You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Quite a few, actually. Recent talks have focused on platforms, Big Data, management, technology, trends, disruption, innovation, and communication.

I prefer to use my own computer. I’ve had way too many issues with using other people’s machines. Beyond that, I’m pretty low-maintenance. I like using projectors, lecterns, and confidence monitors. I prefer lavaliers to proper microphones. I arrive the night before events to ensure that there are no travel snafus. Finally, on the day of the event, I like to do a soundcheck at least two hours before I’m scheduled to go on. Belts and braces, as they say.

No, they are not. They are all customized. I work with my clients through a series of phone calls to determine what they want from my talks—and, just as important, what they don’t want me to cover.

Knock yourself out.

Absolutely. I really enjoy individual interactions with conference attendees.

Most of the time, the answer is yes. (A few of my articles and white papers belong to the companies who contract me to write them.) The majority of the content found on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. This license means you are free to share, copy, or distribute my work under the following conditions:

• You must attribute my work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
• You may not use my work for commercial purposes without express written permission from me.
• You may not alter, transform, or build upon my work without express written permission from me.

You can read more about Creative Commons here.

With rare exceptions, the answer is no. I get the whole Chris Anderson “Freemium” argument but my mortgage company doesn’t accept exposure as a form of payment. On occasion, I will guest post on different sites sans payment but this is the exception–not the rule. I have bills to pay and writing helps me do that.

I suspect that my answer here is somewhat analogous to parents who are asked about their kids. I’m proud of all of my books, but two in particular stand out. Why New Systems Fail will always hold a special place in my heart because it was my first. I didn’t know if I could even do it. The Age of the Platform is special to me for several reasons. First, it took my career to a new level and sold nearly 20,000 copies. It won an award and has been translated into Indonesian and Korean. Finally, some things were going on behind the scenes that made its publication challenging.

Check out my rates here.

My rates reflect several things:

• The value of my content
• The time that it takes me to generate articles, white papers, and blog posts
• The prices that those in my cohort charge

Only for two of them: The Age of the Platform and The New Small. The rest are out of my control.

I bill my clients on a net-30 basis, but I strongly prefer working under a retainer arrangement. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that billing issues occur from time to time, and a retainer helps me mitigate them.

A few types:

• Traditional or full-time, on-site consulting
• Milestone consulting (although I admittedly have my reservations about the effectiveness of this type of arrangement)
• Remote consulting

If requested, sure. They just can’t be too onerous.

Usually no. I want to maintain a direct relationship with my customers. I strongly prefer not having to deal with third parties as it pertains to billing and other administrative matters.

I moved to Tempe, AZ after taking a job as a professor at ASU. I had spent the previous five years in Vegas.

For a very long time, I didn’t maintain one. If I did, I figured that it would look like the ones referenced here. In short, I believe that my body of work on this site and many others trumps a three-page, text-laden document that proves that I can conform to rules. I have worked extremely hard over my career at creating what I believe is interesting and valuable content, the vast majority of which you’ll find on this site.

I still believe these things. However, In 2015 I pursued—and landed—a full-time professor position. As a result, I buckled and put one together.

First, thank you for the compliment. For a while, I built websites for a select group of clients. I ultimately decided, though, that the squeeze just wasn’t worth the juice.

For the most part, though, I did. I’ve become pretty decent at WordPress over the past five years. The most recent incarnation of my site stems from two ridiculously talented people who helped with CSS and PHP:

• Babs Hobbs
• Geno Quiroz

To view the history of my site, click here.

The short answer is “it depends.” Here are some stats though:

• Google PageRank (since retired): 5/10. More information can be found here. Note that the Alexa backlink number is very inaccurate.
• Unique visitors per day: Anywhere from 150 to 200 on average weekdays
• Page views day: Anywhere from 250 to 400 on average weekdays

Also note that all of my traffic is genuine. It’s not hard to buy backlinks, page views, and social-media shares. I choose not to.

No. There are more than 1,100 posts on this site. There’s plenty to read.

All Mac, baby.

It’s very important for me to get my ya-ya’s out. I like to get a proper sweat going every day either at the gym or on the tennis court. Depending on the time of year, I might torture myself on the golf course. Beyond physical activity, I feed my brain via reading, Sudoku, Scrabble, Jumble, and other games designed to keep it sharp.