Jed's shared items in Google Reader

The Important Field

2011-10-28T04:00:00Z

When I think of what it takes to succeed, I think of this...

2011-10-16T08:25:50Z

When I think of what it takes to succeed, I think of this image.

via yvynyl

via Buzzfeed

2011-10-12T02:46:54Z

via Buzzfeed

Goodbye, Steve.

2011-10-06T00:21:15Z

You lived. You really, really lived.



Caught

2011-10-04T13:00:00Z

The following is one of two stories we gathered during the Pitch a WTF panel at Penguicon. As I'm sure you'll come to understand, the submitter wanted both them and their company to remain anonymous. Thank you to everyone who came out and inflicted their horrors in person.

Amalie M. heard a loud clanking sound coming from the back of the factory, near the ovens, where there ought not be any clanking whatsoever. Curious, and a bit worried, she grabbed a hard-hat and headed onto the floor.

*whirrrrr*… *whoosh*… *clang*

Before she could take a step onto the floor, the factory's operator came bounding from around the corner. The old greybeard was moving faster than she'd ever seen. "Hey," he called out, nearly skidding to a stop, standing between her and the stairs to the catwalk. "What're you doing here?"

"Scheduled maintenance of the equipment," she said, stating the obvious. Her company provided all the robots and machine vision equipment for their client's automobile engine factory. "Same as every month."

"You usually come on the fifteenth," he retorted.

"It is the fifteenth."

"Oh. Damn." he said, looking lost, shaking his head. "Working here alone, just me and the robots-- I lose track of the days."

*whirrrr*… *whoosh*… *clang*

Amalie cringed. The sound rang in her ears-- so much louder now. Nothing on the floor should make a sound like that. She looked up at the operator, who slumped a bit.

"Yeah, so I bet you're wondering what that is. The furnace-to-finisher conveyor belt broke down a couple weeks ago."

A broken conveyor belt? That literally didn't sound right. "Why didn't you call for a service visit?"

He huffed. "I'm perfectly capable of fixing my own problems without racking up your billable hours."

"You aren't certified to work on the equipment," she said, her ears still ringing, "It sounds like you made it a whole lot worse!"

He took a step towards her. "I learned your system well enough. I used to build robots you know. And now--" his shoulders slumped, "-- now I just pick up after them. Give an old man a break, will you? I spend all my day forklifting pallets onto transport trucks. I just wanted to do something useful."

Amalie sighed. "Fine. I appreciate your effort, but whatever you've done, I'm probably going to have to undo and fix to spec."

The operator nodded. "Of course, of course. You don't have to worry about it. I'll even take it all offline for you. Why don't you get a coffee across the street while I do that?" He stepped forward, shooing her towards the door.

"Ok, but--"

*whirr* *whoosh*… *CLANG*

The sound stuck in her ears-- but worse, something caught the corner of her eye. Just a flash of something, beyond the machines. A metallic blur. What the hell?

She spun around the operator and dashed up the steps, ignoring the calls for her to stop. She could see the entire factory floor from the catwalk. She spotted the broken conveyor belt right away-- the last belt in the line, between the blast furnace and the pallet stacker. The conveyor belt had buckled, and the motors were exposed. She could see plenty wrong with it-- but what worried her the most was that she couldn't see what this 'fix' was. And yet, the assembly line was running. A neat pile of engine block casings were stacked at the end of the line, and a new one was rolling fresh out of the blast furnace.

The operator caught up to her, leaning heavily on the hand rail. He stood beside her as she watched. "I'll show you what someone 'not certified on the equipment' can do."

The industrial robot at the head of the broken conveyor belt clamped onto the aluminum casing, and passed it though a series of sensors and cameras, using its machine vision to ensure all dirt and foundry oil had been blasted clean. If the engine block failed inspection, it'd be put on a conveyor belt back into the blast furnace. Otherwise, it'd be put on a different belt-- the broken belt-- and sent down the line for finishing.

All the right lights flashed. The engine had passed.

"How?" she mused. The robot went still, as if in thought, while the pallet robot waited patiently.

"They're using the factory's network to run a program I wrote," the operator happily answered. "Their sensors and machine vision are working out the telemetry data."

"What telemetry data?" she asked, confused.

"The usual. Angle. Velocity. Spin."

Before Amalie could even fathom what those data points meant, the second robot hunched into an abnormal position, and signaled 'ready' back to the inspection bot--

-- which then implemented the data into a trajectory, wound up with a *whirr*, and threw the engine block overhand across the 100' gap.

*whoosh*

The receiver caught it with a *clang*, and calmly put it into the carrier, and waited for the next casing.

Amalie ran for The Big Red Button, slammed it, and shut down the entire factory floor. Silence filled the air-- and her mouth as she struggled to find the right words. She glared at the operator.

"What?" he said with a shrug, "I was able to figure out your system well enough to do that all by myself. It's been working perfectly for weeks. There's no problem."

"Oh, I think OSHA would disagree," she said, "If they found out. Which they won't. Ever."

Before she deleted the custom program from the system, Amalie took a copy of it. The program wouldn't ever be used to chuck engine blocks again-- but it would get a certain operator onto the short list the next time a specialist position opened.

What to do next

2011-10-02T09:30:00Z

This is the most important decision in your career (or even your day).

It didn't used to be. What next used to be a question answered by your boss or your clients.

With so many opportunities and so many constraints, successfully picking what to do next is your moment of highest leverage. It deserves more time and attention than most people give it.

If you're not willing to face the abyss of choice, you will almost certainly not spend enough time dancing with opportunity.

Neutrinos

2011-09-23T04:00:00Z

File Transfer

2011-09-09T04:00:00Z

Irene brings rain, flooding and end of news as we know it [#irene]

2011-08-29T06:11:47Z

I just want to be clear about what I'm writing about here. There are people out there who tell great stories--who make me think about the world in different ways and those who bring light to new and interesting information that I wouldn't have known about. These are really great journalists and they'll be around for a long time, because we will always need great storytellers and tenacious investigators.

On the other hand, you have people paid to tell me more about what's going on outside my window--reporters, if you will. These people, and the industry behind them, failed this weekend.

On June 17, 1994, the whole country was interrupted by broadcast news—us New Yorkers were watching Patrick Ewing and the Knicks in the NBA Finals. It was the beginning of the biggest media spectacle we had ever seen. All that needs to be mentioned is “White Bronco” and anyone born on the other side of the 1980’s knows what is being referred to. National news of a single celebrity wanted for murder taking cops on a slow speed chase dominated the airwaves.

Whether or not we wanted to watch, there was nothing else on. We didn’t have a choice. There were no other sources, no other feeds, so we turned out and got sucked in. Never had their been so much coverage of something that impacted the life of the average American so little. That was the day that mainstream, broadcast media decided it was in the entertainment industry—and that ratings and the “production” mattered more than the delivery of relevant information. It was the start of a 17 year journey through countless spectacle after spectacle, each preying on the worst and weakest parts of us—our capacities for fear, gawking, superficiality, and misplaced senses of righteousness. We watched trials, murders, wars, terrorism, heartbreaks, the rise and fall of D-list celebrities—all while we were told this was important. We had to pay attention because these were the events of the day, and if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be in the know. We didn’t want to “miss out”, because the news was going to tell you about the danger lurking in your house that could kill your kids—at 11 after the movie.

I never liked being force fed the national car accident of the day, and kept waiting for the cycle to break.

This weekend, we watched again—for hours and hours—expecting the news to inform us—to convey relevent facts, well researched predictions, and timely reports—about Hurricane Irene. The news broadcasted, for sure, and we watched—but we didn’t actually get informed.

I’m ready to say that this weekend was the last straw—the peak of mainstream media news coverage. It couldn’t have been more obvious that mainsteam news had completely and utterly failed. By overdramatizing the leadup and missing the real threats presented by the storm—the flooding—the news media dropped the ball on its responsibility to inform its audience.

This was the “cry wolf” moment for the news, and from here on in, we will be tuning out. Forget new business models for journalism. It’s done. Over.

Remember the covenant that the music industry used to have with the consumer? We’ll scour the earth for the best talent and give it to you so you don’t have to listen to every last wannabe band—and charge you a price for that quality filter and discovery mechanism. When the industry failed to hold up it’s end of that bargain—instead shoving crappy one-hit wonders down the channel—it was only a matter of time before technology enabled consumers to go around them, and the industry collapsed.

Seven years ago, we bemoaned the end of the mainstream media when blogs grew in popularity, but that was premature. Blogs were just a way for us to comment about the mainstream. We still needed direct sources at the core. Today, news broke of Apple’s plans to go to work on changing our TV experience—actually releasing a digital television with iOS built in. This is only the beginning. From now on, we’re going to be connecting right to direct sources ourselves—to government newsfeeds and to citizens broadcasting their own local experiences right from the scene—right to our TVs. When it becomes just as easy to click the remote and go to a direct data feed as it is to watch a talking anchor head, the middlemen selling stories are in trouble. When there was an earthquake in New York last week, it was confirmed for me immediately by other people on twitter who lived in the city, and someone who thought quickly enough to post a link directly to accurate USGS data—well before any news outlet caught anything. At the end of the day, all you have are direct sources and official reports. Those are coming online fast. Governments are getting online and making every piece of data they have into a feed. Individuals already have discoverable feeds on their own.

The same way the filesharers revolted against the music industry—we will see society’s backlash against being scared into watching. Here in NYC, we spent almost a whole 24 hours on the couch in advance of the actual arrival of the storm waiting for something to happen—waiting for the brimstone. Instead, we got hours and hours of nothing. Even the field reporters seemed frustrated by the utter lack of carnage to cover around the city. We witnessed live shot after live shot of lone reporters either covering nothing at all—the lack of rain, wind, damage—or featuring obvious acts of human stupidity. There were kayakers off Staten Island that had to be rescued, beach front residents that didn’t want to evacuate. Occasionally, you’d get the store owner torn right out of a Spike Lee movie—complete with white tank top, chest hair, and the requisite story of how he’d been in that location for 30 years and was tougher than any storm. Beaches that had flooded before in heavy rains were flooding again.

I kept thinking, “Where is the actual news?”

The real news—the information I needed, cared about, and found relevant—as it turned out, was on the internet. The internet was pretty much the only way to find out whether you had to be evacuated. I didn’t even know about all the flood zones until I found the online maps. I found power outage maps powered by Bing map APIs and real data feeds. I found enough photos of mudslides across railroad tracks and flooded stations taken by the MTA itself to make it obvious that Monday’s commute was going to be hellish for anyone who couldn’t bike or walk to work. And what were the reporters doing? Asking each other when the MTA might be willing to give a “Guesstimate” and suggesting that the PATH trains make for a good subway alternative for the few blocks where they go up 6th ave.

I also had this handy map. At any given time, I could check out where the hurricane was and what the winds were like, with no spray tanned Lee Goldberg hogging up the airwaves.

And then there were the tweets. Twitter was ablaze with a constant stream of commentary, firsthand reports, tips, discussion, and yes, irreverent humor. It was a friend on Twitter that reminded me that my mobile data feed might go out before cell service would, and that switching from Google Voice to regular SMS for texts might be a good idea. Useful! Twitter kept me informed by the right sources, in good spirits, and instilled a sense of community with others nearby—even if I couldn’t reach them by subway. What was fascinating to me was watching reporters who were friends waffle back and forth between being conveyers of news and first hand fellow experiencers of it. Where they “on duty” or just one of us?

It was quite a contrast to sitting alone—and feeling alone—on 9/11. Ten years ago, we didn’t have a community online to turn to the way we do know. In the ten years since the worst tragedy the city has ever seen—an event intended to tear our society apart—we used technology to invent more ways to bring us together than ever before.

The more and more television and major media outlets became a spectical—like a child acting out to try to get attention—the more I turned to the internet for information. The mainstream news coverage was a mockery—an over-the-top little production of community theater quality that we had seen so many times before (hilarious wind-blown reporters from hurricanes past right here). I got more useful reports from Dennis Crowley than from the “CNN guy standing in water when he could be standing on the pier right next to him,” as Jeff Jarvis pointed out.

I don’t want to take anything away from the army of reporters who toiled away for 12-24 hour stretches on location. They were doing their jobs—but even they seemed to grow weary of their own coverage. Inland flooding, as it turned out, was the real danger. Yet, these crews were originally dispatched to waterfronts—many of which typically flooded several times a year—seemingly in an effort to get some gripping footage.

Was it really a surprise to anyone that the Long Beach lifeguard house—a wood framed building on a beach—floated off its foundation? The anchor commented, “I’m worried about that, because there’s nothing holding that building together.” I was worried about the people who thought this was a good idea to put it right back where it was after the last time this happened—yup, this wasn’t the first time flood water carried this place away.

What I’m not worried about is where I’m going to get information should Eyewitness News become economically non-viable and disappear—especially if they fail to provide relevancy and keep me informed.

The outlets we trusted completely missed out on telling us what we actually should have been worried about: small, inland rivers and lakes in suburban towns north and west of the city. That’s where the worst flooding and damage occurred, and where people were taken most by surprise, like the 20 year old New Jersey girl who drowned in her car early Sunday morning after being overtaken by floodwaters from a local creek. Maybe if someone had done some thoughtful research and tried to figure out the story that wasn’t being told, warnings to residents about local inland waterways might have come earlier.

Jeff Jarvis confronts the issue head on:

“So the question the journalists should ask is how they can add value to [all the new sources of direct information]. That is the the question must ask constantly now that information can be exchanged so easily and instantly from officials to citizens, data sources to users, and witnesses to witnesses. It’s an everyday question, not just one for emergencies.

Journalists don’t add value by repeating themselves endlessly, but standing in front of random but ultimately uninformative sites where their cameras and trucks happen to be set up (or worse, in the water), by alarming more than informing people.”

He adds:

“storms of another sort are still overcoming Syria and Libya, both of which might as well not exist on supposed news networks today. Is that journalism?”

This weekend, the clear answer was “no”.

"I'm your singer..."

2011-08-18T09:41:00Z

Keith Richards tells a great story about Charlie Watts, legendary drummer for the Stones.

After a night of drinking, Mick saw Charlie asleep and yelled, "Is that my drummer? Why don't you get your arse down here?"

Richards continues, "Charlie got dressed in a Savile Row suit, tie, shoes, shaved, came down, grabbed him and went boom! Don't ever call me "your drummer" again. You're my ... singer."

No drums, no Stones.

Who's playing the drums in your shop?

Wasting time is not a waste

2011-08-13T09:51:00Z

In fact, wasting time is a key part of our lives.

Wasting time poorly is a sin, because not only are you forgoing the productivity, generosity and art that comes from work, but you're also giving up the downtime, experimentation and joy that comes from wasting time.

If you're going to waste time (and I hope you will) the least you can do is do it well.

Delivering on never

2011-08-03T09:17:00Z

I will never miss a deadline

I will never leave a typo

I will never fail to warn you about a possible pitfall

I will never charge you more than the competition

I will never violate a confidence

I will never let you down

I will never be late for a meeting

There are lots of sorts of never you can deliver to a customer. You can't deliver all of them, of course. Picking your never and sticking with it is a fabulous way to position yourself.

Lanes

2011-07-29T04:00:00Z

Google+

2011-06-29T04:00:00Z

Productize Yourself

2011-06-27T11:45:07Z

There are so many risks you can’t account for in a startup—and in the first year especially, the entrepreneur is just trying to make sure the company doesn’t blow up above all else. “Don’t die” is the most important thing you can accomplish in the early going.

That’s why hiring is so incredibly important. Bad hires can crush a company, and that doesn’t just go for full time employees either. You could easily waste tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, on consultants that don’t wind up doing productive work for the company.

So if you’re trying to work for a startup company, or a venture capital firm, or anywhere else for that matter, having a clear value proposition, transparent costs, and firm deliverables take a lot of the risk of hiring you off the table. Plus, gives you a clear sense of the market’s reaction to what you bring to bear—and whether or not it is measuring up.

When I give career advice, it basically comes down to this… “Productize yourself.”

You need to help someone understand exactly what they can use you, the product, for. What do you specifically do and how will we measure your performance. A lot of times, first time entrepreneurs may not know exactly what types of people need to get hired in each situation—so explaining to someone exactly how they should approach hiring for this position, what risks there are, different options, and how hiring you fits in, the easier you can make it.

There are too many startup newbies and consultants as well who just have basic amorphous skills like “marketing” and “business development”. That doesn’t say exactly what you can do for me—but if you constantly talk about testing customer acquisition across different channels and you tell someone what to expect in three months related to a customer acquistion plan, you’ve won half the battle. You’ve effetively communicated to someone you want to work with why they need to look for someone with your skills—and look, there you are, ripe for the hiring.

Consultants need to work on presenting more clear, upfront “packages”. Tell everyone upfront that for 10k here’s the PR plan you’ll get—as evidenced by, if nothing else, the great PR we do for ourselves.

Subconscious Information Processing

2011-06-19T11:41:31Z

It's fathers day and I thought I'd tell a story about my dad and something he taught me a long time ago. I was in middle school and I had a school project due the next day and it came up at dinner that I had not done the project. My dad made me stay up very late that night until I had completed it. And he stayed up with me. He made sure I understood two things that evening. The first one is obvious. When assigned something, you do it and you do it on time.

But the second thing he explained to me was more subtle and way more powerful. He explained that I should start working on a project as soon as it was assigned. An hour or so would do fine, he told me. He told me to come back to the project every day for at least a little bit and make progress on it slowly over time. I asked him why that was better than cramming at the very end (as I was doing during the conversation).

He explained that once your brain starts working on a problem, it doesn't stop. If you get your mind wrapped around a problem with a fair bit of time left to solve it, the brain will solve the problem subconsciously over time and one day you'll sit down to do some more work on it and the answer will be right in front of you.

I've taken that approach with every big problem I've faced ever since. I used this technique to get through high school, college, and business school. I've used this technique to develop a career in investing and technology. I've even used this technique to deal with our own parenting challenges.

I'm a big fan of subconscious information processing. It is why I have my some of my best ideas in the shower in the morning. It is why I write every morning right after I get up. I believe that while I'm sleeping, my mind is churning through the things that I'm trying to figure out and often the answers are back (like a batch job) when I wake up.

Thanks dad for that tip. It's been a big part of my playbook ever since. Happy fathers day everyone.

SvN Flashback: Product roadmaps are dangerous

2011-06-03T16:09:00Z

Jason 30 Jan 2006 — An email from a reader:

At every company I work at, I keep seeing product roadmaps with qtr by qtr delivery of different features – they typically go out 1-2 years. Of course the product roadmap is out-of-date almost immediately because knowledge is constantly gained from market analysis and interaction with customers. My question is do you guys do product roadmaps? If so, do you put times schedules around them? I’d love to see your comments on this stuff…

Our answer: Product roadmaps are dangerous. They close your eyes and often put you on the wrong path.

One of the tenets of the Getting Real process is the idea that the future should drive the future. When you let a product roadmap guide you you let the past drive the future. You’re saying “6 months ago I knew what 18 months from now would look like.” You’re saying “I’m not going to pay attention to now, I’m going to pay attention to then.” You’re saying “I should be working at the Psychic Friends Network.”

Instead of the roadmap, just look out a few weeks at a time. Work on the next most important thing. What’s the point of a long list when you can’t work on everything at once anyway? Finish what’s important now and then figure out what’s important next. One step at a time.

This doesn’t mean you can’t have ideas of where you think your product should go or future features you’d like to implement. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a vision. It does mean that you need to pay attention to reality. Reality is where you’ll find the best answers. And you’re never closer to reality than right now. The further you get from now, the less you know. And the less you know, the worse your decisions will be.

The other problem with roadmaps is the expectations game. People expect you to deliver what you say you will in 4, 5, 6 months. And what if you have a better idea? What if there’s a shift in the market that you need to address? What if what you thought wasn’t what actually happened? Any change in the roadmap nullifies the roadmap. Then the map isn’t a map at all.

Try it. It’s liberating and certainly more satisfying than following a plan you know is outdated.

Incumbents are encumbered. Encumbered with the knowledge of...

2011-05-16T17:40:00Z

Incumbents are encumbered.

Encumbered with the knowledge of business as usual. Encumbered with sunk costs and supply chains. Encumbered with employees who’ve “always done it this way”. Encumbered with shareholders to appease and market share to protect.

Incumbents say these encumbrances are competitive advantages. Barriers to entry.

But the entrants. The entrants are free to re-imagine, to reinvent, to think different. To make risky bets on unproven ideas and partners. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

And as this chart, and history, suggests the opportunity is in entrants. More so now than ever before.

Self directed effort is the best kind

2011-05-11T09:28:00Z

How much are you paying for a drill sergeant?

Perhaps you can burn 500 calories on the treadmill before you give up for the day. With a personal coach, though, you could do 700. The trainer gets you to exert more effort.

You wake up on a Monday morning after a long hard weekend of misbehaving. You have a splitting headache. You can easily call in sick, no one will freak out. But then you remember that there's a $500 bonus at stake if you keep your attendance perfect. You make the effort because someone else is bribing you.

On the playground, it's tempting to rip into a kid who stole the swing from you. You're about to whack him, but then you see your mom watching. With a great deal of effort, you walk away.

Effort's ephemeral, hard to measure and incredibly difficult to deliver on a regular basis. So we hire a trainer or a coach or a boss and give up our freedom and our upside for someone to whip us into shape. Obviously, you give up part of what you create to the trainer/coach/boss in exchange for their oversight.

Has it become a crutch? Are you addicted to a taskmaster, to someone else's to do list, to short term external rewards that sell your long-term plans short? If no one is watching, are you helpless, just a web surfing, time wasting couch potato? Who owns the extra work you do now that you're being directed?

There's an entire system organized around the idea that we're too weak to deliver effort without external rewards and punishment. If you only grow on demand, you're selling yourself short. If you're only as good as your current boss/trainer/sergeant, you've given over the most important thing you have to someone else.

The thing I care the most about: what do you do when no one is looking, what do you make when it's not an immediate part of your job... how many push ups do you do, just because you can?

The Go programming language is coming to Google App Engine

2011-05-10T19:12:00Z

By David Symonds, Nigel Tao, and Andrew Gerrand of the Go Team

The growing ranks of Go programmers will soon have another platform: Go will be the third language, after Python and Java, in which to write Google App Engine apps. This is an exciting new experimental feature of App Engine and a major milestone for Go.

Go is an open source language, initially designed at Google, that was released in November 2009 and has seen significant development since launch. It is a statically typed, compiled language with a dynamic and lightweight feel. It’s also an interesting new option for App Engine because Go apps will be compiled to native code, making Go a good choice for more CPU-intensive tasks. Plus the garbage collection and concurrency features of the language, combined with excellent libraries, make it a great fit for web apps.

As of today, the App Engine SDK for Go is available for download, and we will soon enable deployment of Go apps into the App Engine infrastructure. If you’re interested in starting early, sign up to be first through the door when we open it up to early testers. Once it proves solid, we’ll open it up to everyone, although it will remain an experimental App Engine feature for a while.

You don’t need an existing Go installation; the SDK is fully self-contained, so it’s very simple to get a local web app up and running. The SDK is a really easy way to start playing with Go.

More details can be found at the Go Programming Language blog.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor