Feed: Who Has Time For This? - AggScore: 73.4

The Awesomest Valentines Day Gift

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It's just a few days away! Check out this idea for your sweetheart, from Voices in Harmony...



Order your Singing Valentine here. When asked where you heard about it, say "from David's blog" and I'll try to deliver yours personally.

Ken Robinson on Passion and Creativity

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Tonight Sir Ken Robinson addressed a crowd of over 1,000 parents that spilled out into the parking lots surrounding the auditorium at Sacred Heart in Atherton. In a performance that topped even his 10-balloon TED Talk, he delivered a lecture with equal parts inspiration and humor.

I was bummed that "Sir" Ken showed up with no sword and without any armor AT ALL. But he does wield a mighty pen that has inked two books on the importance of helping kids find their passions (The Element) and of adapting our educational system to prize creativity over conformity (Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative).

Here's the basic arc of his message: most people are miserable in their jobs, drudging through work in anticipation of the weekend. Only those of us who have found our passions love to work. Everyone has talents and interests to ignite, but usually schools have pushed them aside in favor of standardized academic curricula and tests. At a time when our economy has moved beyond factory jobs, we need creative, entrepreneurial citizens. That all happens only in personalized programs, where kids are encouraged to follow dreams. As Steve Jobs liked to say, people change the world by following their dreams, not a standard formula for success.

Here are some snippets from the talk:

"It's a mistake to confuse standardizing with raising standards."


"I asked the girl what she got out of her dancing class. 'I got a B' she answered."
"We should be teaching students, not subjects... Schools are more like organisms than mechanisms. Teaching ismore like gardening than engineering."

"We cannot predict what will happen, where people will go andhow they will develop. We have to let them find their way, and encourage themto trust that they can follow their passions. If we do this we may not be able to predict the future, butwe will create a future that we all want to live in."

In the audience I saw nearly every school principal in town nodding along with Sir Ken's talk, as though they already follow his advice in their schools! I know some who do, but if they all did, then where's the problem?

Meanwhile, Ken sets an example of great teaching by keeping his audience in stitches. For example:


“I started my dissertation in the 70;s and finished it in the 80’ s largely because of what happened in the 70’s. it was a great decade, or so I’m told.”

"I’m now working on the sequel to The Element, called Findingyour Element. People keep asking me how to find it. Now I wish I had never startedthis whole thing. How do I know? YOU find it, leave me alone. No, seriouslyit’s coming out next year and it’s going to be terrific." 

Dinner with Mork

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Thanks to the invitation of an old friend, two weeks ago I had the great pleasure of a 2 hour dinner with Robin Williams, who IMHO ranks among the greatest comedic actors of my lifetime, alongside Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Bill Murray and Gene Wilder.

I think I expected to meet someone much more frenetic and, frankly, obnoxious. But Williams is gracious, and listens sincerely to the people around him. He came with his gorgeous fiancé Susan whom he married last week.

Williams shared some stories about his career, starting with his high school years studying drama at Juilliard. His big screen break was a cameo on Happy Days as Mork the alien, which later spun off. Perhaps his best known and appreciated film is Good Morning Vietnam.

As I enjoyed the Cornish Hen at Jardiniere, we talked about some of his films, like my favorite Dead Poets Society, where he learned from the director that listening can be as expressive as speaking. (My wife has told me the same thing.)  It surprised me that Williams cited the creepy One Hour Photo as one of his favorites.  He told us a lot about making Awakenings, including the challenge of acting alongside actual mental patients. We also talked about Cadillac Man, The World According to Garp, and Mrs. Doubtfire, which my kids were back home watching at the time.

I learned that Williams has gone to Afghanistan three times to perform for the troops, and heard about many other international trips to raise money for charity. He's an active advocate of gay rights, and an atheist, though he was reluctant to say so (there are some things so shocking that even Robin Williams won't say them).

Often Williams broke into character, spinning up hysterical and poignant characters in the middle of conversation. "I'm so hairy," he improvised, " Coco the Gorilla tried to take me out back. She actually signed, Let's you and me go back and get busy."

On Pseudonyms: Transparency and Free Expression are Not Mutually Exclusive

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I originally wrote this as a guest post for TechCrunch, but based on some good comments, I have modified the proposal. So here is my improved version of that post...

The debate on pseudonyms persists today in the NY Times, as Google continues to eject pseudonymous accounts from Google Plus. Google crafted its Common Names Policy in order to promote trust and transparency, hoping to mitigate spam and flame wars. But the backlash has been strong from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (in this eloquent statement) and others as they advocate for those who need pseudonyms to express themselves without fear of being ostracized, fired, arrested or physically targeted.

Google has promised to review its policy and develop new ways of addressing these concerns. Until then, Google Plus remains irrelevant not only to Arab Spring revolutionaries but to anyone whose life is not completely an open book. Google's policy stifles gay teens, victims of workplace harassment, medical patients seeking information and compassion, and any others who challenge the politics or religion around them.

However, the debate need not dwell on the relative importances of transparency and free expression. We must have both, and I believe we can. If Google seizes the opportunity to get this right, it will further distinguish Google Plus from Facebook as the safe, intelligent platform for sharing.

So Brad and Vic, if you're listening, please consider that you can enable free and transparent expression on the Internet by establishing Google as the source of authenticity for all profile names. I shouldn't pretend that I have thought through all the product ramifications, but roughly speaking here's what I would suggest you do...

Classify each profile name as either: Private for self-proclaimed pseudonyms; Unverified, for new profiles with allegedly "real" names; People Verified for those profiles that reach a certain degree of social activity without any indications of fraud or other reputational issues; Bank Verified for those profiles linked to an active credit card in that same name; and Google Verified for those "celebrity" profiles for whom Google vouches through their manual authentication procedures, as Twitter does.

Once Google does that, I can decide how to interact with Google Plus profiles of varying verification. Furthermore, if you allowed other web sites to also discriminate based on type of profile name, I expect that "Google Verified" would quickly leapfrog Facebook Connect and Twitter 0Auth as the preferred Login replacement.

For example, any community that reaches out to the disenfranchised can be liberal in their policy of expression, while others can exclude, or at least moderate, content from Private and Unverified users. Any statement or request from a Private profile can be considered in light of the person's anonymity. Commercial standards would develop around escalated levels of authentication; for example, commerce sites and banks might accept only Bank Verified logins.

Having cracked the code on how to share intelligently among my different Circles, Google Plus is the perfect platform for bridging transparency and free expression. Let me craft a different profile for each Circle, so I can use my Bank Verified profile at work, and my Private profile as I publicly criticize scary fundamentalists.

There is nothing dishonest about a pseudonym, so long as it's presented as one. Rather than fight anonymity, Google should simply help us recognize it - not only on Google Plus, but across the web.

EarlyBird Hatches the Term "European Comeback"

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The following was originally published as a guest post for TechCrunch.


I just couldn’t keep my big Tweeter shut. When I publicly dismissed the soundness of his widely hailed report on European VC, Jason Whitmire of Earlybird Venture Capital challenged me to openly discuss the facts in a dialogue exceeding 140 characters. So I guess I owe him a response.

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Here's what comes from sending my kid to summer camp in L.A....

 

Buying an Electric Car

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This is a reprint of my recent guest post to TechCrunch / Washington Post.


After 3.5 years, I’ve finally re-joined the community of car owners.


    1. Compared to the others, the Leaf gets twice the range from a battery charge: 100 miles, or 85 miles with the AC cranking. (Plugging the car in and out adds about 15 seconds a day to your daily routine, or 5 minutes a month - about half the time we spend at gas pumps.)


    2. With a pure electric motor (not a hybrid gasoline engine) the Leaf is nimbler, less fragile, and legal to drive in California’s carpool lanes so I can bypass the Highway 101 traffic jams - WHTFT?


    3. Driving in electric mode (without the help of a hybrid gasoline engine) is wonderfully quiet and smooth (no transmission). Even at 80 miles per hour the acceleration is immediate and impressive.


    4. The Leaf steers as smoothly as a Lexus, and the small wheels turn on a dime.


    5. Only the Leaf has open, comfortable seats with ample head room in front and leg room in back (a must if you have kids)


    6. Only the Leaf carries 5 passengers (a must if you have THREE kids!)


    7. The Leaf has the largest trunk, and the back seats fold down for more cargo space.


    8. The Leaf costs 3/4 as much as the Volt, and 1/3 as much as the Karma. You get at least $7500 in tax credits, offset by the $2,000 expense of a home 220 volt charging station.




These reasons explain why the Nissan Leaf now the outsells the pack. I can think of only three good reasons why you might wish to buy one of the other cars:

A Logic Puzzle

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My son passed the time today on the Chunnel crafting a logic puzzle. He has graciously offered it to me as blog content...

Alice, Bob, Charlie, Diana and Ed live in 5 one-garage homes on a street, each numbered 1 through 5 (but not necessarily in that order). They drive a Ford, Honda, Nissan, Toyota and Mercedes – also not necessarily in that order. Based on the following clues, who drives which car?

The women drive only Japanese cars.

The Honda is not in Garage 2.

Edward and Alice have adjacent garages.

Even-numbered homes contain only Japanese cars.

Ed and Bob live next door to each other, and Diana’s address is higher than theirs.

Charlie doesn’t like Japanese cars.

The addresses of the Toyota, Ford and Honda are prime numbers.

Alice’s address is more than twice Charlie’s.

The Ford and Nissan belong to next door neighbors.

Father's Day in London

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Aspiration

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"I Want to Meet a Partner!"

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This is a "reprint" of a post I originally authored for TechCrunch.

Over the years I’ve heard many legitimate gripes from entrepreneurs about the way venture capital firms treat them while fundraising. I must confess an imperfect record of courtesy myself, though I do try to be respectful, and to incorporate feedback. For example, I once resolved never to keep entrepreneurs waiting long for me in our lobby, and I think I live up to that.

But I often hear one particular gripe from those who simply fail to think through the issue practically: For their first pitch to a large venture capital firm, entrepreneurs are often invited to speak or meet with someone other than a partner of the firm. Some interpret this as an insult, a waste of time, and a lack of substantive interest in their startups. And they are partially right.

They are right that in any first meeting or conversation, the VC is less interested than the entrepreneur. Not zero interest, but less. This is true for every pitch meeting that has ever taken place in history. In the second meeting there is more interest, and by the time a venture investor wires the money, the firm is just as excited as the founders.

They are wrong, though, about the insult. And the numbers prove incontrovertibly that it is not a waste of time.

The experienced partner you want as a lead investor probably has a lot of board seats. He or she spends most of the day at company meetings (board and otherwise), in interviews, and with the limited partners who actually provide the capital. I, for one, always try to reserve time in my week for hearing pitches, but it is scarce, and so if I took every first meeting myself, I’d be much less likely to actually meet the entrepreneur whose startup I wish to fund.

Also, as a seasoned VC I’m a lot dumber now about new markets than 15 years ago when I had fewer obligations. Researching all thewild tangents and nuances of cloud infrastructure, cyber security, social commerce, scalable data processing, etc., is a full time job. Who Has Time For This? Not I, but I can hire people smarter than me who do!

So if you’re an entrepreneur interested in partnering with a smart, successful, well capitalized venture investor, you have many aspects of character, competency and chemistry to consider. Is the audience’s seniority at your first pitch really the most important?

Think it through before you snub a meeting with that associate, analyst, principal or vice-president. That’s who’s most likely to get what you’re doing, and to be your champion through the process. (Indeed, the last five investments I made arose from first meetings that the founders had with James Cham, Trevor Oelschig or Ethan Kurzweil.) Consider it an opportunity to scope out the firm and to polish your pitch before you meet the partners.

And please understand that the intention is most definitely not an insult. Anyone in our orbit knows that many VCs fully appreciate the talent, courage, energy and genius of the entrepreneurs we meet. It is only because we wish to meet more of you that we have the process and organization that we do.

Now I’ve got to get going——the two engineers whom Sunil met on Thursday just showed up in my lobby.

Langner calls US a Cyber Bully. I hope he's right.

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Score: 5 balloons

German security researcher Ralph Langner was the first to decode and publish the inner workings of Stuxnet, a Windows-based computer worm that successfully targeted Iran's nuclear enrichment facility, setting back their nuclear weapons program by three years (according to the public statements of several authoritative sources). Although no one has claimed credit for creating Stuxnet, it has been widely attributed to a collaboration between Israeli and US intelligence agencies.

I had come into his TED Talk with high expectations, but I was disappointed -- not by the science but by Ralph's political commentary. What started as an interesting (though simplified) explanation of a ground-breaking cyber weapon devolved into a naive, self righteous rant against the US that appealed to TED's liberal audience. (I normally share that liberal viewpoint, but I overcame my bias with actual knowledge, having connected with my hacker friends at the last DEFcon, and having just read two well documented books on cyber warfare by Jeff Carr and Richard Clarke.)

Langner's first pot shot was his characterization of the US as the only superpower in cyberspace. Apparently Langner is not familiar with Russia and China's far more developed and extensive cyber militaries, which they supplement with privately contracted cyber gangs. Furthermore, Russian and China have far more experience than the US in waging cyber warfare, as evidenced by repeated, successful, multi-day attacks on the government and civilian electronic infrastructures of South Korea, Chechnya and Georgia during the last decade.

Langner's second, more damning accusation was aimed at the US for unleashing Stuxnet on the world, since it can now be repurposed as a weapon against anyone, including our own computer networks. The implication was that just as we did in 1945, the US is once again developing non-conventional weapons that threaten global stability.

But Stuxnet is not what exposes our digital infrastructure to attack. No, we opened that door long ago when we put the computers in charge. Is Langner -- or anyone -- really so naive as to think that without Stuxnet we wouldn't have to defend our networks from cyber attack?

What really irked me, though, was that at no point did Ralph question the wisdom of sharing all his findings publicly (which certainly aids and abets anyone who might wish to repurpose Stuxnet). Nor did he express any hesitation in reaching out to the Iranians to help them overcome this nasty infection. Was I the only person in the audience who thought, "Wait a minute, shouldn't we be thanking the creators of Stuxnet, instead of the guy who stopped it?"

If ever there was a time when US aggression was called for, this was surely it. Ahmadinejad has stated very clearly that Iran supports Jihad on the United States, and that he fully intends for Iran to destroy "the Zionist State" at his earliest convenience. The dictator of Iran holds the Presidential title despite having lost the election, and having brutally crushed the political dissidents who protested. Now who among you really think that stopping the nuclear ambitions of a raving, rogue, belligerent madman is a poor use of our tax dollars?

International pressure has not worked. Economic sanctions have not worked. Sure, we could have used conventional missiles to disable this dictator's Jihad machine, but that would have killed Iranians, possibly spread radiation, jeopardized the lives of our soldiers, cost hundreds of millions, provoked military reprisals, and it may not have even worked.  If indeed our intelligence community helped develop and launch Stuxent, then I for one am grateful.

On the final day of the conference, one TEDster was so fired up by Langner that he got up on stage to denounce the people behind Stuxnet for their evil ways, demanding that the US bring them to justice for their illegal aggression and for exposing our country's infrastructure to Stuxnet variants. The audience applauded loudly.

Except that cyber warfare is NOT illegal. (Though unlike Russia and China, the US does prohibit citizens from computer hacking.) Cyber warfare is, however, fast, effective, precise, virtually free, stealthy and usable without loss of life. If we can't altogether rid the world of conflict, our species is surely better off fighting cyber wars than conventional ones.




 See the Guide to TED Talks 2011.

TED 2011: Kathryn Schulz, Wrongologist

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 See the Guide to TED Talks 2011.

TED 2011: Harvey Fineberg on Neo-Evolution

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Score: 8 balloons





 See the Guide to TED Talks 2011.

Name-Calling Ninny Loose in Los Altos

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So just now I was waiting patiently on the side of the road in the car line to drop off my son at school when a jogger comes running towards us right along the CENTER DIVIDER LINE with iPhone buds in his ears. Apparently he decided to cut in front of me to get to his left side (shouldn't joggers stay to their right?), but I hadn't used my ESP to leave him lots of room in front of my car. So right there in front of all the school kids (and my son) he yells "Idiot!"