Unexpectedly Nice Weather in Tiburon

For our QBR this week my work team had an overnight stay in Tiburon, California. The drive up there on Monday afternoon was easy. It would have been about an hour 20 minutes, maybe an hour 30, though I stopped by SFO to pick up a colleague who'd flown in from Denver.

We arrived at our hotel to find a building that looked pretty spiff in the lobby area but a bit shabby in the rooms.



I'm tempted to say there's nothing wrong with this room— except the floor squeaks like crazy, the door has to be slammed to even latch safely, and the walls are paper thin. It feels kind of like we're in an old Holiday Inn that's surrounded by $10+ million houses.



Outside there's a small pool and a hot tub. A hot tub— and I didn't even think of packing swim trunks! It turned out not to matter as I was busy all evening socializing with the team over dinner. I wouldn't get back to my room until 11pm.



The weather in Tiburon on Monday was quite a surprise. I packed for it to be 65° and foggy in the afternoon, and advised my out-of-town colleagues to do the same. That's typical summer weather in this area. But no, mother nature had other plans this week. On Monday it was a stunning 81° and sunny. After finishing a few work tasks on my computer in the room I headed out for a walk before dinner.



The shabbiness of the hotel room didn't bother me so much with scenery like this to enjoy outdoors. As I quipped to colleagues who were laughing about how poor the rooms were, "Most of the time we'll be in our rooms we'll be unconscious." So let's enjoy the beautiful weather!

The view above is from a little park on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. It's just a block and a half from the hotel.

You can see San Francisco across the water. The drive from downtown SF to Tiburon is 16 miles. It's a circuitous route to this point because we're on a small peninsula. The straight-line distance across the water here is maybe 7 miles.



Here's a crop of what the previous picture looks like, except at full magnification. You can see the city skyline with more detail. This is just what I captured with my iPhone SE 2022's built in camera. With such a beautiful day I wish I'd brought my nicer camera.

Five Things about the QBR

Our sales QBR (quarterly business review) on Tuesday started at 9am and was done at 3:30pm. Running long is the standard for these— there were points at which I figured we'd be there 'til 5pm— but we pulled it in on time by skipping things at the end (which is not the best strategy overall). If you're interesting in learning a bit about how sales teams work, read on; if not, maybe skip. Five Things:

1. Typically the main part of a QBR is for each of the AEs (account executives, aka "salespeople") to review their territory plans. Each (a) highlights their successes from the previous quarter, (b) reviews their plans for key opportunities in the coming quarter, sometimes with robust Q&A, and (c) discusses lessons learned / help needed. This is all useful and important stuff; but piled together it's Death By Powerpoint.


2. This particular QBR went light on #1 because we only have two AEs at the moment. There are two open spots. That's where we saved some time late in the day. Though it would have been good to hold the sales team leader's feet to the fire on key accounts he's holding for TBH-1 and TBH-2.


3. Because of #2 we spent more time hearing from other functions in adjacent teams— channel partners, sales engineers, customer success, business development, and professional services. It was kind of cool that each of those teams got more than a few minutes of airtime. It was still Death By Powerpoint... just different Powerpoint.


4. Almost everyone's presentation runs long because, well, (a) all presentations tend to run long. Most people underestimate how much time will be taken to discuss the slides they prepare. But especially (b) the AEs' presentations run long because the leaders present cannot help but grill them on every little detail. Often with 45 minutes assigned per AE the first AE to present gets held on the spot for 90 minutes, then the second for 60 minutes, then the rest shorter because the leaders suddenly realize "we" are going too slow and instruct "us" to speed up.


5. This was the first time I've joined an in-person QBR in 4 years. It's not just because the Coronavirus scrambled things for a few years but also because a previous senior leader in our sales organization preferred to do these reviews more like one-on-one calls. The value of having the whole team present, though, is all of understanding what each of the AEs is committing to, and each AE making that commitment not just to their boss but to the whole team. Plus, there are fun relationship-building activities like a long dinner together the night before.

I was happy we were done at 3:30pm. The day was already feeling long. It was 6 hours of Death By Powerpoint. I left by about 3:45 and could've been home by a little after 5 except instead of going straight home I unexpectedly had somewhere else to be.

Trump Charged in Georgia for Election Fraud

On Monday this week (Aug 14) a grand jury in Georgia handed up an indictment against Donald Trump and 18 co-conspirators on state charges stemming from their attempt to fraudulently overturn the 2020 election. The crimes charged in the document include false statements to statewide officials, false statements to the state legislature, harassment of election workers, and tampering with election equipment. These are just a few of the 41 counts in the indictment. Example coverage: CNN article updated Aug 15.

Yes, tampering with election equipment. Some of the people charged broke into vote counting machines and/or attempted to do so. So yes, there was vote fraud in the 2020 elections— but not the kind of fraud 40% of US voters think marred the election. The fraud was committed by Trump cronies trying to steal the election for Donald Trump.

And now we see some of those people being charged. Unlike Special Counsel Jack Smith's Aug 2 federal indictment against Donald Trump which described, but did not name, 6 co-conspirators the Georgia indictment names 18 co-defendants. In addition to Trump's election-subverting lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell, who are almost certainly among the unnamed co-conspirators in the federal indictment (though analysts quickly concluded who at least 5 of the 6 are based on the actions described), the Georgia indictment also names charges against former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark. Example coverage: CNN article Aug 16; full text of indictment, annotated by CNN (Aug 15).

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