Erik – Page 9 – Erikboderek

February 4, 2020February 5, 2020

What I Learned from a Year of Making Demo Videos

The inspiration for most of my demo videos.

A year ago this month I was asked to make a video of a demo for a customer. It sounded easy. Flash forward a day and I still wasn’t happy with the product, but I had a deadline, so I handed it off to the customer.

Flash forward to June. I’m sitting in that customer’s offices with their new CEO and my Regional Vice President of sales. We didn’t have an agenda, but I’m asked to pull up the video. I warn the two of them that this was my first video so it’s rough, but we watch it together. We pause every minute or so and chat. It’s summer and it’s hot outside, but I’m hot under my collar having to hear my voice in front of others. The most sobering thing about being a sales engineer is having to hear your own voice. The meeting ends and self-critiques about my videos aside, it was positive. Two days later we landed the new logo customer, and they’re now off doing some really awesome things on Salesforce.

I learned a lot from the first vide, but now that I’ve done a baker’s dozen videos this year, I learned a few lessons that I want to share. Since Martin Scorsese is probably my favorite director, I’m going to reference him and his movies exclusively in this post.

January 17, 2020January 17, 2020

My Favorite Things in the Salesforce Spring 20 Release

I usually start these posts with a quip about the weather. Instead here’s a quote I read in this week’s New Yorker, “Horticulturists have a mantra: right plant, right place.” Now that we have the pleasantries out of the way, let’s jump into the fun stuff. I can say without hyperbole that this is the best Salesforce release of the year.

January 7, 2020

Amtrak is Too Cool For Disaster Recovery Drills

One thing that’s a fact of life for me and my commute is that when the trains are not on time, I get mad. And if other Metra riders are like me, they were very mad one day last February, when all of the trains in Chicago out of Union Station ceased to run.

December 30, 2019January 17, 2020

Harold Washington’s FBI File

I recently read Fire on the Prairie and it is an excellent book about the life of former mayor of Chicago Harold Washington. It was really eye opening in many ways. I have always heard about the so-called Council Wars, but I had no idea that one of the main driving factors was Washington’s race; the other was he was a non-machine politician.

I could probably do another blog post on the book and how a lot of the bigots in power then are still around today, but I want to talk about an omission from the book.

December 30, 2019December 30, 2019

Being in the FOIA Dumps

Last year at this time I wrote how reading The Art Of Access: Strategies For Acquiring Public Records put some swagger back into my FOIA requests. Well dear reader, it’s a year later and I feel like I’ve lost that swagger.

I’ve done a lot of requests lately but I have gotten mainly no responsive records and a lot of 5 ILCS 140/7(1)(v) exemptions. It’s disheartening especially since I do this on the side of my regular job as a hobby and I don’t have the resources or time to follow up and appeal with every request.

That being said, I still have a healthy backlog of requests to submit and I’m going to post a few quick blogs about these FOIA trials and tribulations. No records is never a fun response to open, but I am still an ardent believer in accountability and transparency and will keep fighting the good fight.