I find entrepreneurs to be a remarkably supersticious folk, much like an athlete and his favorite glove. Although I’d bet money that the vast majority of tech entrepreneurs are atheist or agnostic, I would also bet that many of them have weird quirks about particular symbols and objects in their lives.
Recently I discovered that a good friend of mine has a thing for the infinity symbol. Well, that’s interesting. So do I.
Which brings me to wonder to what extent symbols play a role in our lives. Is there energy in things like that? Can carrying a symbol around really help shape a person’s reality? Or is it just a middleman for the power of our faith and will power? Kind of like belief in God allows people to indirectly believe in themselves. That kind of faith enables people to accomplish things they might “think” they’re too weak to accomplish - but now they can with God’s “support.” Religious faith hence becomes a conduit for a person’s will power. Most people don’t want to acknowledge their personal brilliance any more than they want to stare at the sun directly. Is symbolic faith the same? Middle man, source of energy, both, neither?
I asked my friend and he had a classic response: “I think, therefore I am. I think about infinity, therefore I am.” And yes, he’s been infinitely successful with that approach.
My best friend Zach had a sleepless night in Boston yesterday. In the process he had the opportunity to think and write about what really matters in life. He emailed this to me at 4 in the morning. It really stuck:
It’s one of those nights where I can see everything from my window. The parking lot downstairs. The ocean. The shadows in my room. It’s one of those nights where it’s very calm here and I’m left with a few questions–like what’s more important than money, or influence, or the things we often discuss. And it’s one of those nights when I have an answer for you.
So, what’s more important than those things? That part of your past, early childhood, in which you made resolutions to yourself which you are now trying to honor—that part of childhood where the world formed in front of you, some of which you could not partake in—some of which scared you. Those promises we made then. Those things we wanted to be, to do, to prove.
Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about—but the most important thing to me is people, and discovering what motivates them—hearing stories—not the stories they have told to hundreds of other people—but the stories that they themselves forgot about—the ones that are true and unembellished—the kind that unravel slowly….
There are millions of very rich people in the world. Hundreds, even, of billionaires. I think money is great. And I’m not about to lecture here…but what’s even more important to me is not sleep walking through my life: inspiring people and being inspired by them…creating something meaningful, creating something Great.
I just got back from SF where I attended the Federated Media CM Summit. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much. My best friend, Zach, invited me to go and I thought it might be interesting. It turns out that was an understatement. I had an amazing time, met fantastic people, and listened to great presentations. The event was pretty small, only about 200 people, but very intimate and intense. Everyone there was seriously awesome.
I really enjoyed listening to Steve Hayden, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy and Mather. He’s the guy made Apple famous “1984” ad. He spent a lot of time talking about listening to your customers, going so far as to suggest appointing a “Chief Listening Officer.” One of my favorite parts of his presentation was where he suggested that every company apply the following mantra: “COMPANY NAME believes the world would be a better place if…” Seriously, I don’t think people think about companies that way often enough. Even I didn’t. You know what though, the world would be a much better place if everyone’s photos were perfectly organized and accessible. At least I know we’re on the right track there.
Another highlight was the presentation by Carla Hendra, CEO of Ogilvy North America. She did a case study on Dove’s marketing campaign and showcased some amazing advertising. The interesting thing about conversational marketing, she noted, was that you never know where the conversation will go and sometimes it’s not what you expect. Check out the first video below, called Dove Evolution. Then check out the video below that which was a response. Probably not what Dove expected, but awesome nonetheless.
I’ve been traveling a lot lately, so I didn’t have a chance to see some of the latest updates from the Blue Lava team. Recently I saw a demo of our desktop application which we’ll be releasing under ilovephotos.com next month.
Holy Shit!! The software is vastly improved from the last version I saw. I can’t believe how much it’s changed. It actually feels like something we could release. It’s amazing. Chad and Cory have been hauling ass on the interface, completely mastering the front end, making it beautiful and functional. They have seriously outdone themselves.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to be a better leader. Time and time again I come across examples of leadership that involve just getting out of the way and getting everyone involved. Empowering people you work with to lead themselves. The Starfish and the Spider is a great example of that philosophy. So is Sam Walton’s “Made In America,” which is one of the best books I’ve read on leadership.
Many of the people I know that I admire are fantastic communicators. They’re always sharing all the details of what they’re doing with everyone they work with to build a sense of teamwork and participation. It’s completely natural as opposed to forced.
It’s taken me a long time to get used to communicating more. Even this blog is an exercise in communication. Just sharing my thoughts so that the people I know, know what’s on my mind. It doesn’t come naturally to me. But I do really care about the people around me, especially the people I work with, and books like The Starfish and the Spider remind me how important it is to continue communicating as much as I can.
I just finished reading a great book called The Starfish and the Spider. The book does a really good job of illustrating how decentralized organizations trump centralized companies time and time again. Examples cited include the Apache web server, Napster, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Skype.
I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about some of their examples. The issue I have is how they group different types of decentralization. The authors associate decentralized organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous, Apache, and Linux with distributed platforms like Skype and Napster. There’s a big difference between an organization and a technology platform and it doesn’t make sense to group the examples together.
That aside, I was most interested in how this theory applies to the problem of spam. I think spam is a classic example of an “evil” starfish organization like Al Queda. The more you fight it, the more virulent it becomes.
The authors cite three primary examples of fighting decentralized organizations: challenge their ideology, centralize them, or decentralize yourself. I don’t think spammer have much of an ideology. They’re just trying to make a buck. There’s really no “cause” here. I don’t see much to centralize either. However taking a decentralized approach to filtering spam seems to make a lot of sense.
Every major webmail provider has a spam box that allows you to mark spam. Surely the vast majority of spam hits most of the major webmail providers’ systems. If a person marks a particular address or piece of content as spam it should get blacklisted in a shared database accessible to all email providers. This approach would basically created a distributed human computing engine to combat spam. Of course some people would occasionally mark non-spam messages (such as opt-in retail mailers) as spam, but statistically the wisdom of crowds would prevail and the system should be 99.9% accurate.
Most of the spam I get in my mailbox is highly repetitive. Almost all the messages have similar subject lines and content. I use Yahoo Mail to manage all my emails from multiple accounts. Why can’t the power of all Yahoo users be harnessed to filter my spam intelligently? Why can’t the power of all email users across all email providers be harnessed to filter spam intelligently?
You have companies like Symantec that keep a central database of all viruses. Why not a company that keeps a central database of all emails marked as spam across all email providers, which could, in turn, be licensed to each email provider. It seems like a win/win venture to me. Each new email company that signs up provides additional user generated spam data, and the analysis of that data provides dramatically improved real time filtering data to all webmail providers. As soon as an email gets marked as spam in one mailbox, it gets filtered as spam in all mailboxes. If Google can index and offer instant search results on all the content in the world, surely a company can index and offer instant filtering on all the spam in the world?
I just got back from Burning Man. I went out there expecting the best party of my life. I got a little more than I bargained for.
Yes, Burning Man was the biggest and most amazing party of my life. Nothing compares to it. 45,000 get together in the middle of nowhere and build some of the most amazing structures and works of art you have ever seen. In the evening, when the sun sets over the mountains, and the playa lights up a million glowing lights, the place looks like a fairy tale. And it is.
I’ve never been a particularly spiritual person, but this was one of the most profound experiences of my life. People ask me what I mean when I say that and I’m not quite sure how to answer. Maybe it had something to do with the double rainbow I saw over the desert in the middle of a day time dance party. Or maybe it was vision of the temple burn on the last day.
I’ve never been to a place that is so magical. Magic seriously flows through the air. People talk about “flow state” where everything just jives perfectly. That’s kind of how Burning Man was. Everything somehow came together in harmony and with perfect purpose. I really think you have to experience it to understand.
I also met some amazing people. I shared an RV with two great new friends, Jill and Tony. Jill quite possibly has the coolest costumes on the planet. She calls her style “Acid Sex Clown.” I don’t know what that means, but it sounds cool as hell, just like Jill.
I shared most of my time with Laura, my playa companion. We met in the middle of the desert and shared an amazing two days just wandering around and exploring some of the most amazing visuals we’d ever seen. She’s also really hot and wore a bikini most of the time
Finally, our bus. My best friend Laurent built what is quite possibly the most incredible night club on wheels the world has ever seen. The bus is called Shagadelica and you have to see it to believe it. Nothing gave us more grief or joy than this monster. Everything that could possibly go wrong did. In fact, the engine blew up 30 miles outside of Reno. We had to scramble to find a tow truck to bring it in and had to tow it around on the inside. Despite that, suffice it to say, with all the insane stuff that people build out on the playa, Wired Magazine featured Shagadelica as part of it’s “Best of Burning Man” piece. Just wait until next year when the thing actually works! Check out the rest of my pictures here.
