I thought to do something a little differently today, which I hope is going to signify some changes to come. The moment I understood the basic mechanics of Economics was when it was explained to me as a Farmer’s Market. Competing sellers of the same product will try to convince customers to buy their supplies, which brings prices to a equilibrium level, and it’s easy to see what the prices are by simply strolling around the market and checking each stand out.

Anyway, Economics lesson aside, I am planning some new things for this blog on many levels. because I’m multidimensional and honestly, not always interested in writing about the same thing every time. One of the first things I have planned is a nice mix of women in business and sustainable foods. Stay tuned.

Oh yeah, and one more thing, those are Early Girl tomatoes (I think), normal sized leeks, bunch of asparagus and local honey from Small Bees Farm in Los Gatos, CA, very close to where I spent a lot of my childhood. And, jam from Prevedelli Farms, which reminds me of grad school days in Monterey.

Ironically, that’s why we –those who 18 and over and who skew towards being technographically more active on the Internet–wanted Obama in the White House in the first place.

Everybody can admire Obama’s presidential campaign, which was lauded as one of the best social media campaigns in history. His team was good at two things: raising funds and getting us excited about his campaign promises. He said Change is Possible, and yet his State of the Union speech was a re-run of last year’s spectacle.

We’ve hired Hamlet as president,. He thinks too much, claims action, and is amazing at monologues, and potentially has too many false advisors. Basically, he can’t seem to get a cohesive policy together to cure us of this nagging and dangerous malady that is our government.

We should have hired a MD instead of a JD. Preferably someone who understands Chinese medicine methodology, or in other words, somebody who knows how to treat root causes, not prescribe medications for all the symptoms of a disease.

Case in point: the budget and $50 million is set to “change education policy,” which means

increasing

government spending to push further the already over-used public services lever. The objective is to ensure that we will have a long term effective working class. In theory, it sounds fair, but the proposed method to execute lacks true substance.

It is enough to aggravate an already sore and infected budget wound even further. Government proposes to do this by creating a “carrot and stick” effect to reward schools that do better in the aggregate and pay less to schools that don’t. Great idea, Genius President. For all that flowery rhetoric, I feel like I have to go “from the beautiful pacific coast of California all the way to the end of Political Street in DC” to mentally shake the brain of the White House to do the right thing.

So let me see if I got this right. Are you proposing to reward schools in rich neighborhoods MORE money (where students already do well), and allow schools with less money to suffer? This makes me so angry–because it’s representative of a lot of Obama’s policies so far–they push money into places where it doesn’t belong because government’s aim is to placate and reach political compromise rather than to achieve real, lasting results.

I’m no expert, but at first glance, it looks to me like Obama and his Education Policy team never read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

They continue to treat effects instead of the root problems. If you want to focus money into education, focus on encouraging schools to invest in their teachers, encourage creativity, and offer avenues for teachers to get more training and be better teachers. People who don’t belong as teachers will get psychologically squeezed as the field becomes professionally competitive and those unqualified people will move into other areas where they may be more suited. As a result jobs will naturally be reallocated people who really deserve it.

If we continue to push forward more standardized testing, two things will happen. One, we will continue to have the same problems in education that we have had for a very long time and many teachers may simply take their wages and do what is easy. Two, we will be teaching kids to think like standardized tests which is not at all good for the economy in the long run. Our edge in America against China is that we have innovation, a value that China is still struggling with under Communist rule.

I’m not claiming to be an expert economist or even prime to run for President, but seriously (srsly?!) ? Come on, Obama, get to the root of the many diseases that we have developed as a nation and stop treating symptoms.

Not to mention that today was the day that HP and Microsoft today the HP Tablet at Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The news is abuzz, and some say this is the Year of the Tablet (or possibly the year of 3D technologies) [side note: my company is going to love it when that happens!]

I started to try and remember what year it was last year, and I don’t mean that it’s now 2010 and last year was 2009. I mean that what electronics device was the device that caught everybody’s attention?

Was it the Kindle? Or maybe it was the Netbook. A quick look at Google Trends confirmed it: 2008 was the year of the eBook aka Kindle (or end of 2007) and 2009 was the year of the Netbook. And of course there was the iPhone, which is now so common place that I could not locate The Year of the iPhone.

A Year in Review

So, since January is a time to review the previous year and look forward to the upcoming year, I wanted to say something about consumer hardware device convergence. In the Year of the Netbook, there was a slow progression, and this is just based on my experience of having read the news about it. People were first excited by the low price, excited by ASUS’s strong entry and leadership in the market, then confused by the difference between a Netbook and the regular computer (or at least that was my experience), then Dell and other companies started to worry Netbooks would eat up margin.

All of this chatter just suggested that electronics are really moving towards a convergence of devices where it is all going to merge into one. You may have an ebook reader, a computer and a smartphone, but you might at some point find yourself with just a laptop that is also a eBook reader and a computer. And, if you really wanted to, you could probably Skype on it.

Tech Consumers Drive Convergence…and the Market Taught Them to Ask for It
While this is nothing new, the real gem is that consumer attitudes are being shaped by these new technologies. Slowly, we start to expect certain things in a device as they become more mainstream, i.e. a touch screen, mobility, ability to multitask…not to mention, that all of this is largely driven by brand influence and brand equity. It’s the big players such as Apple, HP, Intel, and possibly Nvidia who are able to help declare the Year of the Tablet.

Will China Lead Market Innovation Instead of Drive It?
On a different front, China is starting to come into its own. Up until now, it’s been the supplier backstage that has helped make innovation happen. And China is starting to figure out what brand equity is supposed to mean, which suggests that there will be a year soon where it will be the Year of Innovation Led By China (or something to that effect).

What does your gut tell you will be telling of 2010? Or 2011?

While the poem is ideal, the reality is not as clear as “two roads diverged in yellow wood.”
On my morning commute today, a walk through San Francisco that is full of reminders of homeless and “giving up”, I reflected on my past experiences and what I have enjoyed, such as a leading a group of seniors searching for the next road on their career paths and my love for simply speaking with authority on a subject, because I learn best by talking through things.

I came across this thought as I walked:

To be a teacher is to be a lifelong learner.

In my life, I’ve been very lucky to have teachers and mentors with whom I still keep in touch with. And because my role models have always been teachers, I’ve decided that a good reason for being is to set an example for others, like my brother, friends, family and other people I come across.

A “teacher” is not necessarily someone who works in a classroom, and with that thought, I’ve set my mind to this goal for the week to do the best I can, as to serve others who I can teach and learn from.

We did a test at home on this one to see whether it matters if you do knead the bread and the difference is very minimal.

3 cups of flour
1/4 teaspoon yeast
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups of warm water

With clean hands, just swish the ingredients around in a mixing bowl. Leave overnight for at least 12 hours. The longer, the better.

When you are ready to bake, Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Find a bowl made of pyrex or cast iron (cast iron is probably much better) with a lid and put it in the oven. Wait about 20 minutes or until the inside of the bowl is about 200 degrees F.
At this point you can add anything you like to your bread dough. Ground flax, oat bran or your favorite dried herbs is great, and dressing the outside of the bread with extra virgin olive oil will give it a little extra crunch, but the bread is good with or without these add-ins.

When the bowl is hot enough, take some oven mitts and remove bowl from the oven. Drop the dough in. Bake for 30 minutes with the cover on, and 15 minutes without the cover for that golden, crunchy outside.

I’ll post pictures soon.
Reference: NY Times The Minimalist

Well, while I’ve been away and letting the weeds grow on my blog, I’ve been learning a few important lessons about starting an entrepreneurial venture such as hosting your own wedding. As an aside, it’s almost a logistical impossibility to be both the main organizer of the event and the star of the show, so that’s really where the stress comes in. At some point, you just have to let go and allow the work to be delegated elsewhere. (This is also true for managers of small companies, I believe–you can’t be the one doing all the work and running the operations of the business).

On a market level, though, there is one mantra that wedding vendors want you to believe: Vendors know best and they can influence market prices (in other words, drive UP prices) as they please, because the consumer is most likely not going to protest.

It’s too “risky” to pay less, the vendors will say, on the most important day of your life. It’s a special occasion, a once in a lifetime event, pay them what they deserve to make it your special day. (I call this fear marketing, which marketers shouldn’t be allowed to do. The same goes for other everyday products, such as acne: “if you don’t buy our product, you’re going to suffer with acne for the rest of your life!”) It’s inducing fear into you that your wedding will a) be a disaster or b) be the most amazing time in your life because the vendors have ensured that it would be so.

One word for you: ridiculous. First of all, as a consumer, your first defense against this fear mechanism is research. Especially in a recession, I think you can find that there are many creative solutions to the “traditional” wedding vendor. In the end, it’s the people who are there with you that matter more than the decor.

And negotiate where you can, because they will create all sorts of conditions that lean on the side of creating a false monopoly or oligopoly (that is, where all their circle of friends in the wedding business agree on a set price and then relay that false information to you about how much it will really cost!)

On the marketing side, fear marketing is unethical. In fact, it’s not really marketing. It’s a hard sell, and the same sell a real estate agent might make when they say a house on the market will be swiped up fast by someone else, so you better get it now.

My dealings with the wedding industry got me thinking about how people fell for Madoff and for the subprime mortgage scheme. (Not to mention that neither is good for the overall well-being of the community that participates in the economy.)

Maybe, we just have become lazy about thinking critically. There are so many possibilities rather than what the market wants to tell you is the ONLY possibility. Is this because people have become accustomed to following the flock in exchange for more comfort, convenience or some other type of instant gratification? I think it might be, but you can certainly disagree.

What are your thoughts? Who is to blame? The consumer? The marketer?

Communicating timelines
1. Never tell a client you are working on a project for another client that is causing you to be late. Best to say, based on what is happening internally…
2. Language to push back: “given our current deliverables”

Example: Given our current deliverables and what is happening internally, we should be able to submit this to you by XXX date.

Negotiating on timelines or managing expectations
Use the Time-Quality-Money rule.
1. Money: Push back based on budget agreements: “Well that may not work with the current budget that we have agreed on. Bringing up the timeline would require a $xxx budget, but what we could do is A or B.”
2. Quality: “Well, such and such would usually take X days/weeks to complete to get to the quality that you are asking for, but we could possibly give you XXX to meet your requirement.” (List Pros and Cons of doing it each way, and be clear about what could suffer by shortening the timeline.
3. Time: If the client sets an earlier deadline and you suspect they may not review it right away, find out what their schedule looks like as well. Will they be able to review and give approval on the deliverable? If not, negotiate for a more realistic deadline.

Despite all of these things, the Obama administration continues to pour money and invest in political agendas such as science, a national health care plan, financial bailouts that have long term, uncertain ROI during a time where money supply is short and interest rates are low.
True, a former lawyer is no businessman, but it seems that we need to have business-minded people working in government. People who can work in a non-profit world but also understand how to work a balance sheet.

While I consider myself fairly liberal as a resident of the SF Bay Area, I think Obama may be thinking of too many ways to spend money that we don’t have, instead of developing programs that pull on current and limited resources. He needs to think more like an entrepreneur and less like a large corporation.
That means:
– evaluating resources.
Today I heard on the radio that Obama is creating urgency around the healthcare issue. Is he acting with business sense or acting rashly?

In terms of the health care system, are there any current running health care programs that serve those who need health care but do not have access to it? And are there existing programs that advocate for preventative healthcare? This is what the government should support rather than a overhaul and development of a national healthcare system. We may admire our neighbors to the North for their national healthcare (anyway, it’s targeted at getting people to stay healthy, not treating sick people) but we’re just letting politics get in the way. And we are a tax-minimizing country as well.

– Talent. Obama’s cabinet has talent, but where is a certified public accountant when you need one? A CFO?

How else could the government be more efficient? Chime in with your thoughts.

What could they have done instead? It depends, but let’s say the goal is to share information so that they position themselves as not just the “Job Shop” but also the Job Experts.

They could…
encourage their employees to pro-actively work inside of Twitter with a goal to do outreach to their Twitter community, maybe by offering useful advice on jobs that are available.

They could create the Facebook Fan group so that people can share their tips and tricks on job hunting, and Job Shop could post their helpful hints on how to work with temp agencies (including themselves).

Bonus: You should get a more engaged community and it’s less likely that someone will join your “Fan Page,” take the money and run and forget about it.
OK, I get it though. If someone joins your Fan page, then maybe their friends will see their status. But you certainly won’t get advocates rooting for you, which is a double plus.