Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » How I Work: Mike Olson, VP, Oracle

May 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

How I Work: Mike Olson, VP, Oracle

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What is your role? Vice President for Embedded Technologies at Oracle Corporation. I joined the company when it acquired Sleepycat Software. Like most titles, mine is general and not very descriptive of what I do day to day. I spend most of my time helping our marketing, sales and engineering teams speak to users of Oracle's embedded database products. That includes Berkeley DB, of course.

I'm married with two kids -- one entering high school, one entering middle school. That is a much more demanding, and also rewarding, role!

What is your computer setup? Several, of course, but the use-it-every-day system is a Mac G4 Powerbook with the wide screen running MacOS X 10.4. It's connected to an NEC flat-panel display and a wireless keyboard and mouse at the office, but unplugs easily for the road.

What desktop software applications do you use daily? Adium, Thunderbird, Safari, iCal, Address Book, Microsoft Word. I have a fair number of dashboard utilities I like, and I am addicted to Quicksilver.

What websites do you visit every day? I've got a personalized Google home page that collects a bunch of content and bookmarks I use. Bloglines is my feed aggregator, so I am there every day (most days, that gets me to the Open Sources blog at Infoworld -- not that I am sucking up). Also, Oracle runs a bunch of its internal infrastructure and apps on its intranet -- booking meetings, watching internal blogs, arranging travel and so on -- so I use some of those services every day.

What mobile device or cell phone do you use? The Powerbook for real work. I have a Moto RAZR for calls, but do no data work on it.

Do you use IM? Yes.

Do you use a VoIP phone? I have and I will, but I don't right now -- I haven't figured out how to get Skype on the Mac configured to work with the Oracle proxy.

Do you have a personal organization theory? Talk.

I believe that most organizations want to be flat, and if you can communicate freely and broadly -- blogging, by IM, in email, on the phone, and (not to forget!) face to face -- you'll get much more work done and find much more capable collaborators.

In my experience, job titles seldom correlate to capacity for good work. Most places have people at all levels that drive them forward. The trick is to get those people talking to one another.

Anything else? A book recommendation: The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley. See my blog entry at http://subclock.blogspot.com/.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on May 12, 2006 01:03 PM

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