What To Fix

Morals, Manners, Ethics, and the Law

2009-07-02T12:38:09Z

After chatting with somebody online the other day, it appears to me like a lot of people are confused between ethics, manners, morality, and the law.

I'm not sure if this is deliberate or not. Perhaps it's just ignorance. I don't know. But I thought I would go over my working definitions for each of these.

These definitions may or may not agree with the dictionary. Quite frankly, I could care less. They work for me, and they help me deal with complex issues. Perhaps they'll be useful to you as well.

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Morals - Morals are those things between me and my creator, universe, or conscience that I feel are right and wrong for me. Immanuel Kant had the idea that things that are moral should be those things that you would make required for all mankind. I like this idea as a starting point to talk about morals -- but the point isn't to actually make a law for all mankind, it's to keep your morals in line with those things that would be best for everybody if everybody acted that way. If you are a follower of some religion, then you've got a quick guide for morality. After all, if religions are good for anything they're good for telling you what's right and wrong.

But to me, at least, these religious instructions are just shortcuts to help you out until you can think for yourself. Because it's critically important to understand why things are right or wrong in order to be able to incorporate morals into your everyday life. When you're a child, you need baby food fed to you -- you need morals given to you in sort of a dummy's guide. When you are an adult, you have to work in a more complex environment where the easy rules don't always apply. When your wife asks you if she looks fat in that dress, and you say yes, you'll understand what I mean. Or when somebody asks you how we can execute serial killers when all killing is bad. The list goes on and on. You can either choose to let somebody else do your thinking for you or think for yourself. I choose to think for myself.

Ethics - Ethics are those things deemed appropriate or not by the profession or social class that I am in. Ethics usually have some sort of qualifier -- ethical for whom? So, for instance, when somebody says that a politician is acting unethically, they mean the politician is acting in an unethical manner for politicians. They might be acting in a totally ethical manner for mobsters. Ethics can be codified by a formal ethics body, or they can be informal.

Manners - Manners are those social rules that everybody follows in order to maintain civil discourse, especially about contentious issues. You can violently disagree with somebody about a moral issue, but as long as you both have manners the conversation does not have to get into a fistfight. Manners are a critical part of social life. They're not required or anything, they just make things a lot easier. There are certainly people with little or no manners, and there are those with a highly developed sense of manners. Usually the latter do very well in life, while the former make enemies and earn distrust sometimes without even realizing it. When I was younger I thought manners were kind of silly, but as I've grown older I realize how vitally important manners are to any kind of relationship.

Law - The law is the minimal set of rules which are required in society so that we do not hurt one another. It's different from manners because while manners are concerned with maximizing conflict resolution and civil progress, the law is simply concerned with protecting us from each other. That's why it's perfectly okay to say things that are very offensive to other people -- people do not have a right not to be offended. It's also common for things that are moral to be illegal, like perhaps allowing people to smoke pot (if you believe that marijuana prohibition is immoral) or allowing blacks to ride in the front of the bus during the 1960s. Likewise, some things that are immoral are also legal, like lying to people or cheating people out of money for shoddy products. Of course, what these things are depends on your morals.

People get really mixed up with these concepts, assuming that everything that is moral should also be legal, or vice-versa. Assuming that ethics and morality are the same thing. Assuming that manners are pointless. Assuming that everything that is immoral should be outlawed. Unfortunately, politicians and religious figures do not help very much. There are lots of little traps here to fall into.

Additionally there are some interesting combinations of these ideas that should make you think. If something is gravely immoral yet legal, do you have an obligation to support the law? Do you have an obligation to your fellow man to demonstrate to change the law? What about things that are moral yet illegal? How about things that are simply rude and legal, like the shabby commercials I was talking about the other day? Should a lawyer take a case for somebody he thinks is actually guilty of a crime? It might be the ethical thing to do, but is it moral? Should the law reflect the common morality of some religion or another? Is the law based on religion? Are ethics based on morality? If polluting the planet is immoral, should it also be illegal too? What happens if the law tries to be an enforcer of morality and not a minimum baseline?

By understanding the subtle differences between these terms, you can begin to work your way through them. There are no right and wrong answers to the questions above, they depend on your judgment of a lot of intangibles. But the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms, right?

Et tu, Burger King?

2009-07-01T13:34:29Z

I'm not even going to comment.

Commercials I Hate

2009-06-29T17:10:03Z

If I ever meet this guy, I'm going to punch him right in the nose

I just spent the last week at the beach, and my kids love TV. They like getting out and doing stuff, but the minute they come back the TV comes on. It's like they are incapable of self-directed enjoyment.

I wonder if other people notice this in their kids too?

While we're on the subject of TV, I'm really getting annoyed at these commercials I see everywhere. It seems like everything is fair game and there's no common decency. Call me a prude, but I would think that commercials should be viewable by kids. But we're getting disgusting, intimate, crass, and ugly stuff shoved at us during almost every commercial break no matter what the time or what the underlying show. It's enough to swear off broadcast television completely.

Here are several commercials that I would like to shoot with a bazooka:

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Smilin' Bob - I hate this guy. I really do. He's not funny, he's not informative. He's just annoying. And sort of a pervert, really, if truth be told. 'Cause if you're walking around all the time thinking about your penis, there are probably some wires in your head that need connecting. The guy that developed that product went to jail, which is fine with me. But yet the commercials keep running! Arghhh!

Yours + Mine lube job - Here's the thing: go get a room. Get off my TV. You belong on late-night cable and not in the middle of my family dinner.

Get a room already

Scott and his oven - Not to be outdone, Quizno's has gotten into the lewd festival on TV. This one is funny, except it's funny in an adult way. If you're 15 you're going to laugh like hell watching it. If you're 35 and have a five-year-old girl who sitting beside you, suddenly it's not so funny any more. I feel like I need a shower.

Probably hits the target demographic perfectly.
It just ticks off everybody else who has to put up with it.

Cialis and the rest of the ED bunch - Here we have a couple that got a room and then couldn't make things, er, work out. So they end up watching the sunset in outside bathtubs. Why is somebody else's sex life something that should be part of my day? Look -- if you're in the separate tubs, well, you really need to do something a little different anyway. And what the heck are you doing outside? When's the last time you had a date that involved outside bathing? Sounds more like something you would do at a strange summer camp for old people.

I know that ED is a serious issue, but it's not like everybody doesn't know that ED drugs exist. And what the frack are drug companies doing advertising prescription drugs on TV? Shouldn't doctors make decisions about drugs? What are we supposed to do, go tell our doctor we want a certain kind of ED drug because we saw a happy older couple taking a bath?

It's redundant, inappropriate, and tasteless. It brings up an entire topic with small kids that is wrong. It's my house. I really have better things to do than contemplate an erection that lasts more than 4 hours.

Guys. You're going to have to get out of the tubs at some point.
Perhaps the doctor should have explained some of the mechanics a little better?
Why not just get off the air completely?

Hemorrhoids are a pain in the rear - They used to be able to sell medication for hemorrhoids without showing people wiggling around in a chair trying to scratch their butt. I mean we all know what hemorrhoids are. What's next? Close-up shots? We understand the product. Just give us a break with all the details, okay?

Feminine products - It used to be they sold Tampax by showing a girl running through a field of flowers. Now they get a lot more explicit. We've got products for dryness, for itch, for cleaning -- and it's all in living HD color right here in my living room. I'm not a complete prude. I know these products exist and do great wonders for people. But do you really have to tick everybody off by embarrassing them in their own home?

Years ago there was a Pepto Bismol couple that made a joke out of how people don't like to talk about diarrhea. The lady would always tell people they met about how her husband suffers, much to his consternation. It was funny, because real people don't talk about all of this personal junk in normal everyday life. It's not necessary and it's not polite. Yet we allow ourselves to be forced into having very intimate topics shoved down or throats (or elsewhere) by advertisers on a regular basis.

Not sure what a pool has to do with anything,
but at least it beats a pornographic pizza oven

When did crass become strategically smart for advertisers? I don't want censorship, just take all of this bodily, personal, and private material and present it through a different channel. Have some sense of decency about kids who are watching TV, will ya? No matter how well your sales are going, you're making the entire advertising business look bad.

Please stop.

Myrtle Beach Pictures

2009-06-28T20:38:59Z

I just spent the last nine days in Myrtle Beach. It was a welcome vacation.

Myrtle Beach has been called the "Redneck Riviera" due to the fact that it is convenient to the Bible Belt and is known as a lower cost family resort vacation.

I think the term is a little overdone. Myrtle Beach, located in the southeastern United States, is a good example of what happens when government gets out of the way of progress. As somebody who has been coming every year or so for the past forty years, it's been interesting watching things change.

South Carolina is not a rich state, but it does have beautiful beaches. For some reason unknown to me, the city fathers of Myrtle Beach decided not to have overly restrictive zoning regulations. They decided to let the place grow like it wanted to grow. What happened next was an interesting experiment.

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At the beach, ready to rock-and-roll

At first, the only sign that things were out of control were, well, the signs. Billboards went up everywhere, and flashing and blinking signs soon followed. Businesses sprang up anywhere, like weeds.

Next came the hotels -- hundreds of them, from little family establishments to huge complexes. Hotels were everywhere. Houses were gradually eased out, replaced by more profitable condos and rental homes.

Then came the restaurants. Restaurants chains love the beach because of its intense seasonal peaks.

Then the shows came. The band Alabama located here. Dolly Parton, a famous Country and Western singer, followed. There were magic shows, medieval shows. Lots of shows.

Here something interesting happened. Instead of strip joints and gambling, local mores dictated family-oriented fare. Amusement parks flourished. Day tours and other family services grew. For a long time, Myrtle Beach was just a cross between a tourist trap and a family place to rest. A little course, but mostly geared towards good, clean fun.

But sometime within the last twenty years it became obvious that Myrtle Beach was a gold mine. Huge chains came. Shopping. Gourmet food.

Then we started seeing organized crime. Strip joints, escort services, gambling -- Myrtle Beach was looking more and more seedy with each trip.

Sunrise over the ocean on the east coast is always beautiful

This trip we saw lots of "gentlemen's clubs" and other not-for-kids material. There was boat gambling, high-interest loans, the whole shebang.

It seems that one thing in life is certain: wherever there is lots of money, there are going to be people that have no morals and will make a buck at any cost. It's true in Iran; it's true in Russia, it's true in China, and it's true here, sadly.

I still like Myrtle Beach. She's like an old friend who has not aged gracefully. God knows there is an incredible amount of business that goes through there. But mostly, I am tired of busy family vacations. Myrtle has too much stuff to do: we spent nine days running from event to event. I told Melissa that I'd like to find a place with a house, a hammock, a dock, a boat, some snorkeling, and no distractions.

Here's hoping we get that next year.

Childhood's End

Google Lies: The Myth of Good Content

2009-06-18T17:46:29Z

/* BEGIN GRUMPY RANT */

I blog for myself, mostly. I'd like something for the great-great grandkids to read about me, and I enjoy putting my thoughts on paper. If you like any of this, I'm happy.

My latest reading mission has been on web marketing. I want to find out why and how some people start with Google and end up buying something. We all do it, yet I really don't have a clue as to how it happens!

After years of creating some pretty good programs, the light finally dawned on me that promotion and marketing is as much, or actually much more of an important skill than just slinging code. Being a code monkey is fine, but it's more fun to build a code zoo. I'm finding something similar in web marketing.

Not that everybody else knows. Some folks seem determined to ignore reality.

Many, many times somebody at Google says something like, "Well, the best way to get people to visit your site is just to have good content."

That's total horse-hockey, and Google knows it. Let's get real.

]]> It's easy enough to prove. Take singing. Do you really believe that the best singers in the world are the ones that are the most popular? If so, I have a bridge to sell you. Or sites where people post content, like Digg or HN. Do you really think the best content goes to the top? The best? Really? Because that's not what I'm seeing.

The web is not about good content. It's a popularity game. Popularity games are played by knowing the right people, doing each other favors, getting out and meeting people, and by being, well, popular.

Google is not about search. It's a citation engine -- it provides an ordered listing of how people cite your work. The theory being that if a lot of people cite you, you must be on to something.

As a general rule, it's workable. Heck -- workable to make tens of billions of dollars for Google. But people can cite you for all kinds of reasons, and once huge money gets involved, the game is afoot. I read this post last week where some lady had written an obnoxious article and ticked off an entire online community. So, predictable as rain in the monsoon season, everybody from that community went back to their boards and blogs and started linking to her. Now her traffic is ten times what it was before. Last month I complained about getting traffic for this obscure athlete (I will NOT mention her name again!) and now I'm getting hammered by people googling her, much to my chagrin. Was there some kind of high quality in either of these stories? Not at all. They were popular, or anti-popular. Quality has nothing to do with it.

I read a really good story a few weeks ago about how to promote your content on the web. What's the secret? The guy made a sales sheet and started cold-calling and emailing other website owners to see if he could get a link back to his site. That just seems kind of weird, doesn't it? Calling up strangers so they will mention your site/company on the net? But it works.

What this means in reality is that it's all just smoke and mirrors at the search engines. The king has no clothes. Yes, they try to put the most relevant content in front of the user. But anytime you're dealing with a algorithm people are going to game the system, whether on purpose or by accident. And once some people start gaming the system, everybody has to game the system. It's the prisoner's dilemma.

We'd like to believe that search is about quality, just like we'd like to believe that people who make the coolest technology solutions go on to make tons of money. And the best-sounding bands make the most records. And the best doctors have the happiest lives. And the best ideas get the most attention. But that's so far from the truth it's laughable. Still, the myth persists.

By all means, write the best content you can. If you're doing startups, make the best solutions for your customers as you can. But don't buy into the notion that quality sells itself, or that the best way to get readers is good content. It's just a lie. A fairy-tale to tell small children. There's a whole nother skill (as opposed to a half nother skill?) of marketing. But people don't want to think about having to cold call, mail, network, and all of that other stuff, so we don't talk about those things. Better to say that you're product wasn't good enough or your content wasn't good enough than to admit that you're just lazy, right?

/* END GRUMPY RANT */

Our Thoughts

2009-06-14T18:53:55Z

A young Iranian woman protests the rigged elections in her country

Our thoughts go out to the people of Iran who had their election stolen from them. Of all things, being able to change course peacefully is the one thing that separates successful nations from failed nations. Hopefully Iran can find some way to become the intellectual and cultural star is has the potential to be.

New Head Shot

2009-06-11T23:30:06Z

There's a new picture of me up today. I thought I might explain it, in case you had any small children that were frightened.

I have a major client that is about to end a contract sometime in the next few weeks/months. Somehow it became traditional with me many years ago to do something unusual at the end of each contract -- sort of a rite of passage. So I've lost some weight, shaved the beard, and now, e-gads! the magical hair-of-youth! I told my wife I would dye my hair blue. She yawned and said it would go well with my eyes. She knows the score.

I know I am not alone in this: a friend who is in the same situation is buying a sports car and another friend has decided to become a certified fitness trainer. A third friend in the same situation decided to become a priest. Another decided he wanted to try painting. I guess somehow these contract transitions lends themselves to trying new things.

I tell people I have been very lucky to have had a dozen careers in the same lifetime. I really mean that -- it's been an incredible ride. I've seen startups, dot-coms, Fortune 10s, big government, big insurance, big finances -- I've seen a lot. It's been great. Somebody asked me once if I was afraid of the uncertainty of a contract ending. Not at all! I look to each contract as a wonderful chance to meet great people and help them out -- it's impossible to go on to the next contract without the current one ending. And so far each new gig is better than the last. Who's complaining?

Funeral Home Blogging

2009-06-09T17:41:44Z

It's been said about the internet that never have so many had so much to say about which they knew so little.

As I sat in the lounge in Atlanta yesterday trying to read, there was a television on. I was subjected to local news, Entertainment Tonight, and some real-life garbage. It was hours and hours of stuff you'd show a person who was mentally deficient a hundred years ago: innuendo, gossip, people arguing with each other over nothing while thousands watched. The vain in search of the famous.

Maybe people on the internet blab a lot about things they know nothing about, but it certainly didn't start with the internet.

]]> When I was a freelance writer, writing for a weekly and sometimes a daily meant that I'd get to see the TV news crews working more than most people, and I learned that TV operates by a different standard than print. Everybody knows the old saying "if it bleeds, it leads," and it's true: people are inherently interested in death and destruction. I know I am. The daily and weekly I worked for would routinely run car crash pictures on page 1, usually below the fold. Above the fold there was something the editors found more important -- politics, sports, or business news.

We understood sensationalism, sure, and we made money from it, but we always
had some kind of reserve too.

I remember reading the story of an intern who started working with John McLaughlin years ago. (McLaughlin has a show on PBS; one of those political shows where everybody ends up yelling at each other) He remembers that John had absolutely no sense of decorum. He used to record missives to his intern while in the bathroom each morning, with all of the usual background sounds and noises that go with that. The intern was struck with the idea that celebrity on television means a decided lack of modesty, humility, and a greatly deranged view of self importance.

In the newspaper business I saw some of this lack of control when TV crews visited local funeral homes to interview grieving relatives that were part of a major news story. As writers we used to tell each other that there were some things that just weren't worth doing. Somebody else can fuss with their hair and get their makeup just right for the live shot outside of the still warm body and crying relatives.

Were we jealous? Probably a little. But I think we also had a point.

They say that television is educational. Perhaps they're on to something there. When I first started blogging, I did a lot of posts I wouldn't do today. I did a lot of news aggregation, some top-ten-type lists, mostly lighter fare. Gizmodo stuff. I found that I could gain an audience, but as a result today a huge hunk of my traffic comes from people googling for pictures of celebrities.

Write like TV, get treated like TV.

I found that decreasing my television changed my writing style. No longer was I regurgitating pop culture. Instead I was having to synthesize larger themes from past experiences.

Ye gods, it was almost like having to think for myself.

A few months ago in Buffalo, New York, a Dash-8 commuter plane went down losing all hands on board. Like everybody else, I was interested in the event. So I thought it would be good to blog about it. After all, I am a pilot, and although I am no expert I have spent hundreds of hours immersed in aviation safety topics. I knew enough to speculate.

It'd be a cool article. I could get snapshots of the cockpit, talk about airplane performance, weather, time-in-seat. Heck -- it looked like icing incident. Might be neat to speculate on how sometimes even the pros make amateur mistakes.

But then I thought better of it.

Let's assume that I write a wonderful article outlining exactly what went wrong with the flight and explaining all this neat technology stuff. Somebody, somewhere is grieving the loss of their relatives. To them, now I'm the guy standing outside the funeral home doing the standup. And for what? A few thousand lousy readers?

Let's assume I do a bone-headed job of the article. Then, not only am I self-aggrandizing at the expense of suffering and death, I'm getting all the details wrong. I'm insulting the people involved, over-generalizing on the details, making myself into an expert when I am not, and all for those eyeballs.

Sorry, but your eyeballs just aren't that valuable to me.

What I've noticed, however, is that now public forums are full of people acting just like the people they see on TV. Train wreck in Australia? Not only can you get updates by tweet but you can start immediately speculating on what the causes might be. Don't let facts get in your way. Don't let the idea that people might be grieving bother you. You can implicate people, impugn their expertise, trash companies, make light of existing conditions.

It's not just the TV stations outside of funeral homes any more. It's all of us. We don't need the picture of the wreck on the local newspaper: we're already seeing pictures from cell phones.

You want citizen journalism? First comes citizen exploitation of the weak to appease the morbid curiosity of the many.

A famous columnist said ten years ago that one day there will be live suicides on television and people will pay to see them. He was wrong: it was the internet.

The point here isn't to try to moralize or complain about new technology. Hey kids! You can stay on the lawn! New technology is great. I'm as big a gadget freak as anybody. I even plead guilty as anybody to reading this morbid trash. If it bleeds, it leads.

I've just decided not to create it. Not today.

It might be good to pay attention to the things you are tearing up. Someday you
might want to have them back.

Badges? Badges? We Don't Need No Stinking Badges?

2009-06-06T13:02:38Z

The origin of the joke line: badges? Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!
(It was copied later by Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles and made into a punch line)

I was finishing up work on one of my microsites (shameless plug: Neuropathy is a serious condition and you should be aware of it) when I came to the decision about badges.

Badges are those little graphics you see on some web pages that assure the reader how safe the page is. "Scanned for viruses" or "Member of the BBB" or "HackerSafe" or "Endorsed by Dr. Phil"

We've all seen them. I looked into how to get some of these. Some are very expensive! Some just require you to fill out an online form. One page had a bunch of the buttons and said to complete the application to receive one. Only there wasn't an application anywhere. So I just lifted one of the images.

One guy was making his own badges. "Approved by Chuck!" it proudly said, with a picture of Chuck (I presume) in the middle of an ornate circle.

So from a web owner standpoint, these badges are valued all over the place, and what do they really say? That you had money to pay somebody? Do the badges actually serve a purpose?

]]> From the best I can tell, they do not serve a useful physical purpose and are a waste of money. However from a perception standpoint, they do seem to do something: they lower reader's anixety levels. Consultants that have multi-variate-tested badges say that some badges will pass through a higher percentage of sales. Nothing spectacular, but a there is a measurable difference.

This, of course, means that as a web-site owner you should purchase/create badges based on your own needs instead of just getting nothing or trying to get everything. And don't associate the value of the bade with the price of the badge. It's likely that homemade badges have the same psychological impact as purchased ones. Especially for educational sites that do not involve e-commerce, all you're doing is helping to relax the reader, which I think is a good thing whether you're selling something or not. Of course, some folks will trash me as trying to be manipulative, and they're right: everything you do as a writer should be manipulative, from the background color of the page to the font size and yes, even the badges. No matter what your goal is as a writer, you had better be manipulative to be effective.

As a surfer, the answer is simple: just use PayPal to make purchases and don't put a lot of stock into badges. And according to the data, most people don't put stock into the badges anyway.

After all, we don't need no stinking badges, man.

What Really Drives Innovation, Anyway?

2009-06-05T15:23:06Z

I recently had a team that was under-performing by any standards. They were all nice people: smart, capable, positive attitudes, competent in their work. But they just weren't producing that much.

So management told them: produce or die. Basically either finish up your work in the next sprint or we'll just throw away the entire project and start over with a different team.

It was amazing. People started working harder, using and creating effective information radiators. The team's stand-ups became laser-focused on the work. Everybody was looking for obstacles and getting them out of the way before they could affect progress. The team innovated several new ways of getting things done faster. They had a six-fold increase in productivity.

So what drives innovation, anyway? What makes one team create the next Google and the next team struggle to create a simple report?

]]> I say innovation is when attitude and capability meet crisis.

Let's take them one at a time.

Capability is the one everybody focuses on. Why of course we'll never be the next because we're not geniuses/connected/rich already/have enough free time. A lot of folks focus too much on capability as a cop out. On the other extreme are the business books and tapes that tell you it's all about attitude: just positively think your way to victory! Both extremes can keep you from success.

But there's a dirty little secret about capability: capability is not static.

If you don't know something, how about just go figure it out? I've found that 90% of the capability you need for a project is within easy reach. The other 10%? It's likely within easy reach of somebody else on your team. So don't make excuses why you can't do things, and don't think that just psyching yourself up is all that's required. Make a list of books that explain how to do what you want to do. Go read all of them. Then make a second list of the capabilities those books told you that you're going to need. If you're not reading books that explain what capabilities you need, you're reading the wrong books. Usually by the second iteration of this exercise, a month or two in, you've either grown capability or know how to find/rent it. This part is just a job: go do it.

Attitude is the one thing I think most people underestimate. When I'm interviewing programmers, I go for attitude first, capability second. After all, a positive, motivated, happy person can always go learn something, but even a smart capable person with a bad attitude is not somebody you want on your team. Somebody said once that 90% of life is just showing up, and it's true.

I recently needed a housekeeper for one of my corporate apartments. So I posted an ad on Craigslist. $15 an hour, easy work, you need a resume and a good reputation as a hard, independent worker. Great money for a part-time job.

I got three applicants.

Three.

And only one sent in a resume. She was optimistic, happy, and appeared to be hard-working.

So now she's working on her Master's Degree and has a flexible, part-time job to bring in spending money. Meanwhile, in the same area there are ten thousand unemployed people are sitting around complaining about how there's no jobs out there.

Crisis is the one we're probably most uncomfortable with, but it probably has the greatest catalyzing effect of the three attributes. When Cortez came to the Americas, he burned his boats. His men were going to have to make it work one way or another.

It is critical for teams to have stress in order to innovate. This stress can be internal: wanting to be the smartest/best/richest/most-admired guys in the game. Or it can be external: sell or die. But there must be stress.

Ever wonder how so many people hit it rich with their first startup and then can't make any of the others fly at all? It's because there's no stress: they've already made their money, got their fame, or whatever. If the business doesn't work they just go back to playing golf. I was pitching for a partner a couple of years ago in the virtual commodities space (which I still think is going to be huge) My potential partner had already had a successful startup a decade ago and was looking to do something new. But at the end of the day, there just wasn't that drive there. She couldn't make the choice because there was just no pressure.

Many times we confuse emotional attachment to an idea with the stress needed to execute. Being emotionally attached to an idea can carry you through some tough times, but it's the tough times you needed and not the attachment!

Another friend of mine (and YC interviewee) wanted to do a startup in the medical information field, but there simply wasn't a market for what he wanted to do. After dickering around for a while he realized that he had to do something. Bill collectors were calling and life was closing in around him. Now he's making much more money than I ever have with a completely off-the-wall business idea. It was innovate or die. At the same time, another friend is living in a country with highly subsidized social care. He's comfortable if his startup plans don't work out because there is an elaborate safety net for him. So far, it's been years and years and he just hasn't seen any of his ideas really take off.

And then there's me. I make enough money consulting that when I'm not consulting I live off of savings. When I'm working, I find it very difficult to emotionally commit to a startup: I'm simply too busy and there's not a lot of monetary stress. When I'm not working I get very stressed and I do a lot of creative, innovative things. My problem is maintaining that stress while also succeeding. Some of the great business leaders of the past had horrible fears of poverty to help carry them through. Some folks get wrapped up in office politics, eventually viewing their company as their family. Whatever it takes, you've got to have stress.

Stress is the critical thing that as soft westerners we have difficulty producing and accepting as being a good thing. This inclination to keep reducing external stress means that successful innovators are going to have to have a higher level of internal stress and crisis than people from places where real external existential stress exists. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing, but it is interesting.

There are exceptions, of course, but if you want a team to innovate, find one with a good attitude and capability, then stress the hell out of them.

Will The Social Compact in the United States Remain Valid?

2009-06-04T13:41:48Z

Picture yourself as a colonist in America in the mid 18th century.

The British government is taxing your imports and exports. Their agents are everywhere in the bigger cities, making sure that the right companies are allowed commerce. When troubles arise, instead of the Brits coming over to fix it, they hire Germans to come and do their dirty work for them.

Even with all of the discontent, it was very difficult for the colonies to decide to leave the empire. When Jefferson sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, he listed all of the reasons the social contract with England had to be dissolved. The reasoning was basically "we kept up our end of the bargain, but you failed yours"

Adding fuel to the fire was Thomas Paine, who basically called the King of England a brute and said he had no business ruling England, much less the colonies. Paine spoke in a common, easy manner, and appealed directly to his countryman's sense of fairness and justice.

I was thinking about Jefferson and Paine as I continue to read about the amount of public debt the United States is building up and planning to build up. Out of a need to do something, anything, I wrote my senator, Jim Webb.

I told Webb I was a big fan of his books and national service and asked him to do something about out-of-control spending. I told him I also liked his ideas on prison and drug reform. Prison and drug reform are things we can do that could actually raise more money for the government. They could give us more freedoms in our lives. But keep your priorities, I begged. I asked Webb to do what he could about holding runaway spending in check. Don't make a big political scene, I told him. Nobody is looking for you to make a big break from your party. Just don't be a political putz and do the right thing. Don't be a party man. Be a representative.

What happened?

]]> Webb sent me one of his political speeches hacked into a email talking about all of the great things he was voting for. And how he was such a great person for voting for all of them.

It was like I was talking to the wall.

Jim Webb. Putz.

This isn't a post about current politics, though. This is a post about the representative form of government in general. About trends in complex systems and how to intervene to change them -- how to hack democracy. After all, everybody complains about politics, and there's not much to do but complain sometimes (and vote!)

One of the founding principles of the United States was "no taxation without representation" and I think most Americans still hold that principle dear. But I have a simple question: if we are paying taxes for something our grandfathers' representatives voted for, do we really have representation in the sense that matters?

It's a serious question. As more and more political promises are made that future generations are going to have to pay for, sooner or later those future generations are going to wake up and ask "where was I when this obligation was made? Where was my representation for this tax?"

Because as the debt load increases, the amount of political control future generations will have will naturally decrease although their payout will remain the same. After all, most of the money will have been pre-allocated. Their vote will mean less in fiscal terms than those of people fifty years ago.

You can argue that people can always elect representatives that can eliminate programs, and curb spending, and in theory that is true. But in practice how much is actually cut from one congress to the next? Not much. As my example shows, people get elected to do new big things, not to cut programs from poor Americans. Cutting programs is a way to NOT get elected.

Has there ever been a congress that has slashed spending by say, 50 percent? Not to my knowledge. We do a lot of moving the chairs around on the Titanic, but in general the obligations of government as a percentage of GDP has been steadily increasing since the country was formed. This is not a problem of one party or the other, this is a problem of a government where people can get elected by making promises that they don't have to pay for.

This general trend has ramifications. At some point, probably within the next fifty years, the numbers will no longer add up. This will happen sooner if we spend a lot now, but the pattern shows it will happen who is in charge during each year. Congress will allow the credit rating to fall (which is the easiest way out) and somebody is going to be left holding the bag.

The lesson in representative republics, unfortunately, seems to be spend the money while you can. From what I can see it holds true for both parties. The interesting question is

Agile Project Management Is Like Teenage Sex

2009-06-03T12:32:51Z

Agile is a marketing term that describes best practices for iterative, incremental development of technology. In general, it emphasizes people over process; short feeedback loops; regular, quick delivery of business value to the customer; and a tightly integrated co-located, collaborative team working at peak performance. If you've wondered about how successful startups work, or how companies like Google or top-notch performance consulting teams operate, the answer is Agile.

But Agile is also a kind of movement. There are conferences, books, a manifesto, seminars, training, videos and all sorts of other things to help you out. Sometimes this help gets kind of silly, like in the recent conference where haiku was proposed as a way of bonding the team together better. Like anything that focuses on person-to-person interaction, there's no shortage of opinions. So because Agile focuses on the critical factors of technology development, communication and collaboration between humans, it has roots close to sales, negotiation, religion, psychology, politics, sensitivity, feelings, expectations -- all of that messy people stuff.

So what happens is that there are a lot of people who are very serious about developing software as efficiently as possible chasing a lot of stories and anecdotes about just how to do that. What can I say? Sometimes it feels like geek sensitivity training.

So as a public service to the agile community, I would like to offer the reasons why Agile Project Management is like teenage sex.

]]>

You always exaggerate how much of it you're getting.

Everybody else seems to be having more than you

When somebody tells you about their experiences, you're quick to point out that they're not doing it right

You spend a lot of time reading and thinking about it

It's very awkward trying to make happen

You can't wait until you finally get the real deal

Nobody is really doing that much of it anyway

Cheers!

Enough with the Spreadsheets!

2009-06-02T17:22:40Z

Who doesn't like sitting around all afternoon while somebody updates a spreadsheet?
Woo Hoo! Good times.

I get to watch a lot of project teams on a lot of different projects, so I get to see how teams organize their work and track it. And let's face it -- some things keep team energy and productivity high and some seem to drive it into the ground.

Working from a spreadsheet drives it into the ground.

What's interesting is how easy it is to do this yet how difficult it is to recognize and talk about.

You all know what I'm talking about. Somebody somewhere thinks it's a good idea to keep something in a computer. Maybe it's a list of project stories, a release plan, or the tasks everybody is currently working on. It's an easy and totally natural thing. Who wants to do things by hand when the computer can do them much easier?

The problem is that simply because something is easier for you doesn't mean it's easier for everybody else. Tracking a hundred tasks for the current sprint on a spreadsheet may be an awesome and efficient use of your time. Taking 3 hours of team time while they watch you update it is not.

]]> Ever been on a project that started wordsmithing? You know, the ones where there is a report or something to create and everybody wants to agree on terms. So somebody brings up a Microsoft Word on the screen and everybody goes through the doc line by excruciating line. Should that be a comma or a semicolon? Is the word "with" exact enough or should we use "as part of" instead? What's our opinion on fonts?!?

It's not just Excel or Word. We do this with PowerPoint, with MS Project , with just about anything. Anything that can appear on the screen is something we can subject the rest of our team to.

I had a Scrum Master last month that was getting a project started. They asked the team: do you want to use a spreadsheet or just cards? The team all voted cards. The Scrum Master decided nope, the team was going to use a spreadsheet. After all, which was easier?

The problem here is the question "easier for whom?" For most meetings and communications regarding the team, very simple things are required. Instead we make the input much more complicated so we can generate nifty reports later on. We quickly get into spots where the actual work involved from the team is more related to the complexity of the tool than the value of the decisions being made.

It's crazy. We should stop doing it.

Take Microsoft Project for example. It's not unusual for projects to have dependencies. It's also not unusual for tasks in a project to have dependencies. Dependency management is an important thing to enter and track. But Project is one of a few tools where it's very easy to get your project into a state that even you don't understand. You can end up spending hours only to have to rework major portions. Want to bring your team along with you on that journey?

A wise person said once to make things just as complicated as they need to be and not a bit more. That means if you're meeting to size stories; find a quick way for the team to do that. Use cards, or planning poker, or High/Medium/Low. Whatever you do, keep the energy high and the team moving quickly. If you're meeting to task stories, why not hand the stories out on cards and have the team all task them at once? Does everybody need to watch while you type in each task one-by-one into a spreadsheet? If you're demonstrating your story at a showcase, do we need an hour-long PowerPoint and history of the story? Or just some simple context, what you did, and whether the story is done or not?

That doesn't mean that you won't have difficult and technical conversations, only that they should be the exception, not the rule. And basic project tracking things should NOT be technical in nature. If you want to use a cool tool, do it on your own time.

Most of the time, what you need from the team is very simple. Whatever your role is, what the team needs from you is simple too: keep it upbeat and make their work as easy as you can.

Resveratrol is Best Vitamin Hack So Far

2009-06-01T10:20:27Z

Resveratrol, which has a resemblance to estrogen, may hold the key
to longer life, better health, and prevention of certain common diseases.
No, I have not been smoking it.

Some folks play the ponies. Some curse. Some people read horoscopes Other people ride camels and wear funny shoes. Some people kick their dog around when they get home at night.

I'm a vitamin freak.

I don't know really how it started. The basic idea is to hack my nutrient uptake system -- provide more of things I might need to achieve a few percentage points of higher mental and physical performance. I went on this health kick about ten years ago when I started taking multivitamins. Then I read some books on how supplements can help with various other health problems. I tried them and they seemed to work.

Of course most of it was probably the placebo effect, but hey, the placebo effect is a powerful thing; if it works, use it.

If you're not into the vitamin scene, let me explain the big picture. Usually there is a study or a famous author that comes out in favor of substance X. Much hype and ballyhoo is made, and for a while substance X can do everything from fight colds to cure cancer and grow hair.

Then somebody finds that substance X is actually dangerous, pointless, or a waste of money. The furor dies down. A few die-hard types keep taking substance X. Meanwhile a new study comes out about substance Y, which is REALLY awesome. Everybody chases after that. There are two camps: the supplement boosters and the supplement naysayers. One side is always after the latest in technology, while the other argues that none of it is worth anything.

In other words, it's just like social networking software.

I understand the silliness of this. After all, I am a rational person. I like the placebo effect for some of the things I take and I'm always hoping that one of these magic substances will pan out. I'm like the guy who keeps betting on the long-shot horse.

Sooner or later even long shots win.

And I've got that feeling about resveratrol, which I've been following and taking for the last five years. For my friends who are hackers and heavy analytical types, I can hear you grumbling. Tell you what, let me show you the evidence so far. You decide whether this long shot is going to win or not. I'll give you the three main reasons why I think resveratrol is the real deal.

]]>

You can drink 50 bottles of red wine a day, or take supplements.
I think I'll stick with supplements

For years scientists have known there is something special about red wine. The French, who seem to drink quite a bit of it, don't have the same cardiac problems as those in other western countries, an effect known as The French Paradox. Resveratrol, a substance plants make to defend themselves against damage, is found in higher concentrations in red wine than in white wine. Beginning in the 1990s resveratrol looked like an interesting path to pursue for supplement research.

Quantity and quality of studies showing positive effects of resveratrol

As the studies rolled in, things just kept getting more and more interesting. Resveratrol looked more and more promising for treating a wide variety of conditions, including human aging. Let's review:

1997 Jang Study - topical use of resveratrol prevented skin cancer in mice treated with a carcinogen

2003 Howitz and Sinclair - resveratrol significantly extended the lifespan of yeast.

2006 Italian scientists - fish with a median life span of nine weeks was increased it 56% with the application of resveratrol

2006 Sinclair - took mice and gave them a high-fat diet, making them fat. Study showed that the fat mice on resveratrol had similar mortality rates as the non-fat mice, even though their cholesterol levels were the high

2006 Johan Auwerx - Mice fed resveratrol for fiteen weeks had better performance on the treadmill than control mice.

2007 Finnish study - genetic study shows Fins born with certain variations of the SIRT1 gene had faster metabolisms, allowing them to burn energy faster. (The SIRT1 gene is named after Sinclair's research)

2008 Cornell University - dietary supplementation of resveratrol significantly reduced plaque formation in animal brains. Speculation is that it may help with Alzheimer's Syndrome

2009 Wightman - Study shows students given resveratrol before a test score higher than those given a placebo. Scans show cerebral blood flow was notably increased

Review of the effects of resveratrol on life span as of 1996.
Later studies show significant increases in the lifespan of mice as well

Those are just the highlights.

I know what some of your are thinking -- Daniel we've been here before with Vitamin C, and Vitamin E, and SAMe, and gosh knows all that other stuff. But wait -- resveratrol is the only thing so far that the researchers are getting patents and developing drugs based on its chemistry. There are current human studies involving resveratrol's effectiveness on colon cancer and intestinal cancer. There are dozens of other studies underway to show its effectiveness in other areas. We didn't see that quantity or quality with those other substances. Some of these studies have been successfully repeated in controlled laboratory conditions -- once again, not much of that before. In addition, these are mostly independent university studies and not paid for by the vitamin industry -- another good sign.

Strong chemical/genetic basis for efficacy

I don't have time to get into point-counterpoint, and I'm no biochemist. But check out the wiki page for some of the chemistry behind resveratrol. Or you can google around for the latest news. Seems like there is a lot of it. There is a solid scientific underpinning and theory as to why resveratrol works the way it does. The various new studies that are being done are being done based on this theoretical underpinning. This is not just arm-waving and guys blowing smoke.

Skeptics have failed to make a case

Even the worst naysayers are simply saying that all supplements are a waste of time -- there's nothing especially bad about resveratrol, just general posturing about supplements being a waste of time.

I remember back in 2002 or 2003 when my radar first starting tracking it. There was a researcher who had been involved in debunking a lot of vitamin claims and he was looking at some of the results of the studies done at Harvard. He said something like "This is the real deal. I've never been as interested and excited about something as I am about this"

In my opinion, resveratrol is going to end up like aspirin -- a natural substance that turns out to have myriad health benefits. It's like watching this huge discovery being made, only its happening so slowly it's not always clear to the participants the magnitude of what they're watching.

So each month, like clockwork, I google around to find the best provider of resveratrol. At first I had a hard time even getting small amounts, but lately everybody and their brother are starting to sell the "mega" sized capsules. This is a sign the market is maturing. Heck, I even looked into buying the stuff in bulk -- that's how sold I am on it. And every month it seems like there are more and more vendors and stories, and the claims are getting more and more outlandish. The excitement builds.

Live forever! Cures cancer! Treats foot fungus!

Will resveratrol follow the same trajectory as all those other substances? I don't think so. So what is resveratrol specifcally good for? Why take it? If I had to guess, and it's only a crazy guess from a vitamin junkie, I'd say take it for prevention of diabetes, better quality of life as you age, and perhaps a reduced risk of cancer and heart disease. That's a pretty big claim! And as Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I understand. I can only say "stay tuned". In the next 5-10 years more human studies will come out and we'll have more data. But if you're waiting on somebody to do a human longevity study, that's obviously not going to happen for ethical reasons. I have faith the news is only going to get better.

So why now? Why did I come out of the vitamin closet to make such a strong case? Over the last year I've reached the point where I think I have to take action. I fill like we're at a tipping point. Right now perhaps I could speak to a thousand people. And perhaps ten of them might have a few months of longer life because of my advice. If this is true -- and it's what I believe -- I have an obligation to say something.

Even if you only take a multivitamin now might be a good time to start including some resveratrol in your diet. If you've already accepted the notion that mother nature might need a little boost, resveratrol looks like a good bet. After all, it's a better investment that the daily lottery, or the ponies, or a dozen other things people spend their money on.

My longshot horse is finally going to come in! I just wish it did something about growing hair.

Results of the mouse study in terms of increased lifespan

Why can't Hobbies be Simpler?

2009-05-31T18:10:39Z

What's more fun to watch, this? Or a couple of guys having a knife fight?

I'm picking up a new hobby this summer: SCUBA diving.

It's something I've wanted to do for years, and due to an upcoming trip to Australia I figured it was time to learn. I hear that diving the Great Barrier Reef is something everyone should do once in their life.

It doesn't look too difficult to learn -- nothing like instrument flying. There's a nice blue book, a DVD, a dive computer and some forms. You read the book, take the tests, and watch the movie. Assuming you're able to absorb all of the information, you pass the knowledge test. Of course, the real trick is learning skills. That comes during your hands-on training. We have ours scheduled for next month at Myrtle Beach, SC.

At first I thought this would be simple. The instructor said all that was required was a mask, fins, and snorkel. So I bought one for my wife and oldest son (oldest daughter is still too little). But like every other hobby I've ever tried, they suck you in incrementally. I thought it might be good to have my own vest, so I ordered that. Of course, you really need the regulator with the vest, so I ordered that, too. And to round it out you really need an alternate air supply. So out comes the VISA for that.

Then there's the repair kits, the anti-fog gel (found out that Dawn works well here), the dive slates, the watches, the knives, the dive computers -- must have dive computer -- the goodie bags, the tanks, the signaling devices. Who knows? There's probably a place where I can buy those cool electric underwater propulsion devices from Thunderball.

Why can't hobbies be simpler? Or am I only attracted to hobbies that are complicated? I read somewhere that flying was a great hobby for people who enjoyed very intricate and detailed physics and gadgetry. I can believe that. SCUBA doesn't seem as bad as flying, but it's also full of expensive props and gizmos, especially once you start talking about technical diving.

Some areas of human activity are simply more complex than others: no doubt about it. But I think people in general have a tendency to take simple things and make them more complex over time. I see this with software teams every day. I explain how simple agile practices are but that's not good enough. Before you know it somebody's made it into a set of rules and strict procedures that are highly complicated. We simply love showing people how smart we are, and making things more complicated is a good way to do that. Why have a list of index cards when we can use a spreadsheet? Why have developers self-organize around story completion when we can break things down into a hundred little pieces?

Because we can.

Somebody said that things should be as complicated as they have to be and not a bit more. I think that's a good rule to follow whether it's hobbies, work, government, or anything else.