Wrandomness Written

Moving to Tumblr

2009-09-28T00:29:00.001-04:00

After some thought and consideration, I have decided to move my blog over to the Tumblr platform. No further posts will be made here. Check out my new site at:

http://clifhirtle.tumblr.com

Novel

2009-09-23T23:17:00.005-04:00

I was chatting with a good friend today and it occurred to me that just 1 year ago I did not even know this wonderful, thoughtful friend of mine who has become such a positive force for change in my community.

How could I have possibly predicted just 1 year ago how I would meet this individual who would become such an inspiring, thoughtful colleague over the past 6-9 months? How could I have possibly known how so much might change over the course of just a scant 12 months (a near complete reversal of finance and health and emotion and perspective)? How could I have foreseen how close I would now be to moving beyond these destitute walls, to the near-same place I lived long ago, with newer, wiser eyes showing me just how much I might have missed the last time around?

But it is more than that really.

For how mistaken can we sometimes be in assuming we know just what lies ahead? How foolish to propose we have already experienced the best of this life, merely from this tiny, singular place we are now? How arrogant to settle upon the conclusion that this life is anything less than a wonderful work-in-progress, this ultimate potentiality?

I have heard the author Jack Canfield frequently say that life is like driving car across country in total darkness. You can only see as far as your headlights at any given time, but so long as you have a big picture, a map of where you want to go, you will eventually make it to your destination, even if you can only see as far as your headlights are shining right now.

I always liked that analogy, even if I have not always trusted in it at different points in my life. For the passions I feel, the strengths I wield, the perspectives I draw upon I know never really left me, I simply stopped listening to their voices long just enough to forget how far they got me already... and how far they have to carry me still.

Life a novel: pages penned, ink fresh, a masterpiece in progress.

What are you going to write next?

Inertia

2009-08-13T19:11:00.004-04:00

The only thing impossible is this world is not learning something incredible when you walk to the edge, push a bit harder, go beyond your comfort zone. The mind is elastic, the heart in motion, neither intended to sit idle, hardened by habit or molded by monotony, but rather to continually evolve and expand by exposure to new experiences and the vast wonder of this playground we call "earth."

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

Helen Keller

FastTrac Day 1

2009-08-12T23:42:00.004-04:00

It has been a long time since I wrote here last, yet it feels like only yesterday. Amazing how fast a summer can go by. But befitting that on the sunset of my first FastTrac class tonight that I should dive back into jotting down some thoughts. If this class is any indication, there will be many more to come.

First thing is this, here is a class on business that mirrors much of what an entrepreneurship/startup biz class might cover, yet...

Costs less
Brings in actual, local business people to tell their story
Focuses on real end-products with direct WIIFM for participants (tested business plan)
Directs participants to collaborate, work together during/after class
Provides 1 coach for every 2 students (1:2 vs 1:50 class ratio)

In tandem to Josh Kaufman's Personal MBA and Seth Godin's Alternative MBA concepts, I wonder what it is about these concepts that is so hard for most colleges and classrooms to grasp...

Cooperation over competition
Mentors over lectures
Real-world biz stories over outdated textbook case studies

In the very first 3 hour class session, I heard at least a 1/2 dozen inspiring stories of folks who simply went out and did something, perhaps failed, but continually persisted in pursuing their passion to create a real systems that generate greater value and efficiency than the status quo could ever dream of... often with little more than handful of partners.

Never apologize for being small, the biggest ideas often emerge from the smallest in size.

Give

2009-06-04T07:29:00.003-04:00

Wonderful thought stumbled upon in the coffee table reader this week...

You have only what you give. It's by spending yourself that you become rich...

Give, give, give - what is the point of having experience, knowledge, or talent if I don't give it away? Of having stories if I don't tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don't share it? I don't intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world, and with the divine.

Isabel Allende

from This I Believe

Routine

2009-04-22T23:28:00.003-04:00

Great quote from BZ this week,

It's the awareness of the routine, the point when you know exactly what's coming tomorrow, it is that point that is the real killer."

I could not agree more. The curious mind finds no solace in the same-old songs. Perfect is more than practice alone. Human beings are not meant to live out their lives under fluorescent lights and concrete walls. There is a reason prisoners leave worse than when they arrive. It is the same reason we have more employees than entrepreneurs, more jobs to make a living than living to make jobs, more two week vacations than lifelong adventures.

It is about the stories we teach. The priorities we place. It should not take a lifetime of servitude to have the freedom to break with routine, to revel in the unexpected, to marvel at the unknown.

StatusQuo

2009-04-22T22:56:00.004-04:00

How far do you go to protect what you have?

The outcome of today's freshly-negotiated State employee contract proposal should not have been surprising. I have known the rules for some time.

Yet I was shocked walking out today. Not at the level of give-backs expected, but rather the level to which negotiation went merely to protect the status quo, the same things, the same attitudes, the same costs that placed a system under water to begin with. While simultaneously sacrificing the benefits, the security of those who come on board with fresh ideas and strong work ethics because, ultimately, they have something to lose if they do not produce.

It is a sad reality when any organization gets to the point where the only measure of contribution is the number of hours you have watched pass by, the number of years you have done the same thing. Are we so out of touch with employee contribution that we cannot identify who has performed what service, at what cost, with what results?

Privilege

2009-04-22T22:53:00.002-04:00

Love this...

The ancients are right: The dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege."

- Marilynne Robinson

Trust

2009-03-25T23:54:00.002-04:00

A little Emerson for the evening...

In self-trust, all the virtues are comprehended. Free should the scholar be,--free and brave. Free even to the definition of freedom, "without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution." Brave; for fear is a thing, which a scholar by his very function puts behind him. Fear always springs from ignorance. It is a shame to him if his tranquility, amid dangerous times, arise from the presumption, that, like children and women, his is a protected class; or if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger still; so is the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him look into its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin,--see the whelping of this lion,--which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it, and pass on superior. The world is his, who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.

Emerson
The American Scholar

Roots

2009-03-20T08:17:00.000-04:00

The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.

Mahatma Gandi

Disobey

2009-02-24T13:15:00.004-05:00

Just out of mandatory diversity workshop at work. In this the presenter played back a media "expose" intended to demonstrate how racism still exists in society. In the piece, ABC News takes over a diner, places a blatant prejudiced man behind that counter, has a series of Hispanic actors come in and be refused service, called illegal immigrants, etc in the presence of average customers, and then watches how customers reaction to the situation. The intent being to prove the existence of racism by showing how the vast majority of people will either do nothing or agree with the man behind the counter when placed in the situation.

It is also a completely inaccurate depiction of anything to do with racism.

It represents the very kind of unscientific, overly-simplified major media fear-mongering that the American public has been inundated with for generations. It approaches a serious issue with a cavalier experimental design that makes a mockery of the very cause it is trying to draw awareness to.

The fact is that such a social scenario confounds a number of different variables yet attributes them all to the most visible attribute about the customers - namely that they are Mexican. In fact, it is discriminatory in and of itself by focusing so much attention to only one attribute.

Race, class, fear of safety, and, most critically, fear of authority are all present in this situation. I have mused on this before in prior posts and we have seen it depicted in countless social experiments: the majority of people when placed in awkward or potentially harmful situations, even when they may have a direct impact on the outcome of events, will not stand up, will not follow their better sense of conscience due largely from fear of authority, being ostracized, etc.

Stanley Milgram's studies of obedience at Yale in the 1960's. Phillip Zimbardo's prison experiments at Stanford in the 1970's. The examples of people unable to follow their better judgment when confronted with perceived authority are simply terrifying in itself. We see this in virtually all societies, generations, and organizations.

The true challenge of most societies is not forcing blind obedience to authority, but encouraging civil disobedience to it.

Gandhi said it much better, "The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within."

We need a society of people not trained to obey authority by a military with bullets, but trained to question authority via their own sense of conscience and confidence in themselves. We need citizens not asked to blindly pledge allegiance to symbols, but pledging engagement to higher ideals that are continually evolved through open dialogue and debate.

The real tragedies of our shared humanity are not resolved by attacking them in direct response. We do not solve the world's problems by naively attributing cause and effect to the first, the easiest, factor that emerges before us. We begin where and with who we are at this moment. We begin by first becoming consciously aware of the limitations of our own minds, of our own tendency to simplify by stereotype, to categorize by classification, to continually break things down into their most elemental forms. We progress by understanding how to think critically, both about our wold and about our selves.

The same man above once said, "The only devils in the world are those running in our own hearts. That is where the battle should be fought."

It is only by seeing both limits and possibilities of our shared humanity that we come to that critical point where we are free to focus our energies on those things we want to manifest in the world versus those we do not.

Belief

2009-02-20T22:26:00.002-05:00

"The power of belief, in a sense -- it's one of the strongest of all," he said. "And like religion, if you strongly believe in something, it comes true and it becomes a reality. In acting, I find that as well. If you believe it, you discover a truth and it's quite spiritual.... Along that path, in discovering that character, you discover a lot about yourself."

- 1994 interview with Heath Ledger

J.Allison

2009-02-08T23:19:00.003-05:00

Beliefs are choices. No one has authority over your personal beliefs. Your beliefs are in jeopardy only when you don't know what they are. Understanding your own beliefs, and those of others, comes through focused thought and discussion. Most public dialogue is now propelled by media outlets owned by a dwindling number of multinational corporations. A healthy democracy needs ways to bypass gatekeepers so we can communicate with one another directly, and perhaps even find common ground.

Jay Allison

"This I Believe"

Drive Slow

2009-02-08T20:57:00.002-05:00

How to make the most out of driving 2.5 hours for 1 ski run in the
worst snow conditions ever:

Stay hungry enough to enjoy a great meal with good friends.

Stay long enough to catch a sunset pour out over the mountains.

Drive slow enough to chase a full moon lighting up the night
clouds.

Fire

2009-02-05T07:36:00.005-05:00

I am hurricane. I am mind fire. As I awaken to the light of this day I feel this pulse in my veins quicken, these pupils dilate, this mind come alive. I take this potential for infinite thought, of insatiable curiosity, of open-eyed wonder, and I make it my possibility. I embrace this day as all that I may ever have, all that I have ever had. I define myself here and now. I keep this mind open to the lights of others to shine upon it. I step into new worlds and understandings. I evolve from more than self, but ceaseless wonder of a wider world. I take these experiences with me down this road. I am not alone. I am, by pages turned, through sights perceived, connected to all who came before and all who come after. I leave my mark, yet I carry these experiences with me as timeless companions. In so, I am manifestation, I am amalgamation, I am the eternity of this moment.

Jump

2009-02-03T02:21:00.005-05:00

This weekend I jumped off an ice cliff while skiing.

It was no accident and, after doing so, I felt more liberation than any jump, mogul, or vertical incline ever provided before.

Why?

Because it scared the hell out of me, because every inch of my defined limitations screamed, "impossible"... yet I did it anyway.

I cannot explain euphoria I felt the rest of that day, I cannot explain how I was OK with nearly breaking an ankle further down the trail, I cannot comprehend how a little ice in the woods could have impact it did. But it did so for Jay too so I cannot claim to be crazy.

What I do know is that there are times in life we can feel out of touch with our better selves, when it takes an act so apart from the confines of our predefined limits that we elevate our awareness and appreciation for things that much higher. I would not have dreamed of jumping off an ice cliff in the middle of an unmarked trail on the last run of the day before that moment, but in that moment doing so was all that mattered.

Charles DuBois once said...

2009-01-29T23:59:00.007-05:00

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

Just love this.

broken state

2009-01-27T23:46:00.009-05:00

It sounds almost funny, except it is not. For the past year I have been trying to pay my taxes. Not for a few months, not even for half the year, simply the entire year. What stands in the way of fulfilling this basic duty? CT General Statutes Section 12-130:

failure to send out any tax bill shall not invalidate the tax.

Take a gander at this fine piece of work. It almost makes sense... for a second. Then you read down further. "Ohh... there's what I need, I can click the little 'click here' link to see what I owe." Except that clicking on that little "click here" to look up current year taxes bring up simply, "page not found." So you are back at square one.

Translation?

We, the city tax office, have every right to totally F-up your taxes, duck behind the curtain for cinematic appeal, pull them out of a hat with a silver bunny, then go on vacation for the entire year... oh but please know that it is still your responsibility to pay your unknown sum by an unknown date in lieu of undocumented taxes.

There are few things in life that thoroughly and completely confuse me beyond any hope of comprehension, few things that appear totally broken by their mere nature. Congratulations city government, you just made the short list.

ice

2009-01-17T15:07:00.007-05:00

I hiked up Ragged Mountain today. Just a small little mountain. Nothing like the big White Mountains I ran through as a kid in NH. But today, but this morning, it was enough to soothe a busy mind.

On arrival, I found I missed the hiking group I was to meet. Habit would have had me turn around and go home. I did not know the trails. I had never been here before. There was snow on the ground. But in lieu of a tiny little recurring dream, there was little choice but to climb.

I could say I hiked alone, but for a few friendly escorts to the top from a fluffy malamute husky and a very excited, very cold black lab. They struck me as a bit of an odd couple, the lab whimpering and squirming about, the husky quiet, observant, and paced. The talker and the walker. They made for good company, even if they were just using me for my sandwich.

The trail I took ended up running the ridge of the mountain, up the left, over the lake, then rounding up each side of the mountain to the top. I ran. I hiked. I breathed. I ran some more. I passed a couple others. As I passed the second ridge to the peak, I took a minute to absorb the scope of the snowy ground, barren trees, and quiet sky all around. It struck as me as quite strange how little of nature's sanctity we leave left in our busy lives. It was the last part, that quietness that I had forgotten the importance of, of the omnipresence and power in a mere moment of nature's silence. It came before me. It will last long after. I would have continued on with the rest of the groups I saw on the way up, but for the tranquility of the moment. It seemed only right to savor it well. Who knows if I should step on this path again? Opportunity beckoned.

I glanced over the rolling hills to Mount Southington and it's snow-covered trails. Then off the right to the UCHC. But it was not the hills that caught me this day, but kneeling down, the magnificence of the detail under my feet that took my breath away. There, frozen in one beautiful moment, a layer of water flowing over the rocks at cliff's edge, a thin layer of ice floating mere centimeters off the jagged surface. Hovering. Floating. Like a smooth, transparent skin to the rough and hard points of the rocks beneath. I pressed one section only to feel it creak and shatter under my touch. Caught in the moment, I stared at the random creation for some time. The intricacy of it's ice bubbles, the dryness of the rock beneath. Perhaps we are to this nature not so different anyway, hardened souls covered in a fragile skin or fragile souls isolated by the hardened stone we build around us? Just perhaps.

I spent some time at the top staring not out, but in.

Coming down the other side there were many points where the path got icy. Places where you could really fall hard. I found quickly that in such places you can walk softly and try to go around or you can set back and leap over with everything you have got. I walked softly coming up, so I chose to leap ahead coming down. Even if you don't know where you are going to land, sometimes just the taste of temporary flight is worth the consequence of any landing. I missed only a few times. That I would bleed a few fingers, but not break any legs was good enough a result.

True, in this hike there was much more, but where would we then end? The wonder of getting lost in the woods? The beauty of an uncertain destination? Or a magical reservoir, golden field, forest limo, or hiker hieroglyphics? Such are stories for another day. For today, on this day, what lies within, what we need without, truth be, is enough.

psychart

2008-11-09T11:18:00.011-05:00

For a good part of 5 years in college I spent countless hours attempting to understand the psychology of separation, of stereotypes and discrimination in societies and individuals. There are volumes of these studies out there.

And yet one visit to the local art gallery and these latent biases are similarly confronted. Trading complex social experiments for abstract creativity and images. My own assumptions of order and structure and color and form challenged with the utmost subtlety.

Images to the right of a local exhibit from the wonderful Real Art Ways...

Heather Hart
Notations of a Hybrid, 2008
Notations of a Hybrid explores context, power, literature, and intention in regards to identity development. Hart invited people to give her titles of two books that they have found most helpful in defining their identity. The selection could be based upon the book's title, content, contrast or collaboration.

Hart then obtained these books and encased them in yarn, thereby creating a portrait of each participant. Each object consists of two books that are cozied together, rendering them inaccessible. While the yarn protects these books, it also conceals and restricts their content. This collection of books becomes unusable in their utilitarian sense and become decorative evidence of an obsessive reclamation process - the yarn taking control.

rudder vs sail

2008-11-09T00:44:00.007-05:00

It is a strange feeling. That loss of memory you incur when the jagged edge of stress and blind ambition have cut their way clear into your soul. When the pursuit has eclipsed the pursued. When the intoxication of inspired thought has devolved into the relentless repetition of recycled actions.

When you are paddling upstream.

There is wonder in the heating of the mind, of the solemn intensity of inspired thought. for the heightened sense of awareness that comes from a mind on fire, in purpose. And there is within this space that golden opportunity in transforming thought into action, into tangible substance that leaves the world a little better.

But along this road there are many diverged. So easy to lose one's way. So essential to have that rudder. To steer yourself back home.

Never forsake the rudder for the sail.

2008-11-09T00:33:00.002-05:00

Well, hello there blog. Nice to see you again. How have you been? Oh fine, here too. Yes, I look forward to future rendezvouses with you too. 12:36am or otherwise. Welcome back old friend. Let the conversations begin anew...

Chasing Leprechauns

2008-08-08T19:03:00.001-04:00

I caught a leprechaun today.

Coming out of work late to see a blinding wall of water amidst an ocean of breaking sunshine. Looked out a bit further and there the most fabulous rainbow just hanging around in the sky.

After chasing it around campus a bit I found myself out by Horsebarn Hill. Apparently even the horses love those little green men because they were just galloping around the fields under fading rainbow beams chasing them for now reason at all.

I mean its a Friday for crying out loud. You'd think these horses would have something better to do than chase these grumpy Irish faerie men around all afternoon. Strange things.

Other cars stopped by to watch this amazing scene too. Several in fact. A small crowd of strangers putting aside horse brushings and drives home to catch a glimpse of something magical. People with mouths open like a fireworks display on the 4th. Popping out of cars snapping photos and then back in and off again.

Leprechauns aside. It's an odd place this point and shoot world we live in. Staying just long enough to capture a moment. Perhaps not quite enough to savor.

I stayed a little longer. Sometimes these leprechauns have a bit more to share about the world than a 3 second point and shoot can capture.

melody

2008-07-18T11:41:00.006-04:00

Melody is my medicine.

I was reminded of this on the way to work today: how there is simply no bad day bad enough, no rude driver cursing enough, no unfortunate circumstance tragic enough to overcome the effect of beautiful melody on my heart. The fact that I can't sing a note to save myself is beside the point. Just the sound of others constructing this wonderful language is enough.

Perhaps the sight, sound, or experience differs, but I believe every one of us has this direct channel, the one thing that lifts our souls beyond our selves. Our unique path to ephemeral euphoria through momentary immersion. Our own escape hatch.

If you're stressed out, try it.

If you're still searching, find it.

What's yours?

1:10

2008-06-08T19:35:00.008-04:00

What does it take to move you to care?

Would you come to the aid of dying man in the street?
If you said yes, you'd be wrong 9 out of 10 times.

A little more than a week ago ago in my hometown of Hartford, CT, and 10 minutes from my house, a 78 year old man was hit by two cars, thrown over the hood, and left unassisted by a small crowd of bystanders as the man lay motionless on the ground. You might have missed the story entirely if not for an actual video of the incident and top story from the New York Times circulating the net. The reaction is one of are now referring to the "scary anonymity of the modern street." The police chief himself issuing the blistering statement:

“At the end of the day we’ve got to look at ourselves and understand that our moral values have now changed. We have no regard for each other."

But it's more than it, really.

Hartford's far from being a cradle of good Samaritanism, but it's no poster child for apathy either. In times of strong emotional reaction to horrifying events, the mind has a tendency to rationalize otherwise unacceptable events by distancing itself from reality. It's a protective, knee-jerk reaction, but it doesn't make it an appropriate long-term response.

You see when I was an undergrad I had the honor of working with man by the name of Ervin Staub. Dr Staub was a Holocaust survivor and now speaks internationally on the topic of mass violence, genocide, and international relations. What is more timely to this post is that Staub began the path to uncovering the roots of international phenomenon by studying the basic willingness of people to help one another on the side of the street. In the aftershock of the now famous Kitty Genovese case of the mid 1960's he conducted study after study trying to isolate the specific factors that motivate us to help each other. As written about by the NY Times,

In one of those now most often cited, students at Princeton Theological Seminary were asked to go to a nearby chapel and give an extemporaneous sermon on the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. As they walked to the chapel, they passed a man slumped in a doorway, moaning for help. About two-thirds of those who thought they had plenty of time stopped to help, but only 10 percent of the students who thought they were late did so.

9 out of 10 people are too busy to assist... even when on the way to the chapel to deliver a lesson to others on assisting others. This is not reality TV. It's real social phenomenon referred to as the Bystander Effect. It's what Staub has spent his entire life and dozens of similar studies dedicated to connecting to genocides like the Holocaust and others across the globe. It's what you and I claim would never happen in our hometown. It's what we all assume we would never let go by unnoticed. It's what happens every day, in every nation, within every generation.

It begins with everyday people observing everyday events. And ends with nations massacring millions of people in the name of ethnic cleansing or political agenda.

And if you think 1 in 10 are bad odds, think again. The number of people and cars that passed by Angel Arce Torres before a police cruiser stopped to assist him on May 30, 2008?

20.

$

2008-06-08T15:07:00.006-04:00

As we charge head first into the epidemic otherwise known as America the Indebted, the following 7 sites provide a wonderful, free roadmap to navigating the carnage.

(For those of you that look over NCN's resources you'll notice I cheated a bit with the list.)

:-)

No Credit Needed

All Financial Matters

Consumerism Commentary

Free Money Finance

Get Rich Slowly

Mighty Bargain Hunter

Wise Bread

PS: MacHeads... automate your financial IQ by combining all these website's RSS feeds into a single view. Great timesaver!

Not all free iTunes songs suck

2008-06-06T08:40:00.001-04:00

White Daisy Passing
by Rocky Votolato

Great tune.

Corps

2008-06-05T20:03:00.005-04:00

First class back in MBA program last night. 40 minutes in we're watching a Clinton era video on the effect of outsourcing and decline of unskilled assembly line workers in Oklahoma. Workers complaining. CEO's preaching about the need for eight figure incomes. The massive corporate void between have and have nots.

The lesson is The Stakeholder Theory, but I can't help feeling like I'm outside the Twin Pines Mall and Doc Brown just chucked this video out of his ice-covered Delorean. It's been only 10 years since this video was produced and it already sounds like someone speaking from another century. Have things really changed this much in the last decade?

Unskilled labor, job security, and company paid everything. Relics. As I listen to the words of these CEO's I cannot help but here the words of Cluetrain bouncing across the screen...

In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

We need to get smarter.
The corporation is dying.

Technology has raised us as a generation with little ability to distinguish a colleague in China to a buddy down the hall. Why should it be any different in the boardroom? If my 3G cell phone is a faster route to global suppliers in Taiwan and world-class marketing in NYC, why am commuting 75 minutes through traffic each day to your fluorescent cubicle farm?

Funny how things change... my freshman year in college I remember a radical communist student speaker waxing at poetic at one of the local schools on how we would all one day become free agents in a global marketplace of products and services.

The only question in my mind is, "Why'd it take this long?"

Launch

2008-06-03T00:44:00.003-04:00

Someone once told me that an airplane is off track 90% of the time it's in flight... yet it still lands exactly where it's supposed to.

It's easy to look at other people's lives and assume great performance comes easy. It is a lot harder to see the real struggles we all encounter, to notice how we're all off track much of the time, and understand that it's the self-awareness and minor corrections along the way that help us find our way home.

Launch bold.

Correct along the way.

You will get there.

Inno

2008-05-22T21:15:00.003-04:00

Why is that innovation remains such a rare commodity? How do you reach a point, in any business, where status quo becomes defacto modus operandi?

Great talk by Kevin B. through our local young professionals group tonight. Lots to take away, but one thing in particular: how different the mindset of the successful entrepreneur is from the average cubicle monkey. Innovation has its own language. Its own perspective. You know it when you see it.

To overcome the kind of global challenges we now face, we need more of this. We need to see more eyes ignited with the fire of a fresh idea. We need to speak the language of ubiquitous entrepreneurship, of adding value to the every day. We need to produce more minds unencumbered by fear of making mistakes, of collaborating, of the unknown.

In such a perspective lie the seeds of true progress.

Ride

2008-05-19T14:19:00.008-04:00

I just finished my first 50+ mile bike ride this weekend. I've done charity rides before, but the energy of volunteers here was incredible. Riding alongside a 20 year veteran of a ride like this is nothing short of humbling. Passion and dedication are terribly contagious qualities.

A favorite quote of mine by Polly Berends says,

Everything that happens to you is your teacher. The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it.

You could say the same thing for every person you meet as well. People come in and out of our lives for reasons we may not yet understand. And there lies a magnificent mystery. So long as we understand meaning exists, what great adventures lie for us in unravelling it over time? When everyone's a teacher, the world is your classroom.

I have no idea what brought some 100+ riders and volunteers to a small elementary school in Portsmouth, NH, but it doesn't change how grateful I was to have been a part of such a great experience. Following in the footsteps (or tire tracks) of giants makes going an extra mile a given.

Be the Change

2008-04-24T22:26:00.003-04:00

Three people were shot on my street last night.
Three more the night before on the other side of town.

Police are blaming it on gang violence.
Calling for a crack down on violence.
More police.
More guns.
More lockdown.

The response? We, the citizenry, pay greater taxes for someone else to run our neighborhoods for us. To maintain order. Educate our children. Keep the peace. Quarantine the bad. I strains me to think how far removed from our reality we have allowed ourselves to become.

Ghandi once said that,

The only devils in the world are those running in our own hearts. That is where the battle should be fought.

20 years ago a woman named Kitty Genovese gave us an example of how important each of can be in determining the outcome of our environment. How we cannot merely stand by and let less noble forces determine the fate of a city or a society. We are active agents in the system. Part and parcel of the problem... or solution. Stand up. Be counted.

It needn't ever take a bullet to get things started.

trade

2008-03-05T01:10:00.004-05:00

consider
how easy it is to trade our
daylight for deadlines
sunsets for salaries
moonshine for monuments
to other people and places

remember
what matters
what + who
will remain
after you're gone

Seizure

2008-02-24T01:14:00.005-05:00

A quote from one of my favorite books, Think and Grow Rich,

Life is a checkerboard and the player opposite you is time.

This past week a colleague and supervisor I greatly respected took a position within a different division. He found a passion and pursued it. It is a wonderful, earned opportunity. He tireless dedication to our team leaves behind an amazing foundation for us to build upon.

As I have thought about what changes will come as a result of his absence, I have come to think a lot about the finiteness of time. How little time we have, where we are, today. Jobs begin and end. Relationships form and dissolve. People are born and die.

Every. Single. Second.

It is incumbent upon us to seize our days, steal these moments, find our passion. We have only one life, one moment, one time.

37

2008-01-21T23:53:00.000-05:00

Do you remember one sunny day biking home from Gosselin's Market on the far end of town? Stopped by a girl you went to school with - Jackie was it? Do you remember this day brother?

Do you remember refusing to lift a finger to this angry girl with a knife who wanted a fight? Do you remember your resolution: "I will not fight you." You would not touch the weapon she offered. She threatened me that day to get to you. Your calmness was infuriating. Do you remember protecting me from her? You wouldn't let her get close to me. One sunny summer day etched in the folds of my mind for all eternity. Your gift of empathy that completely disarmed her. Someone with nothing to lose rendered powerless inside of your insight and compassion for her condition. You diffused the situation just long enough for me to get on my bike and pedal off.

Did you stay behind or were you right behind me all the way?

I ask myself the same question every day.

Your courage and compassion will never fail as a beacon to me.

Thank you once again for all the strength you give me still.

Happy birthday brother.

1492

2008-01-14T03:07:00.000-05:00

Anybody that said environment has no impact on inspiration never stepped outside their own backyard. There's only so many ways you can look through the same window thinking the landscape will change.

Find your Columbus.

Done: End Game

2008-01-12T18:07:00.000-05:00

More GTD.

p69...

Many of us hold ourselves back from imaging a desired outcome unless someone can show us how to get there. Unfortunately, that's backward in terms of how our minds work to generate and recognize solutions and methods. One of the most powerful skills in the world of knowledge work, and one of the most important to hone and develop, is creating clear outcomes.

Truth.

Done: Once

2008-01-12T17:05:00.000-05:00

1/2 way through D.Allen's Getting Things Done on the plane today. This is one ass-kicking read.

p22...

I try to make intuitive choices based on my options, instead of trying to think about what those options are. I need to have thought about all of that already and captured the results in a trusted way. I don't want to waste time thinking about things more than once... as soon as you have to things to do stored in your RAM, you've generated personal failure, because you can't do them both at the same time.

Superb.

small

2007-12-28T16:52:00.000-05:00

Sometimes being a hero to the smallest person is better than being a hero to a thousand "big" people.

MQ

2007-12-16T00:58:00.000-05:00

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller

Life is not easy. There are times you can lose track of the bigger picture: who you are, what you stand for, what you believe in. When the earth shifts, it's easy to lose your balance. We all have moments like these, moments where we feel a bit foreign, even to ourselves. In such times it's often critical to have a good friend or family member who will not judge, but merely remind you of the value you bring to this world, of the unique something that you add to it.

It often troubles me to think that there are people out there who do not have this social fabric to keep their hearts warm when it gets cold outside. Because regardless of whether or not they have this recognition, it does not change the fact that we all add that little something extra to the world. Recognized or not, the beacon of humanity still loses something when one of it's lights grows dim, or falls out.

MQ, you called me to tell me you were considering suicide. I know only a small part of how difficult things have been for you, I see a great deal more in your face. I hope you feel better after chatting today. And however unlikely, I hope that, some day, you stumble upon this tiny, unknown blog post of mine. I hope you see what a difference you have made in just one person's life. If nothing else, I want you to know how my life might turn out without you in it, if I tried to do what you do. Just consider ten small things...

I would not be witness to the incredible pride of workmanship you demonstrate every day.
I would have no idea what's it's like to have more brothers than the population of China.
I would smash more innocent fingers under the face of my hammer.
I would curse at more things I don't understand how to fix, but try to anyway.
I would scare off considerably more children with the kind of frustrated expressions that comes from me breaking the very things I am trying to repair.
I would have no one to steal interior design ideas from.
I would have no one to translate what an increasing number of these applicants are try to say to me.
I would do all the work myself and have less time to spend with close family and friends.
I would be so busy doing what I don't enjoy, I might miss out discovering what I really do.
I would have no one who appreciates the value of Boston Market after a long day on the job.

There are countless things you do, that I and countless others, will never comprehend. Skills and abilities that are a mystery to everyone but you. They are your gift. You can keep your gift to yourself or share it with the world. Your choice. I hope some day you understand this. If you can have this great an impact on someone at your lowest point, how great an impact can you have on this world at your best?

Just find it, friend.

irony 1

2007-12-15T17:48:00.000-05:00

There's something terribly ironic about calling the phone company and getting a busy signal.

Reframe

2007-12-03T18:58:00.000-05:00

Two things,

The impossible is often seductive.
We cannot be great at everything.

In life, each of us encounter difficult circumstances that we let become monsters within our mind. They start small and grow big. They are often the result of our ego or pride getting in the way of our reality. We know we cannot be great at everything, yet we push on ahead anyway.

On the other hand, there is something terribly seductive about tackling the impossible. It is not enough to be simply difficult. The impossible is something different. It tests our limits. It pushes us beyond our comfort zone. In hindsight we often see that the process of tackling the impossible was the true reward.

How do we resolve this?

The answer, of course, is simple. Steven Covey calls it thinking win-win. Others simply say, give enough other people what they want and you can have anything you want.

The reality is that some things other people can do much better than I. If that's the case, perhaps my very difficult thing is difficult for other people too. Perhaps this a very good thing. For in difficult, lies opportunity. So perhaps this very difficult thing could make another person very successful in his/her own right - if he/she could solve the need. Perhaps that is worth my time to pursue. Because, perhaps, by first helping someone else, I am also free myself up to do other things I am good at, better, and more often.

This is more than just between me and you. Our perspectives define our reality. Now, more than ever, we live in a world increasingly connected. There is no better time to collaborate with others to solve local and global issues. In this age, I believe we need to encourage greater creativity in our choices. We need more and better solutions to challenges that arise. We need not take the easy path and fall back on defaults.

In challenge... in difficulty... in the impossible... lie infinite opportunities.

Question. Reframe. Resolve.

The Mind of Clear Light

2007-11-21T06:58:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading The Art of Happiness. The Art is a book detailing a Western psychiatrist's interviews and meetings with the Dalai Lama, with the intent of presenting principles of Buddhism and the Dalai Lama's perspective in a format understandable to the Western reader. The book discusses unique perspectives on education, intelligence, anger, and purpose. It is a terrific read.

One of the more fascinating Buddhist concepts discussed in this book is that of the mind of clear light. As quoted from the Dalai Lama himself,

The essential nature of mind is pure. It is based on the belief that the underlying basic subtle consciousness is untainted by negative emotions. It's nature is pure. A state that is referred to as the mind of clear light. That nature of mind is also known as buddha nature. So since negative emotions is not an intrinsic part of buddha nature it is possible to eliminate them and purify the mind.

I believe the Buddhist concepts of inherent mental purity can be both refreshing and enlightening (no pun intended). It has caused me to reflect a great deal upon our Western psychological/medical tradition, the media's inundation of our lives with negative imagery, and the broader concepts of punishment, personal development, and workplace/social order.

Fundamentally the book's philosophy does not negate the importance of ensuring basic mental and physical health. This much is given. The difference is upon the singular focus of our Western psychology tradition, of a diagnostic vocabulary and therapeutic analysis centered upon that which we do not want - the illness, the disorder, the affliction. Psychology and medicine are often focused on this fixing of illness, diagnosis of mental disorder, and returning of the individual to a predefined state of sanity. And then what? Clearly, there is value in understanding one's weaknesses. This can be a necessary first step. But, to spend an entirety of a life focused on the resolution of inherent weaknesses?

We need a new vocabulary.

I believe that which we focus upon expands. I believe thought, as predecessor to action, defines our life. As such, consciousness of thought, awareness of the fundamental connection between mind and reality, is fundamental to a life uncompromised. I believe it is a sad irony of our society when an element of this consciousness, the ability to understand the impact of thought upon action, must be introduced to Western pop-culture through a movie/book called The Secret. Right or wrong, how is conscious direction of our thought such a secret in the first place?

The vast majority of people in this world are not broken. We are not inherently flawed. In fact, perhaps the problem is not the individual at all, but the very paradigms we use in Western culture to define ourselves. What if the focus of our workplace/diagnosis/media on what is wrong or missing in our skills/mind/society/world is the true thief of our finest human potential?

The ultimate creative capacity of the brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.
-George Leonard

Unchallengeable

2007-10-27T14:00:00.001-04:00

"The power of thought is the only thing over which you have complete unchallenged and unchallengeable control. Controlled by the power of will. In giving human being control over but one thing, the Creator must have chosen the most important of all things."

Napoleon Hill

Remember

2007-10-23T22:13:00.000-04:00

Time

mediocrity

2007-10-11T12:31:00.000-04:00

Mediocrity sucks. Yet sometimes it just creeps in on you. Between broad goals/dreams and present reality lies a grey area where our true potential is often lost. We sacrifice battles here because they seems so trivial. Forgetting that so many big victories were built on the back of many smaller battles.

I do not want to live a life unclaimed.
Regret is the harshest reward.

Harmony

2007-09-25T20:21:00.000-04:00

Call it genetic
but I love Celtic music.

This weekend caught a glimpse of a young sister quartet called Give Way. You don't have to be a fan of the fiddle to appreciate these amazing sisters. They're simply awe-inspiring.

Discovering new music is like learning a new language.
It may seem foreign at first, but once you get down to it
You wonder how you went with out it so long.

Check out their music when you get a chance.

You won't be disappointed.

mission

2007-09-11T21:46:00.000-04:00

A recent Tesla Motors - Hyatt Hotels partnership really irks me.

Tesla maybe chasing high-market now,
but it's ultimatum is mass change.

The lack of electric car charging infrastructure is a lie built an anti-consumer model of what a "refueling station" needs to be. We already know most gas stations stay alive by gouging us on Slim Jims, not Ultra 94.

So rather than putting in three custom-fab Tesla charging stations in a global network of 753 Hyatt hotels... why not consider how to make just 1% of the 120,000,000 homes in America the new "gas station mini-merchants?"

How hard is it to run a publicly-acessible electric outlet to your mailbox? Toss in a gov subsidized RFID payment system. Kick back 1% to the homeowner. Imagine.

Given Tesla's high-profile financiers (PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, Google co-founders Brin and Page, and former eBay Pres Jeff Skoll) I find it hard to believe the democratization of electric car charging has not already come up.

C'mon guys, the missing link, the recharging network is already here.

If you can't charge 4 wheels off the same 240V uberplug that sucks 75lbs of water out of my laundry in 60 minutes then perhaps you're in the wrong business sector.

It's not about brand synergy.
It's about brand mission.

naked

2007-09-08T23:31:00.000-04:00

everyone in the world should ride a motorcycle
just once
or more

a motorcycle has something a car can never
a feeling of perpetual risk
of complete exposure.

no steel frames
no windshield
no safety belt

just you
and speed
naked

SyncD

2007-08-29T21:33:00.000-04:00

I want a phone that is not a phone.

I want access to all people I meet
places I'm going
things I'm doing
with me at all times.

I do not want to "sync-up."
I do not want to "dial-up."
I do not want to worry about
whether the appointment I set on my phone
makes it over to my computer
properly.

The year is 2007.
We've had calendars for nearly 3000 years.
We've had PDAs for well over a decade.
How many more decades must go by
before technology catches up with our lives?

Defaultment

2007-06-20T00:16:00.001-04:00

Life is a series of magnificent dichotomies. Ignore them and we risk missing out of the some best-kept lessons of our own experiences.

We need a healthier appreciation for the overcoming of great challenges. Life's too precious a journey to live it giving in. Dare not default. Such experiences, cloaked behind grit teeth and frustration are the true bishops of our finest hours.

The path not taken is opportunity in the making.

In the greatest of challenge. Lies the greatest of growth.

retail

2007-05-27T22:15:00.000-04:00

In a world of Amazon.com, the entire concept of retail confuses me:

Pay More.
Work Harder.
Take Longer.

How is that I spend as much time waiting at a checkout line as I do getting on an airplane? If TSA can search my entire body, bags, and 2 weeks worth of clothing in under 5 minutes, why can't my local grocery store check me out in less than 10?

We're talking turkeys versus explosive powder here.

Was there ever a time when this made sense?

Push a wheeled basket through dozens of aisles largely irrelevant to what you came to purchase.
Move items from shelf to basket. The more you buy, the harder it gets.
Get in line. The more you buy, the longer you wait to pay.
Let me reiterate that: buy more, wait more.
Pull everything out again.
Have every item scanned in front of 1/2 dozen other people.
Pick a product the store forgot to label.
Have your life announced over a loudspeaker.
Wait longer.
Place every bagged item back into your basket.
Push to car.
Take groceries out of carriage again.
Place into car.
Drive home.
Take out of car.
Carry inside.
Take out of bags.
Place back into shelves... just like the ones you pulled the products off of at the store.

Hmm...

Lens

2007-05-23T21:57:00.000-04:00

My favorite pair on shades are the polarized kind. Driving to work the blue lens in the sunlight makes trees look green, the sky bluer, and everything much brighter and colorful than normal.

Plus I don't squint.

Pretty cool how all it takes to get a new view on the world is to change the lens you're looking through.

Evolution

2007-05-08T00:23:00.000-04:00

Life is a series of moments. Some we forget in an instant. Some stick with us for a lifetime.

A month ago I witnessed a dying man living a life fuller than most of us could ever dream. This weekend I saw the body of a man in one place and the essence of his being everywhere else. They say that, "when the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found." The great spiritual leaders talk of a life somewhere else after death. What I saw this weekend tells me that immortality starts right here and now. To become an original worth copying. To begin in one form, to evolve into another; in stories, in memories, in laughter, in lessons taught for generations to come. To become part of the fabric of a collective unconscious. What man would ask more from life than this?

Albert Einstein once wrote,

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Like you said Uncle Frank, "there is only one way."

Mistakes

2007-02-23T16:01:00.000-05:00

Got mistakes? Get more. A great reminder...

1. You will learn lessons.
2. There are no mistakes - only lessons.
3. A lesson is repeated until it is learned.
4. If you don't learn the easy lessons, they get harder.
5. You'll know you've learned a lesson when your actions change.

Failing Forward by John Maxwell

Happy Birthday Brother

2007-01-22T10:59:00.000-05:00

Miss you.

Snow

2007-01-19T07:40:00.000-05:00

There is nothing quite like the first snow of the year...

Even if Father Frost takes until January 19th to exhale.

2 roads

2007-01-10T00:05:00.000-05:00

Two roads diverged, two approaches apart.

Education could learn a thing or two from religion.

In the process of educating people in a faith, religion infuses singing, ceremony, symbolism, ambiance, and candles. Structures to house this process call our eyes upwards with ceilings as high as mountains. Ten minutes of sermon and you're up and singing again. Sit down, then stand up again. Benches so hard no way you're dozing off. People sit together. Lights drop. Candlels flicker. Voices sing notes familiar. Echoing bells send people along their way into a cold, frosty New England night...

The last time I sang a song in a academia? Learning the alphabet. Candles in class? Negative, fire hazard. Ceilings? Keep'em low to maximize space. Walls? Try 30 year old pastel cement blocks. Stained-glass windows? Who needs windows at all? Lighting? How about we stick to eye-straining fluorescents to save a buck, ok?

Two questions...

1) How did we allow ourselves to build prisons for our children and cathedrals for our gods?

2) Since when has inspiration of our minds been any less vital than the exultation of our souls?

Centuries into the process of institutionalizing education and we're still believing that we can inspire youth with chalk and brick? Command and control?

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood...

Currency

2007-01-06T13:04:00.000-05:00

What is the distinction between spending time thinking up ways to Save Money versus spending time thinking up ways to Build Wealth?

Consider this... time is of the highest currency. It has no exchange rate. No conversion. It moves forward only. We live it, we love it, or look back one day wondering if we lost it. Knowing this, what we spend our time thinking about is the highest form of currency exchange possible. It precedes all else.

Saving Money is the way many of us with Depression-era parents were brought up. It focuses on building budgets, reducing desires, investing for 3.125% returns. Dialogue centers around dollars. It's easy to forget how paper, cloth, and a bit of green dye are little more than someone else's creation, someone else's idea. A carrot on a stick is also an idea, an idea that provides the currency needed to keep race horses running in circles time and time again.

The problem, of course, is that money is just an idea. As such, Saving Money escapes the larger truth: if money is just an idea, then an idea is money. Think. How much time do you spend investing in your ideas versus someone else's? How many years would you spend chasing the carrot versus growing the circle?

Building Wealth goes much further than Saving Money. One is proactive, one is reactive. One individual, one universal. One runs in circles, one expands the circle itself.

What market are you in?

Only Thing Better

2006-11-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

There's only one thing better than a good birthday after a long year and 2 hour drive through the pouring rain. A good birthday, after a long year, with great friends. Thx guys. SoCo crew still rocks.

Define

2006-10-29T05:02:00.000-05:00

What defines service? I mean good, ground-breaking service?

I have an oil change place I go to once/month, Economy Oil Change of Vernon, CT. Everytime I go I walk away amazed. Not just satisfied... amazed. While you wait they offer coffee, hot chocolate, free snacks, and magazines. That's nothing too out of the ordinary. The difference is that these guys get you serviced faster than it would take you to read a single article in Newsweek.

In less than 5 minutes your oil's changed, windshield cleaned, car vaccuumed, and fluids filled. My last trip I actually tried to eat through a snack pack of Cheetos before they called my name. It's hopeless. They're that fast.

Consider going to the bathroom and coming out with your car cleaned and ready for you. There's a difference between exceeding customer expectations and defining a new standard.

Consider what'd happen if biz started thinking about new ways to define a new standard, than just exceed the old standard.

The New Edu

2006-09-24T23:22:00.000-04:00

I've been wonderfully inundated over the past several months with a slew of discussions, books, and media on the topic of mind and potential, at a time that has been one of the most busy of my life. Like a good discussion on a great movie: I want to share. I want to discuss. I want to engage a new form of dialogue about possibility and potential. What are some of the ways you see education changing? Value-added? People connected?

Consider... we enter now an age that is only just beginning to appreciate:

Widespread acceptance of long-standing studies in Positive Pyschology.
Web 2.0's obsession with connecting people in new ways.
Social manifestation of Metcalfe's Law exploited by ubiquitous networks.
Debates into the philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics.

For these reasons, I believe there significant value in discussing new way of thinking and new forms of education made possible from our rapidly changing tech/net/world space. Depending on feedback from here, I'll consider expanding to a new, group-blog format. Till then, look here and comment-up. If Melcalfe was right, it can only get brighter the more voices emerge.

Leverage

2006-09-22T17:12:00.000-04:00

Leverage
verb
1. Opposite of jaded, cynical, helpless. Assumes the ability to find a personal, unique solution to any circumstance encountered.
2. See also: Power. Influence. Connected. Involved. Originates from the create force in all of us. Unlimited in scope and potential

Two weeks ago I watched the movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." If you haven't seen it yet, you should. It's a harbinger for our generation. It's also very easy to walk out on this movie thinking an issue as big as global warming and climate change is beyond one's individual ability to influence. Nothing is farther from the truth.

Life is about leverage. Leverage is about power, influence, and connection. How much do you have and where do you want to use it? Like the change of single light bulb, each of us has the power to enact massive change in our world. If you don't believe me, follow along...

Example: At the literal level we know that a single light bulb switched over to its energy-efficient variety cuts energy usage nearly 75%. Focus on the literal one bulb and we miss the metaphorical big change. The question with all of this boils down to this:

How many light bulbs do you have?

Literally, I've got a lot of bulbs burning right now, say 60 at present. For less than $40 at my local Home Depot I can swap out every one for it's compact flourescent cousin. Assuming I have each of those bulbs on for 10 hours/day and each bulb goes from 60 to 13 watts, I've just enacted change on the scale of 13,140 to 2,846 kW-hours/year while saving roughly $3,385/year in energy costs in the process.

But hey, why stop there? What if I took others along for the ride? As a member of a local real estate club, what if I created and promoted the idea of a conversion kit for other property owners as well. The cost savings are clear. And what if we created a common logo and what if we promoted this when advertising our apts - ie: low cost, energy-friendly apartments. And it needn't even stop there. What else could we accomplish by continuing to ask, "what if..."

Abandon apathy. Surpass cynicism. Leverage begins with a simple question:

How many light bulbs do I have before me today?

Kaleidoscope

2006-09-22T00:06:00.000-04:00

"The world is your kaleidoscope and the varying combinations of
colors which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the
exquisitely adjusted pictures of you evermoving thoughts. You will be
what you will to be; Let failure find its false content in that poor
word, 'environment,' But spirit scorns it, and is free."

As a Man Thinketh, James Allen

The Godfather

2006-09-14T23:47:00.000-04:00

4:03pm: It's raining out and only getting worse. I'm posting apt flyers around the central Hispanic corridor of Hartford, CT. In the process of posting I always end up talking to a lot of business owners. But today, one, in particular, stands out from the rest.

Heading to my car, I pass by a store front I've driven by a thousand times before. Something's different this time. Against my traditional mindset, I turn around, ask for the owner, and end up following him into a musty old sub-street level storage shop.

Step inside and it's like another world. Blank, grey walls stacked high with random antiques, coins, jewels, and paintings. Then there, in the middle of it all, a thin old man in a chair. If not so animated at the sound of my voice, I'd have never even see him amongst the items. Like a mechanical fortune teller at a circus he comes alive with stories. I come in to talk apt referrals with the owner, I end up mesmerized by this retired jeweler/banker/car salesman/one-time millionaire who speaks 5 languages and claims possession of antique objects dating back before the birth of Christ.

Could I even make this stuff up?

An hour later and he's still showing me items from his collection. I'm on my way to the door as he continues... "I never told you... I'm a fortune teller you know."

Priceless.

Niche

2006-09-14T20:58:00.000-04:00

12:01am: Late night real estate brainstorming session. Frustrated, I think, something's got to give. Adverts are ineffective. Calls are dropping off. The first bounced mortgage payment will arrive in less than a month. In the afterthoughts of a thousand failed ideas on how to reach the current props' target market, an epiphany hits. What if none of this is truly my target market? Dots connect. ThoughtSpeed engages. Change thoughts to the frame of a new target market and ideas begin to flow forth like a torrent.

What if more businesses got just as honest with themselves? What new, great innovations could be concocted by focusing on value-add, than just be-all?

ThoughtSpeed implies... quite a bit.

Backwards

2006-09-14T01:56:00.000-04:00

A favorite quote of mine by Kierkegaard,

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it has to be lived forwards."

Fi(r)st

2006-09-12T23:03:00.000-04:00

Thomas Edison once wrote,

"Discontentment is the first necessity of progress."

If Tommy Boy's right, there must be some insane changes en-route...

9/11

2006-09-11T11:25:00.000-04:00

Without getting into any of the politics, I encourage anyone reading this to take a couple hours out of the 168 available to you this week to watch Flight 93 (out on DVD now). This not a glofication, exploitation, or dramafication, but a reconstruction of one of most under-covered, yet boldy courageous stories of 9/11. No fluff. No major actors. Just a reminder (largely) put together by many of the very people involved. Five years ago. Today.

Mind Space

2006-09-10T23:59:00.000-04:00

There comes a time when an outside perspective can best the best window to the soul. Saturday night with the SoConn crew. Good times. And it's only after talking with those who know me best I realize how far apart from self you can split by focusing strictly on work. Rendezvous in real estate, relocating, round-the-clock days, and ramping a biz have left a summer with zero time for relaxation or writing. The mind needs space. Deprive it of that and you forget to work smarter, you just work harder. That's Summer 06' in a nutshell. The end is not justified by the means if the means destroys the mind. So here a note to self: life is a journey. Do not forget it. Fall Agenda set: Have fun. Inspire mind. Find space.

A Note to Professors

2006-08-26T01:24:00.000-04:00

Universities are funny places. Walking the hallways I feel like I'm walking down an abandoned subway line - info transit channels with millions invested, increasingly displaced by newer, ad-hoc, virtual channels of communication. Channels more and more on the cusp of revolutionizing the way we learn, interact, and share.

I've been thinking a lot about the way social networking sites and educational institutions will begin to converge (or diverge) from each other in the coming years. GenGaps aside, we need to be clear: Face/Space is more than fad. Yet the closest traditional educational space comes is podcasting and Blackboard. This is not a bridge. We need to learn from each other, yet neither side seems terribly willing to sit down and talk.

Professors, I have only this to say: today's classroom is akin to an academic asthmatic without its thought inhaler. Traditional models of command-and-control, lecture-focus like a tourneqette on the free flow of ideas and information. Consider your base. The knowledge economy means today's learner is lifelong. That means demands on specific time, locations, and social interactions are at all-time highs. In this world we need a learning structure that is ubiquitious, flexible, pausible. 1.5 hours dedicated to a single-channel, single-source can no longer be taken for granted. We need a TiVo for learning. Podcasting not a threat, merely an adaptation to changes already manifested. Consider your market opps. Spare moments in the car, a sprint on the bike, stealing a walk across campus? Priceless. Understand, captive audiences of today move faster than they did yesterday. Continue to lose our brightest by forcing traditional models or adapt to new circumstances and join us as lifelong learners.

Your move.

Craziness

2006-08-10T14:11:00.000-04:00

There's an odd phenomenon out here in New England. Like those geese you see flying south every year, people here live in N/E for the summer, then travel to FL in the winter. Instead of traveling in flocks, generating uplift with an advanced V-formations, and honking at each other to encourage the flock leades, we New Englanders hop on I-95S, drive uncomfortable carbon-spewing cars southward for days, while continually honking (and cursing) at each other from inside our aluminum and plastic rolling boxes. Instead of fluffy, white snow, we travel south to enjoy over-priced amusement parks and cookie-cutter kiddie lands.

Why?

The kind of humidity I hit coming off the plane back from CA leaves little doubt in my mind that Mother Nature has gone totally insane. I've never been to Mars, but I imagine it's gotta be milder than the summer we've had out here in 06'.

Crazy New Englanders. Crazy Mo Nat. Just craziness all around.

Back in the Saddle

2006-08-10T13:53:00.000-04:00

So it's been 3 weeks since East Coast return First lunch with spare time to write things down: today. I've got a lot to say about my frustrations with real estate. Suffice it to say this... there is simply no market more in need of innovation than real estate. More on this to come...

Virtuosity

2006-07-13T05:40:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking quite a bit about the concepts of virtualization and abstraction over the past several months. Fundamentally, I've centered around the following question: Has humankind has begun the most significant migration in our history? Step outside your box for a second and consider the possibility that what we know now as reality may be in the process of changing at its very core. To start, let's ponder the parallels in the following two concepts...

Geostraction
It's no revelation that we live in a world increasingly abstracted from time and space. The pop-culture pre-realityshow fascination of a few years back, of watching people's entire lives fold out over a webcam turned out as just one example pointing to a much larger phenomenon: in the first half of this decade we've seen a massive move to "geostraction." WiFi hotspots, cellular phones, laptop computers, global communities make location an increasingly less relevant factor every day. Instant global electronic communication provides the framework for what's next.

Phystraction (the big whatif)
Considering our migration away from physical location and space, it's no surprise what we've seen happening virtually everywhere. Major market opps in the last 5 years have been all but defined by the migration of products, solutions, and corporations from physical to virtual space. From electronic marketplaces (eBay).... communities (MySpace, Facebook)... communication (email, IM, txt)... media (audio, image, video)... education (Blackboard, WebCT)... literature (Google)... recreation (WoW, xBox Live)... and relationships (Match) more segments of our lives go "live" every day. Business as usual? Think again. Consider the changes in technology in just the last couple years alone. The new playground, hang-out, or meet-up is imminently virtual. Precisely the virtualization that the negative media hype regarding isolated MySpace instances misses, is exactly what has (and will) drive both profits and people for many next generations to come. Naysayers, you miss the point... "the times they are a changing" plays out across all generations.

The crux of what I'm entertaining here are the possibilities and outcome of our ongoing migration of our lives from physical to virtual space. In science fiction the typical story is that humankind will someday fall unwilling victim to all-powerful machines (ala: Matrix, Borg, etc) that threaten to extract the very core of humanity, assimilate us into a cold collective intelligence matrix, then toss out our bodies as superfluous byproducts. Yet what if the virtualization of humanity has has already begun, just willingly, not forcibly? People from "my" generation (GenX) talk a lot about keeping their lives private and offline. People in newer gens are all but obsessed with uploading keeping their lives public and online. Good or bad is irrelevant, the question is this:

What if the uploading of our life experiences are little more than a start down an evolution into something entirely new and different than the what, who, and where we are now?

That's right, I'm talking Lawnmower Man style here - is uploading evolution? Good or bad, it seems we get closer every day. So at that broader level, the question remains: What do you think lies waiting for us as a humanity beyond the NextBigThing?

Evolution happens.
What's next?

Day 10: Muir Woods & Golden Gate

2006-07-11T04:16:00.000-04:00

Starting off the day with a quick shot up to Sonoma Valley vineyards for some wine tasting. Good stuff, but the lady at Viansa keeps pouring me more. $90 later with a slight headache, but wonderfully relaxed it's off again to the next adventure...

Muir Woods (clic4pics)
Home of the infamous Redwood trees. Could I have been any less prepared for this? Take a step into these woods and one thing's immediately apparent:

I walk amongst gods here.

Thousands of year old trees, stretching their arms up over 250 feet into the sky. Words cannot describe it. Pictures cannot capture it. You must walk this path to comprehend. The sheer scope, sanctity, and timelessness of this place is mind-boggling. Dozens of inadequate photos later and I cannot help but sit and stare upwards again and again. Deer eating peacefully to the left, owls swooping through the trees to the right. Fallen trees older than our very nation itself. These trees have seen it all. And lived.

Golden Gate (clic4pics)
Coming over the hill towards the bridge again... out of nowhere this giant red tower emerges over the hill. Jump out of the car, run up the hill as the fog approaches from the west, fighting the winds, and it's all... totally... worth... it. Funny, it looks bigger in the books, yet not nearly as magnificient as when seen in person.

But today it's the sheer contrast of this red giant against these rolling green hills that really shocks me. Exposed from the fog, the question repeated to me over and over... is this truly the perfect intersection of modern civilization and nature? Lush green hills, towering mountains, and this awe-inspiring spanse of crimson steel spanning the shores? Looking around I see a city unlike any I've seen over 30 years. Not some concrete and steel tribute to the industrialization of our planet, but a perfect balance of land, sea, and man. A city ahead in the horizon. An island punching out of the waters. A glorious red archway connecting the shores. A mysterious fog pouring over the bay. The kind of scene you snap 50 times in a row hoping to capture even a whisper of the visual opera going on in your mind.

Beautiful.

Day 9, Part 2: San Francisco

2006-07-10T23:59:00.000-04:00

Arrival in San Francisco, driving over the Golden Gate, the fog is so thick there's simply no visibility at all. People at the vista point staring off into the mist into... nothing. Yet there's something magical about this place. Coming into the city, overlooking each of the bays to the right of the highway as the sun comes down to rest, a recurring theme repeats itself in my mind's eye... Is this our time's modern Rome? Perfect little islands set amidst baby blue waters? Armies of little white boats floating in the bay? A picture out of a museum right off a major state highway. Is this a city at all or just some beautiful scene from straight out some museum I've yet to visit...

Day 9: San Simeon to San Francisco

2006-07-09T23:59:00.000-04:00

It's been a lot longer getting up the Cali coastline than I had originally imagined. Stayed overnight at what seems like the edge of the world, San Simeon, California. Dinner at Mustache Joe's in Cambria. Not much else going on here. In fact, it's downright desolate out here.

Hearst Castle (clic4pics)
Start off the day with one of the most talked-about stops off the coast: Hearst Castle. Ticket guy rec's Tour 1. The positive is there's everything you can imagine of Rennaissance-era here. Ceilings pre-dating Columbus carted in and custom-installed, 500 year old fireplaces standing 30 feet tall, and a massive cross-bred pool clashing Hollywood and Rome. The downside? Your need 3 other tours to see the whole shabang and each one's $24, non-sequential. Fact is this is not even really a castle, just a once-summer camp of Willam Randall Hearst, turned big-house-on-the-hill, turned living art gallery. Fascinating, but not as much as what came next...

Route 1 Cali Coastline (clic4pics)
There's simply nothing like this anywhere. Traveling up the Pacific coastline showcased by California's Route 1 stretch from San Simeone to San Francisco is like nothing I've ever seen. Massive rock walls stretching hundreds of feel down into the crashing ocean waves below. Beach after beach. Canyon after canyon. Narrow, hair pin roads that make 30 mph seem downright terrifying. People said go 101, it's faster. People are seriously missing out on the most beautiful, awe-inspiring drives - anywhere. Everyone, at least once in their lifetime should make this drive.

Bixby Bridge
Along the Big Sur coastline. Hard to miss out on this one. A perfect example of form and function, man matching nature. Words cannot describe this place. You can almost see the early settlers coming over the top of those mountains, looking out over the ocean, the end of the world as they knew it. What a journey. What an experience.

Cali Coastal: La Jolla

2006-07-08T03:33:00.000-04:00

LaJolla
Originally uploaded by clifhirtle.

There are certain places that epitomize things much bigger. Less than 1/2 way into the CaliCoastal Expedition and one thing is abudantly clear: La Jolla, California is the epitome of an incredibly beautiful Pacific coast line. Words are inadequate for this place. Huge cliffs, crashing waves, and a motley crew of seals sunbathing on the beach make for an amazing one-one with Mother Nature. Stone and rock sentries hundreds of feet up ward off the assault of a Pacific Poseidon. Beautiful. Yes indeed, this is truly what California is all about.

San Diego 4th

2006-07-08T01:15:00.000-04:00

July 4th 2006. San Diego navy pier. There's a small crowd out on the piers and I'm terribly excited about spending my first 4th out in Cali... 30 minutes later the crowd's dispersing, families are packing back into their cars, and the night's over. No music. No silly USA attire. Not even many fireworks.

Perhaps I missed something here, because this is definitely not the way we celebrate Independance Day in Boston. Out East it's a sea of honking cars, a booming Boston Pops playing Tchaikovsky, and crowds of thousands upon thousands of drunken Americans who are all suddenly your best friend.

Sometimes East Coast style ain't so bad afterall.

Inspiration H20

2006-07-02T15:50:00.000-04:00

Inspiration is like water. It flows through you, not to you. People talk about "finding inspiration." A better question, how does inspiration find you? Open minds receptive to the possibilities of a creative omnipresence, tap into the central flow of water all around them. Seek not that which flows freely. Don't fight the current, find out where it leads. Be more like the water itself. Consider possibility. Let inspiration find its way to you.

The Vikings Have Landed

2006-06-09T14:42:00.000-04:00

Good to know the ancestors still know how to make an impact...

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1346411.ece

:-)

Mind-Body: Sleep Spice

2006-06-06T21:41:00.000-04:00

A few months back a roomie of mine guinea-pigged me out on a fasting/cleansing program called The Master Cleanser. Curious about the toxemia-disease connection it claimed, I gave it a shot for a few days. One of the stranger ingredients of this lemon-like concoction is a fairly strong dose of cayenne pepper. That's right cayenne, baby. At the time, I recall thinking this a bit odd. Nevertheless, while on the Cleanser I not only slept less, but had little of my usual difficulty getting out of bed in the morning. Odd, right?

Perhaps not. A recent Tasmanian study on the effects of chilli may suggest something else...

Study shows chilli could be the key to good sleep

Mind-Body: Starving Artists

2006-06-06T21:28:00.000-04:00

Ever notice how you get the most done right before lunch/dinner? I've long long to bat with doubters about the clarity and energy achieved through controlled fasting. Once one's impulse hunger passes, clarity of thoughts can be downright amazing. An article over at New Scientist posits a great theory for how and why staying hungry may just be the best brain food you can get...

Why we need a siesta after dinner

Fusion Baby, Fusion

2006-05-22T00:59:00.000-04:00

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks this sounds way too much like Spider Man 2...

http://www.physorg.com/news67442282.html

Treo Trifecta

2006-05-16T21:25:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I mused geek on any one particularly gadget, but the new Treo 700p has got me psyched. Not because of any one particular geekfeat it has, but rather the cultimation of a treo of key capabilities we've been promised in a mobile device for some time:

- broadband wireless speeds (w/tethering)
- decent video/audio recording (pics/vids/audio)
- software expandability

At present I get 2/3 of those with my hacked Moto e815. And for the past year having broadband speeds near everywhere, never worrying about where I might pick up WiFi has been nice. But the lack of software expandability has kept my old Treo 600 close by as a fallback.

Now, with Motorola's Q set to launch next week, the real excitement is the possibility that 06' will be the start of that new generation of mobile devices that live up to the standard manufacturers were promising us 3 years ago... true media, broadband-connected, in your pocket.

The generation of true mobile wireless media has begun.

EBS DOA?

2006-05-11T16:12:00.000-04:00

So I just heard an emergency broadcast warning come over the air... tornado watch now in effect. Yikes. Scary stuff, right?

But this was Internet radio. Broadcasting out of North Carolina... and here I am looking out the window for a twister in Connecticut?

This brings up an interesting paradigm... what exactly is the purpose of our trusty emergency broadcast system in a world of satelite and streaming audio? What's the definition of "local" in a world abstracted from geography, where location is becoming less and less relevant?

Seriously people, what's a person listening to this station in Oregon supposed to think... "Oh man... board up the windows, we've got a class 3 tornado headed our way!"

A better use of the EBS in our digital age? "Code yellow... class 5 packet storm coming across your local subnet."

Nations. Corporations. People.

2006-05-09T19:08:00.000-04:00

Weekend excursion to the NYC for the 06' Romanian Festival with The Bogdan Bunch. Plenty of adventures there, but on the way home we get debating about where our society is headed in an era where governments are growing increasingly incapable of providing for their people, as new challenges from corporations and technology slowly blur the line between public and private, citizens and stakeholders.

Now I don't consider myself political, but Bo's thesis on the rise of international corporations and coming collapse of the nation-state is something I've heard more than once. Graduate business classes are flush with talk on the exponential rise in power of international corporations.

This is not our parents' planet plan. E-commerce has grown up. Global markets are in full-effect. And the Internet is rapidly evolving into the global human connector it always promised it would be from day one.

The power of governments weilding the mantle of large-scale standing armies, geographic borders, and nationalist trade alliances are already in rapid decline. A decent 12 year old hacker with a T1 and an agenda wields more power to bring down a nation than an army of green suits and M16s.

I believe the MBA classes are wrong. The transition from nation-state to international corporations is just the beginning. IC's represent merely the most logical bridge from the nation-state to the virtual-state. In the true virtual-state, we'll understand that a global network of ubiquitiously-connected, geographically-impartial, and highly-informed global citizens are more powerful than even the most nimble, armed, or wealthy government or corporate entity. It is the power of true democracy incarnate. When everyone has a voice, the precepts of power change. When everyone's connected, the rules of profit and exploitation fall apart.

Doubt not. The writing's on the wall. The intersection of nations and corporations is old news. The struggle for power between corporations and individuals has now begun. Examples...

Wars on individuals over copyright infringement.
Wars on time through expectations of longer hours at the office.
Outsourcing of employer-directed defined-benefit to employee-directed defined-contribution retirement plans.
Liberation of citizens from corporations as their only source of income/wealth.
Immiment collapse of the social security system as a fall-back or lifestyle.
Unplugging of workers from corporate office infrastructures in favor of Starbucks, Kinkos, and high-speed, ubiquitious mobile networks.
Retirement of the physical for the virtual space as one's community one-stop (ie: the MySpace/Facebook phenomenon).

The power of corporation in the virtual world represents the ability to establish and enhance human connectivity. Those vying to squeeze lemonade out of the proverbial command and control model have a lot to discover about their role in The New World...

Connect now.
Profit later.
People first.

Ubiquitize Perfection

2006-05-05T00:54:00.000-04:00

Driving range. 6pm. Temps in the swank 70s. Golf clubs still dirty from over a year ago and yet suddenly things click. The perfect swing, contact, lift-off. It may not happen much, but when it does I know this...

There is a perfection in all things.

Most of us only get to see it for a second. We call it "luck" because if we didn't we could not explain it. We'd get confused and the perfection of our imperfectionist perspective wouldn't really make sense anymore. The concept of inherent imperfection would break. Thus, in the magic of the moment, we look away. "Just a fluke" we say.. and hack quickly at the next ball to justify the illusion of our shoddy paradigm.

So I'm listening to the The Magic of Thinking Big audiobook this weekend. Nothing too revolutionary here, but it occurs to me how virtually every one of these self-dev books focus on one thing above all else: breaking free of our own mental limitations. Stripping away these imperfection layers that have been so ingrained in our heads, like peeling back the layers of the onion. I have my own thoughts about where this comes from that I'll cover later, but for now the core question is this:

What could we do if our minds knew no limits?

Traditional psychology often makes this merely an issue of personal development, but clearly it affects much more than that. Ingenuitity. Progress. Ideas. Evolution. How many great things lost in the depths of our minds merely because the voice in the back of our heads politely reminds, "Nah, that'll never work." A favorite quote of mine says this,

You see things as they are and ask why.
But I, I see things that never were and ask why not?

Here's to a lot more "why nots?" in our world.

The Speed of Thought

2006-04-25T01:20:00.000-04:00

Over the past several months I've been obsessed with the idea of time travel. The concept generally comes up when I'm operating on the mental redline, integrating lots of ideas at once or operating across multiple objectives in a short amount of time. Here is what I believe...

When the mind grows heated, time tends to distort.

I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I'm quite certain it's occuring. Often I don't even think about it until after speaking with someone else or passing some point of reference (ie: "has it been only 2 days?"). Einstein proposed a similar idea in his theory of special relatively, namely that as an object approaches the speed of light, a person traveling at that speed and an observer will see the same event, but at different times and distances.

Everyone's had these moments. When you're moving really fast. Working on something very hard. Frequently we brush this off quickly quipping, time flies when you're having fun! Yet what if there's some actual truth to this? What if thought-time exceeds the speed of light and alters what is possible in the same timespan? Tap when I start sounding looney.

What I refer to here is the idea of differentiating thought-time from real-time.

Central to this distinction are dreams. Consider what happens when you sleep. You're real tired, crash on the couch, and wake up feeling as if you've been asleep for weeks. Perhaps you had a dream with some extravagant journey to some elaborate location, for some absurd purpose.

Then you look at your clock. 20 minutes have passed.

In the course of time it took your mind to process weeks worth of experience and adventures, your physical body has experienced only 1/3 of an hour. How is this possible? An article over at Indiana U suggests that there is no difference between dream-time and real-time. I disagree. Actually, the only thing the study seems to suggest is that what we can recall and what our conscious mind can communicate is roughly equivalent to the time that has actually passed. This is not surprising. In fact, even if the study did suggest that our mind only concocted up an amount of experience equivalent to what I could imagine in real-time, the fact is that it still processed through that a longer amount of time in shorter span of space.

conscious... subconscious.
thought-time... real-time.
perception... reality.

I want to explore this vein further, for now it's back to my time machine (sleep). Thoughts?

V2

2006-04-11T20:55:00.001-04:00

Great art is often a matter of multiple interpretations.

Round 2 with V for Vendetta this weekend. This time around with my deep thinking, great friend Bo. Bo grew up under Communist Europe, he's also one of those super intelligent, open your eyes types so I was real curious to know what his take would be. Did he like it? Yes. Would he see it again? Yes. Just one problem...

What does it prove? What can one person really do to change a society?

My initial reaction, disagreement. Yet chat some more, dig a bit deeper and it's clear. Bo saw the V as a person. I saw V as an idea. Bo sees Communist Europe. I see a future America. Each perspective follows its natural course to radically different results. A person in Communist Europe changing society? Not likely says Bo. But an idea in a future America? Who knows, says Clif...

Same film. Multiple interpretations. Great stuff.

We are told to remember the idea, not the man. Because a man can fail. He can be killed. But four hundred years later an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I've seen people kill in the name of them; and die defending them. But you cannot touch an idea, cannot hold it or kiss it. An idea does not feel pain, it cannot bleed, and it does not love.

Freedom of Information

2006-04-02T23:59:00.000-04:00

V for Vendetta is a great film. Particularly with good friends in the best IMAX theater on the planet. What makes this film great? One line...

The security of information is paramount.

In context of this film the analogy is downright terrifying. It is the question of whether or not we are, at this very moment, seeing the first phase of the new world war. A war not fought with tank or a gun, but rather in our minds, in our fears, a war fought on ability to access information itself?

We talk a lot in IT about the information age/economy. Google gobbles rows of libraries every second. Open source movements go head to head over the access to DNA of our modern tools every day. Cluetrain throws a shot straight across the bow of the traditional corporate concept. And governments dare us to challenge them in ongoing efforts to protect from our own fears.

What if it were all connected somehow?

This is a movie for the ages. Ours. Watch it. Then give a listen to a different kind speech from another kind of "V". It doesn't take much to connect the dots.

Thought Rock

2006-04-02T23:58:00.000-04:00

Beantown underground clubs with Dave & crew. Comment of the year from Dave, I never cease to turn your routine upside down do I? Truth bro. See Dave's one of these friends that gets me thinking. Throws out simple questions that get complicated. Last year he sparks thoughts about traveling more. This year he seems almost serious asking if he could ever convince a Norwegian skiier since age 9 to move out West. Very funny Dave.

Look up and round. 20 Campus Reps around dinner. Talking future. Talking innovation. Talking possibilities. Good times get great and then it hits me. Why I keep coming back here time and time again.

Rewind to 99' at Umass. I write my nine-thousandth paper for my Constitutional law class and a professor talks tough about why I should apply to law school. I rebuff claiming, I like the critique of law, I hate the study in it. Her response haunts me ever since...

It's not about the field you study, but the great minds you meet. You need to meet those minds.

I never went to law school. But I've kept looking for what I'd find there ever since. Work hasn't even come close, and yet here it is around a dinner table. Just a bunch of college kids talk'n geek and it's great. Not even a job. Just great minds and the firestorm of ideas that results.

Last year I considered to myself the possibility of unleashing Hill's Mastermind Principle within the context of social networks. This weekend I felt the MMP outside of IPs and screennames, in action. Great minds. Big ideas. No box.

Amazing.

Chicago Reflections

2006-03-28T22:16:00.000-05:00

Back home again and it's immediately evident how the diversity of a big city like Chicago is abundantly absent out here in Connecticut. I've lamented on this to friends in Boston at times, how strikingly white Beantown is. Of course, Boston's like NYC - you don't bash the Beans. So I get two reactions to my statement: (1) What the hell are you talking about? (2) Compared to what?

Well 2006 is the year of travel and the more places you visit the more you start to make distinctions. I like distinctions. I like differences. They show us how much more there is to understand about the world. I believe familiarity leads to stagnation. We all prefer the familiar at times, but in the face of how much more to see and know in the world? If not now, when? Others said it better...

"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility." Albert Einstein

Chicago: Day 4

2006-03-28T21:23:00.000-05:00

Michigan Ave Apple Store... Navy Pier... Field Museum... Museum of Science & Industry. Quick shot over to the airport, bumped to next flight. Words of wisdom for the econo traveler: fly back Saturday so that when the airline offers to give you that free flight anywhere in the US for taking a flight the next day you can take the offer without worrying about work/school on Monday. Summer flight out west? Done.

Museum of Science & Industry: If you ever find yourself in Chicago you need to see this place. One of the top 7th most visited museums in the US and the oldest museum of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. This is not your father's museum, but an interactive extravaganza covering everything from biology to aviation to chemistry to submarines, cars, ships, computers. You name it, they've got it. Pictures don't do it justice. It's downright massive. Plan on a minimum of 3 hours to walk it, 5 to truly appreciate.

Chicago: Day 3

2006-03-25T05:08:00.000-05:00

First day in downtown. Afternoon route: McCormick Center to Atler Planetarium to Shed Aquarium to check-in at the Courtyard Marriot to Hancock Tower to live band at the Blues Chicago. Navy Pier and Apple Store closed, so first up tomorrow.

Hancock Tower. Dine a drink on top of "Big John," you find out why they call Chicago a vertical city. 95 floors up in 40 seconds. A city in itself complete with supermarket, parking, restaurant, and offices. Some people working there never even leave. Imagine that. The highest residences in the world and you don't even have to come down. Plus, how late can you be to work... 30 seconds?

Classical

2006-03-18T19:51:00.000-05:00

There's just something about classical music. One of those wonderful things to hear, but not describe. Feel, but not know. Taste, but not touch. The intangent made tangent in heart, but mystery to mind. Beautiful.

They say the beat of baroque music allows the right and left sides of our brains to sync up. I grew up with this stuff and hated it. Decades later and even wine tastes good.

Hallways and worksplaces need to get this. B&N plays it for a reason. Understand: even the best of actors need a stage set right.

Modern Workplaces

2006-03-17T01:22:00.000-05:00

90 min phone last night w/a good friend. Two friends, two bad days at the office, just one question: how did the absurdity of modern workplace become so accepted? Complicated bureaucracies, crowded cubicle farms, trivial office politics.

With all that we have.
With all that we know.
Why this?

Insights...

"In Business" podcast, 10/6/05. Beautiful discussion on the growth of social networks, remergence of trade leagues, and increasing popularity of virtual corporations.

Better still. How bout this quickie...

"Distributing the Future" podcast, 12/12/05, 8:40 in (link below). Quote: "The atmosphere of the average workplace is to productivity, what flames painted on the side of a car are to speed."

Enough said.