TheRealTomRose Blog

Publishing a New Blog Post (Part 2/2)

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:06:00 -0500

This post is the second part of a two part series explaining how to create a blog. If you haven’t already created a blog at www.blogger.com, then scroll down to my earlier post and start there. Once you have created your blog, start here to publish your first real post.

(1) Go to www.blogger.com and log in using your username and password from when you created your blog.

(2) Click “New Post” to begin writing a new post.

(3) Write a title for your blog post. Make it short and understandable by any reader. Think like a newspaper.

(4) Enter your post text into the big white box under the title. You can use the buttons on top of the white box to add special elements to your post. The most common buttons that I use are the “link” button, which says “link” and the “picture” button which looks like a blue/green blob and is immediately next to the “link” button. When you type your post, try to keep it short: 250 words is a good maximum. I like to include a picture with all of my posts, but they are, of course, optional. (See picture from step 3)

(5) When you are finished, click “publish post” to complete the post and make it live. (See picture from step 3)

(6) Click “View Post” to go to your blog and see your first post.

(7) Bask in the glory of your first, REAL, blog post. You’re not done yet, however. Scroll down to the bottom of your post, and right after the text that you write, you’ll see an icon that looks like an M next to a pencil. Click on the M to start sending an email.

(8) Enter your name, your email, your friend’s email, the word verification, and a quick message. In your message, you should ask your friend to visit your blog and leave a comment. You don’t need to include a link to your blog. That will be done automatically. Here is the text that I used on my first post: “Miro, check out my first blog post. Would you be so kind as to read it and leave me a comment? Thanks, T”.

(9) Okay, now you’re officially on your way. You have created content and driven people to repeat it. If you repeat this process of generating content once a week, soon you’ll create a vibrant community of readers. Once you have created enough content, people will start to find you on the internet automatically, but that comes later. For now, just focus on sending content to people you know.

p.s. Wondering where to go to read your blog? Remember the “URL” that you chose when you were creating your blog. Well, you can go to your blog by opening a web browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. Type “http://myblogurl.blogspot.com”, and press enter. (Make sure you replace “myblogurl” with the URL you chose when making your blog. If you don’t remember what this is, you can always find it out by going to www.blogger.com, logging in, and clicking “View Blog”. Then read your URL off the top of the browser window.

How to create a blog in 20 minutes (Part 1/2)

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 18:39:00 -0500

This is the presentation we gave at Duncaster, a retirement community, about the value of blogging. Following the presentation is a set of how-to instructions for starting a blog.

Duncaster blogging

View more presentations from therealtomrose.

Start here to create your own blog in 20 minutes:

(1) Go to www.blogger.com and click “Get Started”. (I assume you already have an email address. If not, instead click on “Don’t Have a Google Account? Get Started”)

(2) Fill out the form and click “Continue”. (Enter your email address, password, name, and birthday. Enter the word you see in the word verification and check the “acceptance of terms” box.)

(3) Choose a title for your blog and a blog URL. Then click “Continue”. (The Blog URL is where people will go on the internet to find your blog. If possible, make the name and the URL similar.)

(4) Choose a starter template and click “Continue”. (You can always change this later. I recommend starting with the “Simple” template.)

(5) Your blog has now been created. Click “Start Blogging” to create your first post.

(6) Let’s keep things simple for the first post. In the title field type “Hello World!”. In the large text box, type “This is the first post of my blog!”. Click “Publish Post” to publish your first post.

(7) Click “View Post” to go to your blog and see your first post. This is live on the internet for everyone to see.

(8) That’s it, you have created a blog! Now take a break, you deserve it. [See my next post to learn how to create your first real entry.] (http://blog.therealtomrose.com/post/2900218598/publishing-a-new-blog-post-part-2-2)

Building a Deck in 5 days

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 12:48:00 -0500

Every time you drink a beer on my parents’ deck, you save a penguin from choking to death on a plastic bag! That’s right, we built the deck out of Trex, a plastic, wood composite. Interesting fact: Trex is the largest consumer of post-consumer plastic grocery bags. Trex also doesn’t warp, doesn’t splinter, and doesn’t need to be maintained at all! The only thing Trex doesn’t do is write power point slide decks.

When I tell people I built a deck at my parent’s house over the holidays, the most common response is, “well that must be one hell of a power point presentation.” In B-school parlance, “deck” means multimedia-slide-show.

The project came out great and I can’t wait to visit my parents again in the spring so I can do some outdoor grilling.

In case you’re wondering, the final bill, including labor and waste removal, came to $7800. Almost half of that was the Trex decking which comes in at a whopping $30 per 12ft board!! You mess up a cut? That’s worse than setting a $20 bill on fire.

Here’s a slide show of the finished product:

I’d like to thank the following people for their extraordinary help on the project:

Travis Sorensen, for making the project a reality by signing on to help even before he know what he was getting himself into. Travis also provided building expertise, tools, planning, and was my gateway to Carlos y Oscar.

Tom Rose Sr, for providing countless tools and for cleaning the project site regularly (and financing).

Kathy Kircher, for cooking for the team, providing moral support, and of course financing.

Carlos Chadha-Kaye and Stephanie Chadha-Kaye for clutch support. Carlos showed up in the final hour to keep my spirits alive after the sun had gone down.

Carlos and Oscar, two hired hands that powered through a ton of work with super human strength and stamina, including a 15hr work day on the final day to meet our deadline.

Tracy Rose, for being lonely up in Boston without me while I ran around in Maryland for 5 extra days doing man things.

A Simple Way to Minimize the Length of Flight Delays

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:42:38 -0500

My flight is delayed and I just watched jetBlue board and launch a later flight headed to the same destination. I will explain this injustice and an easy solution.

Sending an on-time regularly scheduled flight before a delayed flight to the same destination seems like an obvious injustice. Any first grader could explain why this is unfair. There is a basic cultural norm that says, people waiting longer should get to go first. jetBlue knows this.

So, why the cultural gaffe on jetBlue’s part? The blame actually lies with the FAA. jetBlue is making a calculated management decision.

The FAA keeps track of and publishes data about delayed flights for all major airlines. Any flight delayed more than 30 minutes (I think it’s 30) is counted and the percentage of total delayed flights is published. Obviously, fewer delayed flights is preferable.

So jetBlue is faced with a tough choice in my case. They must either (1) Send out two flights, each delayed by 1 hour, or (2) send out one flight delayed by 2 hours and one flight on-time. The cultural norm of first-come-first-served suggests option 1, while optimizing the FAA stats suggests option number 2 (since option number 2 results in just 1 delayed flight instead of 2).

Do you see how the FAA has jetBlue’s nuts in a vice here? The incentives are all wrong. I propose a simple solution (suggested to me by Arnie Barnett at MIT Sloan). Instead of counting all delayed minutes over 30 as equal, make longer delays count more. How can you do this? Simple, count the square of delayed minutes over 30.

If you do this, you quickly see that airlines are incentivized to get planes out the door as soon as possible as well as in the order that they are scheduled. Airlines would start to minimize the length of delays in addition to the number of delays.

Who is better off with the new formula for reporting delays: airlines, passengers, and the FAA. Airlines will prefer the new system because it allows them to follow cultural norms. Passengers will benefit because they will be screwed less by strange delay accounting. Finally, the FAA will be better off because people will respect their accounting more.

Photography by: jetblueflickr

Riding the Amtrak Acela to 30 Rock

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:41:36 -0400

I’m on my way over to 30 Rock to meet with some folks at NBC. (I wish I could say it was regarding TheMBAShow.) I’m headed up there to do some surprise consulting for Rockefeller Consulting a new social media company that consults with Fortune 500 companies on social technology integration. It turns out that surprise consulting requests happen A LOT in business school. This will tentatively be my 9th engagement in the last 13 months. (Nothing is finalized yet.)

Anyway, so I’m headed over to NY on the Amtrak Acela. I am highly impressed! No one hassled me about my shoes, ID, or water bottle. No one even took a semi-revealing picture of my naughty bits for “security purposes”. This is highly civilized. One might walk into Back Bay station 5 minutes before departure and hop right on the train. Also, I’m writing this blog on my laptop, which is plugged into an AC outlet and connected to the interwebs via free wifi. I might as well be sitting on my couch at home right now, but then I wouldn’t have had access to good coffee and a breakfast sandwich from the cafe car.

The ticket price is $111 each way, which puts it significantly higher than Bolt Bus (~$20), but the difference is noticeable. Worth it, I don’t know? That depends on who’s paying. It’s faster than bolt by about an hour (3:30 vs. 4:30) and I didn’t EVER have to stand in a single line. Now that I’ve seen this, I think the Bolt experience is just a little too airport for my taste.

Photography by UrbanDKaye

Hiking Franconia Notch

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 07:09:59 -0400

Boy, did we pick the right day to hike Franconia Ridge. Apparently, every year on 9/11 a group called “Flags on the 48” flies an American flag on top of each of the 48 mountain peaks in New Hampshire that measure 4000ft or higher. The Franconia Ridge loop trail includes 4 of the 48 peaks.

Franconia ridge is arguably the nicest hike within 2-hours of Boston. The ridge trail spans 4, 4000ft mountain peaks all featuring 360 degree views of the surrounding parks. The Dartmouth Outing Club contains the definitive trip guide. It’s nestled in Franconia Notch State Park and is walking distance from several camp sites. The Franconia Ridge loop trail is about 9 miles long with a vertical climb of about 3000ft up and down. We left at at 8am and returned around 3pm making for a 7 hour round trip.

The hike is not for the faint of heart. There are several areas that require scrambling or a touch of climbing. We had to throw max up a couple of ledges, but he barely noticed. Tracy and I were feeling it by the end.

The up-hill leg is called falling waters trail and it’s plainly obvious why. You’re practically hiking in a mountain spring the whole way up with several crossings and waterfalls.

I highly recommend the hike to anyone who hasn’t been there yet. It’s a can’t miss.

The Kazakoffs get hitched! (And a boat)

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:24:00 -0400

I attended a belated wedding reception yesterday for Miro and Elizabeth Kazakoff. (Miro is an MIT Sloan 2nd year.) Just prior to the event, the three of us took a spin around the Charles River in a luxurious Cape Cod Cat Boat. Of course, we wore life jackets for the majority of the trip, but took a couple of pictures without them for posterity.

The weather was perfect; the breeze was blowing an ideal 8 knots. One thing I learned is that boarding and unboarding (word?) a boat in high heels can be quite a challenge. Congratulations to Elizabeth, who made it look easy.

Gwen and Travis followed us in a chase boat and snapped photos the whole way. I think they came out great. Here is the rest of the album:

My boat is sailing away without me?!

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:00:00 -0400

You can read all the books you want, but until a water taxi beaches itself on top of your anchor line while you’re plying with your dog on the shore, you just don’t know what to do in that situation. One of my sailing teachers used to say that sailing ability is a mixture of training and EXPERIENCE. Emphasis on the experience. Finally, I’m starting to understand what he meant

Yes. This did happen to me.

I was sitting on the beach next to the PTown light house after a quick sailing trip with my wife, aunt, uncle, cousin, cousin, and dog, Tracy, Natasha, Ken, Cora, Cali, and Max. When the water taxi pulled back out, guess what. Our boat was soon sailing with no one on board!

I did the only thing that seemed to make sense. I took off down the beach, dove in, and swam after it. It’s a good thing it wasn’t moving any faster or I wouldn’t have made it. I was barely able to grab hold of the stern and drag my self on board.

When I looked up, the entire beach was watching. At first I was touched by their empathy for my struggle. Then I realized why they were really starting. In the frenzy, my dog max decided to help out and had swam out with me. When he finally made it to the boat and I scooped him up on board, he was greeted with a round of applause from the onlookers.

I have such a great dog. Max would jump off cliff with me if I asked him to.

It’s a good thing Ken was there to help get the boat back under control, or we would have been in a pretty tight spot. Lesson learned? If you anchor your boat in the sand, keep a close eye on it.

Photography by virtualphotographers

Fast Ferry from Boston to PTown

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:11:00 -0400

On Friday, I took the “Fast Ferry” out to see some of my Family who were staying in a rented house in Provincetown. Let me just say, that when they chose the name for that ferry, they weren’t lying. That thing absolutely flies. I don’t know how fast we were moving, but when looking over the side, you can tell that we’re moving fast enough that if you fall over, it might be a while before you see your next salted pretzel. (Yes, they serve salted pretzels on the ferry.) The total trip time was about 1 hour and 30 minutes. I’ve never felt so close to great beaches.

You never know who you’ll run into on the ferry either. While getting off in Boston, i ran into HubSpot TV host Karen Rubin. Karen has recently decided that the best way to get to the beach from Boston is to jump on the fast ferry to PTown. Well there you have it. It must be true, it was said by someone who is on TV.

You can get all sorts of snacks and drinks on the way to the beach. They have a full bar, pretzels, candy bars, sodas, and hotdogs. Since the ferry leaves the Boston port at 6:30 p.m. it’s nice to be able to grab dinner (that stuff above counts as dinner) after climbing on board.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot the best part. You can bring bikes and dogs along as well! So Max, Tracy, and I snuggled the entire ride over. There’s no way a car can beat that :)

The ferry isn’t just dog friendly. It’s also gay friendly. So, if you lean that way, and you’re looking for a place to cut loose with your hubby, you’ll be in good company as soon as you set foot on board. PTown is the queen of gay, but the ferry doesn’t go quite the far. Let’s just say that the ferry is about 0.5 PTowns on the gay-o-meter. Here is a photo from ptown that you can use for comparison purposes.

Photography by sfPhotocraft and Art02169

7 Sure-Fire Ways to Protect Your Bike in Boston

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:28:00 -0400

Have a bike that doesn’t attract attention. (No fancy road bikes, ghetto stickers are a plus)
Use a U-lock (anything else is ludicrous, and a u-lock is fast)
Everything should be bolted on. (No quick release anything)
Pay attention to what you are locking on to (one of my bikes was stolen by breaking the bike rack.)
Don’t marry your bike. (When your bike is stolen, your mind set should be, “sweet, I get a new bike!”)
Buy a cheap bike. (I picked up a schwinn cutter, new for $300 at bicycle bill’s)
Shop at a good bike shop, such as Bicycle Bill (They know good tips and don’t bitch when you ask to have them swap out your quick release.)

Photography by geishaboy500

6 Steps to Getting Hired at HubSpot (As an Engineer)

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:00:00 -0400

HubSpot is a hot startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts with ~160 employees as of this writing. Many, including HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan, credit much of HubSpot’s success to its effective hiring practices. So, how does hiring work?

Hiring Mantra

Hiring at HubSpot is an extremely quantitative affair. Data is collected about candidates at every stage of the game and only the absolute best scoring candidates make the final cut. Candidates are interviewed by many people at the company including several VP level employees and often the CEO.

The Rubric for Engineers

There are 6 qualities that all Engineers must have to be offered a position

Add energy to the team
No assholes
Like the product (I.e. motivated by making a difference)
Can not be silo’d into one technology or language
Pass a short programming test
Ask questions (i.e. Why are we making this?)

The Difference Between Good and Great

I asked Yoav Shapira, the VP of Engineering at HubSpot about the hiring rubric. He said that the difference between a good engineer and a great engineer is the tendency to ask high-level questions. “Great software developers don’t just build to spec. They will ask why are we building this? Is this the best and most efficient way to do this?”

Photography by dprevite

"Process is where innovation goes to die."

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:00:00 -0400

“Process is where innovation goes to die.”

- Anonymous via Yoav Shapira

Anti-Anti- Immigration Protesters March on Boston

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:38:40 -0400

“Fight Brewer!, Fight Back!, Fight Brewer!, Fight Back!, …” was the chant of the crowd on Mass Ave. in Boston today. A group of angry protesters assembled and marched under police cover in protest of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who was visiting Boston today. According to FOXNews, Governor Brewer is in Boston for the National Governors Association Meeting. (It was the first hit on Google. I don’t read Fox News, I swear.)

I snagged a few choice photos of the crowd shaking their fists and yelling toward a crowd of almost entirely white onlookers. I wasn’t fast enough, however, to catch a Boston local whistling and giving the protesters the double-bird. I assure you, however, that he was there, basketball shorts and all.

The group of protesters was fierce, but small in comparison to the size of their police escort. The crowd was no doubt muted by the downpour. A local police officer, who had to work the protest in the rain, remarked that he was happy for the rain because it meant that the protesters would be gone faster.

The main lesson I took away from this is that if you want to have a great protest, it is absolutely essential that you have a loud, angry woman with a mega phone and a small child shouting at the top of her lungs. It just wouldn’t have been the same without her…

Castle Island in Boston

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:39:00 -0400

In South Boston, there is a fort called Fort Independence, which is open to the public most days. Towering 20 feet over Boston Harbor, Ft Independence is surrounded by grassy fields, volleyball courts, beaches, playing children, American flags, and fried food.

Tracy and I headed out to the fort because we heard that it was friendly to dogs and served soft ice cream. We had nothing to do and it was the day after independence day, so it sounded like a perfect little trip.

The area didn’t disappoint. Finding parking was a breeze and max met a friend and played on the beach instantaneously. Max’s friend even had his own ball.

Castle Island sports a huge phallus that is visible from the water. I’ve never seen it up close before, and it was pretty impressive. Above is a photo of Tracy and Max sitting next to it for perspective.

We weren’t able to go into the fort because it was closed. Maybe it was closed for the holiday.

There haven’t been many attacks on New England by sea lately, so at this point Fort Independence seems to be mostly guarding Pleasure Bay. Pleasure bay is walled off by a causeway and has a nice boat club inside.

The best part of Castle Island, however, is the ice cream and fried foods restaurant called Sullivan’s. The chicken fingers at Sullivan’s are to die for. Tracy had the fish and chips and it was “respectable”. Tracy had a maple and walnut ice cream that was “delish”.

Photography in respective order by: Fort Independence, Tom Rose, Google

What would you rate this on the embarrassing scale from 1 to 5?

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:35:36 -0400

What would you rate this on the embarrassing scale from 1 to 5?

How to Use IP Effectively in a Start-up

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:15:00 -0400

I just attended a presentation at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center led by Al Burnett, the general council for Vecna Robotics. He had some interesting things to say about intellectual property (IP) and how it could be effectively used in very young companies.

The short of it: get some patents, and do it as cheaply as possible. Don’t worry too much about the quality of the patents, the claims, or the enforceability.

Why? Well, patents are only enforceable when they come along with litigation (read: very expensive.) If you are a young company, or a small company, you lose whenever litigation occurs. The solution, therefore, is to avoid litigation entirely.

In that sense, patents are not a protection against people trying to use your technology. They are actually protection against people trying to bring suits against you. And when it comes to law suits, patents beats no-patents.

This is how they work. If a company files a suit against you for infringement on one of their patents or technologies, there is a good change that they are a competitor of yours and they are fighting you because you are stealing their market share. A patent is something you can fire back with to say, “I’m not going to lay down and take it from you.” Patents are negotiating chips that you can use to protect yourself from underhanded attacks.

Patents have some other key benefits too: (1) They make your company look more attractive to potential acquirers. They indicate that you are serious, you’re technical, and you know what you’re talking about. (2) They make you look tough when you are being evaluated by competitors. In this sense, more patents are better. A single patent will make you look casual, but several will make you look like a real player.

The end result: get patents, but get them on the cheap. They need to be written well, but not that well. A big company can tear anything apart, so don’t invest in trying to make patents bullet proof. They won’t be.

Photo by Senator Mark Warner

Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick speaks at the opening of...

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:32:00 -0500

Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick speaks at the opening of the largest global startup competition ever. Visit www.masschallenge.org for more info.

"If you aren’t the undisputed leader in your target market, then you haven’t defined your..."

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:39:00 -0500

“If you aren’t the undisputed leader in your target market, then you haven’t defined your market tightly enough.”

- Bill Aulet

The key to triggering rapid growth: find the "job to be done"

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:09:51 -0500

Startup companies all grapple with the same issue at first. They are trying to find that magical product offering and marketing effort that will be the turning point which causes revenue to skyrocket. Well, Clayton Christensen et al. have been researching successful startup companies to determine exactly what conditions typically exist right before that turning point.

What he has found is that companies typically experience a marketing breakthrough immediately prior to their phases of rapid growth. This marketing breakthrough is the discovery of the key “job to be done” that customers have for which they “hire” the product they are purchasing. This breakthrough represents a shift away from the ordinary marketing mind set.

Most companies complete their marketing segmentation in one of two ways:

Customer Segmentation - Customers are grouped by a set of observable characteristics that correlate with the value of the product to them. A commonly used customer segmentation is psychographic segmentation. For example, one psychographic segment might be wives who like expensive, luxurious handbags.
Product Segmentation - Products are grouped according to various categories along a spectrum of cost and functionality. For instance, consider Toyota’s assortment of sedans and trucks: corolla, camry, avalon, tacoma, etc.

Christensen’s latest research suggests that perhaps an alternate mind set might be useful. Instead of matching the product to the customer type or product category, match the product to the job the customer has when he or she goes looking for the product.

For example, consider a store selling milk shakes. Traditional marketing strategies would suggest matching the qualities of the milkshake to the preferences of the customer. This, however will result in the averaging of a wide variety of different preferences resulting in a vanilla, one-size-fits-none product. On the other hand, if the product is matched to the job the customer has for the product a different strategy emerges.

A little ethnographic research will reveal that one of the main reason people purchase milkshakes in the morning is so they have something interesting to do in their cars during their commute. (Believable, but hardly intuitive.) The “job” that the customer has is for something fun and entertaining to occupy him or her on the way to work. Once armed with this information, it is possible to make killer product decisions which greatly increase the value of the product to the customer. In this case, the thickness of the milkshake can be increased so that the milk shake takes longer to drink. Chunks of fruit can be added to the drink so that periodically … thunk … a fun and interesting piece of fruit flies up the straw. Also, a quick serve line can be added so that customers can get their milk shakes in a hurry when they are running late.

The point is this, if you are able to discover the “job” that your customer is hiring your product to do. You will be in a much stronger position to capitalize on improvements that can increase the value proposition of your product. If not, you run the risk of tailoring your product to fit the wrong market, or worse creating a one-size-fits-none vanilla milkshake.

"Cocaine is nothing compared to Joe Joe’s"

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:26:39 -0500

“Cocaine is nothing compared to Joe Joe’s”

- Arnie Barnet