Eric Burns Online — Page 2 of 16 — My Virtual Take on Tech

Why Experienced Leaders and Marketers Don’t Mock Catastrophes

October 25, 2025 Attitude No Comments

The recent AWS outage reminded me of another incident. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound. None of the other oil companies made much public noise about it. Why not? Because they knew it could happen to them. Just a few days ago, AWS experienced a…

Hidden Data Risks When Recycling Old PCs

Besides the obvious risk posed by an old 3.5 inch hard drive, there are several easy to miss ways that retired computers can leak sensitive information. These mistakes can expose intellectual property, customer records, or employee data to the public, or worse, to competitors. The resulting spear phishing attacks…

Are Shipping Failures Baked Into the Business Model?

August 26, 2025 Analytics Attitude Startups No Comments

DO NOT CRUSH OR BENT Still pretty clear – even after translation. That’s what the manufacturer printed on a very thin, minimally padded box. The company I bought it from chose to ship that box inside a paper envelope. In the back of a delivery van, likely in a pile…

Eliminating a Single Point of Failure in My Daily Work Setup

July 25, 2025 Gear No Comments

For years I relied on a single laptop for everything. A Dell Inspiron moved between my office desk, the coffee table, and wherever I happened to be working that day – including lunch outings where I often did some of my most focused work. At my desk, the system lived…

Conversational AI in Support: Integration Matters More Than Intelligence

June 25, 2025 Conversational AI No Comments

It’s encouraging to see large enterprises like Dell Technologies investing in conversational AI for customer support. Done well, these systems can dramatically reduce friction, shorten resolution times, and free human agents to focus on complex issues. However, effectiveness depends on how well the AI is integrated with existing telemetry and…

Trust Starts With Transparency in Cold Outreach

May 25, 2025 Sales Uncategorized No Comments

Trust is at an all time low right now. This means that transparency matters more than ever. If you or your firm disguise your caller ID to appear as a different person or company. Sure, it might increase the odds of someone answering, but you are sacrificing your credibility. That…

A Real-World Example of Omnichannel Done Well

April 28, 2025 Conversational AI No Comments

Omnichannel got its start with eCommerce, but has tremendous value with other use cases when properly implemented in Conversational AI. I live in California and needed to upgrade to a REAL ID, and I was really surprised by the online process. Many of you know I am not easily impressed…

Always On Culture and Global Teams

March 27, 2025 Attitude Startups No Comments

I have always been a big opponent of “Always On Cultures.” Those are ones where you are expected to frequently check emails and IM outside of work hours. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when big projects are going live, or big deals are near closing, that you need…

Google Dorking Against the Competition

February 19, 2025 High Level Tech Intro Sales Engineers SE Skills Uncategorized No Comments

Google Dorking is essentially the art of using advanced searchess in Google (and other search engines) to find specific information that is normally not readily visible through regular searches. By crafting specific search queries, you can find hidden documents and data. Granted it can be used for cybercriminals for nefarious…

API Guides Are Not Textbooks, Don’t Expect Your Users To Use Them That Way

January 18, 2025 High Level Tech Intro Startups Technical Tutorials & Developer Education No Comments

Your users will come to your solution with a wide variety of experiences and knowledge. They’ll also enter the documentation on a specific page likely based on their initial query into Google. This isn’t a call to better leverage SEO in your API docs, nor is it one to dumb…