Bill Watt’s Blog

My favorite thing to do is to spend time with people I love.

I was going through a bunch of pictures on my iPhone (one of the many ways I distract myself from my hour commute in the morning) and I was pretty pumped to come across this pic. It was taken during our wedding weekend up in Portsmouth, NH and while I was freaking out on the inside about the big life event about to happen I couldn’t help but enjoy this moment. It is funny to realize that Corinne was the only person who knew everyone else in the picture before this meal. (This was pre-Facebook where you social networks didn’t cross as readily.)

I only have a couple things I would have wished to be different (a few of my friends living in CA couldn’t make it, Jen and Jason would arrive a few minutes after this and just missed being in it, Paul, Jen, Amelia, Kitty and a few others hadn’t arrived yet) but that is like a 1st world billionaire wishing he had change kinda problem.

The next day we were able to have the picture that got a lot closer to my perfect picture requirements.

(I’ll try to remember to replace these images with the higher quality versions later… not the versions that were optimized for the iPhone.)

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who helped give me these memories but especially Alice who pulled it all together.

I twittered this earlier in the week and got a decent response so I’ll add it to the blog for posterity, for the folks who don’t follow me on twitter (I hear there are some), and so I can use more than 140 characters.

 I want my work to be fun and for my fun to never be work.

While it may sound short and simple and perhaps a bit random, if you know me then you know this is a pretty good assessment of how I try to live. My favorite thing is spending time with amazing people. Because this is what interests me I try to pick jobs that put me in groups of smart people trying to do good things and then I try to get as much enjoyment as I can from the situations that follow.

So… It has been a pretty funny week and I plan to write a longer post over the weekend about all the good stuff that happened. I’ll just drop this as a preview.

Was at dinner last night and was learning about a new friend when we finally hit the intersection of “Where did you go to undergrad?” and “Holy crap, you’re that much younger than me?!?” when I realized we had a friend in common from his undergrad and my FairMarket family. She is on my favorite people list (oh yes, there is a list) and I don’t think they know know each other but that we’re sitting in San Jose drinking wine without any sense of previous commonality and all of a sudden we have a point in our unique pasts that crosses is pretty interesting to me.

I’m not going to write much text now but I’ll write up the dinner summary soon.

I should send a shout out to J Scot Steinhorn and Carol Dombrowski who were married yesterday in Atlanta. I hope you guys are having a ball and look forward to when you move back to CA!

We’ll do a little toast for you guys this Wednesday and maybe we’ll have a pink theme or something to match Carol’s colors.

Yes… yes… yesterday afternoon I went out after lunch and got a hair cut. I’m not back to the high and tight of pre-wedding Bill but I am sporting hair that just goes to the shoulders. I prob lost 5+ inches of hair and I think it came out pretty well. I prefer it pulled back today but it is nicer looking now that it has been cleaned up a bit.

2 people at the office commented on it- one who had previously complimented my longer look and one that liked the shorter look from the facebook profile. Funny the things people notice. I understand that I looked a bit bushy and out of control but being that I never look at myself (which my friend Yuval attributes to an odd form of self esteem) I can’t tell if it looks different to other folks.

Yesterday and most of this week were excellent examples of suckness but also plenty of good stuff happened and that the suckness was a good reminder that I have nothing but first world problems.

Case in point… yesterday was full of stress over an impending release and a bunch of dropped balls. Still… I was able to work from home, attended several conf calls, and still managed to squeeze in Korean BBQ for lunch where I burned myself on the pot while watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my shiny new iPhone. Rough life, right?

So, at one point I was looking for a little humor and a sense that I’m not alone in this big world of Product Management pain. What did I do? Why, I googled “day in the life of a product manager” and came across more than a few gems. Check out this post from “The Cranky Product Manager” and you’ll see the kind of mood I was in.

The nice thing was how the day ended. Release issues (the most important ones anyway) are nearly resolved with a light at the end of the tunnel and I was able to go to Gary Dillabough’s going away party at eBay and see many of my favorite old time eBay folks.

Note for Hima and Ramya- I think I’m actually a hugger after all. Never fear- your protected status is still in place.

It was quite comforting in a way I really really needed yesterday to see good folks and wish Gary well. Two notes to Gary…

1. Thanks for telling the FAIM acquisition story. Even thought it hurts on some grand spiritual level for me to think about how close we were to being a Web 1.0 success story with your parting the number of people that even remember FAIM dropped to about what I can count on two hands and the number of execs who know it dropped to 2. I’m sure in 6 months they’ll rebuild the large merchant strategy and not even realize what they’ve missed out on.
2. Keep me in mind in your future projects. I’d happily clean your pool.

I know many folks has already talked about this and a friend (who controls his online footprint so I’ll leave it at that) at work keeps asking me when I’ll watch. For me… things like this are for the weekend but just in case any of you haven’t seen it, here is the email my friend sent me:

In case you never heard about the “last lecture” project- it was a series of lecture about what would you talk about if you had only one last lecture to do.
Many interesting lectures came out of it but Randy Pausch’s lecture became a must hear for everyone out there.

“On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.”

Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, celebrating the dreams we all strive to make realities. And now, in his book based on the now-famous lecture, Randy goes even deeper to inspire us all.
http://www.thelastlecture.com/
http://www.cmu.edu/uls/journeys/randy-pausch/index.html

Watch the lecture:
Short version (11min) : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8577255250907450469
Full lecture (1:16 hr): http://youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Randy just passed away after a long fight with cancer. We wish his family the best in this tough time and hope they can take some comfort in how he lived and inspired people.

This post idea was suggested by a friend…

So, a few years ago I went to a career management seminar sponsored by eBay. This was one of their “make sure all the resources know we care” initiatives. At one point the facilitator asked, “What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?” So I raised my hand and said, “I’m not sure this is actually good advice but I’ve been told that the best way to be is to keep my head down, work hard, and everything will take care of itself.”

The facilitator shook his head and said, “No, that might actually be the worst advice ever. I hope you didn’t listen to that advice.”

Yes, I’m about a week behind in writing. It has been a busy week.

As is my tradition, my gift to myself was a dinner with a bunch of friends. It is always comforting to know I have more friends than the room available and yet sad that I can’t invite everyone I wanted to invite. So, on Saturday we gathered at Twist and had a great time catching up with old friends, introducing some new friends to the group, and generally ate too much. It was fun mingling FairMarket, eBay,  and Current friends.

It was also nice to see the benefits of a Web 2.0 / global social networking world where the birthday wishes came in from all corners of the Earth.  One more way technology is making the world a bit smaller and way more fun.

Anyway- thanks to everyone who could make it, sorry to everyone who I couldn’t invite, thanks to everyone who wished we me a happy birthday, and thanks to the folks who shared their favorite things with me, and a special thanks to Amanda who baked my favorite cookies.