This great group of girls begged me to come to the ballet and watch their performance! The lovely girl from the organic cafe on Goswell Street suggested that I head towards The Angel, and before long, I’m stumbling across theatre. Thanks to Francesca for helping me appreciate ballet more than I ever had before…
Monthly Archive for October, 2006
I flew through Bangkok airport and was ecstatic to be able to sit down with my laptop and surf on the freely available wireless network – best of all, they had power points in the floor that would work with the American plug for my laptop! Bangkok airport ain’t much at 1am… but it’ll do.
A while back, I was thinking about the future of health care. While I appreciate the great health care that we receive in Australia, globalisation is starting to have an impact… and I wonder where it’s going.
While outsourcing pregnancy (aka surrogate pregnancy) is a fascinating concept, more relevant for many of us is having the more general concept of medical tourism. To me, it’s another example of how development occurs when developed economies offshore their lower value activities – the best sort of foreign aid that we can offer!
While I salute the efforts of guys like Dion at www.NobleDentist.com.au to lower the cost of health care within Australia, some of the bigger picture solutions are going to involve enterprises like Planet Hospital. These guys assert that they can give you great care from top doctors in some of the most technologically advanced hospitals in the world… for a fraction of the price.
Marissa Mayer (VP at Google) looked at the best decisions that she’d ever made and came up with two commonalities:
- She works really hard – big projects are an exciting challenge.
- She surrounded herself with really smart people. That’s the best place to learn and grow – as a result, she ended up as Craig Silverstein’s assistant for her first two years because he’s one of the smartest people she’s ever met!
- She believes in doing something that you’re a little not ready to do… that’s where you really explore and find your limits.
It seems to be working for her…
I like her nine notions of innovation too…
- Ideas come from everywhere
Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team. - Share everything you can
Every idea, every project, every deadline – it’s all accessible to everyone on the intranet - You’re brilliant, we’re hiring
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience - A license to pursue dreams
Employees get a “free” day a week. Half of new launches come from this “20% time” - Innovation, not instant perfection
Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely - Don’t politic, use data
Mayer discourages the use of “I like” in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics - Creativity loves restraint
Give people a vision, rules about how to get there, and deadlines - Worry about usage and users, not money
Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow. - Don’t kill projects — morph them
There’s always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged
I love her style… especially as captain of the pom pom squad and debate teams!
Jawed Karim is the third founder of YouTube, the not-yet-profitable company that Google just bought for $1.65b. After making a few million from being involved with PayPal before it was bought by eBay (also for a billion and a half dollars), Jawed just went back to school. Indeed, this New York Times story reports that he’s gone back to finish a masters degree at Stanford.
The kid (he’s a year younger than me!) seems to be pretty amazingly brilliant, and I started to wonder why. Maybe his father being a researcher for 3M could help, as could his mother being a research A/Prof Biochemist. When explaining Jawed’s interest in science and technology, I really got some insight into the mindset of this family: “To develop new things and be aware of new things, this is our life.â€
He even chose his first college because it was the college that Netscape’s founder attended!
Creative genius is an amazing thing…
Thanks to West for finding a few photos of me… almost the same shots here and here with John Kapeleris at the presentation from the Chief Scientist, Peter Andrews, a few weeks ago, here barely visible during Adrian di Marco’s presentation last May, and here over drinks with that same West afterwards. It’s great to have seen YNOT continue to kick goals – great work, guys!
Brisbane is such a beautiful city. The river is alive with boats and activity, and it’s great to make the time to get down to the river. Hopefully with a few extra bridges and the odd tunnel we’ll not be quite so immobilized when one has some problems like the Riverside expressway did yesterday…
David Suzuki is an amazing powerhouse. He spoke today at the National Press Club, and combined passion for his topic and scientific understanding of underlying issues with energy, wit and charisma. Outstanding
I was really impressed with his grasp of the need for us to look beyond our noses and realise that we are stewards of the world in which we live, stewards for our children’s children and beyond. We have the power to influence the globe; we need to accept the responsibility for applying that power appropriately.
Energy sustainability is a huge issue throughout the world. As I noted a few days ago, computers impose massive demands on our energy generation and supply systems, and it is for this reason that I’m again called to tip my hat to Google. They’re turning the roof of the 1-million-square-foot Googleplex into an enormous solar panel set! It’s so big that they’re expecting the 9,200 panels to produce 1.6MW of electricity – about 30% of the demands of the complex, and enough to repay their capital investment within 5-10 years. Now that’s smart investing…
If their numbers are right, I wonder how many other rooftops could be converted to solar panels. If we’re only looking at a 5-10 year horizon for savings to be realised, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that some profit is waiting to be made… by the big electricity generators if noone else!
I’ve just finished creating the first version of the new style guide on Shirts and Suits.com and would love your thoughts.
In the past few days, I’ve been thinking about relationships. I’ve seen some interesting relationships, and been in a few that could probably give enough material for several soap operas. The following proposition just occurred to me last night:
There are no broken hearts – only closed ones.
Only your ego can actually get hurt. The heart or higher self knows only love, compassion and acceptance, but we can sometimes deal with our emotions in such a way that we close our hearts as a defence mechanism against our ego getting hurt. Closing the heart will hurt us the most by blocking wisdom, killing our self esteem and attracting the wrong people.
There is a fear of totally opening, accepting and allowing… if you’re going to be hurt, it doesn’t matter if your heart is open or closed – you’re going to be hurt!
It’s not that it is ‘wrong’ to close your heart… it’s just that it doesn’t work!
Thanks to my friend Stephane for helping me finally get this!
The end result of our martial arts training is to increase the amount of freedom that we have. We seek to eliminate the threats that may prevent us from having the world as we want it to be. We do not train to hurt other people: hurting others is sometimes necessary to maintain our own security…