Been dark for almost a month.  Post when I have something to say.  Whoa… here we go.  Next blog about new technology. This one more linguistics, human equations.  Fun doing it.

Spring. The air was crisp and cool, sun was shining. I was on my morning commute. The radio station playing in my car was set the night before on my commute home.  Last night it was rock & R&B. Morning was the realm of, well, morning radio.  I have no specific memories of what the host was talking about, only that every sentence he ended with by saying “you know”.   At this point in time, I did not notice the proliferation of “you know”.  I did, however change the station for the same reason many people tune out these shows; Forced laughter, call in contests, traffic reports,  nothing I needed, so I changed the channel to National Public Radio (NPR).

NPR you say, this guy must be a liberal.  No.  My role is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of a software company.  I’m an entrepreneur and a capitalist.  Closer to a libertarian than anything else. That is important to state;  NPR gets a bad wrap sometimes.  Anyone heard of Bill Gates? aka Founder of Microsoft, backer of NPR via the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.  Enough on that.

So  turn the channel to NPR, usually I’ll give it a minute.  Good topic, I listen, boring topic… I put in a CD.  It was a good topic, so I start listening.  Can’t remember what is was about.  The guest was brilliant. However, every time he finished a sentence he said, “you know” at the end.  This time I noticed it.  I felt trapped in my car, wanting to hear what this guest was saying, but feeling every statement he completed with “you know” was completely diminished.   I was compelled to call in.

A very nice woman welcomed me and asked what I would like to talk about.  I felt guilty and petty, but I was compelled by a strange rage.

“I’m feel really strange about calling in about this”, I said

“I am a long time listener”  (everyone says that).  ”and I feel I’ve got to say something.  This guest you have on is saying “you know” at the end of every sentence.   It sounds horrible.  Can someone slip him a note or something.”

Uncomfortable silence.

The woman must have been listening to the live program.  At first I could tell she thought I was a crackpot.  ( I felt I came off as sincere).  She could tell I felt uneasy.   “Hold on a minute” she said.

A few seconds later, she came back and said “you’re right, I’ll see if we can do something”

I continued to listen to the program.  The “you knows” continued until the half hour break.  Every one felt like a stab at me.  When the break was over, a transformation had happened.  The guest WAS very intelligent and probably nervous being on the radio.  Most likely I had nothing to do with it, he might have just calmed down.   The “you knows”  had stopped.   

Pleased with myself.  Yes, internally, I took full credit for the commentators transformation.

Into the office I go.  Broadlook Technologies, my baby.

Late in the morning the “you know” monster reared it’s head again.  Normally, I would not even have noticed.  One of my star sales reps was having a 4-5 minute conversation with a perspective client.   In the few minutes I listened in (we have an open floor sales environment),  I heard 5-6 “you knows”.   He was saying everything right, handling objections with skill, leading the prospect into a solution sell,  actively listening and responding.   However, he was killing his passion and confidence, as perceived by any listener, with interjecting “you know” into his conversation.

That is when I realized what “you know” is.   Lack of confidence.  Seeking approval.  Sometimes just a filler. In his case, I believe it was just a filler.  This guys rules the crowd at conference.  No lack of confidence and not the type to seek approval.  Somehow, it grew on him.  My guy, my friend, my star.  

Has  ”you know”  become the “um” of the 21st century?  

I am guilty too.  This is not a “you say it and I don’t” kind of thing.  I am a “you know” offender.  Now, it is few and far between and I usually catch myself, but it happens.   And damn it, it is everyone’s fault.  We are our brothers keeper when it comes to the evolution of language.   Do you remember saying “google it” 5 years ago?

Remember the old movie, “Network”?  I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore?”  

I am mad about this.  It really bothers me.  Why?   I am not an extremely polished linguist.  I’ve got an average vocabulary for someone in my position.   I’m not concerned that “ain’t” is now in the dictionary.  I may be a snob when it comes to my mac powerbook, but changing the English language, no, I’m not a puritan.  So why does it bother me?  

Know thyself.

One simple reason.  I live with passion.  Passion about my beliefs,  passion about what I create and sell.  When someone ends or begins their statements with “you know”, it is reducing everything they said before.  Try the test of injecting “you know” into a famous speech.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.  You know.”

“I have not yet begun to fight. You know.”

If you are in sales,  try injecting “you know” into your sales presentation.

“Our recruiting software is used by over 3500 client in 22 countries, you know”     ouch!

So where does this leave me.  Frustrated?  Hell no.  Let me give everyone that wants to sell to me a tip.  I love being sold to.  I love buying stuff.  I love being brought through the sales process by a person of excellence that is giving me a solution based on my needs.  

I am putting the world on notice:  If you talk to me and say “you know?”, I will assume that you are asking me a question.  If you ask me a question, I am not going to stand idly by.  I am going to answer:

“No, I don’t know”

Will I be mean? No.  Will I do it until they get the hint? Yes.  Will they be insulted?  I do not know.  My basic tenet is that there is a spark of intelligence in all people.  There is no need for this in our language.  Let’s bring “um” back.   It was kinder and it did not pose a question. 

This plague can be eradicated.  Doing nothing spreads it.  

Join me in just saying, “No, I don’t know”.

I need your help,  for if I’m the only one saying it then people may be thinking I am saying:

“I, Do nat o”

Quick post.  Rob McIntosh made a great comment on my recent post List Metrics; how to measure quality in a list?.   Instead of replying to the comment, I though I’d write a quick post on this, as it is something I have some strong feelings on.

Rob asked, “Who owns list validation?”.  Rob goes on to point out that sometimes great lists never get acted upon.  Sometimes a recruiter will point to a sourcer and ask if a list is validated, and to what level,  cross-referenced, email, phone validation, etc.

Here is the real problem:  Lists get stored and archived are simply structured wrong.   Add validation fields to each record.   It does not matter who owns validation, as long as the list is coded correctly and expectations of the list recipient are accurate.

I’ve had years of experience pioneering this research at Broadlook Technologies.   We look at validation from a statistical perspective.   For example, our flagship recruiting software, Profiler product SCORES all contact data.  

Scoring of data allows the human using the data to make decisions with respect to where to put their efforts.

What are the source dates of the web pages someone was pulled from?  Was the person cross-referenced on multiple sites? If a resume, what is the date?  Does the date on one resume board match the date on another?  Are you saving both dates?  What type of page was the information taken from?

What this makes me think about is that maybe Broadlook should break-out the logic inside the Profiler, enhance it, and create a product that simply scores list data.  Why?  All data is not equal.   After scoring data, a recruiter would have much more insight as to where they should put their efforts first. 

I would like to hear from people on this one??  Implications in the recruiting software business but definitely wider appeal in general B-B sales.

Example:  What is the likelihood of someone from New York, NY moving to Boston vs. Milwaukee?    That affects the score.  What is the ability of the recruiter getting the list to build rapport with a technical candidate?  That affects the score.  What is the track record of the Internal recruitment staff to actually recruit these candidates vs. an outside agency?  (Would be interesting to test this).  Agency recruiters tend to be better, that is why they make the big bucks.  It may be the first step building an ROI study that corporations should be doing the sourcing and getting the short list to a few select recruiters to work the magic.

Axiom:  Regardless of all other variables, all records in a list should have a score

Axiom:  Validation level within a list should persist and be updated throughout the life of the list

Axiom:  Lists should be scored differently based on the need.

Fun stuff.  Thanks for making me think Rob.  enjoyed the rant!

What is a good vertical market to recruit in?   I get asked this question every week.    

However, most often the question is more a question of what I “feel” would be a good market to start a new desk specialty in.  

“Donato, what do you feel a good new desk specialty would be?” 

I say. “I feel like a great market would be placing sales reps in recruiting software companies that do real time data mining of contact information.”  

They respond, “but Donato, Broadlook is the only company I know that does this kind of thing.”

“That’s right”, I say.  “..and I don’t pay fees”   <grin>

About this time they realize I am having fun at their expense and I chime in. “You asked me what I feel, not what I think.”

Most recruiters don’t think it through thoroughly when starting a new desk.   Lets face it, thinking is hard.  A day of designing software wipes me out more than a triathlon (ok I’ve only done one). It’s not their fault.  This is how they were taught.  Or I should say, this is how they learned.  They watch someone who was a big biller and tried to do what they heard.

When discussing the creation of a new desk, I hear a good deal about reading everything from an industry, articles, journals, etc.  Wake up, this type of activity is about learning about the industry, not if the niche will support a desk.  If I am going to trust my livelihood to one vertical or another,  forget the gut, give me data.

“Hey Donato, are you telling me to ignore my gut instinct?”  

NO

The role of the “gut instinct” in this whole process should precede the data gathering.  The gut should lead you to the top several candidates and then you then expose to the scientific method.  The gut gets excited while reading and learning.  Don’t let it get carried away.

The gut is the emotion, the wind.  Let the data be the rudder and the sail.

To start a new desk, I would prefer solid facts about a potential specialty, such as:

How many open jobs, by state and nationally?   (size of universe)
How many recruiters specialize in the niche?     (competition)
What are the average fees paid to recruiters?    (compensation)
What resources can I use to build a candidate pool?  (sourcing)
What resources can I use to win business?  (marketing)
Will I enjoy working this desk specialty? (mental health)
Can I own the space, can I brand this space as mine?  (branding)

Once you do decide on a new desk specialty, based on the data, the first thing to do is think about branding yourself.  I’ll focus on the other questions in my next few blogs.  A great example of branding is Harry Joiner and his site MarketingHeadhunter.com

How easy is it to brand yourself?   Two areas that I know are hot are Physical Therapists and Nanotechnology.  Very different, but both very hot.  So I went out to GoDaddy.com and checked the following web sites:

PHYSICALTHERAPISTRECRUITER.COM   (FREE)
NANOTECHNOLOGYRECRUITER.COM      (FREE)
BIOFUELRECRUITER.COM                            (FREE)
FUELCELLRECRUITER.COM                          (TAKEN)
GREENENERGYRECRUITER.COM                 (FREE)

Most of them were free and only one was taken. Again, all hot, hot, hot.

Heads up.  Don’t try to go register, PHYSICALTHERAPISTRECRUITER.COM or NANOTECHNOLOGYRECRUITER.COM because I just registered them.  The others are free as of this writing.  I may not fetch the 99K that Jason Davis is asking for CEOjobs.com, but they will sell for a hefty profit.

The first Physical Therapist Recruiter to purchase the Broadlook Suite, you can have that site for free.  (I have no passion for that desk).  New clients only.

Don’t ask for nanotechnologyrecruiter.com.  Nanotech excites me.  It’s mine.

I am behind the times.  Kicking back tonight I caught the Apple TV commercial that you can now access facebook with the iPhone.  My facebook profile needs updating. I do love my iPhone, so I jumped on and learned that AmyBeth Hale was having coffee with her bro and that her space heater was on the blink.  Not the information I was looking for, but, the ease of accessing it made me think (I am a fan of AmyBeth, so don’t say any different). 

The biggest explosion of the social networks will be when voice recognition nears 100%.  Yes, everyone types, but we are just putting up with it because we don’t have something better.  Think.  Microsoft software is now in cars.  It does voice recognition.  Microsoft invested in facebook.  Soon we will be seeing in AmyBeth’s profile that she just took a left turn on the drive over to the next SourceCon event.  AmyBeth won’t have to type it in.  It will all be controlled by a set of preferences.  If she does not want the world to know her whereabouts, that option gets turned off.  Technology converges and then excelerates.   The key elements are (1) Superior/intelligent input devices and (2) rules to determine what to do with the input.  We will see it. 

Back to the stream of thought:  Ease of access to information.  Back on facebook.  Political commercial on TV.  Check out how the candidates are doing.  Search on each candidate.  Stats found:

In race
John McCain  59,902 facebook supporters
Hillary Clinton  113,248 facebook supporters
Barack Obama 515,332 facebook supporters
Mike Huckabee  - not on first page of results for “Mike Huckabee”

Not in race, but worth mentioning
Ron Paul 84,145 facebook supporters 
John Edwards 32,630 facebook supporters

Wow.   The Internet cannot, will not be ignored in this election.  Ignore it or don’t leverage it is political death.    It will be interesting how the numbers affect momentum and final results.  Businesses and consultancies will be built on the analysis of this information and how it affects the real world.  Keep in mind that this is the presidential election and we are seeing it many months in advance.  Closer to election day we will start to see the congressional candidates more visible as well. They are there now, we just don’t see “facebook groups” for state and local elections popping up.  We will.

On the other hand Ron Paul is doing better on facebook than John McCain, but he is out of the race.  Interesting variables.  Where is the buzz to influence ratio?  Ron Paul, buzz, McCain has the support of the voters.   I take no sides here, I just find it interesting. I’m curious.

This data can and will be data mined.  What will be done with this information once it is stored?   What information do you add to the social network?  Who will cross reference this data with national cell phone databases?  Who will I be getting calls from on my cell phone come November?  

Has anyone thought of a version of the do-not-call-list for data stored on social networks?  One repository with permissions for usage of data.  Google has their Open Social system for working with many social networks.  Maybe someone can leverage it.

Never know where a blog is going until I’m done.  Meeting with my adopt-a-blogger Dan Hughes in the early am.  Should I spend time posting my appt on facebook or find  a facebook appointment interceptor widget?   I vote widget.

For those expecting a technology blog today, you can skip this posting.

The most common comment I get from people reading my blog is “thanks for the original content”.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Many of us are tired of “me too” postings.  Reposting Youtube, reposting of this, reposting of that.   Why is this?  Why is there essentially a culture of copy out there?  What can we do to fix it?   Many of my readers are recruiters.  Well, if you are a recruiter then you must recruit or better yet, adopt a blogger.

What stops someone who has much to say… from saying it?  As easy as setting up a Wordpress blog is, it will stop most non-technical people in their tracks.  

I was having a discussion with Dan Hughes, one of the people who helped build and grow Broadlook Technologies with me.  Dan wants to blog.  Dan did not know where to start.  We even thought of a name for his site (The Sales Trench).   Weeks later, no blog.   So I’m adopting Dan.  I registered SalesTrench.com,  installed Wordpress for him and configured it.

Adoption is not a one time event.

I will be pestering the heck out of Dan to get some of his great ideas down.  Right now, the site is empty, so, Dan, you are out there, the world is waiting, now you have to write.   

Dan and I talk almost every day, he can’t escape.  I’ll be a blog-parent until he flies from the nest.  Dan, happy birthday.  Have fun with the site! 

Call to bloggers  

Who will you adopt?  Can you think of someone with great ideas that really should be writing them down?   Adopt them, help them, encourage them, pester them if you must.   More unique content will lift us all.  Send me a note about your adoption.
  

I am in Disney World.  My 4 year old daughter crashed in the hotel room after a non-stop day of fun.  It’s a happy place. I’m happy.   I quickly check my email and what do I get?  Blog spam.  Lots of it.  Ok, good, I’m happy I’ve got a bunch of readers now.  For those of you who leave comments email me directly, thank you.  I enjoy the feedback, positive and otherwise, as long as it is thought out.  

But 50 blog spams?  Ouch, I didn’t sign up to be an administrator and a human spam filter.  (please oh experienced bloggers out there, tell me what you do to avoid this.)

The blog spam gave me an idea.   It is a cool one.  I have often received spam at my private email address even though it is one I never have given anyone.  This private email I use to register for sites that I never intend on using again.  (newspapers, register for white papers, etc). The strange thing is that the spam I get in this email account has nothing to do with sites I registered for.  Someone is selling my information.  Are they breaking the terms of service for their site?  I don’t know.

 A discovery process. Here is what I am going to do:

Step 1:  Setup

-create a fictitious company
-register a new domain. 
-not use my real name & make whois information private
-add phony names, titles & emails to the site.  VP of sales, Director of Marketing, etc
-add some basic content to the site and make sure the search engines can find it. 

Step 2:  Seeding

-Register for as many sites as I can.  For each site, I will use a unique email and name that is not printed or listed anywhere for the fictitious company domain.  In addition, I am going to save the privacy terms of each site in a database.
-Save every email for each unique email address.  Each email should only be getting email from one source.
-Let the experiment run for a period, it might be 6 months to a year.
-I will make sure to include all the major email services (Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) and I will always select “NO” to share my information with partner companies (when that option is available)

Step 3: Publish

-all sites registered for
-dates & sources which each unique email received email from

Who is breaking terms of service?  What is the implication of registering on various dot com sites?   It should be an interesting experiment.   If something like this has been done already.  I would like to see the research.

hmm, on second thought, this seems like a darn good deal of work. 

Now  I think I’m looking for an intern who wants to do a research project.  Anybody have a referral?  I’ll give them full access to the Broadlook set of Internet research tools.

To many ideas, too little time.  Daughters awake, back to the magic kingdom. Time for fireworks!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been asking every new prospect and client, how many Internet passwords they have to remember.   The question has several levels.

“How many places on the Internet do you log into on a regular basis”, I ask

Usually the answer is 4-8.

“What about associations, alumni sites,  facebook, myspace, LinkedIN…sites that you may not access every day?”

Usually the answer is “another 10 sites”

“Ok, what about sites that you have signed up for, but may only need to log into once in a blue moon.  Examples,  account management for your cell phone provider, your 401K account,   sites like classmates.com, etc”?

Usually the answer is “10 or more”

“Lastly, what about sites you signed up for and you do not expect to return to in the next year.  Althought you still may need to access the it in the future to update account, billing or contact information?”

Typically I get 20, 50, no idea, or “lost count” 

This is when the average sales rep or recruiter realizes they have anywhere from 25-100 (or more) places they have have passwords to.  (Personally, I have well over 200 and I’ve lost count).

Then it gets fun. 

“Do you use the same password?”  I ask

95% of the time I get a …….YES.

This is a security nightmare.  What happens if facebook or myspace or one of these well trafficed sites gets comprised?   Then someone has YOUR password to all the other sites you use.  

Yes, there are password managers.  I am not a fan of them.  You can’t take them everywhere and computers do crash.  Today, I present a humanistic solution to password management.

It’s a simple concept I call password schemas.  It starts with picking a core password and then modifying it based on the attibutes of the place you are using.  I am going to use my dog’s name as an example of a core password.  Her name is Captain Janeway, so the core password is CaptJane (for those of you thinking it…no, I don’t use my dog’s name).

Password schemas, used badly, can be dangerous.  You could expose all your passwords should someone figure it out.   However,  using a schema is far superior to using the same password everywhere.   The more creative you get with the schemas, the better your protection is.

Here are some schemas:  (I just made up names for these). For each schema I am going to use mail.yahoo.com as the site example 

Alpha front/end:  using the first letters of a site in front or end of your core

            yaCaptJane            CaptJaneya       ( “ya” comes from first letters in “yahoo”)

Syllable front/end:  use syllables of the site in front or end of your core

            yhCaptJane              CaptJaneyh     (”yh” from first two syllables in “yahoo”)

Keyboard replacement:  In the password below, I used the key above each of the letters “CaptJane” on the keyboard.   Example:  the “D” key is above the “C” and the “q” key is above the “a”, etc.     Downfall here is that may need the keyboard in front of you to remember your password.

           DqmbUqhc

Alpha front/end + keyboard replacement.    Combining schemas

          yaDqmbUqhc          

Vowel replacement:  replace  O with 0, replace A with @, replace E with &

         C@pJ@n&

Keyboard wrap:  if the site name starts with a “y”, start with y and use the next 7 additional characters to the right.   If you hit the last letter, wrap around to the other side of the keyboard.

       yuiopqwe    (yahoo)
       ghjklasd       (google)
       hjklasdf        (hotmail)

These are just a few ideas of password schemas.   One of my favorites is to replace vowels with full words:  example  A=Alpha, B=Bravo, C=Charley.    The key thing is to sit down with a paper and pen and create your own.   Be creative, have fun and come up with something that you will remember.  Make sure it would be hard for someone to guess your password by looking at a few examples.  The combinations are endless. 

Captain Janeway & Donato
(she thinks she is a lap dog)

For the past month I’ve been immersing myself in comparing and contrasting different search engines. If you work in the search space like I do, and you have a pulse, it is hard to stop yourself from being exposed to articles about this sort of thing…but I’ve been trying.  Why?  I’ll detail that in another post, but basically, I’m working on a search engine concept.  …So I’ve purposely avoided these articles, as I have a theory.

It’s about the creative process. Most people who have worked with me at Broadlook over the last few years understand my theory and bias, whether they agree with it or not, they know how I feel and they give me the space to follow my method as it works for me.

The basic concept is that you should avoid reviewing others work in a field before you think up your original concept for a project. I actually got the idea from a short story I read in high school by Orson Scott Card called Unaccompanied Sonata. Story in short: A young boy, a musical genius, is removed from society so his musical creations are original. At the end of the story he sneaks away from his encampment and hears the music of Mozart. Upon his return, he is cast out as his music was forever influenced by Mozart and no longer original.

Before I sit down with our team to create a new recruiting software product, I put myself through a black out period. Whatever I am working on, I avoid the concept from outside sources at all costs. This allows my creative side to be creative. The copy factor reduces. It’s like when you find yourself in a totally dark room and your eyes start seeing things. Your brain is trying to stay busy & stimulated. The same thing will happen if you deprive yourself of input stimuli on the topic you are interested in…you will start to think.

Once you have your ideas worked out, then and only then review outside content.  Not reviewing external “art” after you’ve gone through your initial creative process is foolhardy.

The “me to” creations coming from most dot com’s are a sign that they start by copying first, not creating.

I was on the Recruiting Animal Show today and one of the comments was about creating original content vs. reposting information.  For those people who want to start blogging original content, avoid reading blogs at all costs.  Shally Steckerl talked about the “Signal to noise ratio” on the show today. It’s all about eliminating the noise. Eliminate the noise and the creativity will come.

I was going to avoid the Black Friday lines and go online to do some shopping at sears.com.  When my browser reported a “404″ error (page not found), I assumed my home Internet connection was down.  How could Sears.com be offline on one of the busiest shopping days of the year?  Quickly checking Google.com, Yahoo.com, Broadlook.com…all online, I ruled out me having a bad Internet connection.  So I tried Sears.com again and got this page:

For those IT recruiters out there: someone could use a new webmaster.

Now I am forgiving, I tried every 15 minutes and I got into the site 2 hours later.  I was catching up on emails so I had time.  I am curious how many sales they lost?  I was looking for replacement parts for my grill, so I was locked to sears.  Those people who might have been comparison shopping, I can’t see them waiting around.

This made me think about a webmasters role.  What should it be?  Should the person that let this happen be fire?  Did they get hacked? I’ve seen cases and experienced it personally when a webmaster is a hindrance to getting things done.  A webmasters role should be to execute the vision and orders of executive management.  In the case of Sears.com, I would think a good shopping experience would be paramount. Oh, and no down time. Period.  “Look kid, we go down and your fired.  This is Chicago kid-o,  lose me a million and it’s cement shoes for you.”

Downtime for a retail organization is equated to loss of business and perhaps death of business. 

The role of a webmaster at a company like sears is not all that different from a small company like Broadlook.  However the “webmaster” at sears is most likely an entire team of people.  I’ve noticed some trends.  The single and small operators maintain tight controls over their websites.  The messaging is usually concise and it reflects the founding philosophy of the company.   As a company grows to the size where a second level of management is introduced, I’ve noticed those companies move away in their core messaging.  This is to be expected, that first level of management is removing some workload from the founding executives.  There are many areas that would be better served for middle management.  Messaging is not one of them.  Later, as a company grows to have an experience executive in charge of messaging, the web messaging moves reflects the original vision or even improves on it.

Until now, I had no idea where this sears post was going.  I do now. It is sort of a self autopsy on working with my own webmaster, past and present. For me, each of my blogs is a personal journey of discovery. If they were not, then I am writing for everyone else and not myself.  I am not that giving.   This blog is for me and my discovery process, first and foremost.   If others read and get something out of it, great.  If they don’t, that’s ok because I’m learning here. 

Regarding my working with a webmaster, in the past, I failed.  My autopsy tells me that it is management’s role to convey with clarity what is expected of the webmaster and the website.  I did not do this.  That was my mistake. The same mistake that I see happening at many growing companies.  Time to change.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is my 2nd posting today. Why?  I crashed my computer after completing my last blog.  Gone, lost, bye bye.   So I had to rewrite the entire posting.  I’ve been working with computers since I was 15 years old, so with nearly 30 years of writing with computers, I am no stranger to crashes and loss.  One of my first jobs as a software engineer was working for a company that did real time backups.

What made this blog, this writing, stick in my mind more than others in the past?  The packers were winning, the baby was crying and my two older children were louder than the loudest sales rep at Broadlook (that is loud).  The fact that I could get anything done today was an accomplishment.  So I was proud to get anything done at all.  When I lost it, I had to do a rewrite.

The rewrite took 1/4 the time that the original post took.  The writing wasn’t as good.

This made me think of how important backups are.  As I think back over the years, when I lost something in a crash, the rewrites were never as good.  I’m not talking about revisions.  Revisions can be much much better.  A true rewrite is starting from scratch; you don’t have your orginal thoughts and inspiration, it tends to lack something.  In addition, rewriting, after you lost your original, seems more like work than inspiration.  Maybe that is why I am writing this post.  I can’t end the evening with a rewrite.

I’d love to hear the experiences of others.  Orginal inspiration vs. rewrites..what are the attributes of each?