REDIRECT

So Google thinks it will be cool to morph everything into Google Plus. But I don't. From now on you can find all my past stuff (including TypePad archives) at my new digs: http://diane.bz

Oops - I guess that means I need to start posting stuff again :)

Make (or take) the meeting

When you are growing either your business or your career (and increasingly, the two are inextricably linked), it's tempting to focus your time on activities that directly lead to either revenue or job opportunities. The Sirens of Dwindling Bandwidth and The Refrain of Anxious Spouses can easily drive you to flee exploratory, undefined activities, viewing them as luxuries you simply cannot afford.

But these open-ended activities are precisely the things you should be doing. In fact, the greater the degree of turmoil, flux and transition your company (or you) are in, the greater "allocation" you should make to pursuits that may not yield obvious outcomes at the outset.

This is because phases of transition bring ambiguity with them as part of the territory. You are creating a new market or product that doesn't exist...or you are writing a job description for something you (nor anyone) has done before. Therefore, it's time to create rather than transact. And creativity requires exploration of things - and people - who know what you don't.

Specifically, this means you should be intentionally making (or taking) meetings with interesting people, even if you don't know what will come of it. If someone has a good track record, an interesting background and good connections, something good is bound to come of it at some point (long-term thinking often liberates you to enjoy and explore more freely and authentically).

Some guidelines to increase your odds of making a non-specific agenda meeting effective:

• Be face-to-face. Email and even phone calls are limited in the amount of information that is exchanged. It's amazing how much more you can glean over a cup of coffee, which by nature will reveal even the "small stuff" (like where the person just came from, where they got the fancy laptop bag, etc.) that can bring forth other connecting points. If you fear they may not meet with you if you lack a specific agenda, make one: come up with a few ideas of how you may help him / her out (or vice versa or both), and allocate a bit of time for this. But be sure to save some time for additional exploration that may yield something surprising and even better.
• Prepare. Not knowing the outcome does not equate not preparing. Research who you are meeting with: where did s/he go to school and work? Do you have mutual relationships or interests? Have they invested in something that you can provide assistance with or input on? Basically you increase your chances of connection by doing some groundwork. It's fun if you embrace a curious approach.
• Ask questions. Some recent sage wisdom came from my current boss: "people perceive meetings where they are being asked (questions) as more valuable & memorable: Human nature is to help other humans." So despite doing lots of research in advance (see above), your goal is not to demonstrate how much you know, but rather have them share all that THEY know. Not only will they enjoy and value the process, but it will help you uncover areas of collaboration (either now or in the future).
• Follow up. If someone is courteous enough to spend time with you, acknowledge it with a thank you note. Refer to something you discussed during your meeting to show you really paid attention and found the time to be valuable.
• Help them. To paraphrase Guy Kawasaki (whose Art of The Start's final chapter addresses "Being a Mensch"), the most enlightened people pay it forward without thinking about the payback. Because it is the right thing to do. 

Meaning that all of this goes both ways: if someone wants to meet with you, do it. Follow all the steps above - still research them and ask them questions even when they ask you to meet. And if they need your help, help them. Because that is all part of mensch-hood, which is way more important than an exit or a bullet point on a resume.

G+ Deja Vu All Over Again?

A quick Google search on "Pinterest growth" emits the latest Silicon Valley effervescence (yeah, recommended Googling that too ;). It's true that rarely a day passes when I am not notified of at least 2 or 3 new "followers" on the service. And for some reason, I feel compelled to "follow back" out of courtesy. At least, I used to. Now the follows come so furiously that I've lost track.

Which feels like Google+ Deja Vu All Over Again. After the whackamole frenzy of adding G+ Followers my own Circles, I also soon stopped, exhausted and scratching my head at why it was even meaningful.  But Google was quick to assure the world that in its first month, it attained 40 million users.

Um, and...what is usage? Turns out this can constitute simply clicking +1 at the end of any story. Because this feeds back to your Google+ page, this means you are a Google+ "user." At least, to Google+ and the blogging that perpetuates these frothy myths.

Back to Pinterest. Despite claims that it's "2012's Hottest Startup," I'm hard-pressed to be impressed. Like Google+, its users are dramatically skewed towards one demographic (male engineers in G+ case, and women in Pinterest's). But I could stand teh imbalance if the actual significance merited the jubilee. But even some bubbly articles with titles like "Holy SMOKES! Pinterest is the fastest-growing site ever" also include disqualifiers at the end like, "Users aren't spending that much time at the site -- about 90 minutes a month, compared with 7 hours for Facebook."

No matter: it's far more fun to just talk about numbers in abstract; even if out of context, stats make for some sexy infographics. Like, "Over 1/5 of Facebook Connected Users are on Pinterest Daily." Does this  mean the server that hosts my (primarily untouched) Pinterest boards is sending server hits back to this count? And "Daily Users have Increased by 145% Since the Beginning of 2012". Same question as before and added to that is, what was the baseline at the start of 2012 anyway? Let's never forget the so-impressive "Raised $37.5M in funding since October 2011" stat in our list of business fundamentals.

The final straw that eliminated any last ounce of credibility I held for the service was when I learned that Pinterest is "quietly" making money from affiliate revenue. A partner fittingly called "Skimlinks" has helped it create a scheme where Pins that are clicked send an affiliate fee from the content provider straight to Pinterest.

So, in addition to lots of fluffy usage numbers, Pinterest is hiding how it's benefiting from the (few?) women actually taking the time to post stuff to their boards.

Well, at least it's not ALL women.

But...really...is there any reason we don't use metrics like DAU and ARPU here? Tell me I'm missing something...

 I'd Pin this if I trusted the service more...

If it's been said already...

...it may still merit saying!

So much has been said about doing email introductions properly ... and so much of it feels like common sense. So the only amazing thing is that people continue to do it so badly. And perhaps one of the worst parts of this phenomena is that the people making the poorly-formed requests tend to blame the person asked for not responding, when the responsibility really falls on them to make the entire process effective.

How can we eliminate this ill will and save lots of people time? It's hard to top these posts by the prolific VC, Mark Suster...so I'll just underscore some of these points with my own twist in the hopes that this in some small way reduces some frustration and wasted time for all in the future.

(1) Make it Forwardable: This is my ongoing mantra and listed as Suster's #4 here. I've lost count of how many long email threads I have with friends or contacts sussing out how well I know someone, how I suggest reaching out to them, etc, only to end in, "Thanks!" The expectation is then for me to package up all the thinking (and whatever attachments) were embedded in the previous emails to create a version that is digestable by the prospective intro. Making me realize my friend etc. is absolutely clueless or zero in the empathic category.

(2) Short Does Not Equal Focused: Point #1 above does presuppose that the person packaging up the request understands what is useful for someone getting the intro.  Which is why it's helpful to also read the "Short" and "Focused" top 2 points in Suster's post.

But don't be tempted to think "short" necessarily translates into "focused." Today I got a hugely general intro from someone I know saying I "should meet" this other person because they are doing something vaguely pertaining to what I'm currently working on. Worse, the reply from the person being introduced only mentioned wanting to "network" to raise money. No elaboration on or links to what his project is and even worse: no mention of why I specifically am someone he wants to meet. Does he know anything about me, or can he identify whetherwe have something in common, etc. that would make "networking" a truly valuable endeavor?

(3) Do The Work. In the examples above, a common theme is that it's on me to either package things up or devise a useful connecting point. Why me? If you are asking for an intro, you should have done your research on me (or whoever you want me to introduce you to), and laid out some specifics on exactly why an introduction would be valuable. As in, make it clear on what your ask is and what tangible next step you propose: Coffee? Meeting at an event? A brief answer to a question or two?

However, if your goal is to simply want to "get connected" and "network," I encourage you to rethink your definition of networking in an era where time is becoming one of the rarest commodities.

It's like a Mach piece, really.

It's hard to disagree that This is Spinal Tap is one of the best comedies made (but if you do disagree, I will be too flabbergasted to even argue with you).

What I wonder is, just how many rock 'n roll bands Rob Reiner observed before being inspired to write this opus? So much of this film's beauty is how insanely well it identifies common themes among rock bands.... truly making this phenomenon stranger than fiction [a small sampling; (1) the ridiculous lyrics; (2) the frustrated manager; (3) the absurd outfits; (4) the divisive spouse].

I propose that we are at that point with technology entrepreneurs. This month alone has featured a preponderance of stories on two well-known Silicon Valley founders and it's easy to see some common themes emerge...: a genius since childhood....a few failed projects early in the career....an insane dedication to the endeavor....an incredible vision. When I read the latest in today's New York Times, featuring a photo of the entrepreneur as a 5 year-old, I had two thoughts: (1) Why in the world do I care what this person did at age 5?; and (2) This proves it: the time has come to create a Spinal Tap for Geeks.

I'm not sure we can ever match the brilliance from 1984's epic piece but....kind of curious what Rob would think....

And, if you don't know what this headline means....

This Koolaid is Tasty

Last month I had the privilege of joining WebFWD, the new accelerator from Mozilla. When I first learned of the opportunity, Mozilla was to me one thing: "makers of Firefox."

Boy did I have a lot to learn (and still do). At this point, while my brain is still somewhat fresh with the "business" (as in, non-open source) way of thinking, I've identified some key areas that many businesses seek to excel at...and what Mozilla has been building on for years already:

Engagement
Coming from the non-open source side of business, I've been involved in a lot of efforts focused on both employee and customer engagement. In technology, both are key: creating and transferring knowledge require a high degree of information sharing and engagement, both among the developers and the consumers of the software.

At Schwab, we developed a number of programs to engage our IT employees: contests, rewards, events, newsletters, feedback loops, "fun budgets" - any trick short of bribery our HR was ok with, we did it. We monitored, we measured the results, we reported back to senior management.

Flash to the world of Open Source...where, in shock, I learn things like:

• More than 1,000 volunteers contribute code to Firefox, accounting for roughly 40% of its code. Yes, volunteers: as in, voluntarily.
• 400,000 people contribute to Mozilla through its project tracking system Bugzilla

So um yes, these are volunteers, people. Unlike the highly-paid IT professionals we had to cajole with "fun budgets," these people willingly give of their time and their talents. There's no better engagement than that which is not engineered. It's internalized. It sticks.

Social Enterprise
When I was at Haas, the Global Social Venture competition was just starting and the "triple bottom line" was emerging as a paradigm for businesses to deliver value on social as well as commercial fronts. This is becoming pretty pervasive today, thanks in part to social media adding an unprecedented level of transparency to consumer decision making, allowing them to select - and switch - vendors using simple scorecards, and spread the word prolifically. Social good is a huge brand asset

When I encountered this huge phenomenon of Open Source volunteerism, I had to know ...why? Why would these talented professionals give their long-developed skills over for free to an open project? I'm learning that, while there are many reasons, the primary ones are the desire of dedicated people wishing to make things better: for themselves through better tools that solve their problems, and for others through increased competition. This results in a different kind of economy: one predicated less on transacting money for labor, and more on exchanging goodwill and knowledge to improve things. It's allowed social enterprise to extend beyond fair labor practices and health products and into the world of technology. It's very cool.
 
Community
If you've had even one baby toe dipped in the realm of social media over the past 5ish years (and really, who hasn't?), you'll know that "community" is a huge deal. It's the way brands and firms engage (that word again) with their customers. It's Facebook groups. It's Twitter followers. It's Google+ Circles. It's something else next week. But it's important, because it's a way for organizations to draw in and retain customers and influence.

It's so important that brands paid big bucks to firms like the company I consulted with prior to joining Mozilla to create programs to get people to simply click "Like" on Facebook. 

Then I join Mozilla where I learn things like:

• SUMO, Mozilla’s community-powered support site, helps an average of 10,000 Firefox users per week.
• Students from more than 600 institutions in 57 countries spread Firefox as Mozilla Campus Representatives

This is community of the best kind: galvanized around a mission that extends beyond their individual needs, and not dependent on any one person or leader and as such, is highly sustainable and durable.

Globalization
At Schwab we had another initiative: decentralize its workforce (which at the time was concentrated in San Francisco which was perceived as cost-prohibitive), and develop best practices and infrastructure to support this. Remote working policies and technology had to be developed, deployed and broadly adopted. It posed a fundamental shift in how people worked together. Schwab of course is not alone in this endeavor.

At Mozilla, the organization is already global at its core. A few data points that underscore this nicely:

• Firefox is available in more than 75 languages (covering more than 97% of the world’s online population)
• Firefox is used in every country in the world
• Almost every non-English version of Firefox is localized by community volunteers
• More than 50% of global Firefox users use non-English versions 

 ...and you can read the Mozilla Manifesto in 33 languages. But what really drove this home for me was the crazy corners of the earth I hear Mozillians operate from (most recent being Hanoi). Often in their own homes, leveraging the video and real-time conferencing technologies used by volunteers, staffers and community members alike. What many corporations are trying to build are merely the stuff daily Mozilla life is made of, as well as that of many other open source projects (check out GitHub, which supports over 1 million people sharing code around the world).

 

Small wonder, then, that Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker recently encouraged Mozillians confronting an increasingly competitive browser market (thanks largely to Mozilla itself) to "be more Mozilla then ever." Whether they know it or not, it's what most companies want, too.

Da Art of Storytellin'

Not many would argue that publicists/PR types/communications professionals are all about storytelling: weaving together the right angles, sound-bites and talking points to advance their agenda in the media and influence spheres of their choosing.

What many people don't realize is that the to be effective, these professionals often have to tell a parallel internal story as a precursor to telling that external story. For example, consider the inside sale that has to happen when a bunch of....

• Harvard PhDs want to start a dating site and need "a marketing person." That marketing person - likely intrinsically far more fun than the algorithm-coding founders - has to somehow *convey* fun to them in order to bring it to the rest of the world.
• Enterprise software boys who never use half the social media tools themselves suddenly learn that there's money in "being social" and want to talk that up.

The marketer must translate the levity of dating to geeks....and the organic, peer-to-peer elements of social to hierarchical, conventional thinkers, in order to bring the message back to ROW. This isn't simply telling the external story to them first for approval. It's repackaging it into what matters to them: convincing the geeks that your message leads to quantifiable things like user acquisition, and convincing the enterprise dudes that your messages will lead to cash.

So next time you see a really good message, remember: there were probably some other stories that had to happen first.

Assymetric Information

A fairly prominent blogger just posted this note on a Facebook job group:

"Gentle suggestion to job seekers - if you respond to a job eagerly and then fail to follow-through on simple requests for information, it doesn't reflect well. If you have a change of heart on a position, just be up front about it, don't be passive-aggressive and just go off the radar. Unless of course you've been hit by a truck in which case it's understandable."

Once I got beyond the Jewish mother memories this invoked, I quickly concluded two things:

1) Perhaps more frequently, the word "seekers" can be replaced with "posters"

2) The entire job search process is just so danged assymetric. It's a gentle jig of information-sharing. Does the side of the table with the most uncertainty depend on the state of the market (i.e. supply & demand of labor)? Why does it have to be such a guessing game?

The whole dance of information disclosure and timing is, as I often say, dating on steroids: the ultimate in inference. I'm SO glad I'm not actively 'dating' anymore. But it was a precursor to finding something sustainable. Must the job search process always be the same for a thriving career?

I'm searching for other paradigms.

CLMs

According to one of my favorite sources of information, Urban Dictionary...:

CLM: Career Limiting Move

Something that you do at work, that will get you fired, or end your career very soon.

Cut to scene at work this Monday.

CLM #1

Failure to toggle quickly enough out of Lexulous during pre-Thanksgiving Day at the office

CLM #2

Boss: "What games are we gonna pick for this Bowl Game promo?"

Me: "I dunno. We want to go early but what is the "Mountain West" division? The "WAC"? Wha - teams like from SPOKANE or somewhere play in those right? FAIL."

(Boss is from Spokane).

Happy Thanksgiving - here's to a job I not only love, but have! :D

What was it that McNealy said about dog food?

I wrote this post up for a friend who told me he'd pay me $75 for a blog submission.

But I did it before doing any kind of SOW....

Keeping Cash Flow Positive when Contracting

“Full-time, home-based freelancers and independent contractors in the U.S. are expected to increase by 200,000 workers to 11 million by the end of 2009, says Ray Boggs, a vice president of IDC, Framingham, Mass., a market-research firm; he sees another 200,000-worker increase in 2010.”

- “The Five-Second Commute,” The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2009

The life of a freelancer has its pros and cons. One not often cited, however, is getting paid in a timely fashion. Small businesses often have their invoices put aside or ignored because they do not enjoy the support of legal or collections departments, or (and) service other small clients with their own cash flow problems.

One way to address this is to include very clear deliverables in the Statement of Work (SOW). Clear milestones, and using phases for the work, help clients and providers spread out the work and payments, and be on the same page with respect to deliverables and expectations.

An SOW should list out:

• Clear work deliverables
• Milestones/due dates for these work deliverables
• Process for iterating / accepting the deliverables
  
• Payment terms (e.g. hourly, or how much is to be paid for the retainer at which milestone, etc.)

Setting expectations clearly up front not just about the work but about the payment helps you meet your cash flow obligations and build a solid foundation for growing your business.

Psychobabble

Don't get me wrong: I LOVE Myers Briggs. And this year got turned on - by my career coach, no less - to the FIRO-B.

But I'm thinking this "Big Five" stuff is more like "Big Fail".....

I'm a O20-C74-E93-A8-N7 Big Five!!

...as in:

gonnggggg!!!!!

Discern-rential Calculus

Geeks: I love geeks! Consider, for example, the 2002 findings from Scotland academics:

ß =	(An)2 x d(S + 1) √L x (Vo)2

where:

• An is the number of servings of alcohol
• S is the smokiness of the area on a scale of 0 - 10
• L is the lighting level of the area, measured in candelas per square meter, in which 150 is normal room lightning
• Vo is Snellen visual acuity, in which 6/6 is normal and 6/12 is the lower limit at which someone is able to drive
• d is the distance between the observer and the observed, measured in meters [source: BBC News]

The formula works out a "beer goggle" score ranging from 1 to 100+. When ø = 1, the observer is perceiving the same degree of beauty he or she would perceive in a sober state. At 100+, everybody in the room is a perfect 10.

I, too, yearn to deconstruct my desires, sentiments and choices so neatly. For example, I know that my standards in food considerably deteriorate (or shall I just say "change" to stay all copasetic?) when I've just done a spin class...when the options at a certain hour are few...so perhaps I could even assign a relative weighting to X watts exerted, contending with a constraint of Y miles in available edible options and Z minutes of time elapsed since aforesaid watts were exerted....

But would all of this knowledge really change my behavior? I think it would just make the goggles that much more transparent. And transparency often leads to accountability, which typically aspires to some sort of behavior change.

*Behavior change.* Guess I'll be keepin' those goggles on. With my eyes wide open, of course.

That Thing, that Thing, that iPad Thing

Way back in technohistorical January, The Onion gave us a glimpse of just how insanely amazing the upcoming Thing Apple was preparing to launch would be....


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

My favorite quote: "if it's shiny and from Apple, I want it!"

Now that the infamous iPad has launched - and subsequently skyrocketed - I want it. I want it. I don't know why, but I just KNOWS I wants it!

Of course, there are real business and consumer drivers behind this demand. iMedia Connection did a nice piece on just why the iPad is really a big deal. And I even personally corroborated in the froth by serving as one of the coordinators of an iPad developers' event last month.

But I have yet to really USE an iPad, and yet my knee-jerk reaction to a friend's "Sent by my iPad" signature was nonetheless: I WANTS ONE!

We always knew Steve Jobs was a genius. But many in these parochial Silicon Valley technodigerati circles don't realize that Lauryn Hill got it first:

Learning How To Receive

A few years ago, I underwent one of my most powerful inner transformations while listening to my friend Alice belt out this song.

While the full set of lyrics does best justice to the message, the title does, in fact, do a nice job of summing up the point: "All I Need is Everything." At the risk of diluting the beauty of the song with left-brained analysis, I'll just say that hearing this moved me to surrender the limited set of things I think I want to Everything, which does in fact await me.

As the song notes, part of this process entails "learning how to receive."

Fast forward to today. I was finished teaching spin class and having some quality time with the foam roller to nurse a months'-old butt injury when Darok the Rastafarian Personal Trainer playfully scared me from behind. When he saw how much this threw me out of my happy place, he proceeded to ask me if he could make it up to me. By offering me a personal butt massage.

So I took one more step in learning how to receive. Allll righty then!

Darok needs to practice his skillz, and I need to practice how to receive!

The attraction of Crazy Beasties!

In December 1995 I went camping in Baja, California with two guys. Well, really, it was with Steve, and we corralled another guy into going with us to be an official chaperone.* Anyway, one thing we had to do before embarking was procure a means of transport to get us from San Francisco allllll the way down to the tip: Cabo San Lucas.

Steve - who grew up on a farm fixing cars - settled on a 1975 Chevy Blazer, with great joy because he got to work on it a lot before we left. And a lot during our trip. This labor - and these images - will all help you grasp why it soon became lovingly known to us as The Beast: it was The Beast's very ugliness and unwieldiness that made her so attractive and beloved to us.

Lest you think I exaggerate, you should know that we nearly died in The Beast on one climactic night when Steve and our chaperone got into an altercation. When the argument subsided, we continued down the dicey Mexican "highway" in quiet tension, leading us to nearly snap when an unruly truck careened at us in the opposite direction, leaving us no recourse but to veer off the road. The drama made us appreciate our hobbling, graceless Beast (which somehow kept us whole) on an entirely new level. When I was charged with driving Her home after Steve had to fly back for a business meeting, my love grew all the more as she yawed the entire way back up the 101 (I say this now, of course...15 years later and indelibly marked by Her image every time I in fact hear or use the word "yaw").

To this day, the ugly, unwieldy and beastly still hold a crazy kind of pull for me. Is it because I so want to redeem the beauty that I insist simply *must* lie within...some sort of savior complex?

I dunno. But I still love beasts. Lord help me!

My latest Beast spotting tonight in the Mission: isn't she just *beautiful*??

* this had its own unfortunate end that requires a whole other side story...ahh, if only we blogged back then...

Self I-Don't-Care

I'm always kind of surprised when I hear people talk about how they need to "take better care" of themselves. That's never been a challenge for me, who finds it second nature to get:
* Lots of endorphins,
* Quality time with people, with deep belly laughs.
* Quality time alone.
* Gourmet dark chocolate.

...all on a regular basis.

And when the external stressors ramp up, so do I. It's during these times that I also get:
* More endorphins (plus some vitamin D on top).
* More time with people...but more selectively.
* More time alone....with deep belly tears.
* More spontaneity.*

I'd like to propose that it was this last thing - you know, that spontaneity which permits us to exercise our entitled sense of freedom - that led me to the 280 instead of the 101 to meet a friend at a restaurant located just off the...101...

After rerouting significantly, I managed to get there about 25 minutes late. You can just blame it on the inherent beauty and pull of the 280....all part of my "self care!"

'Cuz I mean really: selfishness is *so* unenlightened!

* dark chocolate remains a constant

Hierarchy of Holy days

I've always contended (well, since I was about 20) that Easter just blows away Christmas. It's a no-brainer: the Triumph clearly trumps the Entry. But within Easter weekend (thus excepting Palm Sunday the week prior), we have a range of options to contemplate, and within these, Holy Saturday comes out first for me.

Not that the other days - Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday - are chopped livah:

• Maundy Thursday provides the chance to wonder at how Christ revolutionized the Passover, or deliverance from servitude which, until that point, had most poignantly been instantiated in the Exodus story. By offering Himself as the ultimate sacrifice, He democratized and internalized this redemption for everyone beyond my peeps.
  
• Good Friday is an important moment to ponder the gritty, real sacrifice made by Christ. The pain, agony, separation and acute trial He endured purely out of love, wholly undeserved.
• Easter Sunday is a party: a grand celebration where we can take heart that death has been overcome, the victory sealed, and we simply wait until the full implications of this attained victory fill in.

....but Holy Saturday is beautiful and heartening in its very silence. The unfolding of Thursday and drama of Friday are over, and the closure of Sunday not at all a certainty. Instead, it's a time in the gap...a time of waiting...a time where we must choose to trust and believe, in the midst of no circumstances or actions around us validating that choice.

Thus, Holy Saturday is the most like life as we live it today: we trust and believe that something dramatic and important has happened...and completion WILL happen...but right now, we live in the in-between. The silence. The ambiguity, where we simply must choose to believe despite signals around us which conflict - or simply don't send us anything at all.

For me, the choice to believe is a no-brainer because the alternative - a life without hope, purpose, direction or redemption - is not really a life at all, but an animalistic, nihilistic bumbling about, hoping to attain enough pleasure or numbness to cover up this sad, broken, desolate alternative reality that is so unacceptable ...because it simply is not The Reality. We struggle with it because we weren't made for it.

So I will choose to believe on this Holy Saturday, and in this life, of the in-between. Because I really have no choice.

What does the Speck-ster Bunny think?

good luck with Your Nonsense

In November I got to hear Henry Cho do standup; when querying the audience about current vocational pursuits, he proceeded to wish one member in grad school "good luck with Your Nonsense."

Fast forward to this week: the world was riveted by the climactic launch of Apple's iPad tablet...and a flurry of developments around geolocational services led to l'il ol' me somehow serendipitously talking to a BusinessWeek reporter about why I love to "check in" to places so much....why being "The Mayor" is so addictive and hoarding Virtual Collectibles so satisfying....and other momentous topics of the day.

When my head stopped spinning from the giddiness of it all, I wandered through the various Ferry Building shops, trying to check in to each one, and was paralyzed by the 5-minute limit that Yelp happens to place on checking in to different spots (in contrast to Gowalla which lets you "faux"-walla into as many places you want regardless of when you do so - as long as you are proximate of course yadeyadeya...).

I only regained lucidity when, not knowing what to do with myself because I was unable to check in every second, I meandered over to a bench because it was located next to some sorely-needed power outlets for my Apple products and struck up a conversation with Eddie.

Eddie was enthralled by all of my gadgets. He had no idea why I was (unsuccessfully) trying to log in with a wireless card, why I needed to use my phone and laptop at the same time, and why I needed to sit 3 inches from a power outlet in the first place. This is because Eddie is unwired. And as it turns out, he also happens to be the Real Mayor of the Ferry Building.

Untethered and free. What was all that stuff I was trying to tweet, log in, check in and post to again?

Cupid keeps on striking

I have unabashedly proclaimed my undying love many times in this forum, and I guess I'm promiscuous because the objects of my affection range from presidents to pariahs, from pundits to geeks, from economists to actors, and from comedians to guide dogs.

Nevertheless, I will risk my reputation once more and go to bat for yet another mensch: the (cross all body parts) next governor of "we're our own worst enemy" State of California.

So I love Tom Campbell a lot. But love, unlike affection, must be earned. So here's why I love Tom Campbell so much:

• I love him for his breadth and depth of public service: this includes, but is not limited to: serving in the U.S. Congress, the California State Senate, the Federal Trade Commission, the University of California system, and as Director of Finance for the State of California.
• I love him for his adaptability: he's lived in Berkeley and in the O.C. He was a prof at Cal and at Stanford. (only the coolest of peeps can hang in both schools).
  
• I love him for his finesse: "I'm most concerned about the dropping educational attributes of our population." (whereas I would have cried: "BEWARE THE IDIOCRITAZATION OF OUR SOCIETY!")
  
• I love him for his ethics and class: when I raised the issue of smear tactics, he took a total Nash Game Theory approach to explain why such tactics are ineffective. Nice way to get out of the implicitly-smearing-by-saying-you're-not-the-one-smearing rathole.
  
• I love him for his consistency. When asked why he didn't run as an independent because he is so balanced (aka "moderate"), he replied that he believes in personal liberties with respect to both governance *and* social issues. Thus, a conservative in the most classic liberal sense. He added that independents tend to skew election results to the extreme candidates, and cited Perot and Nader as recent examples (clearly he's not loyal to the GOP then.... another point in his favor for me!).
  
• I love him for his raw intelligence. Last night when he talked about the budget - which is really the main job of any governor (allocating the state's resources) - he decried simplistic, soundbyte-appeal responses such as "eliminating waste, fraud and abuse" (as in, duh?) and instead did the heavy lifting that a complex environment like California's requires and drew from finance/monetary policy, history, law, economics and legislative rules to develop comprehensive solutions. Not soundbyte-y but way more credible.
• I love him for his unabashed humor: "I'd like to be more optimistic than the facts permit me to be. Go Bears." He also humored an alum last night who begged him to recite some salty Irish chants. You may have had to be there, but it was priceless.

Susanne's a lucky woman! Let's hope the State can be so lucky.

Must I?

When I was about 4, I received a gift from a generous relative. Upon opening it, I was cajoled to respond. Complying, I stared directly into her eager, inquiring face and flatly declared:

"I don't like it."

...and to this day, her crestfallen response is indelibly marked in my memory.

But as adults, we've developed the super-ego to ensure we adhere to social mores. As such, we often find ourselves in situations where we are forced to effuse.

Two common settings for this cruelty include:

1) Admiring friends' offspring. When this pertains to homo sapiens, I can buy in. People warrant respect. And infants all the more: I can totally get behind the awe of procreation.

However, my line is crossed when I am obliged to ooh and aah over a canine or feline. How much excitement can one be expected muster over a yelping, unhygienic slobbering animal unable to dialogue? Over what period of time is such feigned enthusiasm sustainable? Inhumane expectations.

2) Staff meetings. These are undoubtedly the most egregious examples of enforced enthusiasm*; particularly when they are kicked off by asking all participants to share with the group just what it is they love -- the most -- about Company A. The ensuing applause most often invariably owes to the fact that the employee has finished, rather than reflecting what s/he has actually shared.

But, being the solutions-oriented businessperson I am, I felt it was important end on a positive and constructive note:

Ways To Avoid Coercive Engagement (drawing off of real-life experience)

• Never use campy parables ... unless good. Really good.
• Don't regift the giveaways. If you must, do not disclose.
• Contain all meetings to 1.5 hours - max. If you have the choice of longer meeting with food, or shorter meeting without food, go without food.
• Make sure your schwag is dogfood you would eat, too.

* You can further reference the gem by Mike Judge at the bottom of this post for a lucid depiction of why this is just so wrong.