Rather than Bill Gates

I was interested in a story about Bill Gates Sr's presentation to
Rotary International.  I've often wondered how much better-off our society would be if,
rather than attempting to emulate Bill Gates Jr, young men & women would
emulate Bill Gates Sr.  They would try their best to inspire hard work,
creativity, dedication and curiosity in their children.  THAT is a sure
deal.  Becoming Bill Gates Jr. is a long shot.

Luddites & the Long Tail

On the subject of the complexity of technology (James Gaskin sent me this link)

It's important not to be sucked into the narrowmindedness of a Luddite. The reason manufacturers put too many features in your phone is that you needed feature 'F' and that got combined with features 'A' through 'Z' to aggregate demand for all the phone buyers needed to justify the manufacturer's R&D for the phone. Since they can't possibly make only 'F' phones, you need to trip over the user interface for all the other features (some of which are mutually exclusive, contradictory and inconsistent - oops!)

There is a great book on the subject: Inmates Are Running The Asylum. (I'll try to rescue it from whereever Beth Ann hides my unfinished books and finish it.)

One consequence is The Long Tail.

More tomorrow.

Entrepreneur analogy

You're skipping a stone across a pond.  Everyone skips a few times then sinks...some skip more than others, some fewer, but they all end up at the bottom.

But one skips once, twice and then a bird swoops into its path, snatches the stone from the air.  You watch as the stone climbs higher and higher until it disappears from sight.

That's what every entrepreneur sees with every venture.

Training

My friend Bruce Frank asked me to help his wife learn about computers. Here's what I wrote him:

1. You married a smart woman. She's raised smart kids (with your help.)
2. Technology is like a hammer - it's just a tool. Nobody is hammer dumb. She's not technology dumb.
3. On the other hand, I don't want to teach hammer, I want to teach carpentry.
4. Here's how you learn this stuff:

1. Decide on something you want to do (like build a cabinet if it was carpentry.)
2. Try on your own - use available systems (like Help, Web, friends) to learn how.
3. Get so frustrated you're about to shoot yourself
4. Get the answer from an expert (like me)

Sometimes people go to courses. They spend $300 and all they've done is share a classroom with other people who don't know anything, to learn stuff they don't care about. The $300 DID get them commitment to learn. If it takes $300 to get Linda to decide she wants to learn this stuff and take the time to do it, have her give ME $300 - we'll both be better off :)

#2 above will expose you to lots of stuff you don't need to know now, but will come in handy later. This is like foraging for knowledge. Mapping the landscape of knowledge is a critical skill.

#3 is important since the relief in #4 is made sweeter proportional to how hard you've tried. It also means you spend more time on #2 doing it yourself.

Novell BrainShare

What a feast! (Literally and figuratively.) My first attendance at BrainShare was a feast for my technology senses. Meeting with my very attentive OEM rep Craig Toyama, meeting many of the other Novell faithful, catching the SuSE/OES buzz and hooking up with Brian Proffitt from LinuxToday.com were just some of the payoffs for enduring another flight through the TSA controlled skies.

While there I also had a chance to sit down with Mike Proper from DirectPointe. Ever the consummate promoter/entrepreneur, he showed off DirectPointe's very impressive SOS product. Not a FileEngine competitor per se, but targeting the SMB none the less. It offers a very powerful looking command center. FileEngine's control system: FEAT (the FileEngine Admin Tool), pales by comparison. But, that's the point, isn't it?

Rotary Club Election

Changing the way things are done can be risky, but it is generally worth doing. [Boring lead, I apologize.]

The most recent campaign for Rotary Club of Indianapolis, one of the largest/oldest in America, involved such change and risk. The change was the approach our team took: Serious, Sober, Content Rich. Our opponents continued a 22 year tradition of frivolity - Safe.

We pulled a pre-campaign stunt: introducing ourselves prior to the assigned campaign day exploiting a rule that allows a member to rise and introduce his/her guest; we used that opportunity to introduce ourselves to the amusement of the other members. We got noticed.

On campaign day, the other team assumed the stage, adorned with day-glow green tee shirts, 8.5" X 11" landscape printed keywords for campaign themes and just a few very simple PPT slides (that really only explained why they had called themselves the HAGS. Which really became BHAGS (instead of Spokes.) It stood for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. (This would make a lot of sense of you had read: James Collins and Jerry Porras's 'Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies' but from the reactions I observed, most of our members hadn't.) We never did learn about their complex 'eye' like logo. But that's for another blog about communication strategy: Keep It Simple.) [Now I need to apologize for the embedded parens.]

We, on the other hand, had a website, passed out Name Memory Cards which supported our theme: Every Rotarian Knows Every Rotarian, and presented what amounts to be a 'platform'. We developed a logo that presented key ideas, we used a Wiki to communicate among ourselves and used a 'gimmick' to demonstrate our Network theme: we paid out about 2000 feet of colorful crepe streamers 'connecting' (really wrapping) the audience in a virtual network to illustrate the way personal relationships create communication channels (ostensibly to enable members to do business with each other. I got worried that claustrophobic members would be alarmed!) But the biggest and most well received tactic was the use of a 5.5 minute video that introduced us to the audience; (economically produced by a member's video story company: Cantaloupe.tv.) There was no script - and I thought my own performance was ho-hum, but as Marshall McLuhen opined: The Medium is the Message.

One of our members created really cool name badges which included our logo; we also made silly banners that we wore like a collar - but hung backwards so when we sat facing the speaker our campaign was advertised to everyone behind us.

Another 'hit' was the text we had our announcer read. This made such an impression that some members that I regard as VIPs commented how good it was and one (the publisher of our monthly newsletter) asked for an electronic copy.

Altogether, our campaign broke with tradition and introduced a provocative goal - and that got us attention. One member remarked that he heard someone say: Imagine that: a SERIOUS campaign for the board. Imagine that: Every Rotarian should know every Rotarian. I was very pleased that those aspects of our campaign got the attention they deserved.

Finally, the hitch. During presentation, and for reasons that I'm still not sure about, the PPT displayed fine, but when I switched to the video all we got was audio and a blank screen! I felt mortified - here I was introduced as the A/V committee chair and I couldn't even get the video to play! After some fiddling around (about a minute and a half's worth) I got it running. The president of the club allowed me a 'do over' and the audience still mustered an applause when it was finished. (Multi-media is still so cool in most settings that it's OK if it comes off like starting a Model A.)

Afterwards, more than one member thought the faux pas wasn't off-putting at all. In fact, they gave me kudos for figuring it out under pressure. Luckily, suicide watch was not necessary!

Can a single election change the course of a venerable institution? I hope so. Our Rotary club is a very important part of our city and makes an impact in our world. As Margaret Mead said:

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Hopefully, we'll get elected and have a chance to transform the gimmicks of our campaign into the leadership needed to reestablish our club as an important force for good business and community building in Indianapolis.

Curiosity

The hallmark of good parenting (and the aim [prize] of a successful society) is raising children that are curious about the world and prepared to satisfy their curiosity. The principal feature missing in today's educational system is the development of curiosity. With it, all the assets of a connected, media rich world may be leveraged to produce insight, engagement, wisdom and empowerment. Without it, all is lost - the lavish application of the most precious educational resources will be for naught.

Who's to blame?

One of the problems of owning 90% of the desktop PC market is that the productivity of the world's desktops can be attributable to one company: Microsoft. It's not possible to hide behind anonymous statistics when everyone is using your software.

A recent issue of Inforworld concluded that over 50% of users are not engaged or actively disengaged at work due to the distractions of Internet access; an IN Education Technology Commission report concludes that over 50% of teachers complain their PCs aren't reliable and tech support is hard to get. PCs stopped adding to productivity a long time ago. Today they are primarily entertainment appliances.

Can we blame Microsoft for building systems that invite abuse, waste, mischief and maintenance headaches? Yes.

Vitamin Fear

Thinking about bringing a new partner into Server Partners, the FileEngine company. This partner has left fear of failure behind - he recently closed a sale of his business worth several million dollars.

I was thinking about how we could relate to each other. How our world views would be different - in fact, worried whether there would be enough common ground for us to work together.

It struck me that my life is still affected by fear. Fear of failure. But then I realized that fear leads to excitement. My life certainly isn't boring. Would having a lot of money make life boring without the fear? Maybe fear is a vitamin.

Education metaphors

Just thinking about how to describe abstraction and the infinitesimal (as in calculus) to young students.

1. Abstraction is familiar to programmers. We use it for indirection. It allow one thing to dynamically refer to multiple other things. You get to the target thing through dereferences. OK, so that sounds complicated. But Robert's Rule of Order is an example that can be easily understood. The Rules descrribe how to run a meeting. But they also describe a system for conducting debate and settling differences which are in fact used to create rule. Robert's Rules is therefore a set of rules to create rules. Seems to me with a little more time (than I have right now,) one could develop this example into a concrete examply of abstraction. Cool!

2. The notion of the infinitesmal is at the core of calculus. But how to make that idea come alive for a student is problematic. I think I found a way: Everyone is familiar with AM and PM. It's often seemed odd to me to call 12 Midnight 12:00AM. I don't disagree with it at all...it just brushes up against my curious bone.

The number 12 is the last number on the clock and follows 11 PM. If 11 you can say 11PM it seems that you ought to be able to say 12PM follows. But it doesn't. The next number is 12AM. As a programmer, I've done time math lots of times and have had to include qwerky logic to account for that. You might be able to have a student focus on that infinitesimal fraction of time that exists around 11:59:59.999999 and 12:00:00.000001. What happens there? There is no time that begins with 12 after midnight that ISN'T PM. (I use that argument when someone tries to tell me that 12:00AM should be 12:00PM but 12:01AM is obviously AM.) No matter how small you slice time up just before the 12, it's PM and no how small the increment is past it, you end up at AM. Thus, there is something very profound that happens at the imaginary gap between the two times. It's real, yet it's ethereal. It could be that it's infinitesimally small. And that's the idea. A real 'thing' that happens twice a day that exposes something strange yet familiar.

From this understanding, calculus seem a little more approachable.

The E-Mail Train Wreck

It has been 25 years since the invention of e-mail. Everybody I know uses it. They use it alot. Their use is self described as critical to their business and important to their personal lives.

Too many people get too much e-mail they can't ignore, organize, protect or trust. It has become as much of a distraction as it has an aid to communication. There must be billions of dollars wasted on it. And it's free!

E-mail can easily get sent by an imposter:
http://www.maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk/news_article.php?section=5&category=89&story=1115

It can be sent anonymously via hundreds of free e-mail services.  If you don't understand how it works it can be a vector for much mischief.  Attachments grow like weeds unseen and clog file systems, exhausting backup capacity.

So much more can be said, I ought to write a book!  The E-Mail Trainwreck.  (Tom Lapp contributed to these ideas.)

Speaking to Pike

Very depressing experience: speaking to high school students at Pike High School in Indianapolis.

The best education money can buy. 5K students on a sprawling campus. Everything a culture could provide its youth. Except ambition, curiosity. I believe by eliminating fear (of hunger, disease, control, exclusion, etc) we've created a generation of young people who aren't motivated to do anything. Why should they?

Sad to see such potential wasted on such sloth.

Passing through airport security, 2/13/2006

Passing through security, 2/13/2006

Dropped off a deposit, found out i was $19 overdrawn...how can that happen? the OD fee is $35? the stupid Fry's payment didn't get made and is due 2/15...need to mail it somehow from the road or tomorrow overnight.

Can't park in the drop-off area and deliver a box to the ticket counter - terrorists have made that small convenience obsolete. the guard at the door is firm: You can't park here, can't go inside - "better move on" echos in my head from some movie.

All service workers are Mexican immigrants. All service workers wear rubber gloves. It occurs to me that gloves signify an additional separation from each other. irrational - but that's the way it makes me feel.

TSA workers have a nearly impossible job; (maybe Americans are just adjusting?) you take off your shoes, your belt, remove your laptop from it's case, all metal objects larger than a silver dollar and they scan you, blow air on you, x-ray you, carefully check your ID... i'm pretty sure the only ones that don't mind becoming criminal suspects (if only for 10 minutes) are the terrorists.

With my proclivity to lose things, i'm constantly worried that all these excess procedures will cause me to forget something. I observed a courteous TSA agent deliver a forgotten laptop case to a traveller. i saw myself. after patting my pockets for wallet, keys, cell phone, USB thumb drive, tickets and visually checking (and counting) the stuff i'm carrying multiple times, i feel some solidarity with persons suffering from OCD. at least they have drugs.

is it the inconvenience that pisses me off so bad? i know i used to get to the airport minutes before takeoff...this morning i arrived 1:20 early. (paybacks are a bitch.)

i've thought about moving before. not just to another town, but to another world...at least another country. if i make a lot of money i'll start looking. they probably won't speak english there. money will buy convenience. maybe if i find a like minded group it will buy the pleasures of living i seem to have lost.

Entrepreneur Diary #3

I promise to live my entrepreneurial life in solidarity with the Jews.

The day before my elbow surgery, Wayne called to say he was considering job offers from a school and others. This would be fine, except that the day before that we were approved for our $250K SBA loan. Needless to say the lack of his collateral killed that deal. It will be a little harder getting the marketing and engineering done, but it won't be impossible. Not like staying alive.

I woke up this morning with a dream of the loan officer. He is simply a half wit, but my mental state cast him in the role of antagonist. I promise to work hard and skip the dreams.

Great show on INHD about a blind person climbing Mt Everest. If he can do that, I can bring a great idea to market.

One last thing: so i'm laying there not wanting to get up. I have this recurring vignette pop in my head about how little money some people start with to end up with a fortune. I'm already mad about losing the $250K loan and the loan officer; I suppose I'm still vain and trying to make myself seem even smarter since I'm going to be successful WITHOUT the $250K.

But then it occurs to me: those stories about becoming successful with $10 ten dollars (I think the last one i heard was on C-SPAN about Franklin,) are all BS. They should record for history that they became successul with a $1 Billion idea in their head. With that kind of idea it hardly matters what money you have.

The physics of entrepreneurship demand that money flows to value. Maybe you have value in assets like Carnegie, or maybe you have value like me. There's an E=mc^2 of entrepreneurship too. But it's P=ci^2. Profit is produced by the application of capital and the squared value of the idea that drives the business.

Has the fourth interesting meeting with a reseller prospect in a week today. But I underestimated his power and interest, but finally figured it out. He said some important things: Resellers are opportunists; They want - like end users - to find someone else to be responsible. We should craft the FE message to appeal to those motivations.

Filing

Ran across these 'to good to throw away' thoughts when i was filing today:

How important is the truth?

Life is about spinning facts which surround you into a story you like to tell yourself about you. (1/21/2004)

Imagination + Courage = Thinking outside the box (4/3/03)

At O'Reilly Conference: Homeless people with laptops; weird glow on faces of people attended seminars in dark rooms.
It's the decision that's expensive

To Boot from a GRUB prompt, type:

root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-3 ro root=/dev/hda2
boot

Brandon's remote copy solution:

tar cz * | ssh kim@216.37.37.31 "dd of=file.tgz"

A School is a Marketplace of Ideas
A Teacher is a Broker of those Ideas
A Student is a Trader, Not a Consumer

Not HOW but WHAT is the most important question.

Political Debate

The Hancock County Farm Bureau held it's first annual Meet the Candidates night last night. I got the questions on Tuesday and studied like it was the SAT. Aside from one question, I planned to get a B+. (I have a regular job, right?)

The event was taped and broadcast on radio. The other candidates were all courteous, reasonably intelligent and genuine. The other Libertarian, a young man of 23, was very nervous, but he didn't throw up. It was over in an hour. I got to answer two questions: How I felt about all day kindergarten? and How should schools be funded? During the scripted part of the evening, the moderator asked the questions and the candidates were called in turn to respond. Boring.

But the exciting part was after the scripted program. An audience member vigously disagreed with my asertion that we are getting less for more from school investments. A woman explained that property taxes forced her to go bankrupt.

If I hadn't thought this politics stuff was serious before now, last night changed my mind. This is serious business.

Entrepreneur Diary #2

Tom called and turned down the job. After a very lengthy interview process, I really thought he'd accept our offer. We were probably $10K (20%) lower than his target, but he seemed really interested in all the things we were doing. And the money was going to be there in the next 6-12 months. I guess it was really just about the money.

This highlights what a hard job entrepreneurs have. They have to compete with incumbent businesses in their market, struggle to make investments with paybacks that stretch for months or years into the future (where their competitors already have begun to see a return,) defend themselves against start-up costs of all kinds including a rash of government friction costs (including compliance, risk and unexpected expenses) AND compete for talent with competitors and the negative image of being a small/start-up company.

You have to wonder how small businesses EVER succeed and WHY entrepreneurs even try. It must be about FREEDOM. It is no less a primal force in business than in life

Various Billboards

As a member of All Saints Episcopal Church, I posted this message on the parish message board: People are Analog, Prejudice is Digital. I don't think many people who saw it inderstood it.

On my office door I've posted this message: People are Polynomials, Life is Non-Linear.

Of the two, I can't decide which I like better.

Entrepreneur Diary #1

This week saw more positive chatter on FileEngine. I co-hosted the inaugural meeting of the Open Source Software For Business (OSS4B) Peer Group of TechPoint, gave an interview for Paul Overhauser's imminent selection as an Innovator for the IBJ, received a referral from the Exex Director of TechPoint to a principal of project hosted by IUPUI concerning open source application testing and quality, received an invitation from an IU development directory to take a VIP tour of the new IUPUI technology building.

The frequency and quality of chatter gives me hope that the intangibles surrounding the FE business will consolodate into connections and outcomes.

Next week will be just as important: We'll likely hire a technician, I'm meeting with an attorney who wants to merge with Computer Experts, Jeff (and possibly Clara) may join the FileEngine marketing team with Bob Badger's assistance and a meeting with Garth Dickey may turn out to be critically important to the FE Linux distribution.

College

Those of you who know me are familar with my college conspiracy rant . . . so I wont repeat it here. But here is a new twist:

Misidentified causes of complex symptoms is the bane of science. To identify college as the 'cause' of success in later life is to misidentify the cause. My feeling is that a person who has the discipline and brains to get through college is probably headed for success anyway!

So, my advice: save the money, join several service groups to get the social networks, get a job + subsidize your own experience. You'll be better off.