Here’s a nice image from woodwardgardens…

Mikey Dread is performing tonight in Alameda.

Some people call him legendary. I haven’t heard much of his work aside from what he did with the Clash, and that was legendary stuff, so maybe he is a legend. On the other hand maybe he’s just a way high cat who spins obscure roots reggae 45’s while looping jah rastafari shout outs through a vintage echoplex. That’s a bad joke. Obviously the guy is going to put on a big show.

I’ve never been to Rooster’s Roadhouse. They were clever enough to book Mikey Dread. It should be fun.

How many millions of Americans have signed up for the National Do Not Call Registry?

Enough to eliminate thousands of thousands of hours of unwanted intrusions on our collective consciousness. I added my number, and the volume of telemarketing calls has dropped way off. The registry has been a small victory for me over the people who don’t value or respect my time. On a national scale it’s been an enormous victory.

Every once in a while though a call slips through. When they do, I get the urge to blog about it. I get a call, hang up, and I hear my housemate’s phone ring a second later. He and I are both on the registry. I wonder how many millions of others are receiving these calls.

Do some marketers just not know that the registry exists? Do they not understand the intent of the registry?

Following minutes of exhaustive online research, Plan Resonate’s investigative team has uncovered the secret agenda of the National Do Not Call Registry:

Do not call. Read the rest of this entry »

We turn briefly to one of your favorite authors, Leo Tolstoy, and perhaps his most popular work, War and Peace. In Book 9, Chapter 1, Tolstoy wrote:

“It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England’s intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war was Napoleon’s ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the way was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England’s policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.”

Nobody wanted Napoleon to invade Russia in 1812. Yet events occurred that made the invasion unavoidable.

So many things conspired to make it possible. Did any events or people conspire to make it impossible? Did anyone make it clear that they wanted (desperately) for the event to NOT happen?

Nestle, the world’s largest food company, is promoting 6.4% organic sales growth in the first half of 2006. It was reported in today’s FT, and they require registration, so I won’t link. Here’s a link to the Nestle August 23, 2006 press release.

You might be thinking 6.4%? That’s not nearly as impressive as the 16.2% growth of US organic foods in 2005 (Organic Trade Association, PDF).

Well, it’s not, and it’s not. I’ll explain… Read the rest of this entry »

Curse?

Delete the post?

Delete the post then republish the post and then post an update?

I’ll opt for all of the above, and maybe next time I’ll skip step two…

It’s possible that these are the three most powerful forces in the world. It’s also possible that they aren’t, and we probably don’t need to view the world according to top 3’s, top 10’s, or top 13’s.

Regardless, here’s a powerful excerpt from Chris Anderson’s review of the book Out of Control:

“Our brains aren’t wired to understand the wisdom of the crowd. Evolution, democracy and capitalism don’t work at the anecdotal level of personal experience, the level at which our story-driven synapses are built to engage. Instead, they’re statistical, operating in the realm of collective probability. They’re not right–they’re “righter”. They’re not predictable and controllable–they’re inherently out of control. That’s scary and unsettling, but also hugely important to understand in a world of increasing complexity and diminishing institutional power (mainstream media: meet blogs; military: meet insurgency).”

We need to be able to acknowledge complexity and chaos if we’re going to work with them. It’s important to grow beyond counterproductive attempts to control some macro forces - some are beyond our human capacity to control. This isn’t easy territory to define, and perhaps CYA culture drives us to ignore the territory completely. For whatever reasons, it’s common for corporate decision makers to err on the arrogant side; to imagine themselves capable of using human chains of hierarchical accountability to reduce complexity. Many business leaders falsely believe they can command and control their environment. It’s not an issue of hard or soft technology. There are forces we can’t control. Like it or not, our universe is in a constant state of entropy.

Thanks Chris for drawing my attention to this book; never heard of it before, and if it’s as compelling as your description, it will be a great read.[tags]evolution, democracy, capitalism[/tags]

Mural at Lavanderia Mr. Burbujas, 24th & Florida, SF, CA

Here’s a link to a Billmon story about the Southern California housing market.

Mind maps are showing up more frequently. I like them. I’m not convinced that they’re nearly as useful for presenting information as they are for helping their creators interract with the information and learn in the process of doing so. So what.

So here’s a link to a Dave Pollard mind map (.jpg) that illustrates the ways that a business can use social networking tools. He calls them Social Networking Applications (SNA’s). It’s part of a great social networking resource post that I recommend you check out if you’re interested in that stuff.

Dave Pollard has produced some enjoyable content for the Fast Company Blogjam 2006. I hope the IBM innovation jammers take note.

Tangent:

I wouldn’t suggest a blog format for future IBM jams. The fast company blogjam has probably attracted a lot of traffic, but not a lot of comments so far. Someone with more experience than me could explain the ideal content drip rate for maximizing traffic and discussion. Timing is a sensitive issue there; it takes time to develop an active dialog that will thrive in such a content rich environment. FC Now is usually a pretty content rich blog. They jammed in a lot more for the blogjam. Maybe the users are experiencing content overload. I did when I was there.

How long does it take for an audience to adapt to such a content rich environment? Probably not long. The blogjam is only two days, and I don’t expect they’ll generate a lot of comments during the two days.

Regardless the blogjam was a clever accomplishment for FC Now and they’ll have a wealth of new resources to share with their users. If we consider the cost of acquiring those resources, it looks like it was a smart play - the type that will help secure their position as a useful search destination for years to come.[tags]Social Networking, FC Blogjam, IBM Innovation Jam[/tags]

Last week I joined some friends in a soma bar for a Friday happy hour. Met some very cool people. A couple of them were lawyers, and the issue of the backdating scandal came up, and Jeff (I think, there were three of us there) shared his perspective.

The story is basically that the tech economy started booming, and you had all these extremely high growth organizations struggling to keep pace with customer demands, and neglecting to invest sufficient resources in back office operations like bookkeeping and accounting.

It was a very reasonable story and I won’t be suprised if the story becomes (has already become ?) a common refrain for defendants accused of backdating.

Administrative mismanagement is more forgiveable when you’re describing the work of first-time entrepreneurs flying by the seat of their pants. It’s so hard to do everything right, or so it can be. And in that context, what was a reasonable backdating defense story becomes a good story.

Then at least one pundit makes offhand reference to the whole silicon valley basement closet to boardroom being mostly a myth. Hmm. Is it? I don’t really know. The good story gets less good.

Then we remember that backdating scandals don’t apply to one man operations… they apply to publicly traded corporations, with publicly traded resources. From my view, the less good story gets shakey.

And then a shakey story turns sour: Apple has announced a restatement of earnings, including changes to historic statements, some possibly dating back to 1997.

Being mostly a one man operation, I understand that it’s easy to ignore mundane administrative tasks. Unfortunately every business needs to perform administrative tasks. It doesn’t matter if you’re one guy or an organization like Apple Computer. Obviously the administrative tasks become increasingly complex with the complexity of the operation. Fair enough, but let’s not forget that you’re Apple computer. You can figure it out.

You can also tell stories about the complexity, and the growth, and oh just make up other reasons why you didn’t figure it out. It’s your reputation. Your credibility. Spend it how you see fit. There are a lot of stories to tell, and many different ways to tell them. Yet ultimately your actions matter more than your stories.

Seems like 9.8 of out 10 days Yahoo users are treated to pure data-driven-to-the-lowest-common-denominator content in the feature video news area. It’s understandable that some users might be annoyed. Anyhow, I’m not writing to complain about Yahoo’s editorial policy.

I’m more interested in the comments associated with Yahoo’s homepage by a Diigo user. This is a unique and fast emerging example of an informal reputation system.

It sure is a wierd gray area. When you go to Yahoo, a small icon appears on the Diigo toolbar indicating that there are public comments for that page. Click on the icon, and the Diigo comments pop up in a separate browser window. The comments are hosted on Diigo’s server.

Is it vandalism? I don’t think so.

Diigo is potentially very useful as a research tool. The value of useful comments may someday outweigh the kind of strangeness pictured above. Let’s hope that in the interim the folks that fear strangeness don’t sue.

Wouldn’t be a fun lawsuit for a emerging small business with a slick new tool…

Props to Slacker Manager for boosting Diigo. I like it. [tags]Diigo comments, reputation systems[/tags]