Sunday, August 09, 2015

Adobe Conference

Recently I attended a conference from Adobe about Creative Cloud and marketing. Although there were more presentations, I found the first three most interesting. Here are my notes with some photos of the presentation.



1. Debbie Millman

Branding = deliberate differentiation 

Human beings metabolize everything quickly. We see this literally with food, but metaphorically with love and with the delight from new products. Being the first on the block with the newest product is temporary and equally fleeting is the joy that aspect brings.


The inward isolation of the iPod has been replaced by the virtual connectedness of social media and this represents a complete change in marketing.

The next wave of product management and advertising is in managing the anxiety of measuring ourselves and our connections.

In today's world if you want to succeed focus on giving the consumer these three things: connection, purpose, fulfillment

Limbic branding - brands as connectors

Have a focused message and don't completely change it for multiple audiences or locals. Do not be ambiguous. We always perceive ambiguity negatively.





2. Ashley Still - Creative cloud

Connected assets allow assets to sync and remix across apps

Experience manager assets - central content storage - connects design with marketing








3. Scott Belsky 


This is both a good thing and a bad thing. We need time to concentrate on the ideas that should happen.

Organization with a bias to action. Write with verbs. If nothing actionable comes out of a meeting then you didn't need it. There should be follow ups. Leaders often write reminders to themselves of "ensure this" and "ensure that". Prioritize projects visually -- use an energy line. Compromise and put some things at low energy -- if everything is at high there's no point in having a line.

Work with what's working and keep optimizing. Never say "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

Share ideas liberally and don't worry about them being taken away. You'll receive far more necessary input than stealing of ideas. For instance share ideas in a blog and then take of with the ones that seem to have an impact on readers.

Seek competition - drive comes from seeing another doing the same thin, which makes you want to do it better.

Great creative teams fight a lot.

Fight apathy as well. Don't let people check out and give up the fight.

Leaders talk last. If you start a meeting with "Here's what I think, what do you think?" then that won't engage others. Don't make them try to find an idea that's similar to yours. First allow for input from others

Value the immune system of the team. The doers will fight off something new. Once in a while suppress it for the dreamers to bring in a new idea. Be the bureaucracy breaker - try to keep moving even if it is inch by inch.

Make people (even your bosses) make decisions.

Gain confidence from doubt.







Monday, August 03, 2015

How to discover a server's mail relay

On Solaris 10 run the following command as a regular user:

grep rhmailer /etc/mail/sendmail.cf


On RedHat/Centos 5 and 6, first discover the OS release level:

cat /etc/redhat-release 


For redhat or centos 5 run the following command:

grep rhmail /etc/mail/sendmail.cf


For redhat or centos 6 run the following command:


grep rhmailer /etc/postfix/main.cf