powerhouse families

Cool! This family inspired two of my all time favorite TV characters J http://bit.ly/1PEAq1

Emanuel was not the only brother with a drive to succeed. Ezekiel, the eldest, became an oncologist, joined the faculty at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard University, and is now a prominent medical ethicist at the National Institutes of Health . Ari went to Hollywood and has become an enormously wealthy agent, not to mention the inspiration for the bombastic Ari Gold character on HBO's "Entourage." (Emanuel, too, partly inspired a TV character: Josh Lyman on "The West Wing.")

Jon Stewart is ridiculously good - sometimes

Where are you on the social networking ladder?

 

I spend time along the Creators/Critics/Collectors tiersJ

 

Complete R/W web article here -> http://bit.ly/1P9QHQ

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Revenue is over rated

My wife sent me a link to this awesome story. It is the story of anentrepreneur who decided to stop servicing an account that generated48% of his annual revenue. Now why would he do that? Because 2 yearslater he saw a 11% increase in profits. Profits mind you not revenue."I can do half the business, make twice the money, and have a tenth ofthe headaches," he says.
This is not for everyone but for the one who can define an end goalaround profits this is a very good place to be. Congratulations JimChristy!

Link - http://bit.ly/2qxGM4

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Many hands make valuable work

At least that is what this article claims.  ->http://bit.ly/Vw8gX

It values the linux kernel at 1.4 billion dollars. Thecalculation is based on a 200$/loc valuation and it calculates that the latest Linuxkernel has 7million lines of code.

Fedora 9 (a linux distribution) is valued at 10billion dollars J based on a 50$/loc cost for 200million lines ofcode.

 

Note: they wave their hand at the details of how theyarrived at these $$ figures.

Not sure why the $/loc is 4x more for the kernel thanfor Fedora (OS code is 4x more expensive than application code)?

 

Hrmm… impressive, is this accurate? Let us see

Yahoo – Market Cap – 17B which would implythat Yahoo has 170 million lines of code based on 100$/loc (in between Fedora9and Linux?)

Goog – Market Cap – 112B which would implythat Google has 745 million lines of code based on 150$/loc.

( this is 310,667 lines of code per day, every day for10 years  [745mill/10 = 74560000 /48 = 1553334/5=316666])

MSFT – Market Cap – 197B which would implythat Microsoft has 985million lines of code based on 200$/loc

(this is 181,159 lines of code per day, every day for23 years  [1B/23/48/5]) which would mean that google has been producingcode at 2x the rate of Microsoft. I am just saying J

 

Heh.. okay so I am done having fun with numbers. Mypoint is that while it sounds impressive to claim market valuation for Linuxand Fedora, I am not sold yet J.  I think if open sourcewants to be truly disruptive (as much as it claims to be) – it has tolearn how to also value itself differently than status quo.

 

 

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will the real number please stand up

Slate article that gives a powerful insight into market behavior.http://www.slate.com/id/2202263/

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin issued a call on Tuesdayfor regulation of the "over the counter" derivatives market, which hasan estimated size of about $596 trillion. By contrast, the value of theworld's financial assets—including all stock, bonds, and bankdeposits—was pegged at $167 trillion last year by McKinsey. How can thederivatives market be larger than the entire world's financial wealth?

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Advice from Sequoia to companies in its porfolio

Worth your time. If you are in a early stage or growth company, pay particular attention to slides 46 and 47.

Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession)

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Doh! what was I thinking - i should have realized that quadrillion is the answer

In a sign of the times, the National Debt Clock in New York City has runout of digits to record the growing figure. As a short-term fix, thedigital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock near Times Squarehas been switched to a figure — the "1" in $10 trillion. It's markingthe federal government's current debt at about $10.2 trillion. The Durst Organizationsays it plans to update the sign next year by adding two digits. Thatwill make it capable of tracking debt up to a quadrillion dollars. Yep,that should solve all of the problems.

Yahoonews link

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The essence of capitalism

http://www.wescooppoop.com/ is a company that serves seven citiesaround the Austin area :). Their business model is simple, they scooppoop. I am not quite sure why they started this or if this has alwaysbeen a life long dream of someone. But I do know this if this companyis surviving, it is because there is a demand from people who believethat it makes sense for them to pay another person to pick their dogspoop. The market is a strange beast indeed.

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inspiration is all around you

Nancy Duarte and her team found an example of everyletter in the alphabet in real world items. Really cool!!

 

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why does my template look so bad

Well the story began when I discovered posterous. I fell in love withit. Started using it -> staysmall.posterous.com.All was good -- happy days.
Then i realized that I could have posterous automatically forward myposts to my old blogger account. Even happier days. I like creating myposts through email.

Then trouble struck :-/, it turns out that the html forwarded byposterous does not play well with half decent blogger templates. So Ihad to make a choice and I choose an ugly template and kept my postingconvenience. Just thought you deserved an explanation.

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Want to do something fun and different with your family

Get them together, yes your wife and all your kids. Watch a coupleepisodes of The Cosby Show on dvd. Just cause...

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The future of humanity

Small populations which are isolated can evolve atrandom as genes are accidentally lost. World-wide, all populations are becomingconnected and the opportunity for random change is dwindling. History is madein bed, but nowadays the beds are getting closer together. We are mixing into a glo-bal mass, and the future isbrown.”

 

Source: TimesOnline article on evolution.

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Hilarious! (thanks to Grek Mankiw for the original post)

 

Found here.

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A snippet from an excellent Warren Buffet interview

BECKY QUICK: If you imagine where things will go withFannie and Freddie, and you
think about the regulators, where were the regulators for what was happening,
and can something like this be prevented from happening again?

Mr. BUFFETT: Well, it's really an incredible case study in regulation
because something called OFHEO was set up in 1992 by Congress, and the sole
job of OFHEO was to watch over Fannie and Freddie, someone to watch over them.
And they were there to evaluate the soundness and the accounting and all of
that. Two companies were all they had to regulate. OFHEO has over 200
employees now. They have a budget now that's $65 million a year, and all they
have to do is look at two companies. I mean, you know, I look at more than
two companies.

BECKY QUICK: Mm-hmm.

Mr. BUFFETT: And they sat there, made reports to the Congress, you canget
themon the Internet, every year. And, in fact, they reported to Sarbanes and
Oxleyevery year. And they went--wrote 100 page reports, and they said,
`We'velooked at these people and their standards are fine and their directors
arefine and everything was fine.' And then all of a sudden you had two of the
greatestaccounting misstatements in history. You had all kinds of management
malfeasance,and it all came out. And, of course, the classic thing was that
afterit all came out, OFHEO wrote a 350--340 page report examining what went
wrong,and they blamed the management, they blamed the directors, they blamed
theaudit committee. They didn't have a word in there about themselves, and
they'rethe ones that 200 people were going to work every day with just two
companiesto think about. It just shows the problems of regulation.

 

The full interview can be found here.

 

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here are some numbers that will wake you up

John Paulson, Paulson & Co., $3.7billion. Paulsonmade $3.7 billion last year, mostly by shorting, or betting against,subprime mortgage securities and collateralized debt obligations. Oneof Paulson’s credit funds earned a 590% return last year, according toAlpha; another racked up a 353% return.
Philip Falcone, Harbinger Capital Parters, $1.7billion. There is no word yet on how much money Falcone has made fromchallenging the New York Times board, but shorting subprime mortgagesclearly was a profitable decision.

Deal Journal took a look at Alpha’s list and how the 10 highest-paidmanagers made their money. We ranked them below by name, firm and theamount of their yearly compensation in 2007. Full article here.

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gawker explains the financial crisis in simple terms (thanks to kim for the link)

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Telegraph captures the moment

Telegraph.co.uk captured yesterday's stock market crash as follows:

Corporate America has just lost a chunk of its value the size ofthe Indian economy.

Poetic, eh :-)

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When does this get completely ridiculous?

There have been 3 bomb blasts in India in the past 10 days. Two of them in Delhi (the national capital) and one in Bombay (the financial capital). I am hoping at some point some is going to step up and go; "Guys this is not business as usual. We need to figure out what the #$% is going on!!!" But so far all I am hearing is "In other news today, 6 dead from a bomb blast in Maharashtra. Government says it is looking into this matter"... Come again... you are doing what!?!

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A September call To action

I am excited to be piggy backing on the efforts of Scott Harrison. Here is your call to action.

From right where you are sitting or standing right now, you can take a country from

to

What am I talking about?

• Average American spends 960$/year on presents.
• 960$ will provide 48 people in Ethiopia clean water for20 years!
• 1 out of 4 people in Ethiopia have NO access to clean water.
  
• Women walk three hours a day with 40pounds on their back to get not_so_clean water. Girls have to choose between school or fetching water.
• I am joining Scott in his goal to raise 1.5 million this month to give clean water to 150,000 people through 333 wells.

Think about it, when was the last time you even had to think about clean drinking water. These people are dying because of that. You ABSOLUTELY CAN make a difference.

My birthday is tomorrow... :-) I am not saying you were thinking of getting my a gift. All i am asking is that you consider donating1,2,5,10,32, or whatever amount you can to help with this cause. Also,i realize that you might be already supporting a lot of worthy causes in which case please accept my humble thanks!

If you are ready -> don't hesitate... go here. Oh, if you see me walk around with a black shirt which says"September" on the front. Now you know why ;-) Spread the word around.

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The flip for mobile email devices

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I wish I made this up - from the annals of "Gee maybe my priorities are misplaced"

  sent a letter to  and 

 

"PETA'srequest comes in the wake of news reports that a Swiss restaurant owner willbegin purchasing breast milk from nursing mothers and substituting breast milkfor 75 percent of the cow's milk in the food he serves," the statementsays.

 

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you don't have to live in california to attend Stanford

Welcome toStanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE)

For the first time in its history, Stanford isoffering some of its most popular engineering classes free of charge tostudents and educators around the world. Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE)expands the Stanford experience to students and educators online. A computer andan Internet connection is all you need. View lecture videos, access readinglists and other course handouts, take quizzes and tests, and communicate withother SEE students, all at your convenience.

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Delighting on an incremental basis!

I love the fact that I can quickly create a calendarevent when I reply to an email in gmail. How long has outlook been around? Whycan’t I do this in outlook?

 

 

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onion delivers it in spades :-)

The Onion does it again J.  Link

(btw this is just me enjoying the parody. As soon asOnion publishes their version of Palin’s inbox –not the allegedlyreal one Gawker published, I will most certainly post that as well).

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are we missing big movements in the midst of the urgent?

China'sstate-controlled fund may buy as much as49 percent of the New York-based investment bank, said the person, who declinedto be identified because the talks aren't public and may end in no agreement.Morgan Stanley resumed its decline on the New York Stock Exchange, falling asmuch as 22 percent.

 

 

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The financial bleeding in pictures

A great graphical tool on the NYTimes site today –link.

 

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Hurricane Ike in pics - courtesy Boston.com

More pictures available here -> link

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Lehman files for bankruptcy

To the tune of 639 billion dollars. Said another way;Lehman just told the world that they own the equivalent of two thousand and one hundred (2140 to be exact) Boeing747-8’s (the most expensive plane in Boeing’s productlist) that we cannot pay a penny on. Nice job!

 

Boeingprice chart

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Practical password management

Joel knocked it out of the park with this article, imho.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Hurricane ike keeps marching along

We continue to wait out Ike’s wrath withfriends. Please be praying for friends and family in the south texas area.

 

Story lines

AP : Hurricane Ike slams Texas coast with majorfloods

Statesman: Galvestonunder water

bbc: BBC NEWS | Americas | Hurricane Ike barrels over Cuba

Hurricane Ike also swept right over Beaumont,Port Arthur, and Galvestonin Texas. Texas refineries processes 1 out of every 4 barrels of oilin the USand this is one of the big concerns for now along with loss to property andlives.

 

 

 

 

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Saudi Arabia scores one for the crazies

Wow really guys, off with their heads eh....

AP
Saudi: OK to kill owners of 'immoral' TV networks
Friday September 12, 9:57 am ET

Top Saudi cleric says it's OK to kill owners of TV networks that broadcast 'immoral content'

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More on my birthday gift

The September Campaign Trailer from charity: water on Vimeo.

Would you like to help? Click on this link.

from the annals of the obvious

Vigorous Physical Activity Reduces Obesity Risk in Genetically Predisposed.

You don't say...

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Want to organize your outlook (the email client not your life)?

      

(photo credit -> flickr -> userBB)

 

 

Try this -> blogpost

I am using the above and excited about it J

 

Or if you are looking for something professional; this-> taglocity.

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The subject is not the challenge to a good presentation.

Alan Cooper shows how to make a presentation onAgile more presentable J

 

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My gift to myself this birthday

This is just a teaser. Stay tuned for more. If you are very impatient, you can click on the link and get the details.

Playing with Posterous

I am playing with posterous. Depending on how much I like it, I might end up making it my primary post platform. The good news is that posterous will auto post my entries to other blogging platforms including blogger. So this blog will stay updated.

You can check out my first posterous entry here (http://bit.ly/4xeaRO)
cheers,
amar

24 Months is just the beginning

Kim and I visited Mammoth lakes, CA to celebrate 24 months of non-stop fun and growth :-). I got exactly what I signed up for and in greater abundance that i thought was possible, I am delighted :) thanks for saying yes to me babe.

We (read Kim) took a lot of pics (she has the eye not me) and below are few of my favs.

What a presentation should be like

Don't think of excuses - just watch and ask yourself can you do something like this instead of the usual bullets and text blobs.


Sky McCloud Presentation from Duarte Design on Vimeo.

For Corin Wagen

littleBits coffemaker from ayah bdeir on Vimeo.

hat tip:: full post here

Not sending any signals but seriously

how cool is this....

Making small progress in the footsteps of Giants

India won its first Olympic Gold since they started competing in the Olympics in 1928.

Abhinav Bindra won India's first individual Olympic gold medal on Monday with a thrilling come-from-behind victory in the men's 10m air rifle.

How much #$%# are we willing to put up with

Umair Haque as usual has a thoughtful and provocative post on the need for fundamental change

Yes, business really does change. 400 years ago, corporations were formed by royal decree. 300 years ago, many countries were powered by slave labour, or its closest moral equivalent. 200 years ago, debtors didn't go bankrupt, they went to prison. 100 years ago - well, business is largely the same as it was a century ago. And that's exactly the problem. Business hasn't changed, but today's array of tectonic global shocks demands a different, radically better kind of business. Yesterday's corporations visibly cannot meet today's economic challenges.

Complete post here.

Let us learn from others mistakes but with caution

My context here is a blog post on Alfresco's blog roll that discusses Vignette's slow but sure decline - full post here.
I don't have domain expertise in the CMS/ECM market and in general i agree with a lot of what Uzi says in his post. He points out the Vignette is "losing the people that they should keep. And they’re keeping the people that they should lose" - which leads me to assume that has inside knowledge about what is going on at Vignette.

My bone of contention is with that following phrase (please read the full post for context before jumping here)

And that’s where the old businesses are falling over. Customers cannot trust in how their money is being spent. It isn’t simply that Vignette’s brand has lost its trust - it’s that the products actually do not work.

Why? Because managers don’t know how to develop good code.

Give them credit, though, for knowing how to keep their jobs.

Umm... really, that is the problem --- "managers don't know how to develop good code". Wow! that scares me.
So let us trace this a little.

a. the brand lost its trust ---> (why?)
b. the products do not actually work ----> (i can see how this can lead to 'a') (why?)
c. managers don't know how to develop good code ----> (let me ask you again -- FOR REAL?)

Products don't work for a lot of reasons - chief amongst them being being poor software, poor understanding of the market problems, poor quality of requirements being given to engineering, ignorance of how the market has changed since v1.0 of the product came out, etc. But rarely does "managers not developing good code" show up on that list.
I would agree that if the product direction is driven by a manager with no technical background or software development experience, that is not a recipe for success. But that is a far cry from "managers don't know how to develop good code".

I understand the point Uzi is trying to make and the distinction being drawn between open source philosophies and "big elephants" but i caution against blaming everything associated with "big elephants" by association.

Imho, one of the reasons I think Alfresco executed so well out of the gate and continues to build on that momentum is Kevin Cochrane - who did not necessarily code (he might have a coding background, i don't know) but did a stellar job of understanding market needs and helped R&D build against it. Kevin's title was product MANAGER :-) if I remember correctly.

Disclosure - I have no stake, interest or strong affiliation with Vignette or the CMS industry. This is more from my perspective as a product manager.

My jaw continues to stay open...

CNN Money headlines

UPDATE: GM Loses $15.5 Billion As Sales Plunge, Charges Mount

This is just Q2 loss - i.e. in a 3 month period. Is this funny money, is this real money. Can we make sense of WT$ this means to a lay man.

How does a company send this information out, lose "investor confidence" but talk about "putting this behind us". How many layers of funny talk and magic financial numbers are we hiding behind.

Forget GM shareholders --- what does this mean to the auto industry in the country?

This is not just GM though, we saw almost all the big financial institutions do this and continue to do this. What needs to happen before there is a outcry for clarity and simplicity in messaging?

Mysteries of Pittsburgh

I am visiting Pittsburgh this week on business. I was uninformed and sadly had prejudged this city. I thought the only thing that was noteworthy about Pittsburgh was the fact that it is the Steeler's town.

This is a really cool city. I have the pleasure of a pitt native guide me through the city and i am really seeing it in a different light. Here are some neat facts about Pittsburgh.

• Pittsburgh turns 250 years old this year.
  
• The Cathedral of Learning - the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh is a remarkable building.

Standing at 535 feet (>163 m)^[4], the 42-story Late Gothic Revival Cathedral is the tallest educational building in the western hemisphere and the second tallest educational building in the world. (Moscow State University's main building in Russia is the tallest.)

• Pittsburgh has the second most funiculars (active and inactive) of any state or province in the world (Valparaíso Chile has the first)

I am sure there are many more things cool about this city - I am just starting to scratch the surface :-). Yes, the title is a nod to michael chabon.

Success..Success..Success... what next?

If you are Pixar --- you freak out and decide to shake things up. That will turn out to be the best darn thing you could have possibly done.

I just read a McKinsey Quarterly article on innovation (thanks boss :)). It was an interview with Pixar's director Brad Bird. In this Brad talks about how Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter came to him because they were afraid. They were coming of 3 huge movie wins in Toy Story, A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2. They were clearly the best animation movie studio in the world and 3 continuous wins to prove it. So what was their reaction?

They were afraid of complacency and sought Brad Bird. Brad's latest venture "The Iron Giant" had received critical reviews but was a financial flop. An unorthodox move at the very least :-) so what do you think happened.

Incredibles - Oscar
Ratatouille - Oscar

Some great quotes in this article but the gist of it seems to be locating, encouraging and harnessing the power of the "black sheep" within your company. Brad defines black sheeps as restless contributors with unconventional ideas.

Who are your black sheeps?

Change is typically met with resistance - PSA

(from my inbox)

Thank you for signing up to "opt out" from getting telephone books at www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org.

A quick update on what is going on in the Yellow Page industry and their resistance to changing their behavior. The following is an excerpt from one of the Yellow Pages leading advocates to help fight anything anti-Yellow Pages:

Time to fight back!!! "Contrary to what you may be hearing and reading, the print Yellow Pages are NOT dead. Far from it. It’s time for the 50,000+ people who make their living from this industry — publishers, agencies, and suppliers, to start to fight back. Now."

www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org is a grass roots organization that can use your help to combat the 50,000+ group of people that don’t understand the issue. As we have stated previously, we are not against the telephone book, rather the unsolicited delivery of its many versions on our doorsteps without our permission.

Please send out our link www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org to as many people as possible. The "opt out" request is growing monthly, and the way to change the world for the better is growing rapidly.

Thanks for your help!

YPGG Organization

Ask yourself "why" before you do something

1. if you are going to record a short video -- Believe in your message
2. if you are going to record a short video -- stitch it together from beginning to end with a good story.
3. if you are going to record a short video just for the sake of putting up a video - it will show.

Gartner video telling you why YOU should attend the BPM summit this fall - http://www.gartner.com/it/summits/611409/video/index.html

Fascinating to read but why?...

Swimming the Amazon: 3,274 Miles on the World’s Deadliest River

Amazon book link

Btw the same gentleman has also conquered the Danube, the Mississippi, and the Yangtze. In 1997, he became the first to swim non-stop from Africa to Europe, and he did it in 29 hours, 36 minutes, and 57 seconds… without a wetsuit. WTF? Seven swimmers had attempted it before and all had failed.

Reality check - a pilot's blog

I was led to Patrick Smith's blog - courtesy Brad Feld. Patrick is an airline pilot who shares his view of the world and specifically the atrocity that is TSA + DHS + Airline industry. I would encourage people to read his blog to get a better all round perspective. Below for instance is a quote that Patrick used to address the misconception that pilots are overpaid, underworked and live lives of ease.

I think of my friend Chris, age 29, who flies for US Airways Express. He is away from home 21 days every month and earns $18,000 a year, with $100,000 in student loans and flight training debt hanging over him. And yet, each time he walks down the concourse, no doubt there are people who eye him with a sneer. Just another overpaid pilot putting in his 20 hours.

-amar

links from kottke day

• Swimming holes in central texas.
• Understanding the work behind mundane things (magazine layout).

The ability to change the world is not in your title

Blogs, blogs and more blogs

This page contains a list of official us government blogs. Interesting blogs include

• EPA's National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information – EPA's online discussion about identifying and sharing the best resources, tools, and ideas for improving access to EPA's environmental information.
• Health Marketing Musings – A blog about research, science, and practice in health marketing and communication, social marketing, information technology, public health partnerships, and more with Jay Bernhardt, Director of CDC's National Center for Health Marketing.
• NASA Goddard CIO Blog – NASA Goddard CIO, Linda Y. Cureton, blogs about technology, leadership, and being a Chief Information Officer.
• Pushing Back – Office of National Drug Control Policy blog to educate Americans about illegal drugs and the latest international, federal, state, and local efforts to reduce drug use (i like the name :-))
  

Gas saving tips

I am not big into 12 step programs. If I cannot remember it of the top of my head, I have trouble changing my behavior. So here are the 4 things I am doing differently to save gas by increasing the fuel economy of our vehicles. YMMV

• Keep your engine below 3000 rpms. This typically translates to drive on or below speed limit. I rarely exceed 65mph these days. It is yet to make me late to an appointment btw :-)
• Use cruise control as often as possible. Your vehicle is a lot more efficient at moderating gas usage than you ever will be so cruise control is your friend.
• Avoid braking hard. Anticipate stops and watch out for red lights and slow down proactively. Hard breaking burns a lot of fuel.
• Try to group your errands together. Cold starting your engine (been over 3hrs since you last drove the car) consumes twice as much fuel as if your engine was running recently. This might not be a big deal for us in Texas heat but nonetheless a good bit of advice to keep in mind.

Good luck :)

I have to make it official

I am a Celtics fan. I did think I was rooting for the Lakers in the finals but a couple of things made me realize who I am truly rooting for

1. Sports Guy for the Celtics. The Lakers don't have a Sports Guy, they have a bunch of gucci totting spectators (spectators not fans).
2. Curt Schilling's blog observations on Kobe's leadership.
3. Kobe's leadership. Seriously watch him - this man has one thing in mind - it is all about 24.
   
4. Celtics team play - way cool .... watch how they hung around Ray Allen till he started to take of in the last round, watch how Sam Cassell got the bench fired up for game 4 (he is stinking on everything else btw), watch how they make eye contact.

Statistics are not truths, they are pithy descriptions of the past. So the fact that no team has ever won after being down 1-3 in the finals does not mean it won't happen. It just means it is really really really hard for it to happen.

I want the Celtics to win. I was rooting for the Lakers because they beat the Spurs. I live in Texas and if anything I am a Suns fan (stupid me), i know complicated logic.

I just had to take a public stance for my own integrity. Kobe is way too self absorbed imo and i just don't see how I can root for his team. He might be the most talented player in the league right now (not PER, raw talent) but boy is he a d$%^&bag. Anyways :-) I hope the Celts make it.

p.s thanks Sports guy.

Obama announces his director of economic policy

• About him

Get to know him.

1. Slate article from April 4th
2. Debate on the stimulus package.
3. Other interactions on mankiw's blog.
   

What AA could have done better yesterday

Kim and I were flying out of Chicago yesterday. Kim was returning to Austin while I was going to Pittsburgh for a day and then to Austin on Monday (tonight). Here are the facts:

• Kim's Austin flight was cancelled and she was automatically booked on an 8am flight for Monday. I had to repeatedly hit '0' till I could talk to some one real. I was then able to book Kim on a 9:45pm flight out of Chicago (Sunday night). They had no answer to why this was not offered as an initial choice.
• My flight to Pittsburgh showed up as being on time.

This is what transpired through the evening:

• By the time I got to O'Hare (for my 4:15 departure), the crowd had grown. Flights had been cancelled initially due to weather and the domino effect was building up exponentially.
  
• I checked in my bag.
• My flight was rescheduled three times and was eventually canceled.
• My bag was going to Pittsburgh whether I was or not.
• I got in a line with ~200 people in front of me, called AA advantage desk and was put on hold for 15 mins (the line moved 3 people).
• Finally I got a person who explained to me that the earliest they could get me into Pittsburgh was Tuesday. My meeting was for Monday so I asked to be booked on the same flight as Kim which was now moved to 10:40PM. They were able to do that.
• Kim showed up at O'Hare. We got on the flight, which finally departed at 11:45 and we made it into Austin around 2:30AM.

This is what AA could have done better - remember O'Hare is AA's hub so if they have the most resources in any airport in the country, it is at O'Hare.

• Red phone lines are good. AA set up red phones with direct access to AA help line. But 3 to 8 lines is a joke when you have 2000 stranded passengers. You are only going to create chaos, confusion and feed the rage.
• Buy free wifi for a day for the whole freaking airport. Chicago has boingo providing WiFi but you have to pay 7$ for a day pass. AA should have opened free wifi access so people can start connecting with the outside world quickly.
• I called the AA Advantage help line and got an automated voice recognition system. I kept repeating "Operator Assistance" and it kept telling me "I understand you would like to talk to someone, have you considered the automated options". Seriously ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? I am in line with a gentleman who is flying international and he has to hit 4 countries in 5 days and you have screwed his schedule royally, the least you can do is allow him to talk to someone. Especially since the automated options HAVE NO OPTION FOR CANCELLED FLIGHTS.
• Set up drink and snack stations. Not saying cater gourmet food but realize that O'Hare has not meaningful food/drink options unless you go through the security check. You have 1000's of people standing in line outside waiting to get re booked BECAUSE OF YOU (weather but from their pov - YOU!). At least have some quick healthy snacks and bottled water around to help people calm down.
• Learn from your mistakes. This is the fourth or fifth time this is happening on a massive scale this year. Why is there no improvement in how AA responds to these situations? Weather is going to be a #$%#$, get used to it. But you can at least work harder on your response plan.
• Prioritize - I would have gladly let the gentleman trying to make 4 countries in 5 days ahead of me but you should help him get there. There is no way he is going to verbally make his case to 250 people and get in the front of the line.
• Deal with emergencies - I saw no paramedics on post or people monitoring for emergency situations. What if someone went into labour, what if an elderly person got into serious distress. What if 4 of these scenarios happened simultaneously across the airport. There did not seem to be a plan in place...

This is just the top of my head. I am sure Weather is an unpredictable factor for any airline but there is only so much you can blame on weather.

Oh btw AA, nice knowing you. I am definitely jumping on the Herb Kelleher bandwagon. Adios.
(I still want my bag back btw).

A biker's nightmare

Stupid drunk drivers. Seriously, what a shame and what a waste of life. Click on the image for the story.

Product Management: Thought exercise

If you were to product manage this, what would you dream about?

Are you a product manager - do you have this trait?

Through a pretty winding (web) road I came upon this blog post. The title says it all - "Strong opinions, Weakly held". I think that is my personality by default. The strong may be replaced with passion in my case :-) Often times in the past I have encountered people who were annoyed with the fact that I changed my opinions. It took me a while to understand that this is not a common operating model for a lot of people.

I would hypothesize that this is a pretty key personality trait if you want to succeed as a product manager. If you do not have passion or strength behind your opinions then your endeavors will fail at the first speed bump you encounter. On the other hand if you do not have the humility and courage to hold on to them weakly, you will find yourself leading battles not because you are fighting for the right cause but instead you are fighting because you want to be right. A big difference :-).

p.s In a lot of instances, people were annoyed with me for the right reasons but i am getting better ;-)

Two sides to every coin

1. Walmart puts the squeeze on suppliers. Times are really hard if you are predominately a WalMart dependent supplier but the article ends with the note that if WalMart did not focus on driving prices down so efficiently, a lot of our population would find basic necessities too expensive.
   
2. One of my colleagues at work was complaining about the cost of filling up his truck and exploring alternatives. Few days later he was thinking of opening a trading account so he could profit from the fuel price madness. :-) (and yes he continues to complain about the fuel cost...)
   

Just a thought : in a global economy there are no simple answers and there are no one size fits all answers. Your pain is very context sensitive and hopefully your context is aligned with the interests of several others.

A brief history lesson

I was listening to NPR in the car and I heard this interview with Frank Buckles. Frank is the last known living American world war I veteran. I wonder what it must feel like to be him, 107 years old and being interviewed because he is the last American left, who was part of the 1st great war. We need a new word for this.

Gmail -- 4 years and counting

I went digging into my gmail account and realized that I got my original "welcome to gmail" email on May 18th 2004. It has been 4+ years and it went by FAST!! The only other email program I recall giving me as much joy for such an extended length of time was pine. That was when i went from never having an email account to my first encounter with the wonders of email. All the other programs I have encountered in-between and since including Notes, Outlook, Yahoo, Hotmail, Zimbra, Mail(mac)have not been memorable. Wonder why?

Here is to the next decade of gmail innovations! :)

Serving too many Gods

This is my second "inspired by Jeff Lash" post :-). Jeff recently blogged about -> "Deliver customer value, not product features" which I think should be gospel for a product manager. Incidentally making this simple statement ring true is the most rewarding as well as the most challenging part of product management.

In my personal experience, one of the challenges with living up to this goal is the desire to please too many masters. As a product manager, you are in the middle of a lot of information flow and will get G2/request/demand/threats/requirements/... from a lot of sources. Accept them with gratitude, treat them with respect, process them appropriately but remember that your allegiance and goal is to delight the customer while solving the customer's problem and not to put the other stakeholder's product needs ahead of the customer. Your company expects this of you.


I leave you with this hasty diagram :-)



Happy customer picture is the property of Dan Taylor and is being used here thanks to his Creative Commons license. Thanks Dan!

Don't peek into the kitchen of your favourite restaurant

I have always heard that said to indicate the fact that once you see first hand how things are made, you are most likely to lose your enjoyment of "the thing" going forward. This is true for your favourite restaurant dish as it is for your favourite magic trick.

Not that I enjoy the current state of the English curriculum adopted by the Texas public schools, but this sound bite does not install confidence in our public school system.

Can rational actions lead to irrational thinking

This is an actual headline from a London news web site.

European Court agrees to hear chimp's plea for human rights

This is just plain crazy at so many levels. It indicates a substantial break down of our world view when we agree to entertain the debate that animals are humans. This is absurd but intriguing since this is the natural conclusion of a world view that accepts macro and micro evolution as tautologies even though only micro evolution can be scientifically proven.

Does this mean that I can claim social security for a chimp that is my pet?

Should I be very afraid?

Below is the full post from Greg Mankiw's blog.

Monday, May 19, 2008

The Coming Tax Hike

CBO writes to Congressman Paul Ryan:

Under current law, rising costs for health care and the aging of the population will cause federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to rise substantially as a share of the economy....In response to your letter of May 15, 2008, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has prepared the attached analysis of the potential economic effects of...using higher income tax rates alone to finance the increases in spending....

With no economic feedbacks taken into account and under an assumption that raising marginal tax rates was the only mechanism used to balance the budget, tax rates would have to more than double. The tax rate for the lowest tax bracket would have to be increased from 10 percent to 25 percent; the tax rate on incomes in the current 25 percent bracket would have to be increased to 63 percent; and the tax rate of the highest bracket would have to be raised from 35 percent to 88 percent. The top corporate income tax rate would also increase from 35 percent to 88 percent.

Such tax rates would significantly reduce economic activity and would create serious problems with tax avoidance and tax evasion.

Book recommendation

"The Protean Corporation" by Michael S Malone to be published by Random House. I found out about this when I read an opinion piece on the WSJ today. It was a good read :)

Ideas can sometimes resemble an itch that you want to scratch but cannot locate. That is, until an author comes along and pins it for you and you go Ah hah! that is exactly what I am thinking about. This opinion piece did that for me. Below is a excerpt and the link.

This higher level of anarchy will be exciting, but it will also sometimes be very painful. Entire industries will die almost overnight, laying off thousands, while others will just as suddenly appear, hungry for employees. Continuity and predictability will become the rarest of commodities. And if the entrepreneurial personality honors smart failures, by the same token it has little pity for weakness. That fraction of Americans – 10%, 20% – who still dream of the gold watch or the 30-year pin will suffer the most . . . and unless their needs are somehow met as well, they will remain a perpetually open wound in our society.

Scary, exciting, liberating, frustrating, infinitely ambitious and thoroughly amnesic. If you live in a high-tech community like Silicon Valley or Redmond or Austin, you already live in this world. It's hard to imagine more exciting places to be.

I live in Austin and though it is not quite the valley it is a fast changing landscape :) not necessarily for the faint of heart. Link to WSJ article.

Freak weather in Austin

Temperatures were unusually high over the past few days. Today we had a true to God thunderstorm in the middle of the day along with unusually large hail (my wife says this is the largest she has seen). Here are some pics courtesy my wife :-)

Product Management: Art + Science + Intuition.

Jeff Lash's recent post caught my attention :-) [Stop gathering requirements:link]. I guess the title is meant to be provocative and attention grabbing (it worked :) . I agree with most of what Jeff says - I would like to clarify it further.

I would amend the title to say "Do not stop with gathering requirements". Gathering requirements is just the first step, the science part. The subsequent steps are where the art and the intuition factor in. The job of the product manager is to collaborate with the other teams (engineering, services, support, docs, etc.) and try to flush out the true customer market need that is buried within those requirements. Sometimes it means extrapolating (customer is not seeing their own problem), and other times it means pruning (customer is treating multiple symptoms instead of one cause).

To me it translates to the following guidelines:

1. Always listen to the customer but the customer is not always right: Do not ever make stuff up. A product manager has accountability across the organization so the sooner you get into the habit of not making stuff up the better.


2. Look for clusters and patterns: This is the art and intuition part. Your job is grok the market. You do that by meeting with customers one at a time but you do not solve an individual customer's problem, you solve the markets problems. Look for patterns, this is where intuition plays a big role. Learn to listen to your own intuition and trust it.
   


3. Collaborate and Communicate: Take the time to earn the respect and trust of your peers and the market, do not assume it comes with the title. The quickest way to get there is to listen and ask others who might know better. For instance you think your product needs better user profile management. A good way to validate this is to ask your support team how many of their customer interactions are around password management and address book management.


4. Do not be afraid of failure: A good product manager focuses on making sure the product being developed is a best-fit for the market needs. This will automatically ensure your individual success but the corollary is not always true.

This is my current mantra and what I call "Evidence based product management".

Caveats:
1. Assumes you are not a brand new start up. If you are one with no customers, then your only guideline is "market research - build - release". Keep doing this till you have enough customers and can extend the hyphen between the three stages.

If you don't think this is beautiful there is something wrong with you

Time she keeps on ticking...

So here is what is going on.

1. Pretty psyched about this development - We are having our first ProductCamp event in Austin. It is going to be at the St. Edwards campus mid June. Follow this link for details. Seriously recommend this if you are into product management, product marketing or interested in these areas. This is the first of its kind in Austin so you have the opportunity to influence and be involved no matter what your experience level. Show up! and make it happen :-)
2. Yesterday was RSS awareness day. I think it is worth a shout.
   
3. Sometimes all that is required for big observable change is a lot of thinking and researching, not a lot of doing. (Something that all product managers would benefit from remembering)
   
1. Proof - 37signals blog post.
2. Anti-proof - Joel Spolsky blog post.
4. My broken collar bone is healing well. I started hitting the stationary bike at the gym this week. I cannot sprint standing up yet but just getting back on the bike has been rewarding.
   

What have I been upto?

This --> And occupying our time this week...

First near opera experience

My wife and I got to enjoy Kathleen Battle perform last night at the newly constructed Long center for the performing arts . Wow! This is my first such show and the closest I have been to an Opera in my life.

Kathleen Battle was amazing! she moved with incredible ease from English to German to French to Spanish and finished with English again.

Now that was a Diva worth watching and listening :) nay feasting on. I seriously encourage you guys to check out upcoming shows at the Long center. It looks like Austin is going to be enjoying some great performances. We are excited about Yo-Yo Ma performing here in September.

Thanks to Yobany and Denise for giving us this very special evening.

Btw, if you want to know more about the acoustical design at the Long center, check out this link.

Austin to Bastrop and back

I upped my PR this past Saturday. I managed to finish a 95 mile ride on Saturday, thanks to Nathan, Drew and Andy :-) No I am serious, this is not an Oscar thank you list, this is a biker thank you list.

I hope to finish strong on my MS150 ride next weekend.


(photo credit: flickr + creative common license)