R. Colin Kennedy

Maybe it’s just selective hearing, but over the last few weeks it seems that I’ve come across a lot of dire rhetoric in friendly conversation and in the media.

Yes, I know sometimes things look bad; how humans treat each other, energy, and the environment can be a bummer.

But don’t sweat it, the zombie apocalypse hasn’t started. We didn’t nuke the world in the Cold War. We’re still here.  The icecaps are in rough shape, but they haven’t melted yet.

Let me assure you, I see hope every day at MIT; people here are working solutions for energy, hacking healthcare’s broken systems, and empowering change in developing economies… Even eradicating that sense of anxiety we all feel when we are given a fresh bottle of ketchup.

Here’s the part that gives me hope: I read that CDC article on my Android (more powerful than the computer I had two years ago) and I’m writing this from a coffee shop on a tiny laptop - that’s powerful, very rapid, and very recent technological change with mass accessibility here in the US.  It’s moving quickly across the globe, and while the prospect of the energy issues when the whole world comes online is daunting, the upside is that humanity’s collective intelligence increases radically.  Collective intelligence that, provided access to information and interconnectedness, will shape the future.

Be responsible, be aware, but be hopeful.  I have faith in tomorrow, you might as well too.

moneyisnotimportant:

[via]

iOS5 looks sweet, but here’s why I’m holding of until there’s a stable untethered jailbreak out.

1. BluSelect - I use Bluetooth for everything; headphones, speakers, etc.  With Bluselect, I just hold the home button from anywhere and this prompt pops up for turning it on/off or selecting the device.  Without it, I have to go Settings > General > Bluetooth.

2 & 3: SBSettings panel and dock -  My iOS device is used daily for the remote to iTunes on my HTPC, and if it goes to sleep it loses the connection, so I”m constantly turning auto-lock on and off, and also I turn wi-fi on and off a lot to save batteries.  Again, those things are nested way in the Settings without this widget, when I now get to by swiping horizontally in the status bar. Swipe, click, done. There’s also this customizable mini dock that I use for settings, activator, and the App Stores (Apple and Cydia), nice and simple.  This widget has basically made it so I never have to deal with the OEM settings anymore.

4: Lockinfo - Love this widget, and apparently so does Apple since they integrated it into iOS. Still waiting to upgrade to iOS 5 until a stable tethered jailbreak, but from what I’ve played with so for, I’m not sure if you can customize Apple’s version - with this I choose which calendars show up, how often the weather refreshes, and I leave email, twitter, and other notifications off of it.

Word on the intertubes is that the jailbreak community is close, but until it is, I don’t want to get stuck without these conveniences that I use almost every time I pick up my iOS device.

Steve Jobs’s Best Quotes - Digits - WSJ

nedhepburn:

The simplest graphs explaining the Great Recession that I’ve ever seen. Well worth a look if you’re interested in the economy. Click through for bigger. 

After this morning’s ride for #startupbike, a friend and I grabbed a coffee and in the course of conversation, he mentioned something that happens to all of us that have to create content:

“We got so busy, and have to create so much content, we lose the personality.”

He felt that we did a good job with it at Grinnit, “things were consistently bursting with personality,” and I really appreciated the comment because we put thought into it; it’s nice when that shows through.  Here’s a sample.

There’s only two key components that we used in our approach at Grinnit:

1. Branding: think of the top three keywords for impressions or emotional responses that you want for your brand.  At Grinnit, it was “Easy, Fun, Happy” which translated to things like accessible language and an approachable tone.  Don’t overthink it, but anything you publish should reinforce these.
2. Audience: Some Marketers believe in getting very specific about your customer, envisioning “people” that are representatives. When I write, I tend to think of a broader audience - demographic info, personality, whatever.  When we wrote for Grinnit, we wanted a friendly, family appeal. We focused on messages that would resonate with kids as well as adults. 

Now, here’s that trick: put this info somewhere handy and just glance at it when you sit down to write.  I used notecards that would look like this:

In my previous life when I first started writing for business, I had multiple audiences depending upon who I was selling to - Procurement, HR, and Operations all speak different languages, so I needed one card for each audience.

So, when I needed to write copy, I’d pull out the index card, stick it at the top of my keyboard, and get it done.  Having it in front of me, top of mind, meant that it just naturally came out when I typed. Eventually it just becomes part of the writing process, but until then, the card helps.

With Grinnit, while Alex and I didn’t have cards handy, we did go through this process early on and were consciencious to make sure that whatever we published reinforced those brand principles.

Another tip: pick up a copy of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. In English class I used it, but for some reason forgot about it until we Juhan Sonin stopped by MassChallenge and gave his Design Axions talk.  The book is a handy guide to great writing; no more, no less.  Now, I keep a hardcover version close at hand.

Marketing is still not a strong suit for me, but making sure to focus on the brand and the audience helps.

Does anyone else have a trick they like?

There are people interested in Grinnit that have asked us to send them frequent updates about our progress; this critical to communicating our ability to execute, but also has proven time consuming.

In order to save some time, and increase the reach of this message, we set up a tumblr blog (blog.grinnit.com) to share our story as well as post relevant  updates.  For those that have asked for the email updates, we used Mailchimpto schedule a weekly digest of an RSS feed from the 

The problem was that the formatting came out a mess, especially when we posted images.

 That’s where Yahoo Pipes comes in; it’s a great online tool for rewiring the web.

So, for anyone that wants to turn the RSS from a tumblog, strip out photos, and filter by a tag, you can use this pipe - http://grinn.it/TumblPipes.

Just enter the RSS from your tumblog and the filter tag, and you’re good to go - you can close it and remove the tag filter easily if you’re prefer to send it all.

This little tidbit proved helpful today when setting up the grinnit blog - took about 3 seconds to set up.

Now, if you don’t follow us on tumblr, the entries will show up on our facebook fan page.

And if you’ve read this far, you’re doing one of those two, aren’t you?

Absolutely remarkable, but not surprising - the closer and more intertwined web services become to our sentiment and daily goings-on, the more accurate that lrger data set becomes.

Behaviore generates data, and that data can predict behavior.

From ‘The Really Smart Phone’ by Robert Lee Hotz at The Wall Street Journal, a fascinating article looking at how locational and personal data collected from smart phones can be used to do analysis of social patterns. (via washingtonpostinnovations)

Let’s face it: I’m easily distracted, at least by nature. Over the years, I’ve had to go to great lengths to train myself how to focus, which primarily consists of eliminating distractions and conscientious time management.

One thing I do when on a computer is eliminate distractions: if I’m working on a document, I don’t have email or chat or news feeds open; often I put my phone on silent when I need to buckle down.  I think of it as micromanaging myself so that nobody else has to.

So a few weeks ago I started to notice that often, when I went into “communication mode” I would open a batch of programs at the same time - Skype, Yammer, and GChat.

Well, I figured there had to be a way to launch them all simultaneously.  The answer? A batch (.bat) file, connected to a shortcut - and in my case a hotkey.

So now I push a button and all three programs launch, making my life simpler and subsequently helps me compartmentalize my focus.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Launch notepad
2. Enter the scripts using the syntax below
3. Save as “LaunchCommTools.bat” (note: not .txt)

That’s it - you can make a shortcut to this file, assign a hotkey, or even a Windows+Key combination.

Here’s the syntax:
Note: <username> us substituted for my Windows username in the code below:

@echo off

cd “C:\Program Files\Yammer”
start Yammer.exe

cd “C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\Google\Google Talk”
start googletalk.exe

cd “C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone”
start Skype.exe

exit

moneyisnotimportant:

“Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.”

-Kevin Durant

This morning was the end of a perfect record: after 30 years of perfect teeth, a an X-ray revealed a cavity between two of my molars.

Not a great way to start a day, but spurred a reflection: the significance and fragility of being on a streak.

A perfect record for 30 years - gone in a blink, and without a deep inspection, I would never have even know until much later.  My point here is not to gripe about my dental situation, but to ponder consistency and its results in a broader sense.

Consistency in execution leads to cumulative effects, and there are no shortcuts; and a streak is the pinnacle of consistent execution.

Often the effects are compounded; an athlete can take a day off, and needs two days of practice to reach the same condition and start making gains again.  For instance, a friend of mine has a 90+ day streak of daily exercise going - and the physical and mental effects are obvious. 

The Same goes for business and anything with a network effect: take a day or two off, and it takes twice as long to catch up - but stay consistent and experience compound gains.

One slip-up or miss in a streak though, and you need to start all over - if you can start over.  There is no reset button on my teeth.

So, though this streak ends, today I begin a few new ones - unrelated to oral hygiene - that are going to have some significant downstream impact.

Do you have a streak going?

entrepreneuradvocate:

“If you can’t live longer, live deeper”

— Italian proverb

—

Perpetual vacancies are a hugely overlooked sunk cost at both large and small companies.  Though there can be visibility into the time a req is open using an applicant tracking system (ATS), the actual cost of a vacancy can be overlooked.  It doesn’t matter how “selective” a hiring manager thinks he should be; when looking for “just the right candidate” for over six to ten months and interviews 100 candidates, he might as well save the time/money/energy and re-spec the job requirement.

When you stack up the following activities using activity-based costing for your recruitment funnel, it gets ugly quickly.

• Sourcing candidates
• Pre-screening by Recruiter
• Reviewing resumes by Manager
• Team’s time for interviews
• Revenue dependencies of work getting done without the person (deals not closed, products not shipped on time, etc.)

The other day I caught up with Leah Daniels from Bullhorn, who told me about an awesome plugin for their Bullhorn Reach social recruiting platform that actually calculates the cost of a vacancy in real time and presents it in a management dashboard.  Powerful, useful stuff - but the question remains open as to whether it will actually change Hiring Manager behavior.

Simple things to minimize the damage of a vacancy:

• Don’t get hung up on a “rock star” if he’s not hung up on you
• If you’re hitting a wall, don’t keep trying to go through - go around or over by breaking up the role, shifting your organization, or hiring on contract.  Won’t always work with a key executive hire, but applies elsewhere.
• Evaluate your budget vs. your needs - you may be looking for someone you can’t afford.
• Watch your direct and indirect recruiting costs like you would any other significant expense.

And of course, always be recruiting

This morning David Balter, CEO of Bzzagent and a Word of Mouth guru, generously carved out some time to chat with me about the complexities of understanding peer-to-peer sharing behavior.

After some hunting, our team found David Skok’s post on forentrepreneurs to be the most pragmatic explanation of modeling virality, with great tangible examples. Chase Garbarino and the BostInnovation team were also generous with their time to act as a sounding board.

As we begin making theories about the growth potential for Grinnit based upon specific customer use cases, it just didn’t add up; we realized that we needed something new.

While the traditional viral growth model works well on a macro scale, its ability to make projections gets a little wonky when your sample size is not massive.  With Grinnit, we wanted to figure out how to use empirical data from some “experiments” with variants of our software could yield different viral behaviors. 

Example: Grinnit guys go to a major event, do a peer-to-peer photo album share, and then those people pass it along to their friends, who repeat the cycle - over a course of hours.  How do we understand how each tier of “promoters” behaves?

Our best guess at this point: a multi-tiered viral model.

We looked at it from the perspective of cohort analysis - and cooked up a three-tier model, with originators (in the case above, plants from our team) and layers of Promoters.  We then back-calculated a viral constant (thanks CloudSponge) from the end results.  While we realize that this isn’t true and may not scale it at least gives us a basic frame for understanding our experimental data.
We can evaluate the parent/child relationships of our invite strings and fit them back into a model - and then check out where we can have maximum impact.

So this is what it looks like:

If you’re struggling with the same thing, drop me a line and I’d be happy to help and share our template (not ready for the public at this point) - and if you can think of a more effective way, please leave a comment below so our team can get smarter about it.

Many thanks to those that have helped us get this far.

from bijan sabet: When it comes to hiring, best not to force it.

Bijan has a great point - whether you’re in a startup or big company - fill your jobs quickly, be diligent about the process, and know when to start over.

When “he’s just not that into you” then you’re risking retention problems in the long run, which means you’re opening yourself up from day one to the tremendous sunk cost of losing a trained employee.

Here’s the quick and dirty math: time to ramp up to 100% productivity X salary + burden. So for a $100K/yr Engineer, with a minimum ramp up of 6 months you’re looking at $50k salary + ~40% burden in benefits and taxes = $70k in the hole, back where you started with a vacancy - but hopefully some work got accomplished.  This excludes the organizational productivity cost of helping this person get up to speed, deadlines made or missed, etc.

In short: your startup can’t afford to hire a flight risk.

MVP Cartoon.

entrepreneuradvocate:

Minimum Viable Product 

—

cosascool:

Japanese artist Mika Aoki creates exquisite glass sculptures inspired by her fascination with the visible and invisible qualities of the medium. 

Cortado. (Taken with Instagram at Ride Studio Cafe)

Look what I just found on SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/evilnine/evil-nine-beat-tape-vol-1

If you’re going to try engineering an outcome, just remember that nothing ever goes as planned - but if you keep your eyes open for opportunities and seize them, you end up in a better place than you imagined.

This Charlie May mix is awesome

http://soundcloud.com/charliemay/cm-radio-mix-2-4-12

Great little mix by JW, helping me get through remaining apps for MIT’s FSA program.

Check it out

______

iTunes: http://bit.ly/jw-twb iTunes USA/CA: http://bit.ly/jw-twb-us
Pre-order CD: http://bit.ly/jw-trails-we-blaze-CD
LIKE Anjunadeep on Facebook: ‪http://on.fb.me/anjunadeep‬
Release Date: 28th May 2012

Here’s a 6 track , 20 minute mix of the album . A little taster , if you like..

Tracklist as is follows -

1 Back to Me
2 95
3 Just one More
4 How you make me Smile
5 Red Stripes
6 Out of Reach

Cool 80s vibe

@elliotcohen with a new toy (Taken with instagram)

Everything you want is within your grasp; you just have have to extend your reach a little.

Perfect sone for a sunny Friday by @jodywisternoff: http://soundcloud.com/jodywisternoff/how-you-make-me-smile-edit