Background

Mentoring young startup teams is incredibly rewarding and a true passion in my professional career.

I've worked as an Advisor with Desai Accelerator for almost 2 years now. In that time I've mentored 15+ startups over 3 Cohorts, delivered workshops and joined some of their advisory boards.  While Desai is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area - I am incredibly drawn to the culture of sharing and passionate community in Ann Arbor. 

This year Angela Kujava, Managing Director of Desai, invited me to deliver the Keynote for Demo Day. Angela asked me to talk about how to nurture a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem and community.  

Honored and humbled by the request, I resisted the easy route of presenting the "best practices" of other notable startup communities. 

My gut told me it was more valuable to explore how a community could identify and leverage its assets to build a virtuous cycle.

This blog post is based on my Keynote which explores how a business model from another domain provides insights to building a thriving startup community.

Very excited to share with a wider audience.

You can watch the full Keynote video [about 13 min] on Desai Accelerator's YouTube Channel.

Thank you for your time reading this post or watching the video. Your feedback is important to me. Let me know your thoughts!

What Makes Belonging Matter?

What does the Ann Arbor [Insert your Community here] Entrepreneurial Community do together that makes belonging matter?

I live in the San Francisco Bay area and was completely disconnected from University of Michigan and the Alumni for 20+ years.

But 5 years ago I was introduced to the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship (CFE) which led to my relationship with Desai Accelerator.

So I can help answer the question from my perspective.

It's the set of Shared Experiences with others in the community that matter to me.

Belonging to the Ann Arbor Entrepreneurial community matters because I love to work with fresh new founders, their companies. I love working with Desai Accelerator, TechArb Incubator and CFE teams who help students and founders level up their entrepreneurial game. 

Realizing the Potential

The Ann Arbor Entrepreneurial Community is well established. More than a Community, it is an Ecosystem with several interdependent parts.

We know the Ecosystem has world-class assets. AND, we know the Ecosystem has abundant potential.

And that’s really the ultimate goal in nearly every endeavor: to realize the full potential.

So the critical question is:

“How can we nurture a virtuous cycle in the ecosystem to realize the untapped potential?”

As I thought about this my curiosity led me to a different domain for inspiration. I looked at growth models for businesses thinking I could leverage a model for an ecosystem.

And it didn’t take too long to find one most of us are familiar with.

Inspired by a different domain

What if we used Amazon’s flywheel to drive a thriving entrepreneurial community?

The flywheel effect is battle tested over decades.  And no one can dispute Amazon is thriving and on an epic run.

What immediately struck me about Amazon's flywheel was the interdependency of separate actors.

Draw your attention to the most important element of their flywheel: Customer Experience

Every activity and decision is aligned to Customer Experience - the catalyst of growth. You can read more about the flywheel in this wonderful article on Medium.

Flywheel Model for a Startup Community

Disclaimer: This is a rough first draft of a model based from a different domain. I’m not claiming it’s correct – I simply offer it up as a way to think about the Community as an Ecosystem with several interdependent elements.

Since we're talking about a community, let's change customer experience to "Community Experience" -- the alignment force for the whole model.

Following the Amazon flywheel as a guide, the first element of the flywheel is Quality Startups. The Ann Arbor ecosystem is already brimming with founders and their startups.

With more Quality Startups, we’ll see more Investors, Accelerators, and Education programs.

I knew each of these created an impact, but the one that surprised me were the Accelerators. You can learn more by reading this research on Regional Supply of Venture Capital and this research on the Accelerator Phenomenon.

With more quality Investors, Accelerators and Education, you get more Knowledge, Experience and Capital in the ecosystem and churned back into the Community Experience.

As the ecosystem thrives, you have more founders, startups, investors, accelerators, education and therefore more opportunities develop.

The increased number of opportunities attracts more entrepreneurs into the community. And the virtuous cycle continues.

Let’s double click on Community Experience.

Community Experience is THE KEY Driver

The Community Experience is the key driver of a thriving ecosystem.

Given you already have a Community and Ecosystem, then why is Ann Arbor [or your community] the BEST place to:

START a company? What is it about the community, the culture that makes it a great place to start a company?

INVEST in a startup? What is it about the community, the culture that makes it a great place to invest in a company?

Thinking through those questions should prime you for the most important question.

What do you want the Community Experience to be?

To answer that question, I believe you need to have a conversation within the community about the following three critical factors of the Community Experience: Core Values, Culture, and Shared Experiences.

Three Critical Elements of Community Experience

Core Values

First - start with Core Values.

To me, core values represent the fulcrum point in the decision making process.

Defining these values, or first principles, empowers the community with a compass directing great decision making.

What are the Core Values of the Community? What are the principles by which decisions are made?

Culture

What culture do we want? If values are for decision making, then culture is the expression of those values.

Put simply, Culture is how we treat one another. I suppose this is the one place I’ll offer a bit of Silicon Valley perspective.

In Bay Area we have a “pay it forward” culture. The culture tends toward transparency, sharing and predisposition to help.My experience is the Ann Arbor culture is similar.

What are the other defining characteristics of the Ann Arbor culture?

Shared Experiences

Shared experiences the things we do together that make belonging to the community matter.

Shared Experiences are the way in which we can experience the values and culture of the community.

Demo Days are a wonderful example of an event pulling together a diverse group of people with a common interest in entrepreneurship

What activities promote a shared experience with people in and outside of the Community?

Build The Flywheel

Unique Assets

The questions above are the foundation. Communities have many assets to leverage: Founders, Mentors, Investors, Businesses, Institutions, Accelerators.

Beyond these assets – what are the UNIQUE ASSETS to leverage? What are the UNFAIR ADVANTAGES of the Ann Arbor entrepreneurial ecosystem [Or for your Community]?

You must identify and you put the assets to work. 

Idle assets are a Liability.

Onboarding Students

Focus on students ”onboarding” into entrepreneurship. Ann Arbor is a University town and students are the renewable natural resource for entrepreneurship.

Examine every way in which a student onboards into entrepreneurship. It’s the same type of examination of customers onboarding with a new product or service. 

What are the venues in which students can learn about entrepreneurship? What are the programs, events, clubs, communities at work to attract and retain new entrepreneurs?

It is essential to create a beautiful onboarding experience for students considering entrepreneurship. It is a critical factor of the community experience.

Note: My talk was focused on the Ann Arbor Startup Community with the University of Michigan as the main institution. I suggested the U of M students are the lifeblood of the thriving community. Your community may have a different "renewable resource" for which you should build a beautiful onboarding experience.

Community Discussion

Next - Hold a series of community discussions about values and culture of the Community Experience you want to create. 

Do not try to "boil the ocean" all at once. Instead start with small groups and build the groups over time. Keep it up and soon you'll be hosting real Town Halls inclusive of the entire community.

Do not try to "boil the ocean" all at once. Instead start with small groups and build the groups over time. Keep it up and soon you'll be hosting real Town Halls inclusive of the entire community.

I've learned from experience the critical factor is to create and maintain a safe environment for people to be vulnerable and share their ideas and experiences of the values and culture. Be intentional about creating that safe environment.

Shared Experiences

And finally - Design and build new shared experiences with intent to reinforce your Community Experience, it's core values and culture.

How does your Demo Day or Hackathon align with your Community Experience today? What can you do to improve alignment?

Consider shared experiences attractive to not only the Community but ”outsiders” as well.

It’s not about competing with other regions for founders and investors. It’s about working with other communities to "grow the whole pie".

Spin the Flywheel

Using the flywheel concept is just one of many possible ways to help better understand and leverage interdependencies in an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

By aligning the actors and incentives to the Community Experience we can create a virtuous cycle that helps grow and empower the community and ecosystem.

I'm interested in your feedback and thoughts on this model and what has worked for you!

Thanks for reading!

Keynote by Pete Giordano: Desai Accelerator Demo Day 2017

I originally produced this content for a presentation I gave to students from the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship during their yearly Bay Area Trek. Excited to share with a wider audience.

Relationships Fuel Entrepreneurship

As an entrepreneur you need relationships to help you achieve your dreams. Further more, Entrepreneurs are intentional about relationships.

Let's run an experiment ...

• Choose a person who knows you best (Parent, sibling, best friend)
• Ask this person to describe you with 5 adjectives (Don't Look!)
• List 5 of your closest relationships (school, social, work) - People you spend the most time with.
• For each of these people, write 3 adjectives that describe them (energetic, thoughtful, resilient)

Now compare the words used to describe you and the words you used to describe the 5 closest people to you. What similarities can you find among the descriptions written about you and what you wrote about your other relationships?

The beauty of this experiment is how it causes you to think about how your close relationships impact who you are and how you behave.  

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”.
-- Jim Rohn 

Here’s how this might look for me ;-)

It Takes a Team to Win!

Entrepreneurs always win with a team. A team of co-founders, employees, advisors, mentors, investors, etc. Winning with a team is a glorious feeling. We all want to be on a winning team, don’t we?
A team that: 

• challenges, guides, supports, and teaches us.
• is resilient, adapts to challenges, matures and evolves together.
• transcends changes in your role, experience, companies you work for or start yourself.
• you are a part of as long as you like.
• has fun together!

Don't you want to be on a team like that!?

The Board of You

Of course the “team” is really your “Personal Board of Directors”. I have one, it’s called “The Board of Pete”. The Board of Pete started about 7 years ago. I collected several of my closest colleagues and friends. People I trust implicitly, familiar with my strengths and “opportunities for growth”, and most importantly, willing and able to hold up a mirror for me to see into my blindspots.

I thought having a personal board of directors was my original idea. Little did I know that Jim Collins talked about a personal board of directors as early as 1996. Recently the CFO of Square published her thoughts on the matter.

Today, The Board of Pete helps steward my goals and dreams, find opportunities to work with new people and build new skills, test ideas, and often – a true reflection of who I am.

Most of the time I reach out to individual members of the board for advice, much like you would with any mentor. Occasionally I’ll send a message or update to the group. I see them socially as a group as well.

Intentional Relationships

You might be asking: “Isn’t he talking about mentors?”

I think what separates JaBoM (just a bunch of mentors) from a Board of You is your board members are Intentional Relationships.

Maybe you think an Intentional Relationship is just another way of saying the relationship is manufactured, sterile, vacant of “chemistry”. ;-)

Here is another way to think about it: Intentionality filters who you invite to your board, not necessarily your personal and professional relationships.

3 Qualities of an Intentional Relationship

Put another way, an Intentional Relationship is a relationship with these qualities:

• Previous shared experiences

• Active relationship

• Meaningful roles

Shared Experience

It’s what you do together that makes the relationship matter. Having a shared experience with a potential board member is essential because the experience provides context. You’ve been through something together. You won or lost together. You learned together. You probably saw each other at your bests and not-so-bests. You know how each other work under pressure and how you like to have fun.

Active Relationship

You’ve kept up with the potential board member. They come to mind when you read an article you’d like to share. Perhaps you meet for an occasional coffee. You send / receive an occasional email / txt. You share some of the same values. There is some chemistry underlying the friendship.

Meaningful Roles

In the same way diversity strengthens and improves a team’s resilience, diversity of roles on your board is essential. Each of your board members should have an insight about you - they should see something in you perhaps hidden to others. Each board member coaches you in a specific area.

Identifying Potential Board Members

Let’s use these qualities to identify potential board members for the Board of You!

1. List the projects / teams / jobs you’ve held in the last 3 years
2. For each of those projects / jobs, list 3 key people with whom you’ve worked most closely.
   E.g. Teammates, project leaders, bosses, people you’ve managed, etc
3. Of those, with whom did you have chemistry, a spark of a deeper relationship? (Circle Them!)
4. Review the key areas in which you would like to improve, be coached.

Which candidates could play one or more of the coaching roles you identified? Which roles?

Keep in mind other areas in which people can help you, and therefore filter and match for potential board members.

• Growth opportunities (where you need to improve)
• Skills you want to develop in the next 1-2 years
• Projects you want to work on in the next 1-2 years
• Roles / jobs you want in the 2-3 years

From this exercise you should arrive at least 2 or 3 potential board members.

Prioritizing Board Members

The obvious next step is to prioritize the potential board members. This is pretty straightforward.

1. List the 2 or 3 people from the previous Exercise
2. Prioritize your opportunities for coaching / guidance
3. Match coaching priorities to your potential board members

This is an example for matching on skill prioritization. Remember, there are other ways to go about matching up potential board members:

growth opportunities, skill development, projects / experience / roles you want to work on in the next 1-2 years.

Building the Board of You

Now that you’ve identified 1 or 2 or more potential board members, it’s time to found your first board.

If you’ve only identified one person - that’s fine, it's all you need to get started.

If you did not identify anyone, that’s ok too. There are strategies to create new intentional relationships.

Founding your board the first time requires a bit more work. However, each iteration is easier because you benefit from previous work and structure you put in place. Indeed, in the spirit of “Lean Startup”: prototype, test, and iterate.

In my experience I start the process by best matching the areas in which I want to be coached to a potential board member.
Then I invite them to the Board of Pete!

Inviting Potential Board Members

I don’t think there is any right or wrong way to invite people to your board. The key is clarity of your desired outcome and articulating the role you are asking them to play. 

Be authentic, honest, vulnerable, humble.

Being vulnerable with someone can build trust very quickly. The authenticity and humility of knowing what you want to improve and asking someone for help is a powerful element in building the relationship.

Here is an example:

“Hi JoAnn - I’m putting together a group of people I admire, respect and can learn from. I call it  the “Board of Pete”. I was thinking back to our time on the project and about how effective a communicator your are. It’s something I want to work on as well. I was wondering if you are interested in meeting from time to time to share some of your practices….”

If you have more than one potential board member, start by reaching out to the one you feel the deeper connection. It will make it easier to talk through your “pitch” to have them join the group.

It may help to invite the potential board member to coffee or a meal to discuss in person.

Managing the Board of You

As your career evolves so do your interests and opportunities for growth.

Therefore, the Board of You must evolve as well.

Just as a CEO must manage her company’s board of directors, you must manage and cultivate your board. You must actively engage each member and the group as a whole in order for this to work and work well. I like to think of the whole process as a cycle. Continuously nurturing, evaluating and evolving the Board of You.

Let's take a closer look at the rest of the cycle.

Nurturing your Board

Nurturing is an active role … it requires effort on your part as well as the board members. 
At it’s best your board can act as a lifeline - you can reach out to the group or individuals at a moment’s notice to ask advice. 

Too often people on boards are neglected for too long. The boards (and sometimes the relationships) wither and dissolve. The worst case is reaching out to your board during a critical time and your board members don’t have enough vested interest to engage you in a meaningful way.

The simplest way to nurture your board is to keep in touch on a periodic basis.  Here are some ideas of how to nurture your board and members:

• Periodic updates in person or via email or txt
• Unsolicited help with your board member’s efforts
• 1-on-1 meetings (coffee, a meal, skype)
• Periodic group outings -- fun and educational - more shared experiences

Evaluate your Board

As chairperson of your board you must evaluate your needs and overall fit with the board members. Identifying gaps on your board and developing new board members is an ongoing process.

One of the more exciting situations is identifying skills, opportunities and experiences you desire.

Create New Shared Experiences

My favorite way of developing additional skills, experiences and opportunities is by identifying and working with a person with those skills and experiences.

I look for people I already have a relationship with or have access to and then pitch a project to work on together. I find a way to create a shared experience with that person. It’s this hands-on approach to learning I love the most. 

Through these shared experiences you increase the potential for an active relationship. You can identify a role she can play on your Board. I’ve made a career of finding the intersection of skills & experiences I want AND people I want to learn from AND a market need or business solution. I call this a “Principle-Led Career” and it deserves a separate blog post.

Marching orders for you: Observe who you admire and consider their qualities, skills, personality, etc driving that admiration and respect. Then find and create opportunities to collaborate in some way with that person. This is the first step of creating a shared experience – the first part of an intentional relationship.

Evolve your Board

As you accumulate more shared experiences and invest in active relationships, you build more candidates for your Board.

Routinely ask yourself: "where do I need more coaching" -- Be intentional and select specific people to help fill gaps on your board.  

Barring some falling out or dissolution of the relationship, there is no need to remove (fire) a Board member. The natural ebb and flow of your career means that you might gravitate toward the more active relationships. Just remember to reach out to the whole Board with a periodic update. The cycle continues - back to nurturing the board! 

In Summary!

1. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with
2. Focus on what excites you in terms of skills and growth opportunities
3. Build Intentional Relationships
4. Actively nurture your relationships to match your evolving needs
5. Enjoy a meaningful and impactful career!

72-hour Rule - Act on What you've Learned

I learned the power of the 72-hour rule from my boss, Carl Eschenbach, at VMware (now at Sequoia Capital).

To ingrain what you’ve learned today commit to three activities within the next three days. I find it helpful to document in writing. Some go further and publish their commitments to the world -- social pressure to follow up on your commitments is a powerful force.

What steps will you take to build the Board of You!?

Thank you for reading and Please let me know your thoughts!

Resources

• Forget Mentors: Employ a Personal Board of Directors, Priscilla Claman, October 20, 2010, https://hbr.org/2010/10/forget-mentors-employ-a-person
• Looking Out for Number One, Inc., by Jim Collins, June 1996, http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/looking-out.html
• How to Assemble Your Own Personal Board of Directors, At a recent conference, Square CFO Sarah Friar described four of the best kinds of mentors, http://www.inc.com/laura-montini/how-to-assemble-your-own-personal-board-of-directors.html

Yes, it takes a team to win. But not just any team.

A team that wins together!

You've heard or maybe said: "we need to align the team". 

But what parts need alignment and to what? How do you connect what you want to do to the people on the team? How do you imbue agency into the team so they are connected to the outcomes?

3 Fundamental Alignments

I've built teams in several startups and Fortune 500 companies in Product Management, Product Marketing, Engineering, Sales Engineering, Finance, HR, Customer Service, Professional Services and more. 

I believe these teams improved at each turn by selecting people using
4 key personality traits and aligning the team in three fundamental areas:
Values, Vision, and Execution. In that order.

Each fundamental alignment stacks on one another, like layers of foundation.

If a single layer is weak, the entire company is compromised.

I use the word "shared" to emphasize that if any of these three areas are held by anything less than everyone on the startup team, impact and efficacy is neutered. 

How do you ensure "shared" nature of these elements?

Through shared experiences. As founder you must create opportunities for the entire startup team to experience each element together.

Keep reading for more info about how to think about each alignment and how to drive shared experiences. 

Shared Values - Building Blocks of Culture

To me, values are the building blocks of culture. Culture is the "way of life" in your startup. Culture is expressed through ordinary behavior, habits, attitudes and moral beliefs. I.e. How people treat each other and make decisions. Culture constantly evolves in your startup. Values are the principles guiding you. Values play an enormous role in your decision process and behavior.

Having shared values in your organization is about getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats (Thanks Jim Collins!).

As founder you must first understand your own core values. There are lots of great tools and frameworks out there. Personally I think 4 to 6 core values is plenty. Mine personal values are: humility, respect, curiosity, creativity and collaboration.

Secondly, identify potential team members by finding those that share 80%+ of your values. Selecting on values is really hard. Unless you have first-hand knowledge of the person you will rely on asking them questions and talking to other people they've worked with. 

If you know the person from previous experience then carefully review your past shared experiences. Focus specifically on how you each approached contentious decisions. What were your positions and interests? What guided your decision and theirs. Finding common ground here is really valuable.

Once you have your core team established with two or three members you switch into cultural cultivation. As founder you must to constantly evaluate and fill cultural gaps to continuously evolve your organizations character, personality, and culture.

I cannot overstate the importance of this fundamental alignment. In fact one study across 200 startups showed companies with culture fit do not fail. 

This is so important I'm going to write a separate blog post on shared values to cover it in depth.

Shared Vision - The "Why"

In a nutshell vision is your "Why", your world view - the future you want to create and live in.

So much has been written about this topic - specifically on importance of a strong vision. However if your vision doesn't jive with your values there will be cognitive dissonance among anyone you attempt to attract to your world view. 

If you're a solo founder I recommend starting with Simon Sinek's "Start with Why". Then review / adjust your core values as necessary. Then write a strong vision statement that jives with your core values. 

If you have co-founders I recommend each of you perform this exercise alone. Present your vision statements to one another and hash out the differences until you are 100% on the same page.  Go back and test that the vision statement jives with your company's shared values.  Rinse and Repeat as necessary.

A well crafted vision statement is the entry point to your founding story. Your founding story provides the background of "the why" and attracts people that share your world view. Once you hook 'em with your vision statement, you reel 'em in with your founding story. 

Added benefit: a strong vision statement is incredibly resilient to changes in your business or "pivots". You're underlying business strategy should be able to evolve, change and grow without impacting your vision statement.  Consider Google's vision statement: "organize all of the data in the world and make it accessible for everyone in a useful way". See, resilient. 

Don't try to align or tweak anything in your startup until you've nailed your "why" and vision statement and can articulate it effortlessly. 

Shared Execution - The Day to Day Mission

Too many people confuse mission and vision. 

Vision is the future you want to create. Mission is what you do each day to make that future a reality. I.e. Execution.

Shared Mission is each team member executing according to well-known priorities.

I use two tools to create shared mission, i.e. shared execution.

First I use a Business Model Canvas. This is literally my business-plan-on-a-page. It should be resilient to minor shifts in strategy. However if you make a material change in any one of the boxes, you are at the beginning of a "pivot".

As founder, lead your team through the shared experience of hashing out the canvas together.

The shared experience creates two important assets:

1. The team has an shared and explicit understanding of the business model and what needs to get done. 
2. The canvas an objective blueprint. It distills all of the ideas, positions, objections, etc into single shareable reference. Think of how an architect's blueprint is used as an objective means to achieve a successful outcome. That's the business model canvas. 

Once you've got a good start on the canvas lead your team through the shared experience of Defining Success.

Defining Success is communicating the three most important priorities within the week (or month, quarter, etc). For example Success for this month might be the following priorities (with Role):

1. Launch seed funding round of $50K (CEO)
2. Increase site visitors by additional 1K / week (Marketing)
3. Release v 0.3 of product (Product)

Once you Define Success, lead a shared experience with each team (Role) hashing out top three priorities to support the respective goal. For example you might decide the following CEO priorities to achieve "Launch seed funding round of $50K":

1. Complete Wefunder.com profile and note
2. Complete funding announcement email
3. Communicate funding opportunity through email and social channels 

Drive this process with the team until you hit the right level of granularity for the individual or team.

This shared experience creates empathy and understanding of who is responsible for which outcomes. The process also yields another objective document that can be shared transparently with the team, investors, advisors, etc.

This system works well with small startup teams of <5. For larger teams you'll need to break out the teams separately. 

I'm a geek in this area so I read Larry Bossidy's "Execution" to cope with growth at global companies like Accenture and VMware. For startups I recommend E-Myth. 

Obviously this isn't a "one and done" type scenario. Execution alignment is an essential ongoing practice. Once you lead the team through the first session, it gets easier with each iteration.

Summing Up

I've shared this because it works for me, and based on feedback, it works for my teams. There is no shortage of advice out there. As Founder you must seek information and make your own decisions. 

If you don't have time - then just start with Shared Core Values. I obsess over the values piece because it makes everything else so much easier. 

72 Hour Rule

Now is your chance - in the next 72 hours commit to executing three activities to drive these alignments within your organization. Carl Eschenbach, My former boss and wonderful leader at VMware (and now Sequoia Capital), always challenged us with the 72-hour rule. Challenge yourself!

Entrepreneurship is about searching for a repeatable and scalable business model.  It's about iteration. Get started on these alignments. Test. Iterate. Improve.

Please let me know your thoughts!

Wanted to share a quick list of tips I sent to my sister Mary this past weekend. She's a burgeoning photographer with a great portfolio. Check out her Etsy site too. 

I've done a fair bit of travel photography and picked up a bunch of tips from travel photo pros like Rick Sammon, Frederick Van Johnson, Karen Hutton, and Martin Bailey.

When my sister reached out to me this week in prep for our family trip to Italy this spring, I was prepped to share!

So here's my quick list of packing tips - PLEASE comment and share your tips as well!

1) Less is More

Really slim down on all of the gear. One of the reasons I like my Lumix GX and lenses - so small and light.

The rest of your gear supports your camera. Small mirrorless cameras provide a "packing annuity" shrinking the size and weight of almost all of the rest of your gear. You'll see what I mean as you read the tips.

• Backup camera = mobile phone or a small compact camera
• Ditch all of the other non-essentials stuff like lens blowers, etc
• Ditch GoPro and audio equipment unless you are making a movie

2) Theft is a REAL threat

• The fewer the logos and shiny objects the better.
• Use camera bags that don't look like camera bags (see below)

• My friends often use black electrical tape to cover logos on their cameras.

3) Two Bags - one for travel, one for walk around

On trains, planes, and automobiles, I carry my gear, laptop and all things electronic in my ThinkTank ShapeShifter (had this for 4+ years now - amazing)

For walk around - Use a bag that doesn't scream "I have expensive camera gear inside!". 2nd bag should flat pack into your luggage or main gear bag. Here are a couple of examples or something like this.

4) Pack minimum number of high-quality lenses

High quality zoom lenses are good for travel.

Mirrorless lenses are light and tiny. Sm - ALL.

The following are my "holy trinity" of lenses. Each of these lenses fits in the palm of my hand.

Midrange Zoom for walk around / street shooting / landscape

Usually on my camera 75-85% of the time

Full frame focal length: 24-70mm f2.8

What I carry: Lumix 12-35mm f2.8 (24-70mm equivalent)

Prime for interior, low light shots, some portraits

Next most used lens! Prime but super versatile!

Full frame focal length: 30 to 50mm f1.8

What I carry: Lumix 20mm f1.7 (40mm equivalent)

Wide Zoom for architecture and landscape

Full frame focal length: 14-28mm f4

What I carry: Lumix 7-14mm (14-28mm equivalent)

Nice to haves...

If you think you'll take a lot of portraits, throw a Long Prime in your bag: 85mm f1.8.

Here is my Olympus 45mm f1.8 -- see, tiny.

Lens adapters like this one let me fit more common Canon EOS lenses onto my Lumix mirrorless camera.

5) Smallest / Lightest tripod and ball head

Mirrorless cameras are smaller and lighter so too are the tripods that support them.

I ALWAYS travel with my Joby Gorilla Pod with a arca-swiss ball head

50% of the time I also take my main tripod, MeFoto Roadtrip

6) Consider a wrist strap instead of a shoulder strap

Nothing screams "I AM A TOURIST" like a crazy camera strap. Instead I use this wrist strap from Peak Design.

Shooting small lightweight mirrorless cameras makes wrist straps a better choice.

7) Pack 3 to 4 extra batteries

Number them so you know which is charged, depleted.

Use a label maker to label the batts with your email and phone number.

8) Pack 4 or 5 memory cards

Same deal here: number and label these.

If you bring multiple cameras, then also label the card to match the camera.

9) USB3 or Thunderbolt SSD Hard Drive

For backing up photos, duh. 1TB preferred. Minimum 500GB.

SSD preferred -- no moving parts to damage during travel.

10) Extremely useful odds and ends

Ok ok - I'm cheating. It's a catch-all category. But seriously everything here is mighty useful and takes up little space and weight.

Small LED flashlight for night photos. 

Get one with a red filter to preserve night vision. I always carry this Gerber Recon Multicolor Flashlight.

Mobile phone tripod mount adapter.

For time lapse shots with your phone. Get one with a threads to fit your tripod.

I attach an arca-swiss plate to mine that way I can pop it into the tripod in a second.

Small micro-fiber cloth(s) 

Ridonkulously useful for cleaning your gear. Easily washable and dry fast.

Finally, pack an Allen wrench (hex key) for your tripod / ball head

PLEASE SHARE your packing tips and comments with me! Good traveling!

2016 Blew by so Fast I Feel Like it Never Started

September 1st? Holy cow! I thought it was Feb!

November 30th? What the What! I thought it was Feb!

Every year I take stock and summarize the year as part of planning process. A quick look in the rear view mirror to appreciate where I've been and what I've accomplished.

I use this introspection to help frame up how to tackle the things most important to me.

The Year of Not Employment

2016 was meant to be a recovery year.

After leaving my last startup, The Arcanum in late 2015, I looked forward to whole year with no "work" and vast green field ahead of me. 

But I'm not really wired that way. I am wired for two states: ON at full power, or OFF.

Self-aware, I tempered my eager-beaveritude with reality of what had to happen in 2016 for myself and my family. 

I'm, proud to say that I successfully avoided being busy and instead remained focused on a few priorities. But more about that below.

Rose, Bud, Thorn

My good friend Dan Kimball intro'd me to the idea of "Rose, Bud, Thorn". It is a simple framework and exercise we use for family dinner conversation, a succinct method to describe your day into three buckets:

• Rose = What went GREAT today
• Bud = What to look forward to tomorrow
• Thorn = What was a problem today

Clearly the framework is useful in a variety of ways. Why not apply the exercise to 2016?

Roses of 2016

• Being a Family Man.
  Cooking, school, field trips, date night. I did it all!  
• Finished a major house remodel.
  Worked daily hand-in-hand with the contractors. I am the son of an electrician and spent much of my youth on job sites. I love to know how things are put together and work. Being involved at such a deep level was incredibly rewarding!
• Being a Maker.
  After building a new shop, I built an 80's Arcade with a Raspberry Pi, a Magic Mirror, a ping-pong paddle pedestal and lots more!

Buds of 2016

• Advising Startups. 
  Outside of hands on making, working directly with a couple of startups and their founders was fun, fascinating and incredibly rewarding. Most of this work happened through new relationships with Desai Accelerator and TechArb Incubator in Ann Arbor.
• Working with Student Entrepreneurs.
  I doubled-down on my contribution to the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship (UM CFE) and led a workshop in Ann Arbor last spring.
• Staying Active.
  Despite injuries (see below). I remained active and spent a lot of time recovering. My year-end numbers prove it.
  2015: Swim ~86 miles, Run/Hike ~196 miles
  2016: Swim ~67 miles (-22% yoy), Run/Hike ~69 miles (-65% yoy)
  I'm looking forward to building on this recovery year in 2017.

Thorns of 2016

• Injuries. Injuries. Injuries.
  Three chronic tendonitis problems really hampered physical activity. I spent a lot of time in PT, icing, practicing strengthening exercises. 
• Insufficient focus on mindfulness.
  How's that for meta? My morning journaling and meditation routine faltered. I felt the impact.
• Not enough writing. Dang. Just writing this simple post took way too long. My lack of journaling definitely impacted my lack of writing. Posting on social media doesn't count! 

Enough Being a History Major

No more looking in the rear view mirror. 

I am going to build systems around the following in 2017 - the best year yet!

And yes, these are in order of priority.

Health. I am transitioning to a Paleo-ish diet and I've felt better in the last few months than I have in years. Practical Paleo has been my primary tool to build out a new system.

Fitness. Focusing on mobility and flexibility. I've already committed to yoga 1x week. Also looking into Gymnastic Bodies.

Family. Whole food dinners (Paleo inspired) and 1-on-1 trips with my 3 kids.

Creative. Build stuff that will challenge me. I have an idea for an app, want to build a new-fangled photo frame, and build a custom device that integrate voice interfaces like Alexa and Google Voice. 

Work. Partner with the UM CFE to build a new experiential "retreat" for the 2017 CFE WUST . Also looking for opportunities to work more closely with founders and their startups to help them achieve their goals.

What are your systems for 2017?

Let me know your thoughts!

Well I just got back from a week long trip with the extended family. This is the type of trip where you realize that spotty and slow Internet is worse than no Internet. The spottiness taunts you. The latency teases you. 

"You're on vacation!"

I was able to spend a lot of much-needed time with my kids and wife Bridget. I was able to play. Be one of the kids. Disconnect and connect all at the same time. 

As you may know, I'm an Apprentice within The Arcanum -- a company I Co-Founded with Trey Ratcliff and Curtis Simmons. Robin Griggs Wood is my Master - an amazing woman with a passion for mentoring others and lifelong learning. 

In addition to family time, I spent a guilty amount of time trying out techniques for compositing / photo manipulation -- part of my goals within my Foundation Sphere at The Arcanum. 

Trying and Failing

I found most of the learning and practicing very challenging. I definitely failed more times than I tried. For example, I’m still bewildered on how to make multiple images match color and tonal values when compositing. I’m definitely getting better at using blend modes to achieve different effects. I’ve also been better about selecting objects and cutting them out using selection tools, refine edge and masks. 

Areas I still need to work on:

• Inspiration / Ideation: What to make? Inspiration to find things I like, that interests me enough to keep trying. 
• Matching perspective. I’m finding it difficult to make composited images look like they belong together in space
• Matching color and tonal values. I did learn quite a bit about color and I’ve tried a couple of techniques to match color. One interesting one was to make a stamped visible layer and then use the “Average” filter to create an average color. Another way would be to use a Gaussian Blur because that retains the general color and tone.

Brain Plasticity

 We had our first day at home yesterday and started the normal post-family-trip-travel-recovery-process. I was able to sneak in a little more practice and was BLOWN AWAY that I started using some techniques automagically!! I literally stopped myself and said, “Holy Cow, how on earth did I know to do ⌘-click the image to select it, then ⌘-J to copy the selected item to a new layer and ⌥- delete to fill the selection with the foreground color of black”. It really did happen automatically. I struggled to understand this sequence of steps and tried it two-dozen times just a few days ago. Then a few days later, some small bundle of neurons in my brain stretched their little star-arms and finally made connections and created a memory. Brains are plastic and are a bit like a muscle. If you challenge yourself, you'll just get better and better. Then one day the proverbial light bulb just pops on and you know can perform feats that were impossible just a few days ago. 

I was speaking to a friend of mine and he asked me:  “What does Happiness feel like?" And then he said, "What about Joy? What does that feel like?"

I didn't answer right away. Mostly because I had no idea what the answer was. Then it hit me...I associated joy with an experience. I couldn't associate Joy = <Some Emotion>. I could only remember experience when I felt what I considered Joy. 

This made me wonder about and appreciate the utter importance of experiences in life. 

Experiences are owned by the participants. Period. 100% undiluted experience. 

Emotions have been cataloged into words, labels that anyone and everyone can use any way they choose to describe how they feel. Often these labels are used to an extreme, diluting the very essence of what they are intended to convey. 

In this way, emotion labels such as “happiness” and “joy” can lose their significance. After all, It’s the same word used for countless experiences of others.. 

Most choose this route anyway.

They pick one or more well-known labels and fire away. This route is efficient. They dilute their experience into a common label. They speak the label. Then the other person hears the label and this conjures up their memories of their own experiences. This takes less time, but the full impact isn’t realized. Only a faint shadow is conveyed. 

Ultimately I chose to describe joy another way….by sharing a story of a personal experience. By describing “joy” this way, the story reinforces the memory and experience for me — I actually felt “joy” while I was telling the story. Perhaps the story ignited a memory for my friend. Perhaps that memory of an experience created a moment of “joy” for my friend. 

I don’t think a label can do that.

Do yourself and your friends and family a favor. Eschew labels in favor of stories whenever possible. You'll have more fun and you'll FEEL the experience. 

Yum! More Dog Food!

Our mission at The Arcanum is to build a Magical Learning Experience that is the most personal, fun and effective way to Level Up your skills.

I mentioned this in a previous post, but I'll recap.

I am so dedicated to our brand promise that I want to feel the experience, not just read and write about it.

So I became a customer of The Arcanum, the service Trey Ratcliff, Curtis Simmons and I are building with the help of dozens of world-class Mentors and Artists. Then I got "invited" to Apprentice with the phenomenal Robin Griggs Wood and her amazing Mastery Cohort chock full of wonderfully passionate and motivated people!

What better way to ensure we're building the best possible learning experience!?

When Learning Feels Like Falling in Love

The Learning Experience in The Arcanum is magical in part because of the "Ah ha" moments that happen again and again as you move along your personal learning path. Some Members of The Arcanum say it's like falling in love.

Like an "Epic Win", these magical moments are shocking, exhilarating, and quite addicting as you realize that you're skills keep improving beyond what you thought was possible.

The Ingredients of a Magical Learning Experience

If you take a step back, you'll find there are three main ingredients to this Magical Learning Experience. I talk about each ingredient in more detail below.

1. Mentors
2. Spheres & Levels
3. Community 

From Masters to Mentors

You can read our website and learn that we are inspired by the time-tested and proven Master and Apprentice learning method.

One key upgrade we made to this ancient learning method is to Level Up Masters to Mentors.

The insight is that masters teach along their path and Mentors guide you along your path. 

Within The Arcanum, your Master mentors and guides you along mutually agreed upon goal for your current learning path. This is all done within the context of your current Sphere. I describe Spheres below, so keep reading!

My future-self has written a blog post on the importance of Mentorship in the Learning Process. If you'd like to satisfy your interest right away, check out this video interview with Robin Griggs Wood and Ron Clifford, two incredibly talented artists and Mentors within The Arcanum. 

Spheres & Levels

Within The Arcanum a Sphere represents one cycle of learning. The cycle of learning happens through the completion of 10 Levels within each Sphere.  

So Sphere 0 and Sphere 1, the "Foundation Spheres", contain Levels 0-9 and 10-19, respectively. Sphere 2 is the first "Focus Sphere" and it contains Levels 20-29. Sphere 3 contains Levels 30-39, and so on. 

This might sound like your traditional education routine, the higher the number, the more advanced, etc, etc.  But not so within The Arcanum. This where the learning experience within The Arcanum is *completely and utterly different* from every other education offering out there.

How's that you ask?

Each Sphere is Like a Story...Written by the Master and Apprentice

Each Sphere has a story-like structure:

1. Introduction
2. Rising Action
3. Climax
4. Denouement

The Introduction. At the beginning of each Sphere the Master (Mentor, remember ;-) and Apprentice discuss and and agree to SMART Goals for the Apprentice. These goals set the "Quest" for the Sphere. Remember, Apprentices take responsibility for their learning. 

Rising Action. After agreeing to one or two SMART goals, the Level Challenges begin. I describe Levels below in more detail. Suffice it to say that the Levels create forward momentum and increase specific activities oriented around your goals. Masters within The Arcanum play their strongest role in this part of the story and the next one, the Climax!

Climax. Level Challenges tailored for you by your Master have prepared you for this moment where you must share your best work with your Master. During this event, you must be vulnerable and open yourself to constructive critique. At it's best both Master and Apprentice Level Up quite a bit by this point. 

Denouement. The Level Challenges can be well, challenging. And taxing. But this is good stress, the kind of stress that when you're in the middle of it and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel you realize you're moving toward an "Epic Win". In this part of the story, it's time to rest a bit and reflect. Many Members post their learnings within the Community at this point. It is within this synthesis, reflection, and introspection that the learning "happens". 

And this cycle continues about 2x per Sphere. 

So in this way, completing more Spheres is mostly about completing more cycles of goal setting and achievement. 

Unlike other education systems that impress a framework on you, The Arcanum puts you in the position of responsibility for your learning and your learning outcomes. 

Levels: One of the Secret Ingredients that Make The Arcanum Personal

As I mentioned before, there are 10 Levels per Sphere. Continuing the analogy that a Sphere is like a story with a Quest, then the Levels are the stepping stones along the path to complete the quest. The Levels create momentum that keep me moving forward with my skill development.

This is another key area where The Arcanum Learning Experience is so utterly personal.  

Within The Arcanum, The Leveling Guide provides Masters and Apprentices with a malleable framework of challenges.  Masters tailor the Level Challenges to each particular Apprentice. These personalized challenges help the Apprentice build specific skills they need achieve their Quest for the Sphere (the goals the agreed to at the outset of the Sphere).

In short, The Levels within Spheres are NOT a rigid curriculum that someone else or organization curated for me. On the contrary, each Level is a stepping stone on my own unique learning path. 

An amazing outcome is that although I'm in the same "Cohort" as my fellow Apprentices, with the same Leveling Guides, my experience within each Level of The Arcanum is completely different from any other Apprentice

I choose my goal and completing each Level gets me closer to my goal -- Not someone else's idea of what I need to learn. 

That is just one of the ways The Arcanum is so personal.

Community Makes Learning Fun and Effective

Everything I've talked about above would simply not be possible without the support of an incredibly passionate Community. The Members of The Arcanum are bound together through  the Level Challenges within each Sphere. Indeed, many of the Levels can only be completed by working together.

Within The Arcanum we're building a Community of Service, where the Members "lean in" toward each other. Always looking for opportunities to help one another Level Up. People are building real relationships and in doing so, a support network. Support networks are critical in stressful times when we're pushing at our maximum to Level Up.  

Suffice it to say for this post, that Community is nothing short of a social and emotional bond that keeps you moving forward. 

Community is a topic that deserves it's own blog post. Yes, my future-self has already written it. 

Stay Tuned!

Wrapping it Up

I think this way of learning is more personal, fun and creates outcomes that are much more meaningful to me.

I now realize that I experience "Bad Stress" - the kind that makes you feel sick - when I am under pressure to complete someone else's curriculum or idea of what I should learn.

On the contrary, I experience "Good Stress" - the kind that makes you improve - when I am completing challenges that help me complete my goals.

I have a feeling the same is true for a lot of others. I guess that's why I am building The Arcanum in the first place. 

If you'd like another perspective from the "inside" read Greig Houghton's blog post about his experience within The Arcanum. Thanks to Greig for posting that!

I'll leave you with this image: The Arcanum is like a personal trainer that coaches you through challenges that build skills that help you reach your goals. All the while a wonderful and supportive community cheers you along the way.

If you want to learn more about The Arcanum, please visit the website www.TheArcanum.com or our Facebook or G+ pages.  

Thanks for taking the time to read and please let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Eating my Own Dogfood

In my last post, The Arcanum Begins, I talked about the company I cofounded this year. Well, I am also a customer. Yes I am Apprenticing within the Master Cohort of Robin Griggs Wood. More on that later. I've decided to chronicle and share my experience so you can have a better understanding and appreciation for this type of learning environment.

What's Level 3?

Within The Arcanum, we're taking a different approach to learning. Making it as personal as possible. Levels are grouped into Spheres. Today, there are 10 Levels per Sphere. The Levels are NOT curriculum. They are stepping stones toward your goal. I'm going to keep the mystery there for right now ;-) Check back in a week or so and I'll post more info about the Magical Learning Experience within The Arcanum!

Within The Arcanum, Level 3 is the first real opportunity to engage the community as part of the Leveling process. Don’t get me wrong, Levels 1 and 2 have been chock full of engagement, discussion, feedback and relationship building up to this point. But Level 3 is where the "rubber meets the road" so to speak.

Goal for Level 3

The challenge for Level 3 is seek assistance from your Apprentices within your Cohort, for help narrowing down from 10 to 5 images that will then be critiqued in Level 4. In addition, you must provide constructive feedback to your Fellow Apprentices. Here's my Level 3 Album.

The experience is a ton of fun! I raced through the Albums posted for Peer Review, so excited to see so many wonderful works. It was a challenge to _slow down_ and provide thoughtful, constructive, authentic feedback. While “Nice photo” or "Love it" is, well, nice....that isn't appropriate or enough for this experience. If that's all you put in, you won't get anything valuable in return.

The secondary purpose of this Level is to learn how to properly post albums, ask and give help through a peer review, learn to set up a G+ Hangout as part of the peer review. So yes - there is a fair amount of ”Learning The Arcanum” as well as Leveling up my skills.

Possible Down-side of Self-Paced Learning?

I got a late start into my Cohort and most or all of the Apprentices have already moved past Level 3. So I didn’t feel my comments and peer review were very helpful in terms helping them narrow down for their critique session. However, I do hope that my feedback was still worth something, another perspective perhaps? 

Insight for Level 3

For this reason It’s critical to “Keep Up” with the group for these initial Levels. Otherwise you’re not taking advantage of the early phase of building essential relationships that create a network of support you need to move forward in The Arcanum.

Best Practice

Robin Griggs Wood is a world-class Mentor. One simple data point is that she *requires* us to spell out our specific goal for each image in any portfolio that which we ask for feedback and critique. She models brilliant behavior by always seeking to understand the goal of each work prior to offering any counsel. This exercise was incredible. Having to write the goal forced me to think about what images I wanted to include. Indeed, I wound up with a different set for the Peer Review because I was actually able to articulate the purpose behind the work. Check out the album and the comments here. 

Energy and Inspiration

Holy COW!!! We completed the Peer Review and I was totally psyched to _go back and re-process_ some of my photos. I had a vision of how to improve them. Goosebumps took over my body. Will be working on the images this weekend!

Here's the recording of our Peer Review Hangout with @Christina Lihani and @Jacob Surland 
Link to my Level 3 Album is also attached..Definitely check out the comments for Goals and feedback from my Fellow Apprentices

Can’t wait for my Level 4 Critique!!

#LEV3 #Level3

http://thearcanum.com/

The Universe works in mysterious ways. Call me a romantic, but I love the fact that the day I decide I have to write a blog post is exactly 1 year after my last post. 

Sad. True.

But I'm back. 

I've been busy since last year: Working on the Strategic Plan for our School District, founding a Maker Space for our School District, and working with two long time friends and colleagues founding The Arcanum. 

It's about time I shared my story about it. 

Mentor

My first job was in "education". At 13 years old (1983) I made $20/hr tutoring kids of all ages (many were older) Math and Science.

Regardless of any role I've held, I've always loved sharing any knowledge and experiences I've had with others. 

I learned very early on that mentoring others was one of the best ways to learn. I've never stopped looking for those opportunities. 

How does this fit in? Read on....

Re-Creative

A few years ago I realized I had a gaping hole in my life. While working a demanding job at VMware and raising 3 kids, I had stopped doing something I loved: creating art. 

For me photography was the perfect intersection of three keen interests of mine: art, science of photography and of course cool gadgets.

So I started shooting and quickly realized I wanted to experiment with HDR so of course I turned to YouTube and other sites to learn more. As part of my research I learned that a long time good friend and colleague, Trey Ratcliff, had become a world famous photographer, specializing in HDR.  I reached out to Trey and we got reconnected.

Plateau

As I tried to improve my skills in photography I realized that the videos weren’t helping as much as I’d hoped because I wasn’t sure what I specifically was doing wrong. Sure I could learn a skill here or there. The things I thought I didn't know. My art was plateauing. I had no constructive feedback.

Perspective

So I joined my local Photo Club and started participating in education meetings as well as competitions. After several competitions, my work was *objectively* getting better — real critics told me so ;-) I’m an engineer so I like to know how things work and I realized that the competition was the forcing function, but the real *LEARNING* was happening during the critiques during the competition because of 2 reasons:

1. Coaching from a different perspective
2. Reflecting on my goals and process to create the art

Insight

It hit me like a ton of bricks:  If you don’t know what’s keeping you from Leveling Up, you won’t Level Up. That’s why the greatest of the great athletes, executives, artists, educators, etc all have coaches and mentors to help the see and remove the obstacles that stand in their way.

Even now - It gives me goosebumps just thinking about realizing that insight. There was NO way I was going to Level Up my skills solely by watching passive videos, taking a one-time workshop, even joining a class where I rigidly follow someone else's curriculum.

Opportunity

Shortly after, Trey and I got together with a mutual friend, Curtis Simmons. Curtis, Trey and I all worked together in Hotlanta back in 1995 and Curtis is also the COO of Trey's Stuck in Customs travel blog.

I bent their ears about my frustration as a “student” and the lack of expert constructive criticism and challenges to help me improve my skills. At the same time, Trey explained his frustration as a “teacher” in that he’s accumulated so much experience and expertise but he’s been limited to sharing that via really passive methods like video tutorials or unscalable methods like an in person photo workshops. 

Then Trey told me his idea of The Arcanum - a place where great experts can share their expertise with learners who are motivated to Level Up their skills. We had a frenzied discussion and decided to work together on the idea and create a completely new way to learn online: Melding modern tech with the time-tested Master & Apprentice method of learning.

"Opportunity of a lifetime" doesn't do it justice. This was my calling. 

Startup

In November, we stood up a really simple website and our marketing video to test the market for other people that believed there could be a better way to Level Up their skills.  

Trey made a single post on social media announcing The Arcanum and in a few short days, we were OVERWHELMED with other learners who completely agreed with us. 

We received THOUSANDS of applications from people in 90 countries that wanted to join The Arcanum. 

WOW! Other people wanted a better way to Level Up as well. 

We knew we were on to something so we began to develop a real application that would enable the Masters (the experts) to search and select Apprentices (learners) to help them Level Up their skills.

We started a Beta in April and the made the service Generally Available on June 25.

Today

We are humbled and honored by the thousands of passionate people from 115 countries that have submitted applications to The Arcanum.

We started slowly with one new Master at a time. Now dozens of world-class Masters are leading Cohorts of 20+ Apprentices. And people are learning. A lot. 

I am so thrilled about every single person that believes in us and has joined us on this journey. 

I spend 3-5 hours a day communicating with our customers. What do I get in return? The best feeling in the world when I read posts from people like Tricia Booker, Rose Fredricksen, and Tanya Wallis.

If you want a sneak peak at what's happening at The Arcanum, check out our Facebook and Google+ Pages.

http://www.facebook.com/TheArcanum

http://plus.google.com/+TheArcanum

Thanks for reading and please leave comments!

Permalink

]]>The Arcanum BeginsPhotographyPeter GiordanoThu, 08 Aug 2013 06:55:00 +0000https://www.petergiordano.com/blog-posts/2013/7/8/chicken-ranch-beach-creek-footbridge517b126fe4b0d5eb59d9a72f:518482c8e4b053753a915a73:51da6dc7e4b01c133f38e22b

On this last day of a really great 4th of July Holiday weekend, we visited some friends with a place in Inverness California (Close to Pt. Reyes Station). 

We spent the day on Chicken Ranch Beach exploring, paddle boarding and kayaking. 

I made this photograph of the footbridge while standing in the little seasonal creek. The creek winds it way to Tomales Bay, chock full of crabs, minnows, and newts.

PhotoGeek Stuff:

Made with my Olympus OM-D E-M5 1/100s @ f/8, ISO 200, Lumix G Vario 7-14mm/F4.0 @ 7mm. Lightroom and Photoshop. 

This one of my first outings with the really wide lens, so I tried doing some perspective corrections in Photoshop, but I'm still getting the hang of it.

This is my first Father's Day without my Father.

After fighting hard all of his life, he finally rested on December 27, 2012. Anthony Peter Giordano was almost 73 years young. 

I've always been proud of my Dad. Even as his health waned he exuded strength, will and passion. And my pride for him grew immensely.  

My Father and Mother worked so hard to provide my brother Anthony, sister Mary and I with an environment that surrounded us with family, love, and fun. Mom and Dad never stopped treating us like children -- I mean this in the best way possible…even as adults they worked hard to guide us, please us, protect us, teach us, and keep us loved, in the warm embrace of our family. Their generosity knew no bounds. Even when I lived 3000 miles away, I always felt like I was home.

My Dad set the best example of how to be a man, husband and father. 

To honor my Dad on this Father's Day, I'm sharing a letter I wrote and read to him during one of my visits to see him at the end of last year.

You Taught us to Be Careful. 

Dad, you always tell all of us to be "Be Careful", whether you are leaving us after visiting or if we are leaving you and Mom after a visit. For most of my life I took this sentiment as a caution, to be careful, to watch and be thoughtful of my surroundings. But I've come to understand that when you say "Be Careful" you are also asking us to be Care - Full, or "Full of Care", to treat others like we would like to be treated, to put ourselves in those of others and better understand and appreciate the other person's perspective and expectations. To care deeply for other people and their point of view. You are the best example of someone who is full of care for your family, friends, and everyone else you meet. Because of you, we are better at being Care-Full with our family, friends and colleagues at work. You've taught us how to put others first, ahead of ourselves. You lead by example.

You Taught us to Put Family First.

Though you are ill now, you still put Mom and your children first. Your thoughts are filled with what should be done to make sure everyone else is taken care of. We will always take care of each other, and the three of us will take care of you and Mom. And together, we'll get through all of life's challenges. On top of this, you carry an immense amount of pride in your family. You share stories about us with family and friends, almost to the point of embarrassment. That pride you carry is so dear and so deep, it fills us with pride and more importantly confidence - enabling us to care for our own families and be proud of them as well. When we tell stories and brag about our own kids, I always remember how you would tell stories about us to family, friends, even people at work. I now understand how good it feels to be proud of your children. 

You Taught us to Work Smart and Hard.

I love that you taught us how to work at a young age. I love telling stories about going to work with you and Anthony. You pushed our limits and taught us that without sincere effort, we wouldn't reach our goals. You taught us how to appreciate what we earn in exchange for our effort. You taught us to always Do the Right Thing and to always Do Things Right. Because of you, I feel a great sense of pride about my childhood and I carry that pride into my own work…it is a sincere source of confidence for me. I think about you every day at work when I ask myself: "What would Dad do?"

You Created a Legacy. 

Dad - hopefully you can tell that we are so very proud of you. You have always been there for us, and have never let any of us down. You don't let anything stop you from doing what you wanted to do, setting the best example of how to live a life to its fullest extent. You taught us how to live our lives by caring for others, always doing the right thing, working hard for our goals, and celebrating our accomplishments. 

Dad, you have taught me how to be a man, a father, and a husband - and that's the most important thing a Dad can do. 

And because of that, this great legacy of yours will live on in us, in our children, in their children, and so on. Forever. 

We Love You Dad. Happy Father's Day.

Our puppy, Coco (AKA Coco G), has also been soaking up the sun.

Deciding to get a dog with three young kids was definitely a "family decision". A year and half later, we couldn't imagine life without Coco. I absolutely feel like she is the 4th kid (But she thinks she's #1).​

​

I love gadgets. Let me say that again. I LOVE gadgets. I wish I could try more of them before I buy any of them.  Tied-down demo models of new gadgets at big box stores never provide a really satisfying experience, especially with store rep after store rep interloping on the "getting to know you" stage of a burgeoning human-gadget relationship. So I was relatively excited when I entered Terminal 2 at SFO and saw the kiosks to try out a Google Chromebook. We were on a family trip on our way to Lake Geneva, WI for some good Midwestern time at the lake. It was about 9:45 am, 10 minutes to boarding. I swept up my 2 year old boy Gavin and said, "let's go see something cool".

Every gate in T2 at SFO had someone from Google redirecting people to a centralized bar where the Chromebooks were. I went straight to the bar a started playing with a Chromebook. Then Rush, one of the Google reps, told me that I could TAKE THE CHROMEBOOK WITH ME! That's right, a seriously innovative  trial program that allows passengers on select routes to take a Chromebook on their flight and drop it off at the arrival gate at their destination city. Now this is the penultimate "try-before-you-buy" program, the ultimate being able to take the gadget home with you for a week. But wait! There's more! Google arranged it so you can access GoGo Inflight WiFi on your flight for free while using the Chromebook! Leave it to Google to innovate around the retail experience at an airport by lending the chromebooks to passengers for a flight.

Test Flight Sign Up

Great marketing with people at each gate, directing folks to Gate 51 within T2 to pick up the Chromebook. Signing up for the program was relatively painless. The few minutes of registration (name, address, email, credit card swipe!) is offset by the Chromebook just flat out working. Nothing to configure, no settings to adjust. Simply log into my Google account on the login screen.

Waiting for "Ding"

As we waited for the cabin door to shut signaling our departure, I started thinking about what I was going to do with the Chromebook once that beautiful "ding" happens at 10,000 feet, allowing roughly 150 people to fire up their gadgets for the remaining 3 hrs of flight. The anticipation continued to build until I felt like a starved lion ready to pounce on prey, eyeing the Chromebook in it's very trial-friendly slipcase. 10,000 ft. DING!

Stick-time on the Chromebook

I lifted the lid and the Chromebook came alive instantly. I laughed a little to myself, "No wonder they call it 'sleep' or 'hibernation'" - PCs take forever to shake off the warm coziness of having their lid shut. Not the Chromebook. This thing was like a jack-in-the-box. No drive to spin up. Barely an OS to wake up from sleep or hibernation. The Chromebook doesn't sleep or hibernates. It cat naps - ready to spring into action at a moments notice. I had signed into my Google account at the gate, so no need to re-enter credentials. Here are some of the things I noticed:

• Form factor of the device was great. A truly "internet-optimized" keyboard is decently sized and laid out. Great size for a airplane tray table..still had room for my coffee.
• Windows shortcuts like ctrl-c, v, x work very well - great for productivity
• Touch pad had good sensitivity, but buttons were a little off...I kept pressing for a left mouse click, but the "right mouse" menu would appear...needed to play around to figure out the right spot to click the touch pad
• Screen is plenty bright and clear
• GoGo Inflight WiFi was decent, but definitely not snappy. I opened three tabs at once, and it took a bit of time for the Chromebook to catch up
• SD card + USB makes me happy
• Sound quality was decent, but a little tinny at times
• Video was ok...surprising well on buffering content on YouTube at 30,000 ft

Unexpected Delights

• THERE IS NO DESKTOP. I caught myself a couple of times trying to get to the desktop. I never realized how getting rid of a desktop was so Feng Shui. Forget about cleaning up the desktop - just GET RID OF IT!
• Working solely in a browser without having to alt-tab or command-tab through apps was dreamy
• Putting Chromebook into a "cat nap" with open browser pages and resuming automagically when opening the lid
• Realizing I could toss this thing out of the plane at 30,000 ft, pick up another one when I land, and pick up where I left off. Just like in the youtube video
• After 2 hours of continuous use, the battery meter hadn't drained a single pixel

Disappointing Kinks

The test flight was not without a few minor issues:

• Attaching Google docs in a gmail message is a hassle at best. Why can't i attach a google doc from a gmail message? Chrome exposes this problem...users need to share a google doc instead of attaching it which means the recipient needs to create a gmail account (not likely for my general contractor doing work at the house).
• Netflix is INCOMPATIBLE with the Chromebook! Holy Bajeezes! Are you kidding me! Tried watching a Netflix streaming video and got the error message:

Instant Watching System Compatibility

Dear Chromebook user,

Streaming is not currently supported on your device. We're working with Google to ensure that Chromebook users can instantly watch TV shows and movies from Netflix. More details will be announced in coming months.

Upon Arrival

When departing the airplane, handing over the Chromebook couldn't have been simpler. The Google kiosk was literally at the opening of the jetway, no need to go out of my way at all to drop off the device. They really made it painless to try out the gadget.

The Chromebook defies being classified as a laptop, notebook, or PC.  Funny enough, I inadvertently never used those terms in this post to describe the Chromebook. The Chromebook is NOT A NOTEBOOK. It is a new category of computing devices. I wonder if "chromebook" will become a synecdoche like xerox.

Using the chromebook for a couple of hours really underscores how much computing I do in the cloud...I accessed all of my favorite apps like Evernote (LOVE IT), DropBox, Twitter, Wordpress (of course), google docs, corporate email -- what else do I need? I wasn't able to try the corporate VPN and accessing internal corp SaaS apps. I'll give that a whirl on the return trip maybe.

Final Thoughts

Working within VMware's End User Computing business unit definitely makes me appreciate the Chromebook that much more. Our vision is to provide a user-centric experience for accessing your data through any app, where ever you are. The adoption of iPads has certainly impacted our vision and I think the Chromebook has an opportunity as well. The

iPad is on track to drive 2% of all internet traffic in North America by end of year

It will be interesting to see how the Chromebook fares in terms of not only driving internet traffic, but also sales vs. netbooks.

I'm looking forward to another test flight of the Chromebook - hopefully on the trip back to SFO.

Please comment and let me know your thoughts!

- PG

On July 1 2011, after nearly 8 years at VMware and 5 1/2 years working within the VMware Technical Services organization, I transitioned to a new role looking after Product Marketing on the VMware Horizon team. I learned a few lessons during this past week that I thought I would share.

First things first - I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet...having spent time on a team with some of the most gifted individuals I've ever worked with, I am fortunate enough to join another team of equally gifted athletes.

Change Company vs. Change Role

Most career changes involve moving from one company to the next, often into a more senior position, but within the same type of role. My transition was from a Technical Services role to a Product Marketing role. While many of the "change company" issues are mitigated when transitioning within the same company, there are several "change role" issues that I met head on.

Let it Go

This is the super-critical point that makes all of the difference. Remaining within the same company means that the transition time is really close to zero. In a fast paced and fast growing company like VMware, you don't get to take a few weeks off to recharge. You've really got to build the transition into the time between your last day in your old role and the first day in your new role. If you're lucky, you get a weekend in between those two dates. I was extremely fortunate that my team, peers and management were so supportive, I was able to build a transition plan, work with the necessary folks on transition, and get thinking about the new role almost immediately. The organizations within VMware acted in accordance with Best Practices and my experience in the transition was about as good as it can get. Ultimately, I realized that everything was in expert hands, and I was able to let go.

Lesson: Once the decision around a transition is communicated, the company, the organization, management and peers need to get behind the change and LET THE PERSON MOVE ON. As the person transitioning, you've got to let go too.

Communicate and Press the Flesh

You would think that transitioning roles within the same company means that you can go light on the communications because people will "find out through normal processes". I took a different approach and have been meeting with people on the team I am transitioning to as well as meeting with several people I routinely worked with in the previous role. Why? Because of 2 super important reasons. First, obviously you've got to meet the new people that are stakeholders in your new role: the people that you'll be working with, depending on, providing services, etc. Secondly, because you need to develop an "outside-in" view of the role you're entering. What do other people think the role is about? What do people think it is important for you to get done quickly? Don't take the job description at face value. Definitely don't fall prey to the trap of "well I work in this company so I kind of know what the role is". Take the little time you have to meet with as many people as possible to forge the beginning of new relationships. Figure out what the real role is, who the real stakeholders are, and what the real impact of your work will be. Meeting with people that you already know gives you a chance to reset the context of your working relationship in your new role. I've found that doing this simple thing has created a support system. People with whom I worked in my previous role, are able to provide advice, insight, and context to the work I have to do in the new role.

Lesson: Treat the transition as if you did change companies and meet meet with as many people as possible. Don't forget to meet with the people you know, reset the context with them and develop an outside-in view of your new role.

Rest the Brain

I've been fortunate that in every new role I've been in, I've been surrounded by exceptionally gifted, knowledgeable, and whip smart people. Before my transition last week, I was in the same general role for about 3 years. During that amount of time in the same role, you become very efficient. You have a stable network of people. You know the processes, procedures. You have tools, templates, etc that enable high productivity. After years in a role, there are few unknowns.

Contrast that with the first week of a new job. In the first week in a new role, almost everything is an unknown. Furthermore, don't know how many more unknowns you have to uncover. You learn something in every meeting, every email you're copied on, every discussion you have. As the number of discussions you have scales up, so does the to-do list. After a week, you've got a pile of notes, emails, and documents. And more unknowns. You work hard to connect the dots between what you're learning. Ultimately, I scheduled time to review the pile. I spent some time building a framework that enabled me to "bucket" new issues, projects, emergencies, into the proper place. Without making this time to synthesize, starting week #2 would be a lot harder.

Lesson: Your Brain is a muscle - it gets a lot of exercise when you transition to a new role. Set aside time to rest your brain by reviewing what you're learning to synthesize, get context and stay focused on priorities.

I am now officially in the 3rd new role of my nearly 8 years at VMware, and I am absolutely loving it! I am so fortunate to work within a company that embraces the movement of its people around the organization. I think the "talent migration" at the company keeps it small, connected, a ton of fun, and absolutely filled with opportunity.

Let me know what you think!

- PG