Category: Uncategorized

So, last night, while I slept, the company picked up and moved up 128 to Lexington.
So far, the number of disruptions have been minimal. The biggest concern was were to plug in the the Bialetti. That is the sign of a near meaningless move.
Physical location is becoming less and less relevant to me. All I ask is that it’s nice.

Your Birthdate: November 14
With a birthday on the 14th of the month (5 energy) you are inclined to work well with people and enjoy them.
You are talented and versatile, very good at presenting ideas, and you are also very good at organization and systematizing.
You may have a tendency to get itchy feet at times and need change and travel.
You tend to be very progressive, imaginative and adaptable.
Your mind is quick, clever and analytical.
A restlessness in your nature may make you a bit impatient and easily bored with routine, and rebel against it.
You have a tendency to shirk responsibility.

Eeerily accurate…

Via Doc Searls

Microsophist (He’s BACK) brings up a very interesting point on upward mobility within any large company: It’s all about the optics. [here]
What are optics? It’s a term I first heard used in reference to the political culture in British Columbia. It described the massaging news to make it look good. Effectively, it means the same as spinning the news.
At any large corporation, it is not about getting things done; it is about looking good and drawing (positive) attention to yourself as someone who manages up well.
The side-effect of this is that leaders that manage both up and down well are seen as unusual.

Had lunch with Rick Segal who was in Waltham on business today.
Lunch was good, and we talked for 90 minutes about all things blogging and technology. It was interesting to meet an Microsoft Technical Evangelist from the good old days.
It was a great chance to meet with someone else who has big ideas, and as my first blogger “meet-up” was a complete success…
…until I demonstrated my complete lack of navigational skills by getting lost and making him late to his 1:30 appointment.
I hate driving in Massachusetts.

Ok, provocative title out of the way. Referencing article here.
More provocative body text: if a lack of sarcasm indicates that a portion of the human mind is not working correctly, then the vast majority of native-born US citizens suffer from this affliction.
I have a hard time living in a society where a fine degree of sarcasm in not appreciated by so many people. I grew up in a culture where sarcasm and self-deprecation were the foundations of humour.
Maybe I am just missing the finer, more subtle, points of US culture.

Dr. Blaise Cronin (the name sounds like the nom de plume of an agent provocateur), author of a justly ridiculed and narrow-minded critique of blogging, has re-appeared just in time for the Summer Solstice. [here and here]
This man is an island. And he has lost the perspective that come from spending too much time in an ivory tower in Indiana. Pamphleteers and Gutenberg began this revolution. Apparently, in Dr. Cronin’s view, the only valid word is the word on paper.
Dr. Cronin: if that is the case, I will be happy to discuss the dismantling your library’s computer system so that you can move back to index cards in those sexy wooden shelving units which became all the rage a few years back when those systems were phased out.
Libraries are repositories of information in all its forms. For my generation, books are great, but they often slow down the process of learning as much as we can as quickly as we can, so that we can keep our jobs.
Or has the benefit of tenure made you complacent and snobbish at the same time.
PS: Thanks for visiting my blog — your personal computer at has a distinct hostname.

Lawrence Lessig and Joi Ito. Now Fred Wilson says that he is burning out, re-thinking his online musings. [here]
I guess that my personality won’t see me slow down for another few months. But I have also chosen a very different style of blogging. I am an aggregator and re-interpreter.
I don’t generate a lot of my own inspiring ideas, but I try to synthesize all the information that streams into my head daily, pulling the random threads together.
What are the Blogging styles?

• Thought Leader / Visionary
• Disruptor
• Aggregator / Synthesizer
• Advocate / Evangelist

The ones that suffer the most likelihood of burn out are the first and the last; they are the ones that give their all.
Fred, you fall into this class. Step back, take a break. You’ll still be on my feed list when you come back.

Here is David Allen’s definition.
Figure it has to be pretty definitive.

Adrian Trenholm:

Coincidentally, I took a client along to Johnnie Moore and James Cherkoff’s Open Sauce Marketing workshop and one of the things that sticks in my brain was the comment “blogging changes the blogger.”

Wow. Couldn’t have said it better.

My boss turned me on to SoftPro Books recently. A great little store full of all the geek books you could imagine.
Today I went in to buy The Art of Project Management and Mind Hacks. While I was at the till, I was chatting with one of the owners. As of next week, SoftPro Books in Waltham will be run in the same location by Quantum Books.
One of the owners is off to try and grow his start-up and the other is taking his family to Tanzania for 2 years.
SoftPro will continue to exist as an online presence for most of us, with the Denver, CO store remaining open.
Best of luck to the SoftPro Waltham Team.