Essay – Page 2 – BTMJ.org

Why I Didn’t Buy an iPad (Yet)

So I went to the store. I held one in my hand. And I didn’t buy it. I surprised my wife, and impressed myself. I figured by the time I actually saw it in person, I would have passed the event horizon and surely have brought one home. Yes, it helped that the 64GB models had been sold out, but I could have found one at another nearby location if I really wanted to.

Why didn’t I buy it?

1. I need a multi-user device. Yes, I know if Apple allows for that, families would buy less iPads, since everyone currently needs their own. Well, this family didn’t buy any because of it. I’m not about to have my baby daughter (who’s grown up using an iPhone touch screen), playing her games, watching family videos, and then sending random tweets or composing gibberish emails to my boss from my account. If it could support multiple user accounts, I’d buy it.

2. I like to write and draw. Multi-touch is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but for me to carry the iPad to meetings and take notes, I need to be able to write and draw on it, with the precision of a stylus. If it could replace a paper notebook, I’d buy it.

3. I’m focused on content production. While I consume content, I don’t need another screen to do so. Yes, the experience is very elegant, and if I was in to luxury or had to travel frequently, I would have bought it. Same for the MacBook Air a couple years ago. But luckily for my wife, I’m a little too conservative for that. If the device could sit on a desktop easel and take a wireless keyboard and mouse (thus replacing my laptop), I’d buy it.

4. Lastly, there was no killer app for me. So far, everything I would want to do on an iPad I can do on an iPhone, just with a small screen. Check/compose email, use Twitter, play a couple games, or watch movies in bed or on a plane. The on-screen keyboard is bigger, but not tremendously easier to use. If an app comes out that I simply must have, then I’d buy it.

So for now, I’ll stay on the sidelines observing how the apps evolve and if any of my use cases above will be supported. I’ll just have to make due with my iPhone, MacBook, Mac Pro, iMac, AppleTV and the MacBook Pro at work.

Watch the game or read the score?

In recent years, I’ve found myself less and less interested in following sports. There are exceptions, like the Saint’s winning the Super Bowl (with daring and class) last month, or our annual Dodger’s opening day tradition (with much less class), but they are increasingly rare. Between a demanding corporate job, raising a young family, and my sundry creative endeavors, it’s hard to justify spending 3 hours in front of the TV. Particularly when you don’t have one.

Watching a game can be stressful. I know it’s supposed to be entertainment, but if you find yourself invested in the team or the point spread, it can impact your blood pressure. It feels like watching each play can be too much detail. Sometimes I’d rather just read the box score.

This leads me to politics and the media’s reporting of the frantic efforts in Washington to pass legislation, project an image, and keep electoral score. Regardless of which side you affiliate yourself with or your views on government healthcare entitlements, if you are invested in the players or the outcome, it can be stressful to watch.

Now obviously we are all impacted by the outcome of these maneuvers, through taxation and regulation and what not, and I’m not saying you should ignore the debate or not get involved if you think it’s necessary, but it’s the investment in “us” versus “them” winning the debate that interests me. It’s your team versus the other team duking it out in the big game. Matt Drudge can now raise or lower your blood pressure.

Do you watch the game, or just read the score when it’s over?

Unexpected Rewards from Daniel Pink, Michael Eisner and Reed Hastings

Daniel Pink takes on motivation in his new book Drive. I recently had the pleasure of hearing him speak in Pasadena, something I recommend to anyone given the opportunity (he’s an exceptional speaker, see his speaking schedule or this TED talk), where he reinforced a key message from his book about rewarding: when rewards are expected, performance suffers. “If you do X, then I’ll reward you with Y” scenarios undermine intrinsic motivation. In a typical job situation, assuming we’re paid enough of a baseline salary commensurate with our value, it’s the unexpected bonus that’s most effective.

This is precisely what I heard from Michael Eisner and Reed Hastings at a recent Churchill Club dinner in Santa Clara. With two very different takes on management, they had a lively discussion about succeeding in the “nimble” technology or more “traditional” Hollywood industries. Eisner as the elder statesmen of formal management, and Hastings as the up and coming entrepreneur with a new take on leadership–which is detailed, by the way, in the excellent Netflix culture deck. It was a lively conversation (you can also see this take on the culture clash).

What stood out for me on the heels of Daniel Pink’s talk, was when discussing how to compensate executives, the two agreed that “if-then” targeted bonuses do not align actions to long term interests of the company. Hastings recounted an event where Netflix had extra money and considered spending it on marketing to drive more subscriptions, which his executive declined as being too expensive on the margin. What if that executive had had a bonus target tied to subscription levels? Their motivation may have been suspect.

Eisner, in turn, describes his ideal model as paying a good salary and stock package (baseline rewards), but then providing unexpected bonuses when the executive demonstrates nimbleness or does something extraordinary. Exactly what Pink’s research confirms, and a testament to Eisner’s leadership ability and understanding of motivation, as well as the astuteness of Pink’s book.

As is fitting to the point here, sometimes the best parts of study and reflection are connecting the dots when you least expect them. Thanks to Daniel Pink and the Churchill Club for an unexpected reward!

Mac Plus Emulation & HyperCard on Mac Pro

You’ll always remember your first. For me, it was a Mac Plus. Purchased by my parents as a family Christmas gift in the mid-eighties, it later ended up in my room and quickly became the center of my universe.

The killer app for me was always HyperCard. Of course at the time I had no idea how prescient that experience would be, since the hypertext driven world wide web did not exist yet nor did my resulting career.

While’s I’ve kept that original Mac in working order (including the original 20MB external hard drive), at some point parts are bound to fail and my trips down memory lane will be over (especially attacking conveys in the Pacific).

Enter Mini vMac, a Mac Plus emulator for modern computers. Now assuming I can successfully migrate the contents of that SCSI hard drive (connected to a computer with LocalTalk but no TCP/IP networking) to the disk image running in the emulator, my Mac Plus can live on indefinitely (that is until 10 years from now when I’m emulating Mac OS X to run the Mac Plus emulator).

It’s only took a couple of hours to get cooking. Notice the top (black and white window) is actually the Mac Plus (running a HyperCard stack I created in the early 90’s), with the purple window being VNC giving me access to the desktop of a headless G4 running OS 9 (for the SetFType utility that does not run on Intel Macs), then some OS X finder windows with access to the G4 shared drive to move the disk images back and forth, and of course Safari with the emulator site.

Note how much more real estate I get to use these days compared to the original 9 inch screen. It really is amazing when you step back and think about it.

Following a fresh install of System 6.0.8 from Apple, I had success! Welcome back Larry, John, Steve and Bruce. Mounting disks is easy, just drag them onto the emulated screen and they mount. Don’t have to worry about only having one floppy drive!

And for those a little more curious, back in my early teens I developed several HyperCard projects, including this piece of shareware that generated random yet pronounceable words (perfect for passwords) based on a consonant/vowel/number structure you could customize.

I’ve toyed with the idea of getting the physical Mac Plus onto the internet via a LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge, or perhaps just getting the SCSI hard drive accessible via some kind of adapter to Firewire. I’d be curious if anyone else has undergone a similar effort–let me know. In the meantime, I’m off to sink a convoy!

Parar y Pensar

As a technology professional who works with the web every day, I’ve become accustom to getting answers to my questions online, oftentimes in just minutes. In fact, like most people in my circles, I take it for granted.

But from time to time however, something comes along that makes you step back and realize what a marvelously powerful tool you have at your disposal, granting you powers only imagined a few decades ago.

I happened to be doing research on some background influences of a philosophy paper I was reading. After following the usual paths of Googling authors and titles from the material, I branched out to some key phrases and terminology introduced in the paper. This led me to other students of the author who, while not referencing the author’s ideas directly, did relate some of the concepts to different contexts. Now I’m starting to get impressed, I’m following a vein of thinking around the web.

Thanks to these new references, I turn back to the original author in search of a recent essay he had published. As it turns out, I find the author’s website, which includes links to the paper as well as his blog, both in Spanish. Using Google translate, I am able to translate the paper to English along with the blog, in about 10 seconds. Done. Total investment: about a dozen minutes and $0.

So, at a time like this I step back and wonder, at what point did what I just do become commonplace? I certainly could not have done it 10 years ago. Makes you really marvel about what the web will be like 10 years from now.

AppleTV is Almost There

I love movies. With a growing family and career on overdrive however, I don’t get to see many these days. There’s a swank new theatre in town that serves booze and has reserved seats, but it might as well be a figment of my imagination.

I loath mindless TV. I dropped cable service for good a few years back and honestly don’t miss it. Well, the occasional ballgame would be nice but it’s an acceptable loss. And with the exception of another historic event (such as 9/11 or the moon landings), the web blows away TV for concise and directed news consumption.

Enter AppleTV. First, in full disclosure, there are some who call me an Apple fanboy. I prefer to think of myself as a connoisseur of fine things and an admirer of Steve Jobs, but I’ll admit Apple’s marketing has me zeroed like a German 88 on a Normandy crossroads (yes, we’ve been watching Band of Brothers again).

I purchased it on a bit of a lark, and was frankly not very impressed for the first few months. It wasn’t until their 2.0 software update and some experimentation running Boxee as hack that I began to think more about the device.

It’s first big win came from an unlikely place, the screensaver. The default setting (assuming you choose to sync your photos to it) is to display all of your photos in a subtle but engaging stream across the screen. Intellectually that doesn’t sound so cool, but if you keep photos from your whole life in there, watching events from different corners of your life really makes it a stream of memories. There have been several occasions with guests were we simply sit and watch it. Sometimes for more than an hour. Great reminders.

Since there are 3 iPhones in the house, the free Remote app (iTunes link) that lets you control the AppleTV (and any other shared iTunes library) via WiFi connection was a brilliant addition. It’s great for wowing guests in the demo or lowering the volume of Johnny Cash during a late night poker game.

The next step was the death (due to old age) of my all-in-one DVD player / surround sound system. Having just invested a small fortune in baby resistant living room furniture, I was in no mood to spend even $100 to replace the device. It’s rare I actually watch a physical disc these days, as I love the convenience of having my collection in iTunes and independent of the screen. For now, no actual disc player hooked to the TV.

So now the only competition for our AppleTV comes from the Roku device that sits next to it, solely for the Netflix streaming (and maybe next year for MLB.tv to scratch that ballgame itch). I’d like to see the next AppleTV update include streaming from say Hulu. Can’t we all get along? Live sports and breaking news, even as content subscriptions, would be intriguing. RSS and Twitter would be nice to throw up on the big screen, maybe as part of the screensaver.

Lastly, the biggest improvement will come from the network, not the device. Just as AT&T turns off potential iPhone converts and frustrates the faithful, Time Warner’s 1.5 down (on a good day) simply doesn’t cut it for spur the moment movie rentals or anything in HD. You basically have to make your choice well before dinner or the night before. I’ve heard about the mythical Verizon FiOS, but alas not a soul at that company can tell me when it will be available in my neighborhood. Why is that such a secret?

While I realize it’s just a hobby for Apple, I hope it gets upgraded to full fledged side business. It’s good lemonade.

Business is Both-Brained. What About Your Career?

The discussion of right-brain and left-brain thinking in business is a hot topic, thanks in particular to Daniel Pink’s wonderful book, A Whole New Mind. In the June 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, the article Innovation in Turbulent Times covers famous left/right, business/creative partnerships such as David Packard/Bill Hewlett, Pierre Wertheimer/Coco Chanel among others.

The need and effective paring of rational, linear and logical thinking with imaginative, creative, and holistic thinking is as obviously important as it is difficult to do well. I see this all the time working in the web domain of information technology, were engineering, design and project delivery frequently intersect.

While its fun to debate what left or right-brained skills are more important these days, one thing is certain: business is “both-brained”. Consider this poignant excerpt from the HBR article:

Management might need better visioning skills to foster a culture of curiosity and greater risk taking–primarily right-brain activities. Left-brain analytic tools might be needed to steer innovation investments toward the most promising areas. The business might need more creativity to generate ideas, but also analytics to constrain unprofitable projects. The right-brain design process might not be strong enough to transform intriguing ideas into practical products. Or the analytic left brains might need to fund the product pipeline to favor a different mix of large and small bets. Sometimes the products are fine but marketing needs to create stronger, more emotional bonds with customers, or engineers need to boost efficiency and profitability through improvements in cost or quality.

It’s as relevant in the context of a business as it is in a career. In the latter, the challenge is to manage the “partnership” of your two brain hemispheres as well as some of the successful business examples we all admire. As any brief study of neuroscience will yield, nearly everything we do uses both sides of brain. The art is in realizing your strengths or natural “handedness”, and learning to cultivate practices that encourage thinking in new ways.

Perhaps all this makes the most famous both-brainer of them all, Leonardo da Vinci, even more relevant to our demanding modern careers.

A Naval Aviator’s Log Book from WWII

My grandfather served as a US Naval Aviator in WWII. We knew him as the patriarch of a large and vibrant family, a successful entrepreneur and executive, an avid sailor, civilian pilot and world traveller. My grandmother Joyce was the love of his life, and he adored his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren… but I think he always thought of himself as an aviator.

As a kid who grew up in the 1930’s and hung on the fence at Floyd Bennett Field on Long Island, his dream was to fly for the US Navy. He worked hard in his youth, as a bartender in Hell’s Kitchen taking care of his parents, and eventually followed his older brother into the US Navy. He became a cadet and attended civilian flight training then flight school in Pensacola, Florida. He graduated as an Ensign, then served in the Caribbean with squadron VJ-16 as a Lieutenant, j.g.

I think he was most proud of his service as a Naval Aviator. He always captivated me with his stories from that era, and someday my cousin and I will finish getting them down on paper to share. When we lost him last year, I created a slideshow for the funeral with pictures from his life. In all the old slides and scrapbooks, I came across his Navy records and aviator’s flight log book. Following the urging from some history buff friends, I’ve decided to scan and post some of the materials.

The first item is the log book you can find here, which I will add to on a regular basis as I have time to scan its contents. I may also post some interesting letters and official Navy documents, including ones from the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States. I’ll update the blog when new material is posted.

Jim Collins on Success Amid Turbulence & Uncertainty

In the interest of full disclosure, both major books of top selling business writer Jim Collins (Built to Last and Good to Great) remain unread on my bookshelf as I’ve taken a break from popular business books over the last few years.

From how his thinking, his writing, and his methods are discussed however, he’s obviously someone to keep an eye on. I also happen to like writers who retreat to the cave or the mountain for years, and come back out with the rare but delightfully well-thought-out book.

Reading this interview in Fortune, I was curious about the topic of his research today and what his next book might be about. We was on the ball a few years ago when he started looking at how businesses succeed in turbulent times (something relevant today, right?).

“The one thing you learn is that those who panic, die on the mountain.”

Spoken like the true rock climber he is. He talks about how the period of stability that followed WWII is ending, and will likely not return during our lifetimes. Companies that have core values (interestingly it’s more important having them then what they are) and realize the people you have with you are the most important thing (again, think about getting stuck on a mountain). People that don’t need management, and consider their work as responsibilities rather than just a job.

It seems like common sense, but having a planning horizon that looks at the next 25+ years rather than the next quarter, is a clear differentiator. We can only hope that our government remembers this when it rushes solutions with little planning yet huge long-term economic consequences upon the country. I hope they read his next book.

Healthy Metrics & Tools

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure" is a management adage typically attributed to W. Edwards Deming. Well it’s as true for business as it is for our health.

Elevation Graph from Trailguru

In my role as a senior manager in a large corporation, I use metrics all the time in my work*. I’ve now undertaken the challenge of applying this same approach to my health statistics. It will not only help me manage and hopefully improve my health, but will be fun in that I get to try out new tools and technologies and share what I find as I go.

Now not everything will be electronic, after all, you’re talking to a guy that carries a fountain pen and Moleskine in addition to an iPhone. It’s an experiment, and will evolve as I try different approaches and hopefully get suggestions from readers.

Health Log – An analog way of keeping track of food, exercise, sleep and medical statistics. Paperback and about 5×8” (conveniently the same size as my Moleskine), it’s light and not too difficult to keep on a desk or carry in the car. I picked it up on a lark in a stationary store in Mammoth Lakes about a year ago, more for the visual design than for the content. I’ll probably go electronic at some point, but it’s cheap and doesn’t run out of batteries.
DailyPlate.com – So how many calories were in that In-N-Out Cheeseburger? This site can tell you (480) along with plenty of other common food items. It’s been a great way to estimate calories, fat and carb content when nutrition labels are absent. It also provides all sorts of other tools, but I’m not a member of the site.
FatWatch – An iPhone application that tracks and graphs your weight. Aside from how I feel, how well my pants fit, and how good my wife says I look, it’s the most available metric to monitor.
Trailguru – An iPhone 3G application and corresponding website that utilizes your phone’s GPS capability to record and plot your outings. It has great statistics such as duration, distance, and ascent as well as charts (see above), map plots and photos you take along the way. And inspired by Fourmilab, I’ve taken to posting my daily walks on Twitter.

* Note: I’m not really a numbers guy. In fact, I believe more strongly in leadership, relationships, and continuos learning–but in a large corporation metrics quantify your success.