S4 E44 |CXR 25: Gerry checks in with Kelly Cartwright and 25 years of CXR

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Gerry Crispin 0:21I'm not gonna ask you any hard questions. So this is you and me. So Kelly Cartwright at Amazon. Not representing Amazon, just representing Kelly Cartwright because she and I have been around for a while, although you were much, much, much, much younger.

Kelly Cartwright, Amazon 0:43Back then

Gerry Crispin 0:45In fact, when did we would you know, the year? When were you in that crazy startup?

Kelly Cartwright, Amazon 0:53I'm going to say 2000?

Gerry Crispin 0:59It had to be that or a little before a little after you were you were, you seem to be leading the damn thing. Yeah, at the time, because nobody else really knew what the hell they were doing. If I recall, it was a referral related product. Is that accurate?

Kelly Cartwright, Amazon 1:19It was it was that that generation one of the referral automation products, remember a referral networks refer.com. And then that the place I worked with called career rewards. And based on my quick look on LinkedIn, I was there in 2001, to 2002.

Gerry Crispin 1:41Okay, so that's, that was the beginning, actually, of us pivoting to a colloquium approach. And, and obviously, we're still doing some consulting. Because I think we came in and did some consulting with you guys, for a day we did.

Kelly Cartwright, Amazon 1:59That's how we met, I asked you and Mark to come in and talk to the board to try to talk some sense into them, because we were making basically making a recommendation to aggressively pursue sale of either the business or the technology assets based on sort of what was going on in the market at that time. So..

Gerry Crispin 2:20And that's, that's kind of what we were about. At the time, we we obviously had gotten a lot of visibility, and we're doing not only consulting there, but with various companies. But it was always chasing that and and we were we were looking for that next thing where we could not have to chase money, but really focus in on having a group of people that were trying to improve what was going on. So I found that kind of fascinating. And I remember the years then that you continued to operate at very in various companies. You I would see you regularly at a at a conference. And as I move by, you would always go Gerry, What's my name? Do you remember that?

Kelly Cartwright, Amazon 3:16I do I do.

Gerry Crispin 3:18I think I think you did that a number of times before I go. Geez, I better remember her name before giving me shit all the time.

Kelly Cartwright, Amazon 3:28I did. I used to purposefully, you know, kind of give you a little like poke and say, Gerry, come on. You must remember me don't you remember the gig we did?

Gerry Crispin 3:38Yeah, it all came back to me, obviously. But my mental faculties were somewhat still are. They still are so so I've seen a lot of your your folks at Amazon, we've had a number of folks participating recently in colloquium and and really appreciate their their participation and involvement. It's really, it's really been good. I keep telling them. So you need to go back and tell Kelly and or whoever is your boss, what you're getting out of this. So, so anyhow, it's kind of a, it's kind of a fascinating shift to pivot to zoom, in effect is what we've done. And instead of a day and a half meeting every month, we're now doing almost two to three meetings a week, on some subject or another. So there's just and we're getting as, you know, 40-50, whatever, people coming from our membership, and the questions and the engagement is fully on. kind of fascinating. I I think more and more right now. people, if they choose to come to a meeting, you see them and they're, they're kind of fully engaged.

Kelly Cartwright,