Hockey Anyone?

NHL2K9This is in some ways the best time of the year. Football is back (Go Sooners!!!), fall is in the air, the latest iteration of the NHL 2K hockey franchise (NHL2K9) is now available.

We have been playing the NHL 2K hockey franchise since 2006. We have gone through 2006, 2007 and 2008. For the record the team of Rob Howard and myself hold the lifetime edge on the team of Dockendorf & Cunningham.

So the initial foray into NHL 2K9 began today. And it began as the 2K8 season ended… With Team Howard/Edwards soundly defeating team Dockendorf/Cunningham.

Oh and by the way…. game one a 5-0 shutout. Welcome to 2K9 gentlemen.

 

7 Periods

I was lucky enough to be at Game 6 of the Stars and Sharks Sunday night. The plans just happened to come together on that day and I am really glad that they did.

Rob Howard, Scott Dockendorf, Deryl Dorsett and I were excited to catch some playoff hockey. None of us expected what turned out to be the equivalent of a double header.

The Stars came out aggressively in the first and you could tell that they wanted to close out the series and turn tonight into hand shake night. The Stars were the first to score and the building erupted. Towels were waving, people were screaming and it seemed as if the roof was going to blow off of the AA center.

After the score it seems as if the team went into a mode of protecting the lead vs. being the aggressor. The Sharks started to inch ahead in the shot column (over 100 shots total in one game) and finally one went past Turco to tie the game. Luckily that would be the last shot to get by Marty on the night.

The third…fourth…fifth… and sixth periods turned into a stalemate with both sides playing tenacious D and neither side willing to relent to the other until the Stars finally ended the drought with a Brenden Morrow goal in the middle of the 7th period.

The game in and of itself was amazing. Outside of the game action we had fun between periods from an unlikely source. You could send a text message to the Stars and they would display the messages (good or bad) across the jumbotron. This was one of the best parts of the night as a lot of people had fun with the Sharks among other things…. Comments about eating, grilling, spearing, etc… I even got a message about Scott D on the jumbotron…. Scott D eats Sharks for Breakfast scrolled by with a chuckle from our group. I should have sent in Our CEO can beat up your CEO as Rob had gotten booted from a hockey game earlier in the day for let’s just say defending himself from a high sticking…. :)

Needless to say it was a great game and I think I am still tired from watching 7 periods of hockey but we all got to see what we were waiting for… Hand Shake night. On to the conference finals!!!

Stars

Bring on the Red Wings!!!! Go Stars!!!

Shutout

nhl_2k8This post is short and sweet. For the past few years Rob, myself, Scott Dockendorf, and Kevin Cunningham have played the various Xbox 360 NHL 2Kx titles. (6, 7 and now 8). During this time Rob and I have teamed up against the duo of Kevin and Scott “The Butcher” Dockendorf.

The series have gone back and forth with one team gaining a lead in the overall standings only to have the series even again. But never during the hundreds of games that we have played together has there ever been a shutout… Until today.

Final score Rob/Tom (Calgary) 8… Scott/Kevin (Calgary) 0

This post is not to boast, but to capture the event in all of it’s shocking glory as we chronicle the never ending series of games and to serve as a humble reminder of the fact that yes Scott and Kevin… You were shutout on this day :)

10,000 points and the NFL draft

It took 7 months but I finally broke through the 10,000 point barrier (Xbox 360 achievement points). Let the celebration begin, okay on to 20,000! In another update to the never ending hockey series, Rob and I once again dropped 2 to the Scott Dockendorf and Kevin Cunningham combo (yesterday). Back to the drawing board.

I am really looking forward to the NFL draft tomorrow! For those of you that don’t know I am a big OU Sooner fan. I can’t wait to see where Adrian Peterson ends up, I just hope that the Bills don’t trade up (Eric Smith’s team). As that would mean I would have to root for Eric’s team and that just can’t happen.

Also, Telligent will play a part in the NFL draft tomorrow. When EA announces the cover athlete to Madden08, the blog portion of the Madden08 site will be powered by Community Server via an iframe!!! Great stuff!!!

 

1000 pts w00t!!!

Alright, I have finally broken the 1000 pt barrier on a game. Thanks to EA’s Fight Night 3 (Great game btw) and 5 nights of gaming and a very understanding wife (love you babe). In the latest news Rob Howard had a big collision during a pick up game of hockey yesterday… don’t worry Rob, scars are cool :). In other updates the never ending series with Scott Dockendorf and Kevin Cunningham took a turn for the worse after directly calling them out in a previous post, we dropped the best of three series 2-1. We will see who is feeling it today.

Being an avid gamer, I have a tendency to focus on vertical markets that I enjoy personally, so we have made significant traction in the gaming industry. From our relationship with the Xbox team, Community Server powers the Xbox forums, Major Nelson‘s blog, Gamerscoreblog, and the new Forza Community. We are doing some very cool work with Electronic Arts that will become public very soon, but one of the sites rhymes with “aladdin” hmmm. Also, we just rolled out a great new site for Ensemble Studios. The new Age of Empire III forums which are powered by Community Server. The real reason we do it is for the free games :P

Also, I have a few positions open in the Dallas area, I am looking for an account manager for CodeSmith Tools as well as a Partner Channel Manager for the Community Server sales team. 

Game On!

One of the great things about Telligent is that we work hard, but we also play hard. At any given time you will either see a heated game of ping pong, scooter races, WoW card games, (I call it adult pokemon others call it geek poker) numerous circular objects making there way towards someone’s head, nerf guns of various shapes and sizes or the all out competition of direct gaming, I am talking head to head, no holds barred Xbox 360 and PC gaming at it’s best. The game of choice for us Xbox guys is NHL 2K7, why? it is fast paced, takes about 15 mins for a game, and you can absolutely school your buddy when they go for the big hit. Scott D, you know who I am talking about :). At any given point in time you can catch me and Rob Howard taking on Scott Dockendorf and Kevin Cunningham in what seems to be a never ending series of games. There have been swings from one side to the other, but I do think that Rob and I hold the all time series lead in this one :). We will have to find out who has the hot hand tomorrow.

Outside of the office there are about 20 or so Telligenti, yes that is what we call ourselves, who are Xbox 360 gamers. We like to co-op or just try to see who can build up the most achievement points between us, FWIW, I am leading the way with 9000+ points. 

We also have what is affectionately known as frag night the first Tuesday of every month, it is our time to order pizza, and get our gaming on. We do need to look into getting an air hockey table or one of the old school hockey games with the guys that spin around. That would be a great addition! 

Why Telligent

One of the more frequent questions I get is why Telligent? I joined the Telligent team about a year and half ago. Previously I was a co-founder of a Professional Services firm that focuses on custom application development and works extensively with Microsoft. I was the VP of Sales & Marketing, a member of the Board of Directors and had equity in the organization. So why leave for Telligent? Two words, Vision and Collaboration. When I met with Rob Howard, Jason AlexanderScott Dockendorf and remotely with Scott Watermasysk one thing became very clear, this was a team that has the vision and domain knowledge to do something truly unique.

When you first meet Rob Howard one of the first things you will notice is the passion that he has for Telligent and Community Server. If you ever happen to catch him at a conference, or via webex demonstrating Community Server you will immediately recognize that Rob truly is a thought leader in terms of understanding the application of business intelligence, specifically around collaborative software and online community. More than that though, Rob understands the concept of the blue ocean. Mainly, don’t compete over minor scraps in the red ocean of over saturated products and competition, look for the blue ocean and ensure that the focus of the organization is to build something that provides value but may not be completely mainstream just yet. This is where the collaboration reference comes into play.

One of the big shifts over the past few years is the emergence of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 focuses on collaboration. From an organizational standpoint this trend is really gaining traction with traditional businesses. The move from traditional marketing to a more viral approach has accelerated the emergence of strategy aimed at bottom up marketing, whereas the end consumer either B2B or B2C has direct impact on the direction of marketing strategy for an organization. This was very key for me as it provided an opportunity to guide the marketing direction of a product that was still in the early adopter phase of the product lifecycle. The ability to ride the wave of collaboration combined with the vision and drive of the Telligent team were an easy sell for me. Over the past year we have made significant penetration into a number of great accounts, Disney, Conde Nast, MSNBC, Intel, Dell and Electronic Arts to name a few. What is really exciting is that enterprise level organizations are truly just scratching the surface of what is possible in terms of Web 2.0 marketing strategy and software solutions. This means that Telligent and Community Server will continue to be in very high demand.

This year has already started with a bang and with the release of Community Server 2007 which is the best Community Server release to date it just keeps getting better. The roadmap is defined and we are looking to do some very special things in upcoming releases. Look for the announcement of some very large initiatives that are in the works and will be launching later this year, one is just mind boggling and definitely affirm that Community Server can scale to meet the needs of almost any organization.

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