How Could I Forget Toastmasters
Now Playing: The Flaming Lips - Ambulance Driver
Topic: Personal or Reflective
Yeah it was a great weekend (see my post below) but how could I forget how such a wonderful weekend started. Friday night we hosted a Toastmasters District Contest at work. In the office from 8-9pm was what it meant for me but the contest went well and it was the other club officers that put so much hard work into the successful event. I barely got the name badges right, even though that used to be my specialty/job back in Colorado.

Here are the photos from the contest and congrats to Rich and Erin for their second places in the Evaluator and Humorous Speech contests, respectively.

Last but not least, the wild adventures of Grant Kaye. He's a legend as a founder of the Freeriders Union of Colorado College and he's living the dream while most of us aren't (myself included...but I'm working on the dream as we speak). He's a crazy guy who lives life to the fullest and if you don't believe me, check out his recent adventure that included schralping, Burning Man, Hawaii, and everywhere in between.

Copyright Grant Kaye 2005

(Amazon link to the new Flaming Lips album, which includes Ambulance Driver)

Guiliani & Jon Stewart
Now Playing: Engadget Podcast, 9/30 & Frou Frou's
Topic: Leadership
Sat. afternoon was an action-packed day, first Giuliani, then dinner with mom and the bro, and then Jon Stewart.

The recap from Giuliani's speech, mostly points from his book on leadership. Here are the six parts of being an effective leader:

What are your beliefs: can you set goals and objectives, and talk to people about where you want to go. Who you work for, especially early in your career, can influence what you believe.

Be an optimist: besides, life's more fun that way. It means being a problem solver.

Have to have courage- it makes you accountable

Relentless preparation; how can you minimize risk to improve your chance of success. If you anticipate everything that you can and are prepared as much as possible, then you'll be prepared for the unexpected.

Teamwork- as a leader you have to know what your weaknesses are and work with people whose strengths make up for your weaknesses.

Communication- being a good communicator comes from studying the five traits above

Do you love people? Leaders love working with people.

Now on to the other main event..perhaps there's some insight here as well: Jon Stewart sold out long ago, packing house while Giuliani still had tons of open seating, hmmm...

I didn't take photos at the Jon Stewart show b/c I assumed the RIT crowd would be all over it. But I spent five minutes searching for any others who blogged/Flickr-ed the Jon Stewart show. I only found this MSN Spaces blog and these Flickr photos. IceRocket found these and here were Technorati's results.

The funny thing is that the girl who took the photos was sitting right in front of me, but look at the picture of her waiting in line. I walked in right before 8pm but found a single seat and was probably only 30 rows back. Ha ha, one advantage of flying solo, you can always hustle to the front and find a seat.

Among all the jokes and social commentary, which were hilarious (his impromptu fun with the person working the closed captioning for the video screen was awesome), the most point on the state of the populace or at least among the youth, was the crowd's answer to Stewart's question on our outlook for the future. Almost everyone booed, someone yelled life sucks, and essentially the sentiment was that people were pessimistic about the future. I sat there shaking my head at this, thinking life is good, if only Americans knew how truly lucky and we are. We have so many opportunities that others would do anything for and yet we don't realize this standing in the world. What a shame.

Posted by cph19 at 4:24 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 10 October 2005 12:13 AM EDT

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India versus China
Now Playing: Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone (Jason Nevins remix)
Topic: Outsourcing

From the newest CIO Insight, an associate dean from HBS discussing the IT environment in China as compared to India:

"First, China has a much more robust internal IT structure, networks and so forth, than does India. They've had a massive telecommunications expansion, and they have more networking capacity than people think. All of that has been a direct result of national economic policy."

This one surprised me but it shows that a coordinated, country-wide initiative from the central government (whether it be a free market or mixed economy), can be more successful than only allowing the market to decide. The current debate on whether U.S. municipalities should be offering wifi services as a public good, either in cooperation with or in competition with the telcos, raises the same issue.

"The biggest risk I see is political. All of the growth in China has been heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard. That has intensified the divide between rural and urban life. But as long as the government can deliver 7 percent or 8 percent growth annually, the poorer people will remain patient. The Chinese government's problem is trying to maintain a fast-enough growth rate that the citizens on balance will buy into it."

I delved into some of this for my undergrad thesis on the international trade patterns of Chinese imports and exports and the economic vs. political factors involving globalization. China has taken a very different approach than Russia underwent following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Russia went full 100% liberalization, both economically and politically, and the combined shock of both was too much for the country to handle. China has taken a different approach, preferring to liberalize the economy while maintaining a strict, centralized hold on the country's political environment.

The challenge for Chinese leaders is to maintain the economic growth to appease or mollify a populace increasingly unsatisfied with the lack of corresponding political freedom that other former communist, not liberalized, countries enjoy. What happens if they can't maintain the economic growth?

"The worst case scenario is that you have a revolution."

Here's The Economist's take (password required, try BugMeNot) on China versus India from back in June 2003.

Posted by cph19 at 6:45 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 7 October 2005 6:48 AM EDT

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One for Schneier
Now Playing: Jay-Z & lincoln park - Izzo/In the End
This one is for Bruce Schneier, one of the world'st foremost computer secuirty experts who alwyas stresses the critical importance of human factors when analyzing secuirty. A warning email sent to my school account:

Fake job listings on online job boards are being used to gather and steal personal information from RIT students.

Description of Threat

Campus Safety recently investigated an incident involving an RIT student who applied for a Data Entry position on www.monster.com. During the application process, the student was asked for and provided her bank account number, driver’s license number, and was given specific instructions by the manager of the company to wire transfer money to an overseas bank (emphasis added). (The student was also given the opportunity to be a Merchandise Packer, Payment Processor, or Wire Transfer Agent.) The job seemed to be too good to be true, and actually was—eventually the student was investigated for inappropriate transfer of funds which were reported stolen by a brokerage firm. Monster.com is investigating the incident and provided us with links to protect you when searching for employment on their website.

Wish I Was at Web 2.0
Now Playing: Dj Shadow vs. Keane - We Might As Well be Strangers
Topic: Web 2.0
Yeah, I wish that I was at Web 2.0 but instead I'm at the coffee shop working and reading, not that there's anything bad with working and reading. I'm going next year, regardless of what the heck the conference is called, Web 2.0a or Web 3.O. Here's Wired's take on the conference:

According to Ross Mayfield, CEO of SocialText and the company hosting the conference,

"Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people,"

By chance I listened to the newest Podtech.net podcast with Mayfield before coming down here to work and here's a quick roundup of his thoughts on wiki:

Wiki at its essence is a webpage that anyone can edit. So rather than programmers editing it like in a traditional coding setup, the regular users of the content contribute and develop it

Wikipedia is like open-source software (OSS) because it's "group editable"

Wiki-powered search results, the future threat to Google? (a rehash from this post from a couple months back)

OSS is a vertical contribution model, in that one part of the code directly links into another section of the code down the line to create a top to bottom functioning program. Wiki is different; it's a horizontal contribution model, where your piece of code (information, content, etc.) links to other pieces of code in a citation manner but it doesn't depend on these links to function overall

Wiki aims to make the webpage the application

I've been trying to become better acquainted with the world of wiki because I tried pitching it at work. Thanks to Fred Wilson I got into the Long Tail theory last week, reading Joe Kaus's posts and digging into JotSpot. It hit me that JotSpot would be a perfect solution for creating a collaborative platform for all of the procedures and information that we create and update during the day. We've talked about other software packages but they cost money and have a steeper learning curve than a more intuitive, web-based WYSIWYG environment. It would be heavy software with maintenance costs and the downtime from Citrix & client/server issues that plague our other applications. It would take forever to get an official, closed source package (read Microsoft product) up and running for our team. With JotSpot or some other wiki platform, we'd be able to collaborate w/o a damned shared network drive and email chains back and forth. It'd be quick, fast, easy...in essence, simplicity.

More than just a collaborative environment (i.e. more than just Lotus Notes), we could use the wiki for creating our own intranet. We wouldn't have to send drafts for the web team to update the content; we'd be creator, reviewer, editor, and publisher all at once. Can you use Notes or SharePoint as an intranet or content management system (CMS) in addition to is collaborative environment platform? Look at the points above for the big-picture advantages of using wiki.

Lastly, updated my desktop wallpapers on Flickr. I really dig the black bubbles photo. A total fluke that I can't even remember the details on, take it as it is. Guiliani & Jon Stewart this weekend at RIT's Homecoming. It's shaping up to be another great weekend.

Posted by cph19 at 9:29 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 10 October 2005 12:16 AM EDT

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It was a good weekend
Now Playing: Louis Armstrong - Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?
Topic: Personal or Reflective
Friday night was the Sabres vs. Wild pre-season hockey game at Blue Cross Arena and yesterday afternoon was Custom Brewcrafters Fall Festival of Ales.

For those lucky enough to be at John and Becky's wedding, he finally posted a link to the official wedding photos. Well he did it on 9/7 but I only noticed it early this past week and haven't posted since. It was a long week (two all-nighters, mostly my own causing), tiring but productive.

I turned on AM 1370 at 6pm specifically for This American Life but had already the current episode so I scanned their archives and listened to two of their recent Hurricane Katrina-related shows.

The end of the second show, "This Is Not My Beautiful House" (9/16), featured a song perfect for New Orleans but also perfect for the mood of a late Sunday evening at home: Louie Armstong song, "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?" (mp3 download). Turn up the volume a little, make sure that you're in your comfortable corner chair with the reading lamp on and close your book for a second. Tap your foot and whistle along for a little bit.

Photos from The Mexican
Now Playing: Nada Surf - Concrete Bed
Topic: Personal or Reflective

After emailing a cousin in CO the photos from funny moving weekend back in July, I noticed the Flickr blog posted on The Mexican, who I stumbled upon and posted a few weeks ago.

The photo still gives me pause; I hope that it always will.

Best analysis of Web 2.0 so far
Now Playing: TimG - Bloc of Nails (NIN & Bloc Party mashup)
Topic: Web 2.0
Fred Wilson's VC Blog has been one of my new favorite blogs lately, not the least of which is his "Positively 10th Street" podcast that he does with his family. I've have quite a few good music suggestions from listening to his podcast (including Josh Rouse, Bloc Party, and M. Ward) and have to compliment Fred and family on their musical choices. I've never met him but given his taste in music, he must be a cool guy). I hesitate to use the word charming because that sounds too quaint; refreshing and inviting may be the best ways to describe the podcast.

Fred continued with his eBay/Skype post, referencing Reed's Law, which I've never heard of. Dig deeper by reading and looking at Umair's graphs at Bubblegeneration, which shows Metcalfe's Law (a linear network-value relationship) and Reed's Law (a exponential network-value relationship). I wonder if John Furrier at Podtech.net has read any of this material?

Fascinating ideas I think, wish I had made the connection myself. This analysis is still a work in progress but its exciting and energizes me about what's coming on the tech/internet horizon in the next couple of years.

Oh yeah, the word on AJAX is out (was I the only who didn't know this?), read a blurb on it in Business2 magazine. And here I was thinking that I'm ahead of the curve, oops. At least I'm still cool, though, because now my blog has this neat ribbon making fun of people using Internet Explorer. Ahh, I feel better now...now it's time for bed.

Bloc Of Nails (Nine Inch Nails vs BP bootleg by Tim G) mp3

WSJ's MBA Survey & Rankings
Now Playing: Podtech InfoTalk series (Podtech.net)
Topic: MBA, B-school
The WSJ's MBA Survey & Rankings came out today, including this podcast (iTunes link) by their MBA writer, Ron Alsop. Here's a quick summary:

1. Huge proliferation of part-time, Executive MBA or online programs, has increased the options for obtaining an MBA, resulting in decreased application rates for regular full-time MBA programs

2. WSJ’s survey asked recruiters to rate the success of part-time vs. full-time MBA students and the recruiters believed that full-time students have much better skill sets & experience:

30% said executive not as good as full-time was more effective

35% said part-time was not as effective as full-time

40% recruiters said online MBA programs are not effective at all

3. Ron Alsop, the WSJ’s MBA writer, has found that schools with a collegial atmosphere, which develop team and communication skills, are more successful:

Recruiters want the communication skills (the distinguishing factor), the soft skills (how one relates to others, works in teams, and has leadership skills)

4. The University of Rochester’s Simon School MBA program is seeking to raise application rates through an experimentation with an online scholarship contest, trying to create a sense of innovation around its MBA program.

Grand prize is one $70,000 full-ride scholarship

Why Simon needs help: a survey of students found that less people were applying because of the U of R’s location, upstate NY: the weather and other factors surrounding its location discouraged applicants

5. People still have sticker shock over the cost of an MBA program (just this year, Stanford and Wharton broke $40,000 a year)

6. There are still questions over the value of a MBA program (and how good is the school?) and the criticism is coming from within, professors at MBA programs themselves are questioning their peers.

And for my grocery store reading roundup (yes, the magazine aisle is my favorite aisle in the grocery store-- I see a great name for a website there, hmmmm...), it's time again for The Economist's Technology Quarterly and their tech cover story, "The meaning of free speech" discussing eBay's acquisition of Skype. Here's their take on Web 2.0 (I've seen it called AJAX, the newspaper-- The Economist is a newspaper not a magazine--calls it mashups).



If anyone is out there, let me know if I'm glossing over the differences between "mashups" and AJAX, I'd be interested in someone explaining the differences.

Posted by cph19 at 9:39 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 24 September 2005 3:26 AM EDT

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Screenshot Love
Now Playing: Boozoo Bajou - Take It Slow
Topic: Personal or Reflective
First, behold the power of BitTorrent for distributing large files quickyl and efficiently: that's 340KB/sec for a 130MB file, download speeds that I've never even come close to via my cable modem connection. I was excited with 100KB/sec back when I downloaded the Jon Stewart on Crossfire video. The file is a new Creative Commons album by Try^d, "Public Domain." Here's Lessig's post on it and here's the torrent for the music file.


Second, look at this Sage Art, compliments of my Sage RSS reader in Firefox acting up when I went to the CIO feed, it rendred the entries as this cool upside-down pryamid shape. I like it

(link to the Boozoo Bajou - Take It Slow mp3 file)

Free Techie Books
Now Playing: Bloc Party - Two More Years
Topic: Personal or Reflective
What a combination, two of my favorite things, free and techie: FreeTechBooks.com (hat tip LifeHacker)

While we're on the subject of free, go grab Bloc Party's new song, Two More Years, from Fred Wilson's A VC blog. I've been listening to this song for over two weeks now, mostly on repeat while doing work at night, and it's great. Wish I had found the song sooner.

Griz Mauling
Now Playing: Daily Source Code Podcast
After Pyszka told me about his trip to Glacier and being on the same trail at about the same time as the father and daughter mauled by a grizzly bear, I stumbled upon this interview (need IE to view video) of the two. I'm amazed that the two survived given Mike's description of the attack.

And I'm not sure why spawned my interest in posting these covers, but maybe it was this Brian Williams story on electricity temporairly coming back on for the presidential speech Thurs. night. The Economist's scathing review of our response to Hurricane Katrina, summed up by these two covers:

The Brownie Song
Now Playing: The Brownie Song (You're Doing a Heck of a Job)
Listening to Harry Shearer's Le Show on KCRW, I think the blogsphere needs to christen this mp3 The Brownie Song ("You're Doing a Heck of a Job."). Let's make the number one listing for The Brownie Song on Google a link to the mp3.

And check out Lessig's post on Fox News Channel's great reporting from New Orleans. Yes, the words "great reporting" and FNC don't often go hand in hand but this video mix shows the raw emotion that sometimes makes great reporting.

I first saw this amazing FNC video from New Orleans when checking out the Geraldo Rivera has never struck me as a great or serious journalist but look at the video and it's hard to not be struck by his raw emotion and sincerity.

Stop, Look, Think, & Post
Now Playing: Juliet Lloyd - Ordinary World
Topic: Personal or Reflective
The combination of listening to Juliet Lloyd (iTunes link) covering the great Duran Duran song, "Ordinary World," and looking at this photo, "Mushroom Vendors," made me stop, look, think, want to post about this. Stopping to smell the roses, something that the late Chief Justice Rehnquist stressed to his law clerks.

Look of the eyes of the children, especially the one of the left, the oldest and reluctant leader of the trio. Those faces have seen a million things and lived through a million hardships that most people on this world will never experience.

The photos are by Mexican Pictures, which I stumbled upon through Lifehacker linking to SLOWER.net that linked to the photo via Del.icio.us. This combination of music and imagery is one of those eye opening and unexpected travels that I stumble upon when surfing the web, bouncing from one area of interest to something completely unknown but mesmerizing. The music and the photo make me pause and contemplate things.

Look at "Mushroom Vendors" again and imprint the image of the kids' faces in your mind; keep it with you, when you drive to work or are out for a run and your mind is wandering, and think about your life versus the life of those kids.

Defining Great Leadership
Now Playing: Talib Kweli - Lonely People (on repeat w/ the Bose headphones rockin')
Topic: Leadership
I've posted before about Collins' book, Good to Great, (and who hasn't honestly, the thing has been on the NYT bestseller list for a long time), and this quote below led me to back to Collins' mantra of getting the right people on the bus:

Here's a definition of leadership that has stuck with me: Leaders are "people who leave their footprints in their areas of passion." (HBS Working Knowledge)

Sounds very similar to the Five Patterns book I posted on a couple of weeks ago.

And I'm back from the Labor Day road trip, 1700 miles in ~28hrs. Here are a few photo highlights, or the only crappy shots that turned out from my camera phone. Remember, though, driving across Kansas isn't usually a highlight unless you stop to see the world's largest prairie dog. Maybe next time.

Uploaded my Desktop Wallpapers
Now Playing: Talib Kweli - Lonely People
Topic: Personal or Reflective

Photos to Motivate
Now Playing: Since U Been Gone - Jason Nevins club mix
Topic: Personal or Reflective
I hesitated on installing the newest Google Desktop software because I wasn't sure that I need the enhancements, including those that would serve up content based on my browsing habits. Privacy and anonymity are important so maybe this newer version wasn't my cup of tea.

But Pogue and Mossberg convinced me otherwise and seeing the photos plugin when the sidebar is docked to your screen, that did it for me. I've been using WinPix to rotate my desktop's wallpapers every 15 minutes b/c seeing the photos reminds me what life is about: having fun with your friends & family, being happy.

Rather than only seeing the photos change on my desktop (which isn't that often b/c when you're working on the computer, you have all of your apps open and never see the desktop wallpaper), now I see them on the screen all the time. [As Pogue or Mossberg pointed out, Apple has had these "new" Google-enabled features for some time, including the changing wallpaper for your desktop. We won't bother asking why Microsoft never put these features into Windows...too busy creating Clippy.] It's like a digital scrapbook docked to my screen, reminding me and motivating me to stay focused and continue cranking on whatever I'm working on at the moment.

Yet again, I have to say thank you Google.

Decompressing through Experimental Uses of RSS
Now Playing: Coldplay - Clocks (Royksopp trembling remix)
Topic: Personal or Reflective
I spent the weekend decompressing (which I've called detox in the past but decompression is a more accurate word) by re-reading The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers.

I've been adrift the last couple of weeks (maybe it's been months) at work and knew that I needed some focus on what I've been doing and what I should be doing. Nothing in any of these career (or self-help books for that matter as well) is profound but you have to stick with it and over time we all lose that sharp focus on being successful, motivated, and happy.

And thinking about the future is usually what reinvigorates me, especially the confluences of the internet, politics, culture, & communication. What do I see as cool apps stemming from the trend called Web2.0?

How about using RSS to syndicate different CSS templates that would allow websites to change their look and feel automatically, almost a cross between the CSS Zen Garden and podcasting.

Or how about using RSS/XML and APIs from Amazon to automatically cross-reference your public library's book catalog. I googled to find this post referencing Jon Udell starting the LibraryLookup Project that aims to bridge the gap between your Amazon wishlist and your public library.

Last but not least, my dad just returned from an extensive road trip covering Montana to New York and I had to share this highlight: pig races at the Bear Creek Saloon & Steakhouse in Red Lodge, MT. Yes, you can bet on little pigs running around in a circle behind the restaurant (reminds of Mike's stories of turtle races in Chicago).

Now before you ask yourself why the hell you would ever do this, you must know that all proceeds from the races (over $61,000 to date) go to scholarships for local kids in the area. What a great way to raise money for a worthy cause and bring in people to your restaurant. I chuckled and had to smile as my dad described it so here's a quick sequence of one of the races.

It's Google This, Google That
Now Playing: KCRW via iTunes
At least according to the busy Monday postings by the Engadget guys, they should have just called it "Google This, Google That" Day.

1) Google building a national broadband/wi-fi network?

2) Google hooking up with iTunes?

God these guys are good. As I've said, I'm still trying to get over the personalized Google homepage and ability to add RSS feeds (including one for your Gmail account).

Thanks to KCRW Yet Again
Now Playing: Harada Ikuko - Twinkling
Thanks to Chris Douridas and his show, New Ground, on KCRW for one of my new favorite songs, a nice, mellow one for an overcast/drizzling/dreary yet slightly energizing Sunday afternoon here in Rochester, NY.

The song is by Harada Ikuko - Twinkling (mp3). I heard it played on the July 30th show. Hope you enjoy it as much as I've been.