Tag: decision making
Best of Day News Filtering
In the quest for relevant knowledge we spend hours each week (or day) sifting through mountains of data in order to discover information critical to our success. Dozens of services specialize and survive by delivering relevant content.* There’s a thin line between brilliant success and obsolescent oblivion.
Introspection 18 months later, are you an entrepreneur?
If you’re planning on building a business, at some point in your life you’ve gotta ask yourself a few hard questions:
The Motivation for Contributing to User Generated Content Sites
Why post to Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News or Reddit? Why blog on Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr or Posterous? Why answer questions on Quora? All of these activities can be traced back to social motivation. The desire to share something cool with other folks is a big part of what drives the commercial internet today.
How to persuade corporate IT into making your next computer upgrade an Apple
Here’s an extended list of Mac vs PC commercials. If your IT staff proves resistant to blatant advertising tricks you’ll have to dig deeper, please read on.
Why I pulled the plug on my favorite escape
World of Warcraft, for those not familiar with online gaming, is a huge and beautiful virtual roleplaying world. It’s also a seductive time sync.
Celebrity or Pro Chops, Pick One
While tracing the perimeter of the mall I failed to filter out an American Idol segment repeating ad naseum. The hosts were shouting to an ecstatic crowd about the prospect of becoming instantly famous. One young woman states, “this is the most important day of my life”. A mother screams about the perceived success of her child, “my baby made it!” Did they really?
Should I stay or should I go now
Migration Patterns
Like many days before, I waited outside the mall where I walk each morning. An enormous flock of birds surged through the area, swimming by over half a minute. There’s nothing more natural than moving to where life is more hospitable, and the flock was rapidly heading to warmer weather guided by habit and instinct.
eleven thirty
It’s not just the right time twice a day, it’s my wife Michelle’s birthday. She’s 29 years old at 7 am this morning. That’s really 29 as opposed to fictional 29 for the next decade. It’s hard to believe we’ve known each other for almost four years already. Each moment I share with her is a blessing that I dare not take for granted. Recognizing her birthday has given me time to reflect on the flow of time, and the role it plays as a constant partner in our lives.
Samurai and Ronin, Founders and First Employees
This post is the result of introspection related to a couple of positions I’ve come across. The most recent is an employee number one position in a YC company lead by two founders called ZeroCater. They’re profitable, have big growth plans, and they’re running a Python/Django stack but need help scaling up. Thanks to Andrew Badr for taking a few minutes out of his busy schedule to contact me and answer a few questions. David Tisch, the managing director of TechStars New York discussed an attractive HackStars staff position for the coming January-March TechStars NY program. While I’m optimistic about the program, the HackStars position misses out on the valuable social signal of being a carefully selected startup, and is more aligned with an employee number one position. The HackStar role is still a great vector to forging a company and improving tech and business skills.