I was describing to my rather-precocious, thirteen-year-old son the problem that companies have of getting the word out.  As part of “Career Week” at his school (five different jobs for five days at the end of the school year), my son decided he would make a stop-motion Lego video for Tek-Tools, one of my clients, to promote the company.   I told him that, if it was good enough, I would show it to the CEO, and maybe he would use it.  Little did I know that my son was going to, upon completion, post the video on YouTube.  But he did.  Without permission.  And my wife asked me, once again, “Why don’t we have more controls on his computer?” 

Ken Barth, the CEO of Tek-Tools,  was our first client at Walden Technology Partners.  A lot of people in the computer storage industry know him, and beyond the fact that he has been successful in everything that he has done, everyone who meets him says the same thing: “He’s a great guy.”  Ken’s company provides a superb solution for reporting, monitoring, forecasting, and profiling IT infrastructure.  It’s easy to install, easy to use, and provides immediate value.  What could be better?  

Well, a lot of IT managers know they have a problem, but they don’t all find Tek-Tools.  And even if they do find Tek-Tools, they need to be able to see that Tek-Tools is a solution to their problems. Since seeing is believing, Tek-Tools started developing videos that are posted on YouTube, here and here.  They should probably do a couple more, especially on their agentless offering, Profiler for VMware, which, as the name implies, provides a solution to monitor and better-manage VMware environments.

So back to the story of my son.  With my tail between my legs, I went to Ken, and told him what my son had done.  His response was, “What a great kid.  Give that boy a hug. Let him leave it up.”  That’s classic Ken. So here’s my son’s Tek-Tools video on YouTube, with the tagline, “You may not be able to know everything about your life. At least know what’s going on with your servers. Tek-Tools.”  Ken Barth is such a good sport.  And because my son is a budding entrepreneur, he got me to agree to promote the video and pay him 1-cent per download.  He’s up to 15 cents now. 

My son says the next video will be better. I bet Ken can hardly wait.