How I spend my day

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Jason Shah

I was asked by a member of our Chicago startup community to detail what the day-to-day life of the CTO looks like at Mediafly. I thought I’d share how I spend my time, summarized in this graph:

As you can see, my role pulls me in a lot of different directions. Often, what I believe I will be doing at the start of the day turns out to be completely wrong by the end of the day looking back.

This graph doesn’t state much in isolation. More interesting is when I pair this with where I want to spend my time (assuming Mediafly is no more than double its current size):

As we grow, I want to spend less time troubleshooting client issues, and more time with the product, with prospective customers, with my team, and writing and speaking. Put another way, I want to spend more time being externally focused and be able to further rely on my team to make things happen.

The following notes apply when reading this:

This is how I spend my time. It is not meant to be prescriptive, and It will almost assuredly differ from how you spend your time in the same role at the same company.
I am the CTO of Mediafly, a high-growth enterprise mobility software-as-a-service company. We turn enterprise content and data into compelling mobile experiences. We have approximately 25 employees and contractors, the bulk of whom reside in engineering and services.
My experiences and time allocation will differ from the CTO of a consumer-focused startup, established enterprise software company, or internal IT CTO.

I plan to update this post over time as my thoughts evolve. As always, feedback is welcome!

“Mediafly’s CTO Joins a Panel of Experts to Discuss Reliability and Security at the NAB Cloud Computing Conference”

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Jason Shah

Repost of a press release about me.

If you are at NAB and have the right pass, I hope you can make it!

“Chicago, IL, April 03, 2013 –(PR.com)– NAB Show, held April 6-11 in Las Vegas, is the world’s largest electronic media show covering filmed entertainment and the development, management and delivery of content across all mediums. On Monday, April 8, an expert panel will address the remaining pitfalls that cause producers and distributors to resist migrating to the cloud. Placing content on the cloud heightens concerns around the secure exchange of media. This coupled with the need for reliable access to content regardless of whether you are online or offline makes this a key discussion to attend if you want to understand how these obstacles are being overcome. The panel will include the Chief Technology Officer of Mediafly, Jason Shah. Mediafly works with three of the four major broadcast networks and has addressed these issues first hand.

Jason joined Mediafly in May 2010 and oversees all product management, engineering, and services. His duties include product management, platform and integration engineering, customer delivery, and product marketing. Jason brings a strong background in client engagement and software product management, with experience from Neuros Technology, Bain & Company, and Trilogy Software.

More information about the event is available at http://bit.ly/Y4wrII.

About NAB Show
NAB show hosts more than 90,000 attendees from 151 countries and 1,600+ exhibitors, NAB Show is the ultimate marketplace for digital media and entertainment. From creation to consumption, across multiple platforms and countless nationalities, NAB Show is home to the solutions that transcend traditional broadcasting and embrace content delivery to new screens in new ways. Complete details are available at www.nabshow.com.

About Mediafly
Mediafly, Inc. creates business media solutions for the Fortune 500. Mediafly joins its cloud-based content management platform with elegant native applications on mobile, tablet, connected TV devices, and PCs. Industry leading customers use Mediafly as a powerful selling tool for face-to-face meetings, as a media screening and review/approve tool for pre- and post-air media, and as a platform to deliver engaging live and on-demand corporate communications to every employee and partner. For more information, visit: www.mediafly.com.”

Hierarchies of Needs

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Jason Shah

For Code:

For Design:

And of course, the original:

Photography

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Jason Shah

Taken at the Alcazar in Sevilla. This is an example of Moorish architecture intersecting with Christianity. The concept of drawing the likeness of humans and nature is forbidden in Islam, however, notice the faces of Catholic kings and queens along the wall.

When in Spain…

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Jason Shah

(Or more specifically, When in restaurants in Spain…)

We just returned from a 12-day trip to Spain. Our journey took us to Barcelona, Granada, Sevilla, and Madrid. As expected, we ate out a lot during the trip. We learned quite a bit from observation and our two guidebooks (Rick Steves’s Spain 2012 and Lonely Planet’s Discover Spain 2012; the former was excellent, the latter was relatively useless). A few interesting notes that we want to share with our friends, family and other readers. Note that these apply to the mid-range restaurants that we ate at; low end and high end will have a different set of rules.

Sit at the bar. Service is faster (more U.S.A.-like), food is cheaper (different prices for bar vs. restaurant vs. terrace/patio), and you have more freedom at the bar to explore various pintxo’s (tapas served on bread) that are usually housed at the bar.
For variety, order tapas and not the larger raciónes. The former is great for trying new things, whereas the latter is a larger plate.
Notice how hard the waiters and waitresses work. There are no busboys. Waiters often wash dishes. They will cut their own bread for the table. And they often cover what seems like double the number of tables as in the States (something like 10 or so).
Like many parts of the world, beer is cheaper than water. House wine and Sangría often are as well.
Churros con chocolate are delicious. They are not the typical amusement park churros I am used to from the States. These are freshly made with a bit of salt. Dip them into your chocolate and enjoy.
People eat late. Lunch is 1:30-2:30 and dinner is 9:30-11. Come in any early and you are immediately pegged as a tourist.
Bread is not free. You have to ask for it.
However, if you get bread, you can often get a plate of olives for free with the bread.
Patatas bravas (spicy potatoes) are much better in tapas restaurants in the States than they are in Spain. In Spain, the dish is basically french fries with spicy mayo.
There are many varieties of gaspacho (cold, delicious soup) in grocery stores. Many of them taste like V8 and are served in similar canisters.
Do not order paella from a restaurant that has pictures of it on a board and a brand name for the paella. This is typically tourist fare that is microwaved.

Fantastic incentives to reduce bribery

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Jason Shah

I just read this clip about Kaushik Basu, the new World Bank chief economist:

A paper he released last year caused a bit of a stir: While advising the Indian government, Mr. Basu argued that countries could reduce the incidence of “harassment bribes” – e.g., “I’ll approve this home renovation project for you for a small fee…” – by making it legal to give a bribe, though not to receive one.

“This will cause a sharp decline in the incidence of bribery,” Mr. Basu said. “After the act of bribery is committed, the interests of the bribe giver and the bribe taker will be at divergence. The bribe giver will be willing to cooperate in getting the bribe taker caught. Knowing that this will happen, the bribe taker will be deterred from taking a bribe.” (Mr. Basu notably argued against giving an amnesty for past incidents of bribery.)

As a brilliant woman I know likes to say, “intentions are good, incentives are better.”

Introducing Mediafly Airship

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Jason Shah

I’m proud to have worked with my colleagues at Mediafly to beta-release Airship, the web-based content management system that we’ve been working on for almost a year. It’s been a fantastic experience conceiving of, designing, and working with them to build the system. I’ve learned a few things about introducing new products during this process.

Speed is essential. The engineer in all of us on the team wants to build a robust, scalable system up front. But doing so has gotten us into trouble in the past. So, this time, we opted to build super-fast, and worry about scalability when we need to. After all, while we may have a guess as to what the scalability challenges may be 6 months from now, we could be very wrong. So it’s better to kick the can down the road at this early stage.
Saying no to feature requests is hard. Very very hard. Especially to ones that are good ideas, but are not a part of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Frequent meetings and checkins are important. We met 2-3 times/week in 5-minute standup meetings, and informally lots of times/week to hash out ideas.
What was hard in the old system is easy now. With our old Publisher system, getting the media into the system took ages. Users had to use a user-unfriendly “filechucker” that we wrote years ago, to incrementally upload files. Or, they would have to paste a URL. This time we used highly developed open source tools, and as a result, importing is as easy as dragging and dropping into your browser.
What was easy in the old system is hard (for now). Assign security groups to a large number of files was relatively easy. Now, (at least in MVP), it requires making changes to each file independently. While this is a short term solution, it is incredibly error prone and time consuming.

Lots more thoughts coming soon. In the meantime, congratulations team, and keep on flying!

Why Android Tablets haven’t gained traction in Enterprise

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Jason Shah

Apple is selling north of 10M iPads every quarter. Compare that to leading Android tablet manufacturers:

Motorola Xoom, the first real Android tablet, sold 250,000 in the first quarter of its release in 2011. No updated numbers are readily available since then, but given the lack anything resembling marketing coming from Motorola around the Xoom since then, along with increased competition from other manufacturers, I would guess that last quarter saw no more than 250,000 units sold in the past quarter as well.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales numbers are not broken out. However, a Lenovo executive claimed that the device’s smaller cousin, the 7″ model, has sold no more than 20,000 units at retail.
ASUS Transformer Prime, the best Android tablet that I have used, revealed in a court case that they had sold 80,000 units in the first few months (~2,000/month).

In short, sales of Android tablets are measured in tens to hundreds of thousands, where sales of iPads are measured in tens of millions.

We experience the enterprise divide every day at Mediafly. Many of our enterprise customers want to support Android tablets, but when pen comes to paper, the iPad is all that managers care about. This divide is further driven home by recent research from Good Technology, makers of enterprise email solutions. They find that 97.3% of enterprise activations for tablets in first quarter 2012 are iPad versions. The remaining 2.7% are for Android tablets.

The way this market is shaping out is quite depressing for an Android supporter like me. (As you may know, I’ve been recognized for my work building Android apps, and have built the popular Chicago Transit Tracker in the Android Market.). And there seems little that will change this in the near future. Below are my reasons for why Android tablets won’t come to dominate enterprise tablet usage over the next few years.

No price advantage. While Android smartphones have a major price advantage to the iPhone ($99 for an unlocked entry-level Android smartphone, vs. $549 for the iPhone), the same price disparity can’t be found with tablets. The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, Xoom, and iPad 2 all hover around $399, while the Transformer Prime prices at around $499.
Phones are a necessity, tablets are not. If you are going to spring for a tablet, or if your company will buy a set of tablets for you and your coworkers, you/they will usually buy the market leaders, the safe option. This means the iPad.
The iPad (3) is, frankly, better. I’ve used the Kindle Fire, NOOK Color, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7″, Motorola Xoom, Sony Tablet S, and ASUS Transformer Prime. Of all of these, the only tablet that comes close to the usability and smoothness of the iPad is the ASUS Transformer Prime. And that device falls short as well: the keyboard is awful, the display is not a retina display, and there is no cellular capability. And let’s not forget that ASUS’s marketing is hopelessly outmatched by Apple’s marketing.

You will notice that I don’t mention apps. Are apps important? For the consumer, absolutely. For the enterprise, less so. That will be a topic of another blog post.

Comments welcome.

Evernote is fantastic

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Jason Shah

I was very skeptical when I first learned about Evernote, a service whose mission is to help you “remember everything”.

This seemed like another Web 2.0 company so focused on Free that they wouldn’t last.
Their product sounded hoaky – a glorified notepad for (initially) iPhone. I already had alternatives to that: emails that I send to myself or leave in draft form, Google Docs, and Word + Dropbox.
I like taking notes in a notebook – when you need to scribble something down or draw something, nothing is faster. Granted, the ability to search your notes is nonexistent, but I have my own rudimentary method of organization honed during my time as a consultant at Bain.

After a coworker showed me how he uses Evernote to take notes during meetings, and all the interesting features that go with it, I thought I would dip my toe in (while keeping my paper notebook close at hand for safety).

Now, 45 days and 74 notes later, I can safely say that this service is fantastic.

I use Evernote on whatever device I’m closest to. This is the Number One selling point to me: whether I have my phone, laptop or tablet(s) with me, I have all of my notes in one location.
I organize notes into (currently) 11 different Notebooks, which are similar to GMail’s labels, loose associations of individual notes. I have differente Notebooks for each of our customers at Mediafly, another for Prospect meetings, and a couple for other functional areas (Product, Marketing, Engineering, etc.). I also have a few Notebooks for personal areas.
Oftentimes, as a part of product management, engineering, or marketing, we will have long whiteboard sessions. These will often result in a series of block diagrams, sketches, and notes on the whiteboard. In the past, I would have to manually transcribe these into the notebook. Now, I simply take a photo with my phone or tablet and drop it into a Note in the correct Notebook, and I’m set.
Finally, Evernote has gotten me to write more. In the past I struggled with where to jot down interesting stories about daily life. Do I send an email to myself? I would never find it again. Do I create a Google or Word doc? Those are still too cumbersome. With Evernote, I simply create a new Note in my personal Stories Notebook and jot it down. A recent entry:

Biking to work today, I pull up to Milwaukee and Grand. While stopped, another biker pulls up next to me.
“Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” I reply.
“Where can I buy some cheese?”
“Uhh…. there is a Jewel right up there…. what an odd question.”
“Well, I need to buy cheese for lunch.”

If you are on the fence, give it a try. It’s free to start and easy to shut down if you decide that it isn’t right for you.

Amazon uses Akamai

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Jason Shah

This post is for those of you who are intrigued by web services infrastructure providers. For the rest of you, apologies.

Amazon is arguably the leading cloud infrastructure provider, through its Amazon Web Services subsidiary. Tens of thousands of companies, from startups to global giants use or have used AWS. In fact, the largest users of AWS include banks, pharmaceutical companies, and technology companies like Netflix (and of course Mediafly). Amazon.com itself makes use of AWS, as a way of eating their own dog food.

But apparently not everything has made that transition. In the process of installing the Amazon App Store onto a new ASUS Transformer Prime tablet, I was sent an email from Amazon with a link to download the App Store application to the tablet. The link is:

https://www.amazon.com/app-email
which redirects to:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get-appstore/android/ref=mas_em_dl?dl=1
which redirects to:
https://amznadsi-a.akamaihd.net/public/Amazon_Appstore-release.apk

Even Amazon App Store, one of Amazon’s most visible new initiatives, is using Akamai’s CDN to distribute media over the web, and not Amazon’s own Cloudfront CDN.