Define

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

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

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

"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

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

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

A favorite quote of mine by Kierkegaard,

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

More on this to come...

Fi(r)st

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.