 Personal Profile
© 2008 Max Lent
Have you ever read a book or magazine article and discovered that the type of person being described sounds just like
you? It's disconcerting. The following quote is from The Cluetrain Manifesto,
(pages 128-129) by Levine, Locke, Searls, and Weinberger. "Increasingly, a useful expert is not someone
with (containing) all the answers but someone who knows where to find answers. The new experts have value not by
centralizing information and control but by being great 'pointers' to other people and to useful current information.
In short, your most valuable employee is likely to be the one who, in response to a question, doesn't give a concrete
answer in a booming voice but who says, 'You should talk to Larry. And check Janis's project plan. Oh, and
there's a mailing list on this topic I ran into a couple of weeks ago...'"
It wasn't until I read The Cluetrain Manifesto that I discovered what value I was providing to previous
employers. In retrospect, there were several people like me in my previous organizations. We were the people
who constantly read books and periodicals. We attended every available session at professional conferences.
We couldn't wait to share every new idea or scrap of useful knowledge with our fellow workers. We often had lines
of people lined up outside our cubes waiting to ask us questions. We were networked. We brought the new
ideas into our organization. With this new knowledge I understand why my last supervisor, a director, appeared so
incredulous regarding my value to an IT organization. From their perspective I did nothing and had no value.
I didn't generate code or applications--the measures of success in a traditional IT organization. The tens of
thousands of Web pages that were created as a result of my enabling behavior would not have counted. What I was
doing was changing a corporate culture by empowering people--something that is not easily measured by an IT
organization. My most powerful tangible output was the chocolate chip cookies I baked to lure people to our user
group meetings.
I used to complain to my managers that I wasn't getting my work done because I was spending so much time solving the
problems of other employees. Dr. Lawrence Ash, UCLA School of Public Health, told me in the mid 1970s that my real
job was helping our graduate students achieve success and the "work" would get done sometime. Looking back, I
marvel at Dr. Ash's wisdom and my poor understanding of what he said. It took reading the Cluetrain Manifesto
to open my eyes to my real value.
Here's another quote from the Cluetrain Manifesto that sums up the difficulties my previous mangers may have
had in dealing with measuring my value. "How could you hope to capture this on an org chart? And how do you
compensate people fairly if the value depends upon their participation in a shifting set of hyperlinked associations?
How do you hire great hyperlinked people? How could this ever be expressed in a resume?"
Work experience
Some of my past job titles include:
- Senior network computer analyst
- Internet/Intranet consultant
- Internet/Intranet strategist
- Author of books and articles
- Business intelligence researcher
- Database manager
- Web content developer
- HTML programmer
- Expedition leader
- Fine art photographer
- Commercial photographer
- Photography instructor
- Videographer
- Video instructor
- Public relations consultant
- Radio commercial writer
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- Advertising copy writer
- Publisher
- Research associate in tropical parasitology
- Entomologist
- Herpetologist
- Teaching assistant in zoology
- Laboratory assistant in sub-atomic particle physics
- Department store manager
- Camera store manager
- Food server
- Dish washer
- Farm laborer
- Farmhand
- Stable hand
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What I do for fun
If I am not helping clients with their Web sites, writing or exploring the Internet, you will most likely find me
hiking, canoeing, cross/country skiing, bicycling, running, or traveling with my wife and best friend, Tina. When we
travel, we spend about half our time touring art museums and churches (Tina is an art historian) and the other half
looking for wild and untrammeled places. No matter where we are, we search for culinary delights. Our favorite food
writers are Calvin Trillin (American Fried, Alice Let's Eat) and Patricia Wells' (Food Lover's Guide to Paris
& Food Lover's Guide to France).
Travel experience
U.S. States visited
- All U.S. states except Alaska.
Countries visited:
- India
- Nepal
- United Kingdom
- France
- Switzerland
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- Italy
- Belgium
- Germany
- The Netherlands
- Luxembourg
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Biology
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