Storad's strategy: built on the foundation of desert life
The Barberton Herald, my hometown newspaper, wrote about
children's author Conrad Storad (pictured, and whom we always knew as "Top" back in high school -- I never knew why). In the article Storad says he'll be writing children's books full-time after he retires in five years from
his present job at Arizona State University, where he gathers together information on desert life and natural science from ASU researchers, and repackages the information for kids and teachers. This information is hosted at his Web site,
Chain Reaction. He has what I think (from a distance, anyway) is one of the coolest jobs in the world, and when he retires from that he'll be an entrepreneur. So I asked him about it. [The answer hasn't come back yet, but when it does it'll be posted here. :-)]
What I asked him was (1) has full-time children's book-writing always been his plan? (2) will he still be as prolific after he's out of ASU and away from the direct contact with researchers he's enjoyed up to now? and (3) is that kind of expertise necessary for anyone who wants to write children's books? Stay tuned.
Labels: diversions
Juterphusion sits in on Melody Gardot
Melody Gardot is a singer/guitarist/pianist/songwriter who appears, based on her current superb singles, to have a bright future in jazz and blues. Anthony Thompson of
Juterphusion sent me an MP3 of a song of hers called "One Day," which Anthony evidently recorded himself during a recent live appearance in the area. (I don't think it could've been at TCNJ -- school's been out for over a week.) The music is terrific and the recording is clean. And this is exactly the kind of thing Juterphusion ought to be -- and wants to be -- doing: aligning itself with young artists, to grow right alongside them.
Here's what Melody had to say on the subject:
your mixes are tight!!!!!!!!!!!!!! did you mix one day? dude........this is awesome. hit me up ne[xt?] time .. xo
melody
Labels: young entrepreneurs
designnotes.com coming right along...
Design Notes is the first company acquired by the
IMET Corporation during IMET's present stage of growth. And a look at the Web site says that IMET has nothing to be ashamed of: the Design Notes online store has hundred of products, and the Web site's discussion forums have hundreds of registered users. Maybe all that was in place when IMET bought the company, but that doesn't make what we see there any less impressive. :-)
Labels: young entrepreneurs
"Absense" of an Editor
If you did this in your
press release, no media outlet would pick it up. So why does the local paper print this with such a bold typo?
Labels: rhetoric
Trenton Farmers Market: what next?
The
Trenton Farmers Market (these guys have an ugly Web site for such a successful business, but maybe they don't need a nice one -- they're not selling anything online) was written up in today's Times (Yeske, C. "Farmers Market Looks to Grow") of Trenton, with a plan for expansion -- if not in space, then at least in time. It just started being open on Sundays, for instance. They're also looking at
- a facelift -- the walls are currently garage doors
- year-round merchandise (they have seller space, especially during the off-season, as most of the merchants are, well, farmers)
- and changing traffic patterns around the place, which is located near the busiest intersection within five miles of my home.
The people who have businesses there are looking at the possibility of competing with a nearby Wal-Mart that's been proposed. They also are thinking about changing the name, because "Trenton" suggests "urban," and to some, "gang violence." (That's one of the principal reasons that what was once "Trenton State College" is now known as the "College of New Jersey," you know.) Plus, the place is every bit as much in Lawrence and Ewing as it is in Trenton.
For my part, getting in and out of the place is the real issue. It's really crowded on some of its open days (it hasn't been open every day) during growing season. We park in the Halo Farm dairy next door and walk over.
There are also parts on the inside that stink. Out behind the Farmers Market itself is the smelliest little fish market I have ever seen. I was inside this little old fish closet for a few minutes and it literally made me sick. It may be gone by now: I haven't the nerve to look. And I can't buy anything there. The place draws bugs and who knows what else. If they want to improve the place, tear that shack down for starters. Then we can talk.
Labels: consulting
On McKaig's "E-mail for Entrepreneurs"
Angie McKaig writes a very nice (and brief!)
article on the above subject, in which she hits on these major points:
- how the e-mail looks
- how often you respond
- why you should avoid emotions
- when to explain
- why e-mail is "real work"
There's only one place where she leaves me confused. She has this to say about emoticons:
Even if you never use emoticons, never forget the reason they were created: because it's tough to tell tone via email. Something straightforward and businesslike to you may seem curt or sarcastic to another. Be as clear as possible.
This could suggest to readers that there's room for smileys in business e-mail, yet she says just before this quote that there's no room for emotions at all. Rule of thumb to lift the confusion: if you feel the need for an emoticon, you need to rewrite the context instead. That's the only surefire way to avoid the risk of a misinterpreted tone.
McKaig's tagline is "still a great pair of legs." I dunno about that for sure, but I can say with some authority that she has a very nice bunny rabbit. :-) :-) :-)
Labels: rhetoric
How to teach entrepreneurs...?
You could certainly argue that there are
resources well beyond what I can supply on this topic. But just because what I say isn't exhaustive doesn't mean it's not TRUE. What follows is a summary of the best principles I have observed and tried to follow in my years of teaching entrepreneurs, engineers, writers and high-school Algebra students. If they're too brief or too vague, that's only because one size doesn't fit all.
- Start with baby steps. Remember how a baby walks, man. Tiny little steps with tiny little feet on wobbly legs, holding on to anything it can reach on the way, and falling on its baby ass more often than not. Sure, you gotta help that baby be safe; but you gotta let it fall too, so baby learns to get back up. You have to show baby more than one way to get to the same place; but you gotta let baby choose which way. And if baby can't get there fast enough, maybe baby can't go just yet.
- Find out what they've learned. Make sure to check regularly, especially after a baby-ass landing. If they haven't learned anything from it, maybe they're not ready to go further.
- They're never too young for a sanity check. Make sure they've read the signs and looked both ways. Make sure they haven't forgotten anything. Make sure they know where they're going, how to get there, and when they have to arrive. Make sure they know who to call and when. And for the love of mercy make sure they take notes. :-)
Labels: education
Take the bad memories with the good
As I am converting my journal of experience with GreyPilgrim, Inc. to HTML for posting on the Web, I am more-or-less reliving both the good (feeling more like an engineer than at any other time of my life) and the bad, such as this experience from
September 1996:
I went with my boss to Windsor, CT this week, to visit the US headquarters of Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), whose nuclear division showed some promise as a service provider partner. We had a scheduled meeting with a division head that actually had the power to make a decision. (You're always told when job-hunting to try to get yourself into the office of the person with the power to hire you. This is the analogous scenario for our case.) Meeting scheduled at noon, we get there promptly (for me, after a five-hour drive) -- and the guy's not there.
Instead, we get a 90-minute meeting with two lesser supervisors (one of whom was reading our material as we talked). We get no offer of refreshment, we get no promise of so much as a return call, and I give away valuable copies of reports. After talking this over with Jean, I became steamed at such unprofessional behaviour (and "unprofessional" is a word I hate to use and seldom do) on the part of an industry giant like ABB. I told the boss that I'd not visit ABB again for any reason unless they paid me for the visit, in advance.
Funny thing: I have interviewed for several consulting gigs since, and it's common these days to have interviewers not offer to pick up travel costs, or to offer you lunch or even a cup of coffee. More often than not, the interviewer can't even offer you the gig: this is a maneuver designed to get you out the door so the hiring company has time to bring in others they like better. I used to think that the first thing that went out the window in times of budget cuts was R & D; now I see what really gets thrown out is hospitality. There is little kindness in the engineering world today. And I can't even blame Bush for that; it predates him by years.
But I digress. The experience journal is up for several months so far:
Labels: rhetoric
Cuban's missive crisis
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was fined a couple hundred grand by the NBA for making
comments on his blog about improving NBA officiating.
No doubt this fine is levied primarily as a
cumulative response to Cuban's past comments, such as being unwilling to hire the NBA's head of officials "to manage a Dairy Queen."
But Cuban's blog comments seem both restrained and well-reasoned. Although what Cuban says about how "the best people should be on the job with the money products" is not true -- consider how seniority, for instance, affects the very concept -- he makes the point that NBA officiating is not coordinated with business efficiency in mind. (And considering how every other aspect of the sport is aligned with making money, why not this one?)
So the NBA doesn't want to hear from Cuban about this because... he owns a team? he has openly complained before? Or maybe it's more that they won't admit that nobody else is qualified to have a good idea on this point. Or maybe the
NBA believes it's running its business so well that its poop doesn't even stink. Maybe. But something about those guys does stink, that's for sure. I think Cuban should be praised for standing up against it.
Labels: character, diversions
Multicultural workplace education, ten years later
In my
NASA days, I was exposed to an organization-wide required training course entitled "New Leadership Strategy." It was intended to be a marriage of diversity awareness training and
Total Quality Management [tm]. As it happened, what we got was not "New" -- we'd had it before. It wasn't "Leadership" -- we were all given responsibility for it, with no clear evidence that it was applied from the top down, except for "target goals" in hiring and promotion. And it wasn't "Strategy" either -- because what we saw was just another training class. But that was a long time ago. What I want to summarize now are the lessons I learned then that are still applicable now:
- Such training drags us away from "real work." I don't buy that and I never have. Our ability to recognize, understand and relate to customers and colleagues IS "real work." We need to come to terms with this, and have that knowledge periodically refreshed. At NASA, the job was to "sell technology" to the American public, and to the world. It isn't now, nor has it ever been, to have our heads down over our desks, just handling our own small piece of things. It's real work if it contributes to the mission. (If you don't have a mission, well, that's another thing.)
- Who's willing to take personal responsibility for a lack of diversity, or a diverse but ineffective workplace? It's like, "hey, I just work here, I never screwed anyone myself, why should I be made to bear this burden?" My response, which has been shown to generate little enthusiasm among white males I have worked with: "because we are products of a racist system and as such have benefited from it." We all have to come to terms with that knowledge as well. Our job security and satisfaction are purchased from society and carried on the backs of others.
- Several people in my organization for whom English was a second language brought up the subject of poor English speakers in the workplace. Each of them, having started at LeRC as poor English speakers themselves, agreed that they were open to being asked to repeat or clarify what they say. They took ownership of problems of communication as their own both as speakers and listeners. Nearly everyone I mentioned this to later was touched by this display of openness and trust. And some of us felt guilty because of our lack of willingness to take on personal responsibility for making it easier to communicate with our co-workers. We are all of us responsible for communication with each other.
I guess I'm amazed that after so many years these lessons still have power. :-)
Labels: education
The Ballad of Parallel Lines
This was written by a student.
Parallel lines
intersect in various ways [well, actually, by the definition of parallel lines, they don't...]
plane and plane together
the following shape is made
a little triple connection
spray-painted as a little sign
Andre [student] in turn created it
with his tiny minute mind
But now it's all completed
yesterday it was just an egg
Plane plane together
Never and Forever again
Labels: education
The purpose and power of Free Comic Book Day
This Saturday is Free Comic Book Day. What I like about this isn't so much that I get free stuff (though I do like that). It's that there's a chance for that free stuff to entice new customers to the medium. I have loved comics since I was a kid, and they're so much more compelling, both in terms of art and storyline today than they were then. Free stuff is a great way for small businesses to bring in new customers, and most comic dealers are small businesses -- standalone specialty shops rather than the corner drugstore where we bought the
DC Go-Go Check comics when we were kids. Anyhow, here's what the Web site has to say about it.
Comic books are an original American art form, created in the early days of the twentieth century. They are fun to read, featuring a wide range of diverse storylines that capture the imagination of the readers, and have survived: the dominance of radio, the ubiquity of television, the spread of color and sound motion pictures, the rise of videogames, and the Internet. That's worth celebrating in our book, and as this site continues to grow and evolve, you'll see even more information about this wonderful medium. To learn more about comic books and their history, go here.
Labels: consulting
Let's all blow our money like Tom Cruise!
There's an article here that chronicles the purchase of an ultrasound machine by Tom Cruise, to monitor the progress of Katie Holmes' baby. A local politician then initiates legislation to ban the sale of
these things to private individuals. He says
If someone sees Tom Cruise buy one, they think this is the thing to do.
Yeah, boy. If Tom Cruise plops down US $200K for something he's only gonna use two or three times, I gotta do it too. Where do I sign up?
Entrepreneurs learn not to drop large amounts of money like that without a plan in place to use it. I knew a guy who put US $50K down for an industrial-strength film-processing machine to use in his
retail camera business, and he never used it, ultimately unplugging it and allowing it to occupy half of his storage room. (This decision almost put him out of business. And I for one would never have missed his business if it were gone. Never did like that guy. And it's hard to get me not to like someone.)
IMET, on the other hand, put down US $50K for a powder-based
rapid prototyping machine, and they love it! Their ability to quickly visualize 3D parts (and to show visualizations like this one to customers) will soon pay for itself! But unlike the "unfortunate" camera-store owner above, IMET actually has a plan. Anyone who buys a sonogram because Tom Cruise bought one doesn't have a plan, and should be spending money on ME instead of the machine. This politician doesn't have a plan either.
Labels: character
I hate this crap, so you oughta hate it too!
Entertainment- popular songs remixed to have a disco beat (man, you can't dance to Coldplay, pictured)
- radio announcers who say stupid things instead of just playing the music (why isn't the music the most important part any more?)
- sports-talk hosts who froth at the mouth
- legions of unimaginative people trying to knock off anything that works (e.g. reality shows)
- idiots being worshipped by the public (e.g. Paris Hilton)
- great shows that go about two minutes between commercials (e.g. "24")
- great shows that only air once, so if you miss it you're screwed (e.g. "Gray's Anatomy")
- commercials for the same turds over and over (e.g. Sci-Fi Channel movies)
Driving- people turning right in front of me when I have half a mile of empty road behind me
- people not knowing where they are going right in front of me
- people playing their obnoxious music at full blast out of their open car windows
WorkplaceWaitingSchools- students doing just about anything other than what they are supposed to do
- students who ignore what's going on in class until they need to know it, and then ask to be taught again
- teaching to tests
- copy machines jamming
- unreasonable parents
- unreasonable teachers
- unreasonable students
- unreasonable sdministrators
- levies
- property taxes
Politics- a few getting richer and richer while more and more of us barely get by
- lies
- thinking a win, however close, means a mandate to do whatever you want to screw the country
- activist voters who piss and moan about the state of the country, and snipe at elected officials, without offering a single suggestion for real improvement
Entrepreneurs- thinking they have no competition (this is Kawasaki's lie #6, paraphrased)
- thinking their sales will grow without bound indefinitely (this is Kawasaki's lie #2, paraphrased)
- not recording a good idea
- not learning the lesson of a bad idea
- spending money on a nice ride, or a well-stocked refrigerator, or a game room, or anything that's not contributing to the mission (this is described wonderfully in Ryan, M. "Digital Debacle." Smart Business, 11.2000, which is unfortunately apparently not available online)
- thinking they can sell through spam
Myself- having to do things over again because I didn't do them right the first time
- losing stuff
- forgetting stuff
- dropping stuff
- breaking stuff
- lies (my own this time)
- people (including myself) thinking about what they're going to say next instead of listening
- having enough leisure (just enough in this case) and willingness to ponder over what I hate
:-) :-) :-)
Labels: diversions
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