Thanks to Joshi for pointing out this inspiring interview with an air national guard pilot who helped defend us after September 11
Most people working at the World Trade Center site immediately after the attack were toiling too hard to look around and reflect much. Here's a rare account from an articulate Buddhist chaplain who was one of the very few non-first responders permitted into the area. I found it very illuminating.
In case you missed it, here's the tale of how Hurricane Irene made me remember the deeper, scarier emotions of that time. And the story of a friend lost on United flight 93.
Finally, I've already linked to it a zillion times, but you've just got to read this terrific series of pieces in Slate which worked through the various theories explaining why America hasn't suffered a 9/11 style attack since, er, 9/11.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Balancing Against the Grain
I don't sound like anyone else on trombone. And I got some great advice once: I don't need to try to sound original; I sound that way without trying. So when I make an effort, the result can sound exaggerated.
In the other direction, my natural social tendency is to introvert. If I don't make an effort to be animated, I come off as sullen - even though I'm not. I need to aim a few notches above my natural inclination, and that takes effort.
It's really helpful to figure out where one needs to push and where one shouldn't push at all. The trick is to take stock of where one's imbalances lie.
There's a natural human compulsion to hyperextend our active sorts of imbalances (natural athletes spend hours in the gym, hyper people drink loads of coffee, the mentally ill hate taking meds because it makes life feel boring, etc.) and to cede to our passive ones (ennui, introversion, depression, etc.).
We exaggerate our exaggerations, and we resign to our inclination to resign. That, of course, is completely backwards.
In the other direction, my natural social tendency is to introvert. If I don't make an effort to be animated, I come off as sullen - even though I'm not. I need to aim a few notches above my natural inclination, and that takes effort.
It's really helpful to figure out where one needs to push and where one shouldn't push at all. The trick is to take stock of where one's imbalances lie.
There's a natural human compulsion to hyperextend our active sorts of imbalances (natural athletes spend hours in the gym, hyper people drink loads of coffee, the mentally ill hate taking meds because it makes life feel boring, etc.) and to cede to our passive ones (ennui, introversion, depression, etc.).
We exaggerate our exaggerations, and we resign to our inclination to resign. That, of course, is completely backwards.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Bubbles, Slogs, and Selling Out: Part 21
Previous installment
First installment
All installments in reverse chronological order
Throughout my tenure, I'd clutched to my breast, like a spy's cyanide pill, a last-resort scheme hatched shortly after the shocking phone call where I learned thatDarth Vader was my father Clay would be my boss. I called it my "Gone Jesus" option. The idea was that I'd claim to have had a religious awakening, and would load up all my writings, internal memos, Chowhound board postings, and press interviews with heavy-handed scriptural references. I'd subsist entirely on Jesus fish and Ezekiel bread, and claim to have lost all interest in gastronomy.
As previously explained, my employment contract pretty much amounted to indentured servitude. If I were to quit or be fired, I'd be sued. But CNET couldn't fire me over a religious preference. So if I'd Gone Jesus, a mutally-agreeable way would have been found to swiftly ease me out. And so I kept Jesus in the wings. Thankfully, it never quite came to that. But any entrepreneurs caught in this position ought to bone up on their bible studies just in case (I particularly recommend the Book of Job).
It's important to note that my trepidations were mostly personal. I was in for a tough year, but Chowhound, with its well-established culture and strong momentum, would be tough to screw up too badly. And I was comforted by my observation that Clay was a big dreamer but a poor executer. Endless hours were endured listening to his grandiose "vision", but the saving grace was knowing that none of it would actually materialize. Poor execution mercifully stanches bad ideas.
Here are Leff's Four Scenarios of Authority, in declining order of preference:
Of course, I didn't love being in the surreal position of fighting against foolish initiatives which I knew would never be implemented. But even after Clay's departure from the company (not long after I bailed) a dumb ideas/bad execution culture has remained firmly entrenched among the corporate overlords, much to my relief. This is why Chowhound's culture is still pretty much intact.
Competence is beneficial only when wisdom is assured. That's why the Founding Fathers intentionally throttled the ability of any one branch of government to easily launch initiatives. Gridlock's not always a bad thing.
One horrible initiative was actually pushed through, however, and put us on a shaky business trajectory which persists to this day.
Read the next installment (#22)
First installment
All installments in reverse chronological order
Throughout my tenure, I'd clutched to my breast, like a spy's cyanide pill, a last-resort scheme hatched shortly after the shocking phone call where I learned that
As previously explained, my employment contract pretty much amounted to indentured servitude. If I were to quit or be fired, I'd be sued. But CNET couldn't fire me over a religious preference. So if I'd Gone Jesus, a mutally-agreeable way would have been found to swiftly ease me out. And so I kept Jesus in the wings. Thankfully, it never quite came to that. But any entrepreneurs caught in this position ought to bone up on their bible studies just in case (I particularly recommend the Book of Job).
It's important to note that my trepidations were mostly personal. I was in for a tough year, but Chowhound, with its well-established culture and strong momentum, would be tough to screw up too badly. And I was comforted by my observation that Clay was a big dreamer but a poor executer. Endless hours were endured listening to his grandiose "vision", but the saving grace was knowing that none of it would actually materialize. Poor execution mercifully stanches bad ideas.
Here are Leff's Four Scenarios of Authority, in declining order of preference:
1. Smart ideas, good executionScenario #1 is too much to hope for, and #3 is heart-breaking and volatile and makes everyone give up (#4, God help us, is Nazi Germany). Scenario #2 is a stable condition of steady-state status quo (let's call it "Planet Earth"). It's worked well for Chowhound post-sale, which is why I began this saga by noting that I'm generally pleased with how the site's fared.
2. Dumb ideas, bad execution
3. Smart ideas, bad execution
4. Dumb ideas, good execution
Of course, I didn't love being in the surreal position of fighting against foolish initiatives which I knew would never be implemented. But even after Clay's departure from the company (not long after I bailed) a dumb ideas/bad execution culture has remained firmly entrenched among the corporate overlords, much to my relief. This is why Chowhound's culture is still pretty much intact.
Competence is beneficial only when wisdom is assured. That's why the Founding Fathers intentionally throttled the ability of any one branch of government to easily launch initiatives. Gridlock's not always a bad thing.
One horrible initiative was actually pushed through, however, and put us on a shaky business trajectory which persists to this day.
Read the next installment (#22)
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Google Buys Zagat
So Google has bought Zagat. Here are some thoughts:
Impact on Zagat
Aside from the boatloads of money they were surely paid, this rescues Zagat from a slog far longer than the one I endured with Chowhound. Tim and Nina weren't merely slow in extending their brand to the Internet; they were downright luddite about it for years. And even after drawing hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital funding during the Internet boom of the late 1990's - from investors who could see their brand's online potential, even if they themselves couldn't - not much seems to have been done with it.
Every step Zagat's ever taken in the tech world has been sluggish and tottery. The books were great. The branding was great. The distribution was pure genius (bookstore sales were surely dwarfed by sales via the countless unconventional channels they opened). But tech + Zagat, even at this late date of 2011, has yet to fully happen. They've been waiting...and waiting...and waiting...
Impact on Google
Google is all about data. Lots of data brought into their computational fold toward the goal of "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful". Tech nerds, who traffic in algorithms and such, prefer their data normalized (or at least normalizable). That means it's presented in a format which can be organized, standardized, crunched, analyzed, and generally be easily digested by computers.
Zagat offers highly normalized data on restaurants and more, and it's a natural for Google (so what took them so long?). Contrast with Chowhound, a data hairball where lots of people fling information at each other in chaotic plain language, all within only the loosest organization. Try extracting all references to Mel's Diner, much less parsing a nice clean number reflecting its quality relative to, say, Bob's Diner. It's not going to happen (and, for lots of good reasons, it must never happen), and that's why I didn't even talk to Google when I was selling the operation.
Add in the key issue of locality - which Google's previously been slow to seize upon - and it's easy to see why Zagat's a good fit.
One problem, though, is that Zagat's data, while normalized, is highly subjective. And subjective data is not Google's specialty. Moreover, this is not particularly high quality data. It's always been insanely easy to stuff Zagat's ballot box.
Posters to Chowhound offer a rich trail of information about themselves, allowing users to decide who's smart, ignorant, or a likely shill. Still more of that trail is available to moderators, helping them remove dishonest postings and monitor patterns of subversion. Chowhound's not completely honest, nor could it ever be. But it's damned good, and that's because the hairball approach supplies a thick enough trail to keep it that way.
But anonymous individuals plugging ratings into survey forms offer little evidence as to their honesty - much less their savvy. The aggregated result may be sleek - assigning each restaurant a clear rating, which Google's processors can chew on and repurpose to their kernel's content - but it's shallow and iffy.
On the other hand, when it comes to data, the perfect is very much the enemy of the good. In the large view, tons of iffy data is super useful. So load it in, boys.
Impact on Chowhound
Mild positive. The pitfalls of Zagat's algorithmic approach make an alternative like Chowhound more attractive for more dedicated enthusiasts. A few of many reasons:
1. Restaurants are too dynamic for a numerical rating to mean much.
Consider how many of your dining opinions - even your most confident ones - are for restaurants you haven't patronized in months or years. Chowhounds (who by the nature of the forum, strive to offer specifics and currency) often report recent meals, while Zagat raters often lazily report stale opinions (or simply regurgitate conventional wisdom, which is staler still).
2. Averaging restaurant ratings shaves off too much value
An otherwise mediocre restaurant with one mind-blowingly great dish may be a perfect ten for a savvy eater, but will always be underrated in an aggregate. Same for a restaurant with one great cook and one poor one. In both cases, you need to strategize, and Zagat won't help you much with that. Similarly, aggregated ratings lead to distorted results. Should a very good street lollipop vendor rate as highly as a very good French bistro? My answer, of course, is a loud "yes", but I'm hardly Zagat/Google's target.
3. When ratings clash with actual experience, confidence plummets
For reasons above, plus lots more, restaurants don't lend themselves to hard ratings. So when Zagat tells people unambiguously where to eat and their experience drastically differs, that erodes confidence in the brand. Chowhound's hairball approach offers nuanced opinions from individuals, rather than a branded rating. We convey a sense of a dynamic dining scene requiring plenty of strategizing and intrepid exploration - quite a different thing than issuing official pronouncements re: "What's Good".
4. He who controls the agenda controls the outcome.
Zagat's playing field is determined by the listing of restaurants offered for rating, and there have always been (and will always inherently be) limits to the currency and breadth of that list. I like lesser-known places, so many of my favorites aren't even on that list. Chowhound's the place for learning about off-radar venues.
This isn't a sales pitch for the superiority of Chowhound. They're apples and oranges, and the vast majority of people, not so picky, will of course find Zagat's neat, clean orange more useful than Chowhound's fuzzy, sprawling apple. (I actually had a clever plan for polishing Chowhound's data without changing its culture. It would have worked, but CNET rejected it. I'll be recounting it as the final installment of my tale of the Chowhound/CNET merger, so stay tuned).
My point is that for all the attractions of standardized data, much is lost when rich, dynamic, and subjective realms are hammered into machine-readability. And the stuff that's lost is the stuff Chowhound specializes in. Which is one reason I built it in the first place.
But Google + Zagat is a natural, and a great move for both of them. Shoot, I'll make good use of it myself. The standard rap among food writers and aficionados for decades has been that Zagat makes a sensational address book. Well, we're about to enjoy a much more souped-up address book.
With, surely, APIs. Hmmm.....
Impact on Zagat
Aside from the boatloads of money they were surely paid, this rescues Zagat from a slog far longer than the one I endured with Chowhound. Tim and Nina weren't merely slow in extending their brand to the Internet; they were downright luddite about it for years. And even after drawing hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital funding during the Internet boom of the late 1990's - from investors who could see their brand's online potential, even if they themselves couldn't - not much seems to have been done with it.
Every step Zagat's ever taken in the tech world has been sluggish and tottery. The books were great. The branding was great. The distribution was pure genius (bookstore sales were surely dwarfed by sales via the countless unconventional channels they opened). But tech + Zagat, even at this late date of 2011, has yet to fully happen. They've been waiting...and waiting...and waiting...
Impact on Google
Google is all about data. Lots of data brought into their computational fold toward the goal of "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful". Tech nerds, who traffic in algorithms and such, prefer their data normalized (or at least normalizable). That means it's presented in a format which can be organized, standardized, crunched, analyzed, and generally be easily digested by computers.
Zagat offers highly normalized data on restaurants and more, and it's a natural for Google (so what took them so long?). Contrast with Chowhound, a data hairball where lots of people fling information at each other in chaotic plain language, all within only the loosest organization. Try extracting all references to Mel's Diner, much less parsing a nice clean number reflecting its quality relative to, say, Bob's Diner. It's not going to happen (and, for lots of good reasons, it must never happen), and that's why I didn't even talk to Google when I was selling the operation.
Add in the key issue of locality - which Google's previously been slow to seize upon - and it's easy to see why Zagat's a good fit.
One problem, though, is that Zagat's data, while normalized, is highly subjective. And subjective data is not Google's specialty. Moreover, this is not particularly high quality data. It's always been insanely easy to stuff Zagat's ballot box.
Posters to Chowhound offer a rich trail of information about themselves, allowing users to decide who's smart, ignorant, or a likely shill. Still more of that trail is available to moderators, helping them remove dishonest postings and monitor patterns of subversion. Chowhound's not completely honest, nor could it ever be. But it's damned good, and that's because the hairball approach supplies a thick enough trail to keep it that way.
But anonymous individuals plugging ratings into survey forms offer little evidence as to their honesty - much less their savvy. The aggregated result may be sleek - assigning each restaurant a clear rating, which Google's processors can chew on and repurpose to their kernel's content - but it's shallow and iffy.
On the other hand, when it comes to data, the perfect is very much the enemy of the good. In the large view, tons of iffy data is super useful. So load it in, boys.
Impact on Chowhound
Mild positive. The pitfalls of Zagat's algorithmic approach make an alternative like Chowhound more attractive for more dedicated enthusiasts. A few of many reasons:
1. Restaurants are too dynamic for a numerical rating to mean much.
Consider how many of your dining opinions - even your most confident ones - are for restaurants you haven't patronized in months or years. Chowhounds (who by the nature of the forum, strive to offer specifics and currency) often report recent meals, while Zagat raters often lazily report stale opinions (or simply regurgitate conventional wisdom, which is staler still).
2. Averaging restaurant ratings shaves off too much value
An otherwise mediocre restaurant with one mind-blowingly great dish may be a perfect ten for a savvy eater, but will always be underrated in an aggregate. Same for a restaurant with one great cook and one poor one. In both cases, you need to strategize, and Zagat won't help you much with that. Similarly, aggregated ratings lead to distorted results. Should a very good street lollipop vendor rate as highly as a very good French bistro? My answer, of course, is a loud "yes", but I'm hardly Zagat/Google's target.
3. When ratings clash with actual experience, confidence plummets
For reasons above, plus lots more, restaurants don't lend themselves to hard ratings. So when Zagat tells people unambiguously where to eat and their experience drastically differs, that erodes confidence in the brand. Chowhound's hairball approach offers nuanced opinions from individuals, rather than a branded rating. We convey a sense of a dynamic dining scene requiring plenty of strategizing and intrepid exploration - quite a different thing than issuing official pronouncements re: "What's Good".
4. He who controls the agenda controls the outcome.
Zagat's playing field is determined by the listing of restaurants offered for rating, and there have always been (and will always inherently be) limits to the currency and breadth of that list. I like lesser-known places, so many of my favorites aren't even on that list. Chowhound's the place for learning about off-radar venues.
This isn't a sales pitch for the superiority of Chowhound. They're apples and oranges, and the vast majority of people, not so picky, will of course find Zagat's neat, clean orange more useful than Chowhound's fuzzy, sprawling apple. (I actually had a clever plan for polishing Chowhound's data without changing its culture. It would have worked, but CNET rejected it. I'll be recounting it as the final installment of my tale of the Chowhound/CNET merger, so stay tuned).
My point is that for all the attractions of standardized data, much is lost when rich, dynamic, and subjective realms are hammered into machine-readability. And the stuff that's lost is the stuff Chowhound specializes in. Which is one reason I built it in the first place.
But Google + Zagat is a natural, and a great move for both of them. Shoot, I'll make good use of it myself. The standard rap among food writers and aficionados for decades has been that Zagat makes a sensational address book. Well, we're about to enjoy a much more souped-up address book.
With, surely, APIs. Hmmm.....
Jimmy Kimmel's Uncle Frank
Late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel's Uncle Frank died recently. Even if you know nothing about Kimmel's show, or Uncle Frank's place in it, if you could use some uplift, read on.
First, enjoy this beautifully done (and highly entertaining) remembrance by one of the show's writers. And then watch this touching, lovingly produced field piece Uncle Frank did with Mike Tyson in his urban rooftop pigeon coop:
I dare you to laugh at Tyson or find him pathetic. He's on to something, and it took that rarest of rarities - a fully genuine human being on network TV - to serve as a lens allowing the camera to zero in on the truth of a public figure whose image has been distorted beyond all recognition. Within the hurricane, we now see, is boundless silence and kindness.
Absolutely beautiful. Rest in peace, Uncle Frank.
Bonus: Kimmel's tribute, with Uncle Frank's best highlights (I particularly love the part where he tells Meryl Streep she's got a great future ahead of her).
If you're not a fan of weepy intros, start 30 seconds in:
First, enjoy this beautifully done (and highly entertaining) remembrance by one of the show's writers. And then watch this touching, lovingly produced field piece Uncle Frank did with Mike Tyson in his urban rooftop pigeon coop:
I dare you to laugh at Tyson or find him pathetic. He's on to something, and it took that rarest of rarities - a fully genuine human being on network TV - to serve as a lens allowing the camera to zero in on the truth of a public figure whose image has been distorted beyond all recognition. Within the hurricane, we now see, is boundless silence and kindness.
Absolutely beautiful. Rest in peace, Uncle Frank.
Bonus: Kimmel's tribute, with Uncle Frank's best highlights (I particularly love the part where he tells Meryl Streep she's got a great future ahead of her).
If you're not a fan of weepy intros, start 30 seconds in:
Michael Arrington: Callow Pundit
I've been through so much in the online biz world since I started Chowhound in 1997 that I don't shock easily. But this shocked me: Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, who has for years tried to position himself as a savvy expert on tech biz issues, sold out to AOL a year ago. And now he's publicly posted this:
Memo to naive entrepreneurs: the folks who buy your company get to do whatever they want with it. Period. The shower of assurances which rain down prior to closing are mere lubricant allowing you to make a deal you very much want anyway (in Chowhound's case, there was no choice: it was either sell or shut down). When Mike and Frankie on "American Pickers" wheedle you out of your family heirloom, telling you it'll go to nice people who will love it as much as you do, they're throwing you emotional rope, that's all. The assurance is a meaningless, unbinding bit of nicey-nice fluff. Only ditzes take it seriously. And only dunces bluster with public outrage when it doesn't turn out that way.
You took the money. You sold out. There is a sound basis for the pejorative shading of the term "sell-out", and there's nothing more pathetic than a morally aggrieved sell-out. If Arrington believed the assurances, he's a hobbyist, not an entrepreneur...much less a biz pundit.
When CNET was engineering its acquisition of Chowhound, a ton of promises were made, and I didn't feel particularly savvy in knowing to smirk wearily as they spewed forth. I fully recognized that selling means sold, and while I wasn't happy with some of their subsequently choices - and I certainly advocated for what I felt to be the site's best interest - I never questioned CNET's prerogative to do as it likes, assurances be damned. And I'm just a food guy, while Arrington's a supposed authority on just these sorts of business issues.
Arrington's not going to buy it back. His bluff is as empty as were their assurances. This is just whining.
"I believe that AOL should be held to their promise when they acquired us to give TechCrunch complete editorial independence.
As of late last week TechCrunch no longer has editorial independence. Some argue that the circumstances demanded it. I disagree. Editorial independence was never supposed to be an easy thing for Aol to give us. But it was never meaningful if it shatters the first time it is put to the test.
We’ve proposed two options to Aol.
1. Reaffirmation of the editorial independence promised at the time of acquisition. Given the current circumstances, that means autonomy from Huffington Post, unfettered editorial independence and a blanket right to editorial self determination. To put it simply, TechCrunch would stay with Aol but would be independent of the Huffington Post.
or
2. Sell TechCrunch back to the original shareholders.
If Aol cannot accept either of these options, and no other creative solution can be found, I cannot be a part of TechCrunch going forward."
Memo to naive entrepreneurs: the folks who buy your company get to do whatever they want with it. Period. The shower of assurances which rain down prior to closing are mere lubricant allowing you to make a deal you very much want anyway (in Chowhound's case, there was no choice: it was either sell or shut down). When Mike and Frankie on "American Pickers" wheedle you out of your family heirloom, telling you it'll go to nice people who will love it as much as you do, they're throwing you emotional rope, that's all. The assurance is a meaningless, unbinding bit of nicey-nice fluff. Only ditzes take it seriously. And only dunces bluster with public outrage when it doesn't turn out that way.
You took the money. You sold out. There is a sound basis for the pejorative shading of the term "sell-out", and there's nothing more pathetic than a morally aggrieved sell-out. If Arrington believed the assurances, he's a hobbyist, not an entrepreneur...much less a biz pundit.
When CNET was engineering its acquisition of Chowhound, a ton of promises were made, and I didn't feel particularly savvy in knowing to smirk wearily as they spewed forth. I fully recognized that selling means sold, and while I wasn't happy with some of their subsequently choices - and I certainly advocated for what I felt to be the site's best interest - I never questioned CNET's prerogative to do as it likes, assurances be damned. And I'm just a food guy, while Arrington's a supposed authority on just these sorts of business issues.
Arrington's not going to buy it back. His bluff is as empty as were their assurances. This is just whining.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Bubbles, Slogs, and Selling Out: Part 20
Previous installment
First installment
All installments in reverse chronological order
Last time, I was on the receiving end of a sadistic prank by the brutish business development dude who had coordinated the purchase of my web site, Chowhound, by his company, CNET (now a part of CBS). Shortly afterwards, he relayed the terrific news that he'd been promoted out of business development, and would be serving as my boss for the year that I was contractually obligated to work at CNET.
I have a few scattered recollections to close out with (befitting such an epic saga, it will take me a few installments to finish up).
Jumping ahead a few months to near the end of my tenure with CNET, I'd confessed to the NY Times that "insofar as my input, there's a lot of meetings where I'll say, 'I think we should do this,' and they say, 'I don't think so,' and I say, 'O.K.'"
It was my sole blip of public venting (which, to be honest, I kind of regret; I was otherwise very disciplined), and a blogger I don't know, named John Wilson, wrote an article about it:
Also, the corporate talent was more D-list than B-list. Like every other rational entrepreneur in my position, I had fully expected Chowhound to be run by someone with less feel for it than I had; but I never ever imagined they'd put the business development ("bizdev") guy in charge. This is like finding yourself on an operating table and learning your surgery will be performed by the hospital's fundraising manager. And: here he is, with his big cheesy nervous smile, hovering over you, his scalpel poised to cut.
To be sure, the fellow was a whiz of a dealmaker - I've never known anyone with such deep and consistent awareness of the goings-on in his field - but beyond having no food knowledge or experience (or, really, interest), he knew nothing about online communities. Nor did he understand editorial - though he knew the lingo and could bluff a little. And I'm pretty sure he'd never managed workers (if he had, he'd have been put through several anger management courses by then).
So what was my time there like? Again, you know. But let me put it this way: one month into my tenure, a friend bought me, as an ironic gift, a DVD set of The (British) Office. I watched about 45 seconds, leapt violently from my couch, and stabbed the eject button. To this day, years later, I can't bear to watch it.
Yet there were saving graces.
Read the next installment (#21)
First installment
All installments in reverse chronological order
Last time, I was on the receiving end of a sadistic prank by the brutish business development dude who had coordinated the purchase of my web site, Chowhound, by his company, CNET (now a part of CBS). Shortly afterwards, he relayed the terrific news that he'd been promoted out of business development, and would be serving as my boss for the year that I was contractually obligated to work at CNET.
I have a few scattered recollections to close out with (befitting such an epic saga, it will take me a few installments to finish up).
Jumping ahead a few months to near the end of my tenure with CNET, I'd confessed to the NY Times that "insofar as my input, there's a lot of meetings where I'll say, 'I think we should do this,' and they say, 'I don't think so,' and I say, 'O.K.'"
It was my sole blip of public venting (which, to be honest, I kind of regret; I was otherwise very disciplined), and a blogger I don't know, named John Wilson, wrote an article about it:
"Oh, the joys of becoming an employee in a big company.Man, does that ever sum it up. Except for the yacht. I didn't make yacht money. But I'm not sure I'm really a yacht guy, anyway.
Lifecycle:
1. Talent starts innovative business
2. Big company buys talent & their company
3. Big company "B listers" sit on top of talent, using their experience of never having had to build value from scratch to direct the new division activities
4. Big company can't figure out why it hasn't continued to see the success achieved by the business it acquired, in the period since purchase and decides even tighter control of new division is required
5. Acquired talent leaves in disgust [taking most of their riches] and lives on yacht for a while
6. go to 1."
Also, the corporate talent was more D-list than B-list. Like every other rational entrepreneur in my position, I had fully expected Chowhound to be run by someone with less feel for it than I had; but I never ever imagined they'd put the business development ("bizdev") guy in charge. This is like finding yourself on an operating table and learning your surgery will be performed by the hospital's fundraising manager. And: here he is, with his big cheesy nervous smile, hovering over you, his scalpel poised to cut.
To be sure, the fellow was a whiz of a dealmaker - I've never known anyone with such deep and consistent awareness of the goings-on in his field - but beyond having no food knowledge or experience (or, really, interest), he knew nothing about online communities. Nor did he understand editorial - though he knew the lingo and could bluff a little. And I'm pretty sure he'd never managed workers (if he had, he'd have been put through several anger management courses by then).
So what was my time there like? Again, you know. But let me put it this way: one month into my tenure, a friend bought me, as an ironic gift, a DVD set of The (British) Office. I watched about 45 seconds, leapt violently from my couch, and stabbed the eject button. To this day, years later, I can't bear to watch it.
Yet there were saving graces.
Read the next installment (#21)
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Hurricanes, Hijacked Planes, and the Skewing of History
Hurricane Irene was a bit traumatic. Huge dead tree limbs, which I'd procrastinated removing, hung ominously over the house. A particularly iffy giant tree waved drunkenly above my second floor bedroom, so I spent the night downstairs on an uncomfortable couch, awakened every few hours by the sickening crack of one large tree after another snapped by the wind. I was ready to flee into the basement if any of the Branches of Damocles pierced the roof.
The house was unscathed, but there was little time to exhale, as I got to work cleaning up the jungle of fallen wood. It was a full week before it was all cut, split, and raked.
And then another monster hurricane, Katia, was announced. I heard about it late last week, on a clear, crisp, pre-Autumn day with a brilliant blue sky. Which roused an odd deja vu.
I was transported back to a similar day in the fall of 2001 when my stomach began to freeze as I pondered what might come next. While the loss of 3000 was awful, the crippling thing was the sense that greater doom was imminent. That was where the terror was. New Yorkers were jittery for months - the anthrax scare, a mere footnote in the history of it all, was a really, really big deal.
Historians always know the outcome, and that distorts everything. I knew then, as I was party to history, that the takeaway - buildings and planes went down, so people grieved the loss - would be skewed and incomplete. The anthrax affair would be devalued because it turned out minor. The paralyzing dread, without any concrete event to pin it on, would hardly appear in historical accounts, though that was the tenor of the time.
In fact we do the same with our own memories. September 11 is recalled entirely via images of firemen, debris and fleeing mobs - concrete pictures we can can pin our emotions to. The more intangible emotional layer - the forward-facing dread - is less specific, more limbic. It's much harder to connect our memories to at an intellectual level. And history is always written from the layer of intellect.
But after a night of cracking tree trunks and 75 mph winds, followed by a week of physical recovery and emotional rawness, I received word of another storm headed my way beneath a crisp, autumnal blue sky. And I remembered.
The house was unscathed, but there was little time to exhale, as I got to work cleaning up the jungle of fallen wood. It was a full week before it was all cut, split, and raked.
And then another monster hurricane, Katia, was announced. I heard about it late last week, on a clear, crisp, pre-Autumn day with a brilliant blue sky. Which roused an odd deja vu.
I was transported back to a similar day in the fall of 2001 when my stomach began to freeze as I pondered what might come next. While the loss of 3000 was awful, the crippling thing was the sense that greater doom was imminent. That was where the terror was. New Yorkers were jittery for months - the anthrax scare, a mere footnote in the history of it all, was a really, really big deal.
Historians always know the outcome, and that distorts everything. I knew then, as I was party to history, that the takeaway - buildings and planes went down, so people grieved the loss - would be skewed and incomplete. The anthrax affair would be devalued because it turned out minor. The paralyzing dread, without any concrete event to pin it on, would hardly appear in historical accounts, though that was the tenor of the time.
In fact we do the same with our own memories. September 11 is recalled entirely via images of firemen, debris and fleeing mobs - concrete pictures we can can pin our emotions to. The more intangible emotional layer - the forward-facing dread - is less specific, more limbic. It's much harder to connect our memories to at an intellectual level. And history is always written from the layer of intellect.
But after a night of cracking tree trunks and 75 mph winds, followed by a week of physical recovery and emotional rawness, I received word of another storm headed my way beneath a crisp, autumnal blue sky. And I remembered.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Nice Try, Dick...
From Fox News (of course):
"Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Hillary Clinton might have been better at building bridges with Republicans if she were in the White House than the current president, as he gently egged on the secretary of state to challenge President Obama for his party's 2012 nomination.
Cheney said a Clinton bid 'would be good for a two-party system.'"
Botched Links
I completely botched the links on my posting pointing out posts with especially interesting comments. So you may want to take another look, and, especially, check out the book recommendation (I'm reading it now).
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