My musepad

The official name for Bangkok is Krung Thep Maha Nakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit.

For official government purposes though, they only use the first four word Krung Thep Maha Nakhon.

Over the years, I have written a lot of stuff. Mostly a few newsletters, my book called Community-in-a-Box, and lots of posts over social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn.

With Twitter going off the rails however, I did not have that one space to freely share my thoughts. Then I remembered I had this blog that I started over a dozen years ago.

I probably won't write the same things as I did back then. While there may be some overlap on topics like startups and tech and investing, this will mostly be my scratchpad for ideas, a place to vent on occasion, and an opportunity to explore new ideas and directions.

There are two Americas. The first is the one white people experience.

Then there is the other America, the one hyphenated Americans experience.

The path to the American Dream is very different for those Americas, specifically for African-Americans.

Racism is built into the culture, the systems, the policies, and the workplaces, including the tech industry.

They use words like meritocracy and diversity, but still fall short of being inclusive.

This is wrong and the lack of diversity has far reaching consequences.

As algorithms and AI decide more things for people, who writes the code matters even more.

It’s no longer just the biases of people, but the biases of code, making life & death decisions.

Five years seems like an eternity these days.  So much changes in a short about of time, at least from where we sit now.

In any other era of human history, the difference in five years never really amounted to much.  Breakthroughs happened, but the changes took place over decades rather than years. Human behavior changed at an even slower pace.  We plodded along merrily.

I remember a conversation with someone about mobile technology.  The year was 2011.  Five years prior there was no iPhone or Android.  Apps and app stores were not a thing.  Now everyone has a mobile supercomputer in their pockets and we stare at tiny screens for way too many hours of the day.

During the dot com crash, I recalled saying to a friend that five years ago, searching for information meant going to the library or government office.  In 2001, all I had to go was turn on a computer, open a browser, and “Google” it.

If I look at where we are today and ask what has changed from five years prior, I can’t say we have gotten very far.  Innovation is in a holding pattern.  The most potentially exciting innovations have turned out to be based more on hope and bad science.  For all the talk about the sharing economy, it doesn’t look much different than the existing economy other than shifting around the overlords.  Drones, VR and IoT are all interesting but still far from mainstream applicability.

Even in the area of business technologies, nothing outstanding or different has emerged.  We are still in the phase of delivering prettier pixels or replacing spreadsheets for apps.  In an area I look at intensely, sales technology still requires way too many apps, way too many steps, and way too much time.  There are 300+ startups alone from less than 100 just a few years ago, all promising abounding lift in sales efficiency and effectiveness. Instead, it is death to sales rep productivity through a million little apps, all with slightly off data.

There is innovation happening, but for the regular person, tech has peaked.  The stuff that matters is still many years off, whether it is self-driving transportation, genetic reengineering, truly useful AI, home-based manufacturing (3-D printing), and numerous other innovations.  There are people like Elon Musk that continue to push the boundaries of technology, but it seems like there are fewer people willing to truly take the moonshots.

I wonder if our mechanisms for advancing the most outlandish and revolutionary ideas is being stalled by the very machine that enabled our previous 50 years of tech innovation.  I am glad to hear that certain accelerators are proud to state that all of their companies are revenue generating.  Those sound like promising businesses, but not the type that create new industries or economies.  Venture capital served a different purpose once, one that was nobler and riskier and scary.  The name of the game now is how to purge risk out of the portfolio.  I think their optics may be off.

Erebus by Shades of Black - Some early morning crunchy djent to get one going.  There is a belief that there is only one band worthy of djent, but even Meshuggah is over it, and so should you.  No one person or band owns music, it is for the masses to listen, stretch, explore, and remake in beautiful new forms.

This is not me speaking in metaphors.  I will be running in an actual marathon this year.  I signed up for an event down in South Carolina and December 10th is my day of reckoning.  So what is a non-runner who often cites how much he hates running doing running a marathon?

One could say I am a glutton for punishment.  Over ten years ago I signed up for a 2-day 170-mile bike tour down the NJ shore.  It was a beautiful ride other than the fact that I was in a state of complete exhaustion the entire time.  My training consisted of two 25 mile rides in the weeks prior, and before that the last time I was rode a non-motorized form of two-wheeled transportation was as a teen.  After that first ride, I came to love road cycling.

I like impossible things. I like the audacity of ridiculous goals and striving towards them.  It is what motivates me.  Sometimes I have bit off more than I can handle, it was never an experience that I could look back on with disappointment.  I always uncovered a deep truth about myself or found a path that guided me towards some greater journey.

The impetus started a couple of years ago.  While never athletic, I was always generally fit.  Then family and work take greater portions of your time and focus.  As I looked at myself and evaluated my energy levels, I needed to make a change.  I had become fat and out of shape.  Worse, it was leading to poor lifestyle choices and I was feeling spent.

Dreaming small does not work for me.  The same goes with goals.  I tried the gym and made an effort to become healthier, but it never stuck.  Striving towards better health is great in theory, but it is too fuzzy of a goal.  Even setting specific metrics did not provide much incentive.  It seemed too easy to let the goals slip because it did not matter. The consequence of failure did not matter.

You cannot let a marathon slip.  It is on the calendar, travel is arranged, people have been informed.  It cannot be avoided.  It is a goal staring me full in the face saying “you signed up, so now come at me.”  There is no failing, I have to show up at that start point and I have to cross the finish line.

I hope not to repeat the same mistakes that I made when training for the bike tour.  That means a regular training schedule, better habits around food and hydration, and a much more focused mental game.  I have to give thanks to my friend Lisa in Boston for sharing a book, “The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer”, which is literally the bible for preparing for your first marathon.

I have only gotten to week three of the 16-week program, but here is the entire schedule:

My times are slow.  I ran my 6-miler at a 12-minute average pace. My calves are sore as hell.  I can’t seem to drink enough water.  I am still not enjoying running.  There are moments though that I feel this incredible flow where my feet fly and my legs feel like jet engines.  I can feel the energy.

So if the training is only 16 weeks and the marathon is in December, what I am doing with the other three months in between?  I do a half-marathon in September, recover for a week, and then cycle through the training again using the last 11 weeks of the schedule.

METAL MONDAY: Vinland by SIG:AR:TYR - I might be accused of having a thing for Viking metal.  I pledge no allegiance to Viking kind and I have no obvious ancestry to explain the affinity for brooding Viking tunes set to loud guitar and pulsing rhythms.  I just like it.

David Ogilvy

Dale Carnegie

METAL MONDAY: Pleiades’ Dust by Gorguts - Back in 2013, I said that Colored Sands was one of my favorite albums.  It is still on rotation and it remains one of my favorite albums of the decade.