Cleaning out old ideas

"Holding onto things from the past is like preparing for a future that never arrives."

Like many others, I saved some artifacts during my career that I thought might prove useful at some point. Now that I’m retired, I have realized that day will never come!

It’s not just that the items themselves get old but that the business environment which made things useful can cease to exist. Here are 5 items out of many that I pulled out to illustrate this point to help others streamline their own housecleaning process in the future!

The stuff:

1. A desktop paper clip holder

2. “The Tradeshow Advantage” guide

3. Paper copies of 3 Latitude annual reports

4. A software manual for PaperMax / MaxMate 1.0

5. A demo disk for Oracle Data Browser 1.0

As I went through everything, I kept the following quotation in mind.

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Here goes!

Desktop paper clip holder

This was a funny artifact that I’m not sure why I kept. It’s basically an Oracle-branded desktop magnet that looks like a stone and holds paper clips in ready reach. Cool huh?

Actually, not! This paper clip holder isn’t even heavy enough to be a paperweight! You can see it even jiggles when returning the paper clips to the holder.

In earlier office and home office life, paper used to be so common that paper clips were used all the time. Now, little kids don’t even know how to use them!

Source: Reddit

In truth, I never use paper clips for either their intended use of holding paper together or even hobbyist uses with electronics. For example, I recall in the past using unbent paper clips to open the SIM slots on my mobile phone. However, even Apple has recognized that this time has passed, and the company provided a tool to do what unbent paper clips used to do. Here’s one of these tools that came with my iPhone 12 Pro.

As a funny aside, I didn’t even know where the paper clips in our house were! Marsha just told me while I was writing this that we have a whole tupperware full of them inside of a cabinet I never go into! (She is a crafter, and I typically leave all the crafting stuff alone!)

The idea of consuming valuable desk space with a paper clip holder has long passed for me. Moreover, this particular paper clip holder is neither useful nor beautiful. Toss!

Tradeshow Advantage Guide

Much earlier in my career, two of my startups were partners with Lotus Development Corporation. As one of the benefits of the partnership program, I was invited to take a course on tradeshow best practices. This was the coursebook.

This guide had a great list of “don’ts” for the tradeshow booth which are pretty timeless, and I’ll paste them here. This is probably the one useful part of the guide for the ages.

However, the bulk of the guide was a set of good tips back then for engaging new contacts 1-on-1 at a tradeshow. Early in my career, I remember having some very high quality initial meetings at tradeshows that ultimately led to very large sales. For example, when I was at Latitude Communications, I remember meeting our champion at Microsoft at the Computer Telephony tradeshow in Southern California. This relationship didn’t just result in a big sale but also a key strategic relationship for our company.

For context, here’s an example “opening” for a tradeshow interaction described in the book. While useful at the time, its style feels a bit dated right now.

There were many other helpful exercises which were very applicable in this era. I kept that document all these years thinking I might refer back to it.

However, I personally found in more recent times that tradeshows have been less useful for startups as ways to recruit serious new prospects. Tradeshows can still be great places to gain exposure. They can also serve as great ways to meet up with existing contacts and to follow up on “warm” introductions face-to-face, particularly as office visits are getting scarce with “work from home” (WFH).

Standing in a booth waiting for initial 1-on-1 meetings like in the old days involves a lot of “fig leafing.” For those who have not heard the term “fig leafing,” here's a demonstration…

In recent times, I’ve found the the most effective formulas for tradeshow programs in the modern era tend to fall along these lines:

1. Make a really good stage presentation and attract a crowd

2. Have a really good giveaway

3. Scan badges aggressively to build an email and call list

4. Follow up aggressively after the show

5. Have sales people do high-touch meetings away from the booth

This guide preceded these more modern practices.

Moreover, exhibitor training seems to have moved from these (very good at the time) hardcopy workbooks to a video format to connect with modern audiences. I believe that even if I were asked to consult on any tradeshow marketing, I would not use this material. The time has passed. As such, this particular workbook is neither useful nor beautiful. Toss!

Printed Annual Reports

In the old days of my first IPO (Latitude Communications), it was customary (and required) for public companies to send out annual reports to shareholders. In my stuff down in storage, I ran into Latitude’s first three printed annual reports.

These pieces were printed on heavy stock and were expensive to mail. They also looked really nice. Here’s a page about Cisco as both a customer and partner to Latitude back then.

Nowadays, shareholders don’t typically receive hardcopy annual reports. Most shareholders simply get an opportunity to view online versions of a public company’s Annual Report and Proxy Statement using a web link at the bottom of the email announcement for the annual meeting.

The practice of producing expensive, printed annual reports that most shareholders didn’t bother to read has passed.

While somewhat beautiful, these particular printed reports for Latitude aren’t useful any longer. The company got acquired by Cisco long ago, and the product line was discontinued. Even as a memento, I tried to read them again and got bored. Toss.

Software manual

I kept the software manual for the product of my first startup, Visioneer. (For more context, see my previous Substack post titled “My own tech layoff story.”)

In the old days, software products came with printed manuals, complete with screen shots, detailed instructions, and even troubleshooting tips to hopefully help to avoid calls to Technical Support.

This tradition of including big software manuals with packaged software lived well beyond its useful life, as it was well-understood even at the time that these manuals almost never got read. The expression “RTFM” was one that vendors often exclaimed, but there were reasons why people didn’t read manuals.

Again, this manual is not useful any longer, not even as a memento. I can’t imagine anyone re-reading a document that didn’t even get read back in the day. Toss!

Demo disk

What is a demo disk?

Back in the days before WebEx and Zoom, there was no way for telephone sales representatives to demonstrate a software product over the phone! Also, remember there were no YouTube videos (or even web browsers for that matter!) Most office workers didn’t have VHS players at their desks. DVDs weren’t yet invented either.

The answer for delivering demos to customers remotely at the time was to produce demo disks, typically on a 3.5” floppy disk, that could run a program that would do screen shot walkthroughs with on-screen text descriptions.

At the request of Oracle’s Direct Marketing Division (DMD), I created a demo disk for Oracle Data Browser 1.0, which was Oracle’s first product for Windows 3.x that ran natively using Oracle’s own technology.

The demo disk came in a cardboard sleeve, which could be slipped in an envelope mailer. The label of the demo disk sleeve had an internal Oracle part number so that Oracle manufacturing could stock it and fulfill orders placed by a DMD rep for the prospective customer.

The idea of a demo disk just completely went away with the Internet, whether through web demos, YouTube videos, or live sessions over web conferencing.

However, this artifact is a bit different than the others I am tossing. For history’s sake, I’d be interested in seeing if I can convert this demo disk into a YouTube video. Doing so will require that I run the demo disk, which was developed in MS-DOS. I don’t have a computer with a 3.5” floppy disk drive anymore, but I’m going to ask around to see if any friends still have one. I will also have to see if vDos can be used on my 64-bit Windows 11 laptop to run it! Wish me luck!

Doing this little project and sharing some laughs with old friends from Oracle might bring me some “joy” (Marie Kondo term) in retirement. So, I’m keeping this for now! However, if I don’t complete the project in 2025, I’m tossing this one, too!

Free your mind

What I hoped to illustrate is that old business mementos aren’t just old. The ideas behind the stuff might be old, too. Channel your inner Marie Kondo. If an idea feels old, thank it for its service and make room for new brilliance!

We don’t need to prepare for the retro apocalypse where only printed materials and floppy disks will save us.

I don’t encourage anyone to go through the same mental load that I’m describing in getting rid of old business stuff. Just toss it.