues and friends are those people. Theyʼre folks who LOVE that stuff, and want to do the deals, write the big plans, do the due diligence before the Merger. Me, Iʼd rather just read about stuff like that, play with the resulting technology, analyze how our culture is going with this stuff, and what the money and politicians are going to do about it all. Sure, I could have done that stuff too, but life sent me a few curves that took me on a different highway. And I never wanted to do as much of that stuff as my old colleagues were prepared to do.
So here I am, with plenty of deep, strategic experience of technology, culture, structures and processes, without any desire to become another cog in one of the big machines that run the planet. I want to help people understand whatʼs going on with technology, how it might effect their lives, and how they can take some of the control back from the technology giants who want you for a money battery.
TechMentor. It’s your life, your technology, and your data.