Dishing on Data: Interview with Vanessa Fox
This is the second in an occasional series of audio interviews we’re doing with tech gurus and alpha geeks. We’ll be talking to them about how they manage their digital life, where they store all of their virtual stuff and related geekery. Photo by Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com.
You can listen to the interview, or read the transcription below:
Darren: This is Darren Barefoot talking today for PutPlace about backing up your digital life. Today we’re talking to Vanessa Fox. Hello, Vanessa.
Vanessa: Hi. How’s it going?
Darren: It’s going well. How’s it going with you?
Vanessa: Wonderful.
Darren: Excellent. And tell us who you are.
Vanessa: Oh. My goodness. That’s a very good question. Well, I do a number of things online, I guess. I probably am mostly known for what I’ve done in the search industry. I used to work at Google and built Webmaster Central for them. Now, I’m actually launching a new site called Nine by Blue where I’m going to just try to talk about a lot of different things involved in acquiring more visitors through things such as search and social media.
Darren: And so this is the number nine by blue dot com?
Vanessa: Yes, so I’m going to try and make sure to have both it spelled out and the number redirecting to the same place.
Darren: Yes. That makes sense. And why that domain?
Vanessa: You know, it’s very hard to come up with names. I think people who do naming are very skilled. They have a talent that I don’t have. So I spent a lot of time thinking about it and what I really just sort of wanted to convey was the idea that there actually is a lot of data out there about your customers, about your potential customers, and so you can take all those numbers and sort of turn them into something more, something that’s actually an engagement as opposed to just the numbers. ‘Cause there’s just tons of numbers and it’s hard to find what’s actionable. So, you know, really aggregating that stuff in a useful way. Just sort of, numbers into something else. And I just like blue. I like the water.
Darren: Sure. It could have been any color. You went with blue.
Vanessa: Could have been anything. Yeah.
Darren: Maybe you got a spot in this whole — Hopefully, if you’re really successful you can spawn an imitation site which is “Seven By Indigo” or something like that.
Vanessa: Yes, exactly.
Darren: I’m going to go register actually all the other numbers and all the other colors right now just so I can own –
Vanessa: Oh no!
Darren: So somebody’s like “Oh, what was that website? Nine by pink?” Anyway. Actually, that’s a fun way to slice a bunch of domains is by having colors associated with given, kind of, topic set.
Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Darren: Not to use a stereotype, but if you had a blog about gay lifestyle it could be “X By Pink” or something.
Vanessa: Uh-huh.
iPhones, iPods and Smart Phones
Darren: Yeah. Nevertheless, I’m just inventing things on the fly. So, we’re talking about your digital life and how you manage it and how you back it up. Let’s start by asking how many — I haven’t found the right word for this — how many computational devices do you have? Like phones plus computers plus other electronic devices et cetera?
Vanessa: I have gotten much better at this, actually. I was very hopeful that the iPhone would become a convergent device for me, which was part of the appeal for me. It hasn’t gone quite that far but it’s better. I used to have a smartphone and a regular cell phone because the Microsoft smart phone is really good for data but not really for calling. And when I got the iPhone, actually, reduced that down to one phone instead of two. And I can use that for my music now instead of my iPod, as well, which is nice. But, I do have a desktop at home and I have a Mac laptop that I use around and then probably my iPhone are my three primary devices. I mean, don’t ask me how many laptops I actually have in my office but I only really use one of them.
Darren: And how about — actually, I should have also asked about cameras. How many cameras do you have?
Vanessa: So I have a digital camera. Again, I tend to just use the iPhone now a lot. But probably on the trip I’m going to be going on, I try to throw the digital camera in there. Also, I have this little bag where I sort of keep the camera, an extra charger, and all that and I kind of always have that ready to throw in my bag when I travel.
Darren: I see. Military people call that “the go-bag”.
Vanessa: Yes. Exactly.
Windows, Mac and Dueling Monitors
Darren: Yes. And so is your desktop a Windows machine or an Apple?
Vanessa: My desktop is a windows machine. My Mac is, of course, a Mac. But, I actually have a dual-boot. So I have a Windows side and a Mac side.
Darren: I see. Does that still cause you pain? I have a Macbook laptop and then a Windows desktop. And it’s ninety percent problem solved. But there’s still ten percent agony around file formats or versions or opening something in something. Does that –
Vanessa: Yeah, I tend not to have too many problems with that. I have Office 2007 on the Mac side as well. Although, of course, it doesn’t work anything like the Windows version. So sometimes I’ll be using PowerPoint or something and it’s like “Where is all that stuff?” ’cause it’s in a different place. But, I don’t really have a lot of trouble with file formats. I actually got the desktop — I’m kind of envious now of the new Macs that are coming out because you can do a dual monitor output. Part of the reason I got the desktop at home rather than just having the laptop was that I like having the two monitors when I’m working at home and it’s kind of hard to do that with a laptop normally.
Darren: Let me ask you something. I’ve been asking lots of people about this, about the dual monitors. So, do you have them lined up so that you use them both equally or do you have a primary and secondary model? And if you have them lined up so that you use them equally side-by-side, you’re staring at the gap in the middle of them, aren’t you?
Vanessa: So, I do have them lined up side-by-side. Although, there’s not really a gap ’cause I have them right next to each other. And I think I do tend to have one in front of me and one over to the side a little bit, so I am looking at one. I think for me — I know a lot of people use two monitors now but I think for me I got into the habit of it years and years ago when I was a tech writer and you might have had the same experience where I would have, say, the interface or the code of something that I was documenting on one monitor and then I was writing about it on the other monitor, so it is just nice to be able to go back and forth and so I think I got into the habit back then and now it is kind of hard for me not to have both, I am such a multi-tasker, it seems like I always have multiple things open. You know whether I am doing a blog post or a technical site review or that kind of thing, I just like the model of having what I am talking about or writing about on one side and then knock out the other.
Darren: Yeah, I definitely agree. We are building a house and so we are kind of planning out our home office and obviously I have never actually had a two-monitor setup, but I have been trying to, because I have always had one enormous monitor, but I have been trying to get my head around that.
Vanessa: Oh you will love it.
Darren: Yeah, that’s what everyone says. So I just need to jump in and they are so much cheaper than they used to be.
Vanessa: Yeah.
Keeping PowerPoint Presentations Safe
Darren: So you have a bunch of devices, you have a desktop, a laptop, iPhone, camera, what is your current kind of backup strategy?
Vanessa: So, it is interesting you ask that because I have been looking over the last few months for a good backup strategy because I don’t really have one. I thought it might be nice to find an online backup system because then instead of having a hard drive where I keep all my storage, I could keep…the dream would be that I could keep everything in the cloud and then whether I am on my desktop or my laptop, some where I always have access to everything, you know that would be kind of a nice idea. I haven’t really found that yet. I have tried a few things like I tried maths-dot-me and I tried some other things like that but I haven’t really found anything that works very well. So what I tend to do, I also bought this wireless backup storage device for home because I figured well at least I could keep everything there and then access things at home, but that is proving problematic. Actually that’s the one thing I can’t seem to get that hooked on the Mac side, it seems to only work with Windows.
Darren: Is that a Seagate thing?
Vanessa: It is a Netgear I think.
Darren: Oh yeah, okay.
Vanessa: But similar, right, it is kind of like this little wireless storage device. So I have been having some problems and so what I do particularly to go between the two is I’ll either email myself or put things on like a USB, but then of course I always find if I’m say in London and I really need something that’s not on my desktop that I didn’t expect and then that gets to be kind of frustrating. In terms of sheer backup like having a copy in case things go wrong, that’s probably the smart thing that I should start trying.
Darren: Well it is funny actually, I was using recently and this I suppose is contrary to put places average user hopefully but, I actually have very little concern about backup because so much of our work, we use Gmail and then Google Docs for collaboration and then all my MP3’s are stored on a service, they have been up there for a year called MP3Tunes.com. So really the kind of precious stuff that I need to worry about and all photos, the only copy of all our photos are up on Flickr.
Vanessa: That’s where mine are as well.
Darren: Yeah and the only precious stuff is kind of old, old files. So that’s about … yeah.
Vanessa: You know I find that too because I use Google Docs a lot also and then for client stuff I have started uploading it to a password area on my site that people can have access, so that stuff is still there I think. The only thing I would really lose are all my PowerPoints from over the years because I kind of keep all my slide decks and I have tons of those. And I tend to … I don’t reuse slide sets very often, but I tend to use like individual slides, like I will pull something out of old presentations. And I haven’t really found a good online thing to use instead of PowerPoint, like I have tried the Google stuff, but it just isn’t robust enough yet to replace PowerPoint.
Darren: Sure, yeah. Me too, I have a similar model, every new slide set seems to be some variation on the previous slide set, so I find it highly iterative process.
Vanessa: Yep, exactly.
Living Data Disaster Free
Darren: So in your lifetime of computer use, have you ever had like a major disaster in terms of losing valuable email or data or files or anything like that?
Vanessa: So, not really, I did have one time when I worked at Google when my laptop just completely died and would not come back, but fortunately they have a pretty good backup system where, you know, when you plug in to the network, they automatically back your stuff up. So I was able to get most of that stuff back when I got a new laptop.
I tried this idea, it was like maybe a year or so ago, I was really telling, you know, I should be smarter about backing things up and all this and so I bought this little drive that you hook up via a USB, I got as a prize or something and it was like a 500 gig drive and so I started putting stuff on there and then I got kind of lazy about having things on my desktop also, so it turned into less of a backup device and more of a primary storage device and then that drive stopped working. Now when you plug it in, it just clicks at you and then it is like completely dead. And so I haven’t gone back to try to see if I can resurrect it, I am not even really sure what’s on it at this point. It is probably a lot of my old PowerPoints, but that was kind of depressing.
Darren: Yes, yes, I would imagine. Yeah it is funny, because when I talk to people about this data loss stuff, most people actually haven’t had any tragedies. This stuff mostly works mostly of the time and that made … an answer to my next question which is like the fact that most people don’t backup unless if they have a geek who is harassing them a lot, why do you think that is, why do you think most people don’t backup?
Vanessa: A couple of things, one is probably the fact that things generally don’t go wrong, so if you haven’t had things go wrong in the past, you like assume your life will always be happy and carefree until something, you know, awful happens that makes you bitter and cynical.
But I think the other thing is probably that we probably don’t have a lot of stuff that would be so awful if we lost it. When I think, at least for me, I think at this point if you look at all my old laptops and hard drives that I have and all the stuff that I have, I probably have tons of things stored, but it is not like I use them a lot.
I mean it is kind of like I just went through and gave away a bunch of old clothes to like the Salvation Army and it has always been hard for me to give up clothes, you know for some reason I think I am going to need them. And so what I did this time is, I just put them all into boxes and put them in storage and then a year later, I was like OK I didn’t any of those clothes, so I am just going to give them all away. But I think the same thing is with a lot of our like digital stuff we think it is really important, but maybe a lot of it we never really go back to.
I think the exceptions would be like pictures, which like you say, most of us I think just keep on Flickr now and there is probably a few things like that that if we really thought about it, it would be bad to lose them. But mostly, for me it is like old projects I worked on years go or something like that.
Darren: Yeah, companies that are now long gone, the ones like I find looking back, in Vancouver I read about a story in which this young couple, they had a new baby and they had their laptop stolen which was full of photos, it is baby’s first moments in the world, so it is kind of an awful story.
Vanessa: Oh no. Yeah, see those are the kind of things that you would definitely want to keep and it would be really bad to lose.
Darren: Yes. And finally, what is the oldest digital file you think you have, like how old is it if you were to go dig around in all your stored stuff?
Vanessa: Oh my goodness.
Darren: I should tell you that mine is a Wordstar 2.0 essay I wrote about adults when I was 12.
Vanessa: Wow, that’s pretty good, that’s probably older than my oldest thing because I didn’t…my first computer was when I was in college and it was a PowerBook and that was probably like 1992. Probably the oldest thing I have is maybe from ‘95 or ‘96. I think I have a couple of CDs, CAD-like help documents that I wrote for the application or something lying around somewhere. But other than that, I probably have a bunch of old drives, but that’s probably the oldest, it’s around ‘95.
Darren: What is sadder than old useless technical documentation, eh?
Vanessa: Oh my goodness I know, I have a whole box of printed stuff, I’m about like toss out, because I am like why in the world do I have this.
Darren: I have a few like huge manuals I worked on years and years and years ago and like this software doesn’t exist anymore like it doesn’t even…this model of software doesn’t even exist anymore, right, like it is all, something else is going on.
Vanessa: Yeah, it is like — I think I remember how much work it was to do, like those huge old manuals, so it is hard to throw them away, but it is like come on this is ridiculous, no one needs this.
Darren: Have you written a book? Are you planning on writing a book? Have you thought about writing a book?
Vanessa: I have not written a book, I have been thinking lately about writing a book actually because I never want to get too far away from writing and so it seems like might be a good time. I have started thinking about a few ideas because I really would like to do something interesting and useful as opposed to a topic that has been done a lot where there would really be no need for my book, so I have been thinking about it.
Darren: Sure.
Vanessa: It takes a lot of time, right, that is the thing.
Darren: Yeah, we are working on a book right now and it is a surprising amount of work to get the 90,000 words.
Vanessa: Yeah, when you are doing, I mean it is not like — well I don’t know, I mean for me, I don’t think I’d be able to stop doing everything else and just write the book. And I also don’t know if I could do that, I don’t know if I could be as disciplined as that either much less having the time to do it. So you’d have to really carve it out, is that what you guys do, you like carve out time, you are dedicated?
Darren: Yeah, we have tried that and we had gone away for a couple of weeks to do that too, but it is hard when you are like working full time. I think co-authoring is an excellent strategy too, right. Like if you can find somebody who you trust, think is smart and you can work with, then that cuts the problem in half.
Vanessa: Yeah, that was a good point.
Darren: Yeah, but you know, cuts the problem in half, yet doesn’t, whatever reason you are doing it for, you shouldn’t do it for money, that was [xx] not to write a book, but for whatever reason you are doing it, like it doesn’t reduce whatever benefits you get by one-half, right?
Vanessa: Right. Yeah, that’s a good point, that’s actually an excellent idea.
Darren: Well I appreciate you taking the time out from your very busy schedule to talk to me.
Vanessa: Oh yeah, it was fun, it was nice to talk to you.
Darren: Excellent. I have already subscribed to the RSS feed at ninebyblue.com.
Vanessa: Excellent and hopefully in like a day or two, just really hoping it is going to be out with much more stuff.
Darren: That soon?
Vanessa: Yeah well, we will see, but that’s you know, this plane thing is going to get in the way, like it is on our plane ride, no internet on the plane.
Darren: Excellent. We will probably not post this till next week, so hopefully it will be up by then.
Vanessa: Oh yeah, that will be great.
Darren: Very good, have fun and I will send you the email when this is all posted.
Vanessa: Thank you, great.
Darren: All right, well see you later.
Vanessa: Okay, bye.
Tags: backup, google webmaster, iphone, ninebyblue, old files, seo, vanessa fox
