26 Miles

Joy In Work

// March 15th, 2010 // No Comments » // Life

Finding joy in my work has been hard to come by lately and I think I figured out why — I’ve been delegating too much!

We’ve gone from a staff of 4 developers on the product side to just 2 (myself included) which has forced me to take on more of the day to day software development and problem solving duties, and I’m having a lot more fun!

I never enjoyed the ‘project manager’ role and have always been in the thick of the action for most of my career but with my latest venture I somehow felt to be the most effective I needed to assume more of a strategic management role and do less of the actual software development. I’m finding that wasn’t the best recipe.

Lately I’ve been adjusting my workload so I can personally tackle some of the things I’ve wanted us to get to for a while and with it has come a sense of ‘getting things done’ that I haven’t felt in a while.

So, lesson learned. Fully enjoying my work is directly tied to solving tactical challenges we face every day, and not just the managing the long-term strategic vision. Balance is key, and I’ve been sacrificing one too greatly at the expense of the other.

Go Green, Get Rich?

// February 23rd, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Life

After suppressing my initial revulsion at the thought of a Monty Burns-esque captain-of-industry sitting in his expansive study next to a warm fire in his Gothic armchair, sipping Brandy and scheming about how to get rich off of so-called “Green” business opportunities, I realized maybe it was me who was looking at it all wrong.

CNN Money and Business 2.0 magazine have an article espousing a few choice ways we can all make the environment a little better, and get stinking rich in the process. More specifically, they’re profiling a handful of companies who are making some effort at addressing specific global environmental issues, such as oil dependency or global warming.

While many make individual efforts to do what they can to be less consumptive or at least recycle their aluminum cans, few identify themselves with the organized environmental movement, which is often portrayed by the press as a radicalized fringe who chain themselves to trees or vandalize popular symbols of environmental injustice.

But as the world’s leading consumers and polluters, we in the US must take a good look at what makes us tick as a culture when choosing the path that may lead us towards a brighter, greener future for our kids and grandkids. The organized environmental movement should refocus it’s effort on fostering, funding, and marketing business ideas that make the “Green” solution what I’ll call the “brain-dead” choice. The green-solution must be cheaper, must work as well as or better, must last longer, and be at least as easy to get as the “Brown” alternatives are in the market.

The environmental movement has to be brought to the center politically. It must take an active role in championing ideas, businesses, and people who strive to change the economic model to favor “Green” ideas. My own shock at seeing “green” and “get rich” in the same sentence is symptomatic of a popular conception that the two are irreconcilable. For “Green” to succeed, this has to change.

Patenting Life

// February 15th, 2007 // 4 Comments » // Business & Politics, Security & Privacy

Michael Crichton has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times discussing what has become among the most egregious abuse of the underfunded US Patent Office and their penchant for rubber stamping most patent applications that come across their desk, regardless of the true originality, merit, or social value of the claim.

Companies now hold gene patents for the genes that compose common diseases, such as Hepatitis. This stifles research as scientists who would otherwise devote energy to researching cures are dissuaded by the sometimes huge licensing fees that must be paid to the owners of the patent to conduct their research.

People die because of this, as Crichton points out. He cites proposed legislation to nullify prior gene patents and prevent the future patenting of genes but the only reference I could find to a similarly titled piece of legislation died in Congress 3 years ago. If anyone can find evidence that the legislation is on the docket for the current Congressional session, please comment and provide a citation.

TXU’s Environmentally-Friendly Rate Plans

// January 11th, 2007 // No Comments » // Life

For you Texas residents reading this blog who are concerned about the quality of your environment (Hi Mom!), TXU has many rate plans, a couple of which are geared towards folks interested in improving Texas air quality and supporting renewable energy production in Texas.

The most Earth-friendly of which is their “100% EarthWise” rate plan.

This plan boasts that “The environmental impact of your enrollment in TXU Energy 100% EarthWise for 1 year is the same as planting over 1,100 trees. (* based on average monthly usage of 1,500 kWh, average annual mileage of 12,000 miles and annual CO2 emissions of 11,500 lbs.)”.

It costs a little more than the regular plan but by my calculations it wouldn’t amount to more than $20-$30 a month extra for most people. There’s not many other ways you could plant 1,100 trees a year for $30 a month, support the growth of Texas wind farms, and do your part to improve the Texas environment at the same.

It certainly seems to be a worthy trade-off. Spread the word to other Texas residents. Most people probably don’t even know TXU has more than 1 rate plan.

Bubble 2.0?

// October 18th, 2006 // No Comments » // Technology

Edward Cone has an article at CIO Insight arguing against those who espouse that the Google’s acquisition of YouTube is one of many signs that we’re entering another bubble.

He points out that, while there will always be investors ready to waste their money on ill-conceived vaportech dot-com ideas, many of the latest cashouts have been aimed at companies with huge user bases, such as MySpace and YouTube, which demonstrate the street-value of brand loyalty and adversiting potential, especially in social networking sites.

What we haven’t seen yet is what becomes of popular social networking sites once they become “corporatized”. Creating MySpace and YouTube wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t that hard either, and can be repeated over and over again. If these huge investments in well-branded social networking sites result in rampant censorship, restricting access to content, or otherwise become DRM-ified, people will quickly flock to the one-off site that isn’t “0wn3d” by “the man”. After all, I gotta have my Stewie.

Time will tell if Google loses their shorts on the YouTube deal. They’re not idiots so they probably won’t. But even if they do, who cares? They throw off a few billion a year on wild ideas anyway. They don’t need all of them to pan out to make shareholders happy. Getting YouTube gave them a monopoly on the video-sharing market, at least for now, and monopolies are usually a good thing for the monopolist.

In any case, I think we’re too early in the evolution of the next-generation of web-based companies to forsee the true value of our collective investment.