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Deep Calm

(author unknown) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:37:00 PDT

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Pure Zen!

I’m sitting in the early dawn light in a cabin in Tabernash, Colorado drinking a cup of coffee and getting ready to go for a run in the mountains.

I’ve just spent the last 18 hours with my Foundry Group partners at our quarterly retreat. This is an approximately 24 hour affair that includes staying overnight somewhere in Colorado within driving distance of Boulder. We’ve been doing this quarterly since we conceived of the idea for Foundry Group.

Our retreats aren’t “portfolio review sessions” nor are they complex travel boondoggles. They are a simple, focused, 24 hours away together to discuss our business, reflect on how we are working together, and explore ways to improve things.

In Feld Technologies (my first company) I used to do this monthly with my partner Dave Jilk. We lived in Boston at the time so we had our retreats within driving distance of Boston. Same drill – leave in the morning of day 1; return in the afternoon of day 2. Spend the time talking about our business and how we were working together. Deal with any hard issues head on and try to figure out what we were going to do about them. Dave and I managed to do this 10 out of 12 months a year (we’d occasionally miss) but when I think back on Feld Technologies, these were some of the most important and satisfying times we spent together.

While my life is frenetic, the world around us is chaotic, and as I like to say “something in my world somewhere is totally fucked up every single day”, I generally achieve a very deep calm. On the surface I appear to be extremely busy, but at my essence I hear the birds chirping and think of fields of golden retriever puppies.

I woke up thinking about this and realizing how incredibly powerful it can be. The lights on one’s existence go out suddenly and often unexpectedly. There are endless (and daily) twists and turns in the path to happy, whatever you define happy as. I’ve often said anxiety and fear are useless emotions in most contexts; a deep calm helps counteract them when they arise.

I encourage you to ponder this as you go about your day. Time for a run.

THE BIG BILL STRATEGY ON CLIMATE CHANGE.

(author unknown) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:30:42 PDT

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putting everything into one bill seems like a recipe for disaster, unless, of course, it works. and if it does work, that may change legislative strategy for a long, long time.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 -- otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey climate change bill -- is not a cap and trade bill. Nor is it energy legislation. It's not about modernizing the grid or promoting efficiency or encouraging renewables. Instead, it's everything. Call it the Big Bill Strategy. And Waxman and Markey are perfectly explicit about this. (The word "titles," in this context, essentially means "parts.")

The legislation has four titles: (1) a “clean energy” title that promotes renewable sources of energy and carbon capture and sequestration technologies, low-carbon transportation fuels, clean electric vehicles, and the smart grid and electricity transmission; (2) an “energy efficiency” title that increases energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy, including buildings, appliances, transportation, and industry; (3) a “global warming” title that places limits on the emissions of heat-trapping pollutants; and (4) a “transitioning” title that protects U.S. consumers and industry and promotes green jobs during the transition to a clean energy economy.

The first three titles basically include the whole of the climate change community's agenda. Combining them into one bill is, in Dave Roberts's estimation, "perhaps the most consequential legislative decision Dems will make this year on energy/climate."

The fact is, doing these pieces separately would mean three, four, possibly five bruising legislative battles, culminating in a battle over cap-and-trade that, in my estimation, simply can't be won on its own in this Senate. No one in D.C. has the appetite for that, not this year.

So they've decided, uncharacteristically for Democrats, to double down. They are piling all this stuff into one big-ticket, high-profile, must-pass bill. Just as there will be "a healthcare bill" -- and not four disparate, complicated healthcare bills only wonks can understand -- there will now be a green economy bill. For it or against it.

The downside to this strategy is similarly clear: If you lose, you lose everything. Senators who vote against cap and trade will also be dooming grid modernization and efficiency incentives. And crafting a bill this large ensures that there will be plenty to vote against. Roberts says that politicians will either be for or against "the green economy bill," but that's going to be a vague accomplishment as opposed to being for or against the worst provision of the green economy bill.

This sort of Big Bill strategy, however, is particularly well-suited to the climate change problem. More so than most policy problems, you either pass legislation strong enough to stop climate change -- defined, generally, as reducing the atmosphere's carbon load to 550 parts per million -- or you don't. Making it better isn't a particularly viable option: The trapped carbon will engage sufficient feedback loops that the problem will worsen on its own. That's different from a policy like health reform, where you could at least imagine improving coverage without, say, reforming the delivery system.

Inside the Transition: Technology, Innovation and Government Reform

(author unknown) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:51:55 PST

The Obama Administation’s commitment to reform and transparency is embodied by the one of the Transition’s most dynamic groups—the TIGR (Technology, Innovation and Government Reform) Team.

The experts who serve in TIGR advocated for some of our most innovative features on Change.gov—including the Citizen’s Briefing Book and Seat at the Table. Watch the video and get to know the people behind the ideas—and let us know your reaction to some of the initiatives they’re proposing.

Also available on Vimeo.
High-resolution, .mp4 format available here.

Notebook 1: Paul Hughes & Design Thinking - a set on Flickr

(author unknown) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:40:42 PST

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Paul Hughes: "The process of Design Thinking is an ocean where one can choose to dive as deeply as one wishes."

Pages from the notebooks of Paul Hugheson Design Thinking:

These notebooks are the 'behind thescene' thoughts, notes, and personaldiscoveries that are part of a continualprocess of unpacking creative processesand design processes. The process ofDesign Thinking is an ocean where onecan choose to dive as deeply as onewishes.

How Cook's Illustrated thrives while others are dying

(author unknown) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:25:57 PST

Not all publications are on a financial deathwatch.

Cook’s Illustrated takes no ads and charges for access to its recipes online. According to “Let’s Invent an iTunes for News,” the publication has 900,000 print subscribers (and 100,000 newsstand buyers) and is thriving online with 260,000 digital subscribers at a cost of $35 a year, a group that grew by 30 percent in 2008.

Many companies would think this way: “We can’t charge for online recipes, they’re available for free all over the web!” So how does CI manage to swing it? By being the Consumer Reports of food. It offers blind comparison tests of kitchen products and recipes that are extremely thorough, each one made dozens of times to get every detail right.

The magazine hypes its perfectionism on its “Why Cook’s Illustrated is different than other cooking magazines” page: “There’s no more authoritative food magazine. When Cook’s Illustrated endorses a cheesecake, it’s because its editors made 45 of them.” Accessing the recipes online is valuable enough that half of the site’s subscribers are people who also subscribe to the print publication.

CI also succeeds because it focuses on what it’s good at and stays away from the food fashion covered at other publications. Jack Bishop, executive editor of Cook’s Illustrated, says:

Our magazine is timeless in many respects. We are not covering the latest greatest trends, we don’t do travel, we don’t have features on the hippest chefs in Los Angeles. It’s about the techniques, equipment and ingredients that go into good home cooking, and that doesn’t change much month to month or even year to year.

More...

John Montgomery: "Sitting in meeting, keeping chair from flying up to ceiling."

(author unknown) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:04:08 PST

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still my favorite tweet of all time!

Sitting in meeting, keeping chair from flying up to ceiling.

John Montgomery: "Sitting in meeting, keeping chair from flying up to ceiling."

(author unknown) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:04:08 PST

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still my favorite tweet of all time!

Sitting in meeting, keeping chair from flying up to ceiling.

Corkd Gets Hackd, Handles it Brilliantly!

(author unknown) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:46:53 PST

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Stuff happens so recovery is very important. Check out the story and Gary's video for a great example for government and corporate leaders.

If you try to visit the URL for wine review website Corkd, you’ll automatically get rerouted to porn site Adult Friend Finder (obviously NSFW). We’re not sure how long this has been the case, but we’re not the only ones noticing.

What’s weird about the redirect is that there’s a delay, so you’ll actually see the Corkd website for a second before it switches to the adult website. If the domain name would just be pointed to the Adult Friend Finder site, that wouldn’t happen. ~~We’re trying to find out if there is malicious intent at play here, or that the site owners configured the redirect intentionally for whatever reason.~~

Update: the site now reads a message that they’ll be back shortly, so it was definitely a malicious act. We’re confirming this with the owners of the site right now.

We’ve had incoming tips before about Corkd going the way of the dinosaur, but apart from the fact that it’s been quite some time since the site received an update, we didn’t really see any reason for us to deadpool them, also considering the fact that the company never responded to our requests for information.

Update 2: Web celeb Gary Vaynerchuk’s WineLibrary actually acquired Corkd back in May 2007, we’ve contacted him to see if he can tell us more about what happened. This Twitter message of Gary Vee kind of says it all, though.

Update 3: see Gary Vaynerchuk’s video comment below.

Update 4:

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

10,000 hours, more or less...

(author unknown) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:32:52 PST

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Interesting and nuanced take on Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers.

It's not surprising that Malcolm Gladwell's new book has made a splash. All his thought-provoking writing does and deserves to.

The argument of Outliers:

Where you're born and when you're born have an enormous amount to do with whether or not you're successful.
Becoming a superstar takes about 10,000 hours of hard work.
Both of the bullet points above are far more important than the magical talent myth.

Bill Gates, the Beatles, Beethoven, Bill Joy, Tiger Woods--do the math, 10,000 hours of work.

In some ways, this is a restatement of the Dip. Being the best in the world brings extraordinary benefits, but it's not easy to get there.

For me, though, some of the 10k analysis doesn't hold up. The Doors (or Devo or the Bee Gees) for example, didn't play together for 10,000 hours before they invented a new kind of rock*. If the Doors had encountered significantly more competition for their brand of music, it's not clear that they could have gotten away with succeeding as quickly as they did. Hey, Miley Cyrus wasn't even 10,000 hours awake before she became a hit.

Doc Searls and Scoble didn't blog for 10,000 hours before they became the best, most important bloggers in the world. Molly Katzen didn't work on her recipes for 10,000 hours before she wrote the Moosewood Cookbook either.

*(There were bar bands in Buffalo, where I grew up, that put in far more than 10,000 playing mediocre music... didn't help. Hard work may be necessary, but not sufficient).

Here's my take on it:
You win when you become the best in the world, however 'best' and 'world' are defined by your market. In many mature markets, it takes 10,000 hours of preparation to win because most people give up after 5,000 hours. That's the only magic thing about 10k... it's a hard number to reach, so most people bail.

Yo Yo Ma isn't perfect... he's just better than everyone else. He pushed through the Dip that others chose not to. I'm guessing that there are endeavors (like being CEO of a Fortune 500 company or partner at a big law firm) where the rewards are so huge that the number is closer to 20,000 hours or more to get through the Dip.

But, ready for this? The Dip is much closer in niche areas, new areas, unexplored areas. You can get through the Dip in an online network or with a new kind of music because being seen as the best in that area is easier (at least for now). You can get through the Dip as a real estate broker in a new, growing town a lot quicker than someone in midtown Manhattan. The competition is thinner and probably less motivated.

Yes, it matters where and when you were born. It matters that you get lucky. And it matters most of all that you saw the Dip, realized how far away it was and chose to push through it.

How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft...

(author unknown) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:58:30 PST

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this would be the money quote: "When I'm old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say 'wow, that was an adventure,' not 'wow, I sure felt safe.'" of course, when you're much closer to being old and dying...

18 Oct 2008 – San Francisco

2008 is a leap year. That means that three hundred and sixty six days ago, almost to the minute, I was sitting alone in a booth at Zeke’s Sports Bar and Grill on 3rd Street in San Francisco. I wouldn’t normally hang out at a sports bar, let alone a sports bar in SOMA, but back then Thursday was “I Can Has Ruby” night. I guess back then “I can has _______” was also a reasonable moniker to attach to pretty much anything. ICHR was a semi-private meeting of like minded Ruby Hackers that generally and willingly devolved into late night drinking sessions. Normally these nights would fade away like my hangover the next morning, but this night was different. This was the night that GitHub was born.

I think I was sitting at the booth alone because I’d just ordered a fresh Fat Tire and needed a short break from the socializing that was happening over at the long tables in the dimly lit aft portion of the bar. On the fifth or sixth sip, Chris Wanstrath walked in. I have trouble remembering now if I’d even classify Chris and I as “friends” at the time. We knew each other through Ruby meetups and conferences, but only casually. Like a mutual “hey, I think your code is awesome” kind of thing. I’m not sure what made me do it, but I gestured him over to the booth and said “dude, check this out.” About a week earlier I’d started work on a project called Grit that allowed me to access Git repositories in an object oriented manner via Ruby code. Chris was one of only a handful of Rubyists at the time that was starting to become serious about Git. He sat down and I started showing him what I had. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to see that it had sparked something in Chris. Sensing this, I launched into my half-baked idea for some sort of website that acted as hub for coders to share their Git repositories. I even had a name: GitHub. I may be paraphrasing, but his response was along the lines of a very emphatic “I’m in. Let’s do it!”

The next night, Friday, October 19, 2007 at 10:24pm Chris made the first commit to the GitHub repository and sealed in digital stone the beginning of our joint venture. There were, so far, no agreements of any kind regarding how things would proceed. Just two guys that decided to hack together on something that sounded cool.

Remember those amazing few minutes in Karate Kid where Daniel is training to become a martial arts expert? Remember the music? Well, you should probably go buy and listen to You’re The Best by Joe Esposito in iTunes because I’m about to hit you with a montage.

For the next three months Chris and I spent ridiculous hours planning and coding GitHub. I kept going with Grit and designed the UI. Chris built out the Rails app. We met in person every Saturday to make design decisions and try to figure out what the hell our pricing plan would look like. I remember one very rainy day we talked for a good two hours about various pricing strategies over some of the best Vietnamese egg rolls in the city. All of this we did while holding other engagements. I, for one, was employed full time at Powerset as a tools developer for the Ranking and Relevance team.

In mid January, after three months of nights and weekends, we launched into private beta mode, sending invites to our friends. In mid February PJ Hyett joined in and made us three-strong. We publicly launched the site on April 10th. TechCrunch was not invited. At this point it was still just three 20-somethings without a single penny of outside investment.

I was still working full time at Powerset on July 1, 2008 when we learned that Powerset had just been acquired by Microsoft for around $100 million. This was interesting timing. With the acquisition, I was going to be faced with a choice sooner than I had anticipated. I could either sign on as a Microsoft employee or quit and go GitHub full time. At 29 years old, I was the oldest of the three GitHubbers, and had accumulated a proportionally larger amount of debt and monthly expenditure. I was used to my six digit lifestyle. Further confounding the issue was the imminent return of my wife, Theresa, from her PhD fieldwork in Costa Rica. I would soon be transitioning from make-believe bachelor back to married man.

To muddy the waters of decision even more, the Microsoft employment offer was juicy. Salary + $300k over three years juicy. That’s enough money to make anybody think twice about anything. So I was faced with this: a safe job with lots of guaranteed money as a Microsoft man –or– a risky job with unknown amounts of money as an entrepreneur. I knew things with the other GitHub guys would become extremely strained if I stayed on at Powerset much longer. Having saved up some money and become freelancers some time ago, they had both started dedicating full time effort to GitHub. It was do or die time. Either pick GitHub and go for it, or make the safe choice and quit GitHub to make wheelbarrows full of cash at Microsoft.

If you want a recipe for restless sleep, I can give you one. Add one part “what will my wife think” with 3,000 parts Benjamin Franklin; stir in a “beer anytime you damn well please” and top with a chance at financial independence.

I’ve become pretty good at giving my employers the bad news that I’m leaving the company to go do something cooler. I broke the news to my boss at Powerset on the day the employment offer was due. I told him I was quitting to go work full time on GitHub. Like any great boss, he was bummed, but understanding. He didn’t try to tempt me with a bigger bonus or anything. I think deep down he knew I was going to leave. I may have even received a larger incentive to stay than others, on account of my being a flight risk. Those Microsoft managers are crafty, I tell you. They’ve got retention bonuses down to a science. Well, except when you throw an entrepreneur, the singularity of the business world, into the mix. Everything goes wacky when you’ve got one of those around.

In the end, just as Indiana Jones could never turn down the opportunity to search for the Holy Grail, I could no less turn down the chance to work for myself on something I truly love, no matter how safe the alternative might be. When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say “wow, that was an adventure,” not “wow, I sure felt safe.”

Flow Charts

(author unknown) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:51:45 PST

The SEC, Madoff and XBRL

(author unknown) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:43:10 PST

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Mark Cuban: "XBRL is here and ready, but our government isnt using it for anything it does. Tracking the bailout would be a perfect application for XBRL. There is absolutely no reason why we couldnt or shouldnt use it since all technical systems and reporting requirements would be new and could easily be built around XBRL."

I wonder if Mark has a change.gov account?

You probably have never heard of XBRL. If you havent, and you are the least bit interested in how regulatory agencies can avoid future Madoff like events, and in government transparency for our bailout tax dollars, you should take a minute to get up to speed on what XBRL can do.

XBRL is a version of XML for financial reporting. To the SEC’s credit, they have become a big proponent, requiring $5 Billion Market Cap companies to start reporting using XBRL as of this past June, with the next 1800 in market size required in 2009, and everyone else in 2010. The value of XBRL is that by creating standardized tags for data elements (ie, net income , cash, interest, etc), companies will not only have to conform their financial statement line items to the defined tags, but in doing so it will make it much easier for investors and regulators alike to analyze and compare the financials of various companies. All good so far.

Here comes the but..

XBRL is here and ready, but our government isnt using it for anything it does. Tracking the bailout would be a perfect application for XBRL. There is absolutely no reason why we couldnt or shouldnt use it since all technical systems and reporting requirements would be new and could easily be built around XBRL.

IN addition, there is no reason why every entity that has to report to the SEC, and even those that don’t shouldn’t be required to use XBRL. From investment advisors like Madoff, to hedge funds, to mutual funds, to ETFs, brokers, dealers, market makers,to banks and each and every loan that is made, you name it, all should be required to format their financial data in XBRL. In fact, the smart thing for the SEC to do is to demand that any new financial instrument, regulated or not, needs to have an XBRL taxonomy assigned to it for future reporting pursposes before it could be sold. This would simplify any future reporting requirements and allow the SEC to review and analyze before its regulates, having the advantage of a body of data to guide it. For the filing companies, It certainly would not be a hardship. It is no worse than requiring websites to use HTML before they can publish to the web. Its that easy.

By acquiring data in XBRL format, it becomes easy to import into databases that can be monitored and analyzed. Think of it as turning the government into a quant shop for data they receive. Like a quant shop, the data could be monitored and analyzed in realtime looking for everything and anything it believes are indicative of problems, including the Madoff test for no variability in reported returns.

The beauty of this system is that while it wont catch everything, it will automate much of what had been a manual process of review by regulatory staff. It wont take a painstaking audit of suspects chosen on a best efforts basis. Outliers and exceptions will quickly become apparent as will trends and repetitive problems.

Not only will XBRL be a tool for government, but it could be a tool for government watchdogs as well. We as taxpayers should demand that every penny spent and committed be defined in XBRL and presented on a .gov site in realtime. We can start with the bailout money and how its being spent. In fact, President Obama’s use or lack of use of XBRL for government will be a beacon as to just how much transparency we can expect from his administration.

We are about to enter a period where the most recommended solution for avoiding future crisis like the one we are experiencing now, is increased regulation. I happen to agree with the SEC Commisioner when he said “Transparency is a powerful antidote for what ails our capital markets“ We can never come up with perfect regulations to solve the problems we have yet to see. WE will never anticipate the results of unintended consequences. We can require that all those that participate in the capital markets contribute their data and hope that the data guides us to avoid those problems.

Far from perfect I know, but its far better than what happens today

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Best Careers 2009: Politician/Elected Official

(author unknown) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:48:00 PST

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Er, umm, something's changed...

You also probably need to live a squeaky-clean life.

TV Has License to Kill Movies at iTunes, Netflix

(author unknown) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:49:47 PST

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from DariingFireball

This is the sort of stupidity that drives even those want to be honest customers toward bootlegging.

Jazz Quotes-the wisdom of jazz

(author unknown) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:41:02 PST

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A good list of quotes, but missing one of my favorites. When asked what he does when he plays a wrong note, Miles Davis rasps, "I play it again!"

"I believe that regardless of how many people you've listened to or emulated over the years, your sound is you and what you really feel inside." Clarke Terry

"I have to play every day in order to keep absolute control over my form"
"Blow your life through your horn."
"To rise above the crowd, you must discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition."
"I know that I haven't invented anything myself, that I am only a mixture of countless influences, and thanks to that I am able to find my own style of playing."
"It's so important to listen to music, to listen again and again." Eat, sleep and drink music. Arturo Sandoval

"Music should always be an adventure." Coleman Hawkins
"Life is a lot like jazz. . . it’s best when you improvise. . ." George Gershwin
"When I die I want them to play the BLACK AND CRAZY BLUES, I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot and I want beautiful people to smoke me andhope they got something out of it."Roland Kirk
"If you believe, you will. If you don’t, you won’t."Eddie Harris
"To me, the piano in itself is an orchestra."Cecil Taylor
"Make no mistake, this music is for everyone. Jazz is not an exclusive, elite club. Go ahead, listen to your Snoop Doggy Dog, Pearl Jam, Garth Brooks,but add a little Ellington, Basie and Coltrane to your life as well." Christian McBride

"It's very difficult for me to dislike an artist......No matter what he's creating,the fact that he's experiencing the joy of creation makes me feellike we're in a brotherhood of some kind...we're in it together." Chick Corea

"I am not a blues singer. I am not a jazz singer. I am not a country singer.But I am a singer who can sing the blues, who can sing jazz, who can sing country."Ray Charles

"Wrong is right."Thelonius Monk

"I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was."Paul Desmond

"Rather than simply say, I play jazz, I say I play music."Kenny Garret

"Music washes away the dust of every day life." Art Blakey

"If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked."Miles Davis
"Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument. This is a comprehensive technique . . . a feeling for the keyboard that will allow you to transfer any emotional utterance into it. What has to happen is that you develop a comprehensive technique and then say, Forget that. I’m just going to be expressive through the piano."Bill Evans
"It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up!" Jaco Pastorius
"Well, if you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night."Count Basie
"The saxophone is actually a translation of the human voice, in my conception. All you can do isplay melody. No matter how complicated it gets, it’s still a melody." Stan Getz
"I never hurt nobody but myself, and that ain’t nobody business but my own." Billie Holiday

"There is no such thing as a wrong note." Art Tatum

"A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves." Herbie Hancock

"I tell my students, 'It's an important tradition and you have to go back and hearthis music and learn its language all the way through. How are you goingto know what's new to play, if you haven't listened to everything that's old?'" Jackie Mclean

"I don't have a definition of jazz...You're just supposed to know it when you hear it." Thelonious Monk

Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation,not mere unaided instinct." Duke Ellington

"Jazz is what I play for a living." Louis Armstrong's response to an interviewer when asked the question What Is Jazz?

"If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats."The name of a composition by Charles Mingus

"Each man has his own music bubbling up inside him." Louis Armstrong

"Pianists must be taught. If a man has no technique, if he hasbeen self-taught, you'll hear it said that he has an open mind. Not true.He has only grooved himself." Oscar Peterson, responding to the recurring charge that he had "too much" technique

"We have to make ourselves as perfect as we can." Sonny Rollins explaining why hestopped performing for 2 years as he practiced daily on the Williamsburg bridge playing into the wind

"For his artistry, there can be no replacement." Dizzy Gillespie after hearing of thedeath of Clifford Brown

"When there's something we think could be better, we must make an effortto try and make it better." John Coltrane

"People sometimes think I'm difficult because I always say what's on my mind, and they can't always see what I see." Miles Davis

"Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it.I say, if it sounds good it does." Wynton Marsalis

"Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms." Keith Jarrett

"I made the tenor sax-there's nobody plays like me and I don't play like anybody else." Coleman Hawkins

"I am trying to play the natural feelings of a people....Some of the people of the music which has been writtenwill always be beautiful and immortal. Beethoven, Wagner and Bachare geniuses; no one can rob their work of the merit that's due it,but these men have not portrayed the people who are about us today, and the interpretation of these people is our future music." -Duke Ellington

..."Get around, be on the scene, play it clean, be seen, be keen,and be over eighteen." 1923- Willie "the Lion" Smith's advice to younger pianists

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction,that New Orleans is the cradle of jazz- Jelly Roll Morton

When you see a jazz musician playing, you're lookingat a pioneer, you're looking at an experimenter, you're looking at a scientist, you're looking at all those things becauseit's the creative process incarnate! Albert Murray

When they study our civilization two thousand years from now,there will be three things that Americans will be known for:the Constitution, baseball and jazz music. They're the threemost beautiful things Americans have ever created. Gerald Early

More time = shorter letter

(author unknown) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:27:26 PST

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timeless quotes on writing.

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

Blaise Pascal, (1623-1662) Lettres provinciales.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

Henry David Thoreau

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

Marcus T. Cicero

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855)

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Nietzsche

The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit.

Felelon

No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all-disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report….

Woodrow Wilson

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”

Mark Twain

Sunlight Foundation » Obama and Affirmative Disclosure

(author unknown) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:31:10 PST

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John Wonderlich lauds Obama transition team's efforts at providing transparency. That's change.gov we can believe in...

The Obama transition team released two new policies this week, a Creative Commons license and a radical disclosure policy. These changes don’t just signal a new relationship to the public, but also create a paradigm shift in how government manages information, and could lead to much bigger things to come from the administration. Requirements for affirmative disclosure move the onus of dissemination to the government (unlike FOIA, which relies on citizen requests), and might just revolutionize the way our government views its communications.

Creative Commons

First, the transition team changed its copyright policy, and is now publishing under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. This is great news, since, contrary to popular opinion (see the comments here), transition materials aren’t automatically in the public domain, despite the .gov web address. This means that reuse of their work is now encouraged, within carefully crafted guidelines, and, more importantly, that the transition team is thinking about the real effects of their publication methods. That’s exactly what the Creative Commons was designed to do: to add a level and control and nuance to a legal framework designed around limitations. Whereas Copyright is about control, the Creative Commons and copyleft movements are about empowerment, through carefully crafted designations created by brilliant lawyers. (For example, “You are free to Reuse… or Remix, [so long as you] attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor…)

Creative Commons licenses are affirmative designations with real legal force, enabling creativity and reuse through a carefully crafted set of nuanced licenses. (Keep that in mind…)

At the Table

Next, the transition team introduced their Seat at the Table feature. At first glance, “Your Seat at the Table” might look like a kitschy PR portal. What is the entire change.gov site supposed to be, if not a seat at the table? A closer look, however, reveals that this specific feature is in fact different from the rest of the site — it’s the result of a significant policy change. From the (actual) memo sent out from John Podesta, as posted on the site (pdf):

Scope:
The following information will be posted on our website:
1. Documents: All policy documents1and written policy recommendations from official
meetings2 with outside organizations.
2. Meetings: The date and organizations represented at official meetings in the Transition
headquarters or agency offices, with any documents presented as noted above.
This scope is a floor, not a ceiling, and all staff are strongly encouraged to include additional
materials. Such materials could include documents (recommendations, press releases, etc.)
presented in smaller meetings or materials or made public by the outside organization without a
connection to an official meeting.

The footnoted section contains the real meat, since it defines what must be disclosed:

1This policy does not apply to non-public or classified information acquired from the Agency Review Process and internal memorandum.
2 An “official meeting” is defined as a meeting with outside organizations or representatives of those organizations to which three or more outside participants attend.

To summarize, the transition team has decided that all policy documents and recommendations presented at official meetings with outside groups will be posted online, and they’re defining “official meetings” as those at which three or more representatives attend.

Now, it’s tempting to quibble with the definition of “official meeting”, but remember, this is the transition team, not the administration. They’re only operational for a few months, and nothing like this has been tried before in this context, so their policy is entirely appropriate. They’re posting primary resources, in near real time, and at least acknowledging the public’s role as overseer and partner, and nothing says they have to. They’ve created a new designation (the official transition meeting), and used that designation to generate public access and oversight.

This is a brave, bold move, and the transition team deserves our praise.

Affirmative Disclosure?

All this raises a more significant question, however. What could such a program look like across the entire executive branch? In other words, does “Your Seat at the Table” scale? Could there be a system of affirmative designations that broadly opens executive branch information, just as Creative Commons has in the creative sphere?

This is pretty complex question, but we do have some other examples of government information programs that are based on managing carefully crafted records designations. Here are two…

First, think of classification, the official process by which our government keeps secrets. It’s so prolific that it costs about $8 Billion per year (pdf). (That doesn’t count the CIA’s classification budget, which is, well, classified.)

Second, we have General Records Schedules, which are designations that the National Archives uses to standardize how administrative records are kept across the government. The FDA issues regulations on meat, and NARA issues regulations on paperwork. (Though NARA has initially resisted playing any enforcement role, despite failing preservation procedures government-wide.)

These are two enormous government programs dedicated to controlling public information. My question is this: If we have set up a complex, $8 Billion system for making secrets, and have created a complex system for managing the flow of paper throughout government, where is the public disclosure system? Who should be deciding what the public can see, and how they see it?

Should we be thinking about creating a system for proactive disclosure, where documents or data can be designated for release, RSS, API, upload, download, IG review, FTP, or whatever?

Especially after the last administration has made it easier to make secrets and obfuscate, shouldn’t the Obama administration make it easier to say “Hey, someone should really be taking a look at this!”.

This makes sense as a whistleblower provision, or even as a data management practice. Imagine if witnesses to malfeasance were empowered to flag troublesome documents for publication, or at least for further review, and that those designations carried some administrative or legal force, like Creative Commons licenses, or the designation of a “public meeting”. Imagine if a Webmaster or CIO were capable of submitting requests to the OMB data task force, or to the Public Data Advisory Team.

Even better, imagine if all government data were given a proactive designation by an empowered centralized Information Officer, Transparency Czar, or Deputy CTO. We already do this for secret-keeping, and for historical preservation. Real-time public access should be at least as important as history and secrecy.

(discussion also on the Open House Project google group.)

Posted: December 8, 2008 - 3:33 am. Tags: cc, Change.gov, cto, FOIA, lessig, NARA, Obama, ogis, seat at the table, whistleblower

Who Are the Better Managers -- Political Appointees or Career Bureaucrats?

(author unknown) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 13:01:43 PST

Shared by Bb
Excellent question. Is change possible or even useful?

Every time the White House changes hands between the Democrats and the Republicans, the outgoing party quickly sees the virtues of staffing government departments with competent managers. The incoming party invariably seeks to reward loyal campaign operatives with political appointments.

Presidents from Thomas Jefferson onward have grappled with opposing forces during their transitions to power: One school of thought argues that lots of political appointees can sweep away bureaucratic cobwebs. The other suggests that appointees mostly get in the way of the career professionals who really know how to make government work.

The United States has a far larger number of political appointees in government than any other industrialized democracy. Growing evidence suggests that while presidents and political parties appoint partisans in the belief that loyalists will drive the president's agenda forward, appointees may actually damage the long-term interests of both presidents and their parties.

Exhibit A for the negative effect that too many political appointees can have on the vitality of presidents and their parties, several political scientists said, is the outgoing administration of George W. Bush.

"Loyalty and ideology were valued over expertise, and policy and management suffered as a result," said Donald Moynihan, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "Political appointees helped to handicap FEMA, which contributed to the dire response to Katrina. White House appointees tried to shape the judgments of the EPA on the causes of global warming. Political appointees pushed weak intelligence to make a case for the war on Iraq. They illegally politicized the selection of career positions in the Department of Justice. Inexperienced but politically connected appointees in the Coalition Provisional Authority failed to manage the rebuilding of Iraq."

In an unusual new analysis, another political scientist compared the Bush administration's own evaluations of more than 600 government programs with the backgrounds of the 242 managers who ran those programs. David E. Lewis, who is now at Vanderbilt University, found that three-quarters of the managers administering the programs were political appointees while a quarter were career civil servants.

The political appointees were better educated, on average, than the civil staff. Many had stellar records in the private sector or on the campaign trail. Side by side, the political appointees just looked like a much smarter bunch than the careerists.

When it came to performance, however, the bureaucrats whipped the politicals: Programs administered by civil servants were significantly more likely to display better strategic planning, program design, financial oversight -- and results. These findings, remember, were based on the Bush administration's own evaluation system -- the Program Assessment Rating Tool, administered by the Office of Management and Budget.

Lewis and Moynihan said presidents often forget that while political appointees may be whip-smart operatives, it is the career civil staffers who hold institutional knowledge about agencies -- and that the bureaucrats tend to stick around longer than the appointees. For all the hatred that political candidates aim at the Washington bureaucracy during campaigns, political interference rather than bureaucratic inertia appears to be the central driver of governmental incompetence.

There were 1,778 political appointees in 1960 and nearly double that number in 2004, not counting part-time, advisory and White House positions. The federal government grew dramatically in that period, too, but the number of political appointees grew nearly twice as fast, said Lewis, author of the book "The Politics of Presidential Appointments."

Lewis said President-elect Barack Obama would do well to reduce the number of political appointees by as much as a quarter, and to appoint career civil servants to positions typically given to political appointees.

Not everyone agrees that the United States has too many political appointees: Robert Maranto at the University of Arkansas argued that political appointees have poorer track records than bureaucrats because presidents may preferentially give them the toughest assignments. Moreover, Maranto said, amid rising political partisanship, presidents need to stock departments with people who understand politics and the increased importance of interaction with Congress, lobbyists and the media. If a president placed more civil servants in slots now occupied by politicals, he argued, this could expose bureaucrats to the kind of controversies that can jeopardize careers.

Lewis, however, said his analysis controlled for a number of confounding factors, including the difficulty of administering different programs. He said civil servants outperformed political appointees even when the analysis was restricted to comparably difficult programs.

There is a happy balance between political control and the civil service corps, the political scientist added: If presidents feel they have to build separate bureaucracies to duplicate agency functions, it probably means the bureaucrats are out of control. On the other hand, if government departments are having a difficult time recruiting and retaining high-quality people, it probably means that departments are suffering from excessive political interference.

Jim Pfiffner, a political scientist at George Mason University, went even further than Lewis and suggested the number of political appointees be slashed by a third -- but acknowledged this was unlikely to happen.

"Presidents want patronage and think it will help them control the government," he said. "But the increasing number of layers of political appointees attenuates rather than increases control from the top."

The message could not be clearer for all those Obama-campaign-operatives-turned-political-appointment- hunters: If they really want to know what they can do for their country, they shouldn't be asking their president what he can do for them.

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Quick Solution to a Detroit Auto Bailout

(author unknown) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:44:03 PST

Shared by Bb
mark cuban: "if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you got."

In reading all the discussion about the possibility of a bailout of GM, Ford and maybe Chrysler, it appears to me that no one has asked and answered the fundamental questions behind the issue.

First let me say that this is not about the quality of cars they build. I just bought a Ford for my dad. Im looking at trading in at least my personal Lexus coupe for another Ford I like. I think Ford makes great cars. There are some great GM cars as well. Unfortunately, while the companies make cars I like, they can’t seem to run their businesses in a way that will allow them to survive. The issue is not about car quality. Even consumer reports says that the Big 3 now makes reliable cars. This is about their business model.

The reality of markets is this, If GM, Ford and Chrysler disappeared that doesn’t mean the demand for cars will disappear. We will still buy cars. The question is what brand we will buy, where will those cars be built, by what company and how many jobs will be created to fulfill the demand ? According to Cars.com the Toyota Camry is built in Lafeyette Indiana and has more than 75pct American Components. The Honda Civic is built in the US with more than 70pct of US made components. The Big 3 are not the only manufacturers making cars in the US. If they go away, buy American Made could still survive.

It would be nice to have GM, Ford and Chrysler survive in some new profitable form, but we shouldn’t lie to ourselves and make it sound like the demand for GM, Ford and Chrysler cars couldn’t move to other cards made in the USA. Its a lie to suggest that 100pct of the jobs at these companies and their vendors will disappear. Jobs will be created in the businesses of those car companies that fulfill the demand for cars that the Big 3 leave behind. That said, it would be nice to find a solution that maintains as much of these institutions as possible and keeps their employees in their jobs if at all possible.

My Solutions ?

Take a page from the FDIC. The government should be in discussions with foreign automakers that have US manufacturing operations to discuss buying/assuming the operations of GM, Ford and/or Chrysler and rolling the acquisitions into Toyota, Honda, whoever with a requirement that the cars continue to be built in the US and any profits remain in the US.

It is unfortunate that there are not any well run or even profitable car manufacturers in the US that could assume the operations, but it is what it is. It will take the US operations of foreign car companies taking over manufacturing facitilities, dealership relationships, vendor contracts, the whole works. I realize that this is more difficult than assuming bank branches. That manufacturing facilities are different between operators. I didn’t say this would be easy. It wouldn’t be. But its far better than the alternative. I would rather see money used to retool manufacturing than fund a business operation that just doesn’t work and hasnt worked for years.

Of course every induced merger requires concessions. The concessions being that some negotiated percentage of GM/Ford/Chrysler employees would roll into the cost, pay and benefits structure of the acquirer. The taxpayers would guarantee the BANK debt acquired by whoever takes over the companies. Bond debt would be paid if after everyone else that is owed money, including the government.

Sure, the CEO and management of GM would be upset. Just as Im sure the CEO and management of banks that were taken over were. Thats life in the big city.

If I’m providing loan guarantees, or direct government loans to car companies to protect jobs, I would much rather have Toyota US Operations running GM with a Toyota USA cost and manufacturing model than GM, with a GM cost and manufacturing model running GM. They can apply business principles that actually do work and save whatever part of the Big 3 can be saved. IMHO, this will keep the largest chunk possible of the job base in the US and turn the auto industry into income tax payers rather than a taxpayer money pit. Call me crazy. Its time for the US auto industry to go down in history as an example of how not to run a business. If we want manufacturing to be a priority in this country, we have to find business models that work. We cant just depend on protectionist policies to keep unproductive, unprofitable businesses alive because we think they are too big to fail.

And if there is no Sheila Blair with a plan for the auto industry. Let em go bankrupt with the government providing financing to help them come out with a brand new business structure. Of course there should be some caveats:

1.. The bankruptcy court puts the designs of all parts, patents and technology of all big 3 cars into the public domain so no one ever has to worry about getting their car fixed. Someone will always be able to build parts or systems for all makes and models. In fact, making the designs open source could possibly lead to better parts, car designs and repair solutions.

2. The bankruptcy court assigns to their boards someone who has a clue about how to cut costs and manufacture in a cut throat environment. Michael Dell and Andy Grove come to mind.

3. The court creates a warranty fund, much like the FDIC, where every car sold has some dollar amount go into the fund to pay for warranty service for a maximum of up to 3 years. In the event the Big 3 cant survive out of bankruptcy, repairs on the cars for models sold while the companies are in bankruptcy become a tax credit, with the treasury being reimbursed for these repairs from the fund. (btw, I hate to do something using tax credits, so if anyone else has a better suggestion on how to deal with and pay for warranties..)

I’m probably missing something, but if the fear of bankruptcy is buyers will turn away for fear of parts and warranties concerns, problem solved. In fact, knowing that the government will now help protect warranties could help sales.

Bottom line is this: When doing things the same was as its always been done doesnt work….. stop doing it that way. That applies not only to businesses, but consumers as well.

My last car purchase, for my dad, was American. The next car I buy will be made in America. I can think of so many reasons why its the right thing to do. I’m going to give Detroit another chance and buy American. It wont matter if they are owned by Toyota or Honda, in or out of bankruptcy or as is. What will matter is whether or not I like the car. I’m coming back with an open mind. The product better be as good as advertised or you have lost me forever.

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The Sole of a New Machine

(author unknown) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:39:36 PST

Shared by Bb
Interesting photos from Guy Kawasaki's tour of Zappos.

Zappos is a machine. Who would have thought that so many people would buy $1 billion worth of shoes from an online retailer? Not me. I would have said that women want to see, touch, and smell the shoes that they are buying. Certainly, they’d want to make sure they fit. This is lesson #1 of Zappos for small business owners: You never know until you try.

I recently visited Zappos and learned lesson #2: Make your company a fun and interesting place to work. To illustrate what I mean, check out these pictures from my visit to its Las Vegas offices.