Preferred Birthday

Cool analysis of birthday data that shows 13th is not a date women want to give birth. They prefer to schedule around it. Comments from those in the field were pretty informative too:

The choice of when to induce is not based on staffing, but on convenience. For example, my hospital schedules a full day of c sections on Wednesday’s because the mothers will stay 3 days after the procedure and go home on Saturday morning, when the traffic is light and the family can enjoy the weekend together.

These decisions are absolutely a huge part of how deliveries are determined, and have been since about the 1950s, when women were routinely given scopolamine to remove their senses and memories of labor and then strapped down to prevent them from hurting themselves while waiting. Doctors back then made all of the decisions on timing themselves, based on their expertise but also their golf schedule and weekend plans. That idea of women being a passive part of their own labor decisions has continued through our current labor and delivery practices, with doctors deciding when it would be convenient to deliver

This reminded me of my own experience when J was born. I loved my doctor - she knew that my marriage was in a very bad place and I needed all the support I could get. On my last scheduled visit, Dr. B told me that she was going to be out at a conference on the day J was supposed to arrive. She asked if I would like to be induced so she could be there for the delivery. 

Her words filled me with an overwhelming panic. I was not ready for more variability and change in my life but did not want to play games with destiny either. It felt right that J should come into the world when she was good and ready and I should deal with whatever that meant for me. And so we did and it turned out she was ready a bit sooner than predicted so Dr. B was there with me as I had hoped and prayed for. 

Victory Lap

Still reading How to Kill a Unicorn and learning how its easy to run a victory lap a little too soon. In this example, the Starbucks Evenings program cited by the author as an example of a winning two-sided solution that brings Magic and Money together - the mantra of his company. In the book, the Starbucks Evenings story is a winner - its proved out the concept and the business case handily: 

“When we went live with the first prototype, I sat nervously at a table waiting to see if women would come and if our hypothesis about their needs would be borne out. The first customer in the door is a guy who steps up and orders a glass of wine. I’m thinking wow, were we that wrong? When he settles in, I come over and start chatting. He’s a stay-at-home dad who’d just dropped his kids off at soccer! You can’t make this stuff up. The other big moment was when I discussed the idea with some women and one of them broke down in tears. She said, ‘I can’t tell you how stretched I feel by that point in the day and what it would mean to have this option.’ ” As the program expands to select stores that fit a particular profile, there are a lot of happy women, and an occasional guy, too. Like Rachel and Howard Schultz.

Fast forward to 2017 and the concept was sunset by Starbucks and a Forbes article covering the story does not invoke so much happiness: 

Starbucks’ “Evenings” program was aimed at driving traffic in the latter part of the day, since most customers flocked its stores for their morning coffee. By introducing wine and beer, the company hoped that it could attract customers in the evenings. However, it appears that this strategy did not work, especially since table service in the evenings conflicted with the counter service format in the mornings.

It's for good reason that vendors and consultants try grab those customer references as soon as possible before anything could possibly be proven out. To see the same strategy make its way into a book that is meant to teach others how to innovate is disappointing. 

Entirely Incidental

Read the news of the demise of Samsung's chairman around the same time as I was reading How to Kill a Unicorn. The two diametrically opposite views of the company made me wonder who if anyone had it right in such stories. It's as if fact-checking has gone out of fashion along with many other standards that content should be held up to if it meant for the consumption of the general population. In the book, the author Mark Payne writes of Samsung:

The company’s scale is mind-boggling. With 2013 global revenues of $268 billion, Samsung is the world’s tenth-largest company. We’ve worked with them on many innovation challenges and have consistently been amazed by their ability to execute with brilliance and speed against the things they consider important. Most businesses reaching that kind of scale are slow to spot new opportunities and act on them. But Samsung keeps charging forward. Fast Company magazine recently celebrated Samsung as one of the world’s most innovative companies. Two of the four innovations that were cited were ideas we’d helped shape with their world-class innovation teams. In an age where every company talks incessantly about innovation, Samsung lives it, moving with remarkable speed and decisiveness.

The WSJ story leads with "Lee Jae-yong has the challenge of transforming the South Korean conglomerate after it has failed to keep pace with rivals"

Are they talking about the same company? The times we live in are such that a strong position one way or another should be treated with skepticism. Used to be that was the result of the writer having done their diligence and come up with an original insight. Today, it is more likely a messaging decision calculated to get the most buzz. Facts are entirely incidental. 

Reading Educated

Reading Educated was a confusing experience. As with many bestsellers, it feels disorienting when you can't respond to a book in the way the vast majority of readers have. The quality of writing and story-telling felt very uneven. Early on in the book, it was hard to see the point of some events that Westover describes in great detail. Yet the seminal events that lead to transformation in her life are only mentioned in the passing, sometimes so trivialized that the reader might almost miss it.

These lines probably explain why she tells her story the way she does. Her stance throughout the telling of her story is of someone who is observing from the outside but not connected to the events being narrated. When the events in question are so brutal, that distancing can feel discordant. Here she reflects on her mental state after horrific physical abuse by her brother Shawn:

This moment would define my memory of that night, and of the many nights like it, for a decade. In it I saw myself as unbreakable, tender as stone. At first I merely believed this, until one day it became the truth. Then I was able to tell myself, without lying, that it didn’t affect me, that he didn’t affect me, because nothing affected me. I didn’t understand how morbidly right I was. How I had hollowed myself out. For all my obsessing over the consequences of that night, I had misunderstood the vital truth: that its not affecting me, that was its effect.

There are many encounters with Shawn that take place before and after this event. Each is described in a lot of detail. Yet, her years in Cambridge, the hard-fought successes at BYU that helped her get there received a very cursory treatment. The reader is not able to appreciate her astounding mental growth over a relatively short period of time. Even as she achieves impossible things, the past is like a vortex pulling her back in. The force never seems to abate. Somehow the dots did not connect for me till the end. 

Thinking Nextdoor

Interesting essay on how loneliness can lead to abuse:

Totalitarianism in power found a way to crystallise the occasional experience of loneliness into a permanent state of being. Through the use of isolation and terror, totalitarian regimes created the conditions for loneliness, and then appealed to people’s loneliness with ideological propaganda.

Unrelated to what this essay is about, the abuse of loneliness as a concept made me think about the Nextdoor IPO which is basically a platform for busybody neighbors to do their meddling without being stigmatized. The nosiness likely stems from loneliness - social media and the gratuitous over-sharing with legions of "friends" does not fill that void. That leaves the space open for a Nextdoor where you can get closer to the action, engage with people in physical proximity and not feel alone.  

I don't know about totalitarianism but creating societal conditions where a large number of people feel habitually lonely is definitely good for business. Offerings will arise to fill that aching void nothing can fill so in effect the market opportunity is infinite. The Salon story summarizes the road to hell paved with good intentions well: 

It is baffling to think this all started on a digital platform. While this incident is not your average day on Nextdoor, it is worth wondering if the internet enabled its outcome. Nextdoor was supposed to provide users a sense of community, but under the anomic influence of online communication (a condition known academically as the online disinhibition effect), Nextdoor sometimes more resembles 4chan.

Perhaps that explains the appeal of Best of Nextdoor: It shows the levity of the oft-charged online world. Some of the finest Best of Nextdoor posts consist of non-urgent "urgent alerts" that users receive on their phones, including a recent "urgent alert" from a worried mom asking if the neighborhood should be concerned about the song “Gucci Gang” by Lil Pump.

Drawing Together

Being able to tune into Adobe MAX online this year has been an absolute treat. Loved too many of the sessions to specifically call out. But listening to Wendy MacNaughton, prompted me to sit in one of her classes though I am not her target demographic. For a little while, it took me back in time to my own childhood when I took drawing classes on Sunday mornings. My teacher brought his two kids along to class so they learned along with us. The youngest was my age and quite a proficient artist. But his father never gave him any special attention or credit. He was just one of the kids he was teaching. Mr. M taught us all to look and things with love just as MacNaughton says. We went outside where we could sit under the shade of a tree and draw its trunk. 

Through his eyes, I learned to appreciate the character of gnarled tree-trunk, respect the work nature had done over time to create this giant thing of beauty that stood unassumingly outside our classroom. We drew leaves in spring time when they were shiny, young and green. Mr. M showed us how to mix colors to get the shades of green that looked close to what nature had made. When autumn came, we would draw the dry leaves much the same way. Mr. M's oldest was already in college and we were all in awe of her. She loved to draw faces and just about everyone in class had pencil sketch of their face she had done at some point. Seeing our faces in the way that she saw us was fascinating. I remember feeling I was looking at someone familiar but still a relative stranger when I saw my face in her notebook. There was something she had captured that gave me pause. I was too young to understand what to make of it. 

Hiking Lessons

We did a ten mile mountain hike recently, picking a trial that was marked "strenuous". In the past, we had only done easy to moderate but that Sunday morning, we felt ready for something harder. It was an experience to learn from and remember. We got off to an easy start and went downhill for a long time and came to the point where a number of creeks mixed and merged with each other forming cascades along the way. It was still a bright sunny day, the colors of fall while not as spectacular as it has been in years past, were still beautiful. The hikers we met along the way were mostly young people including students presumably from the nearby college. We met a friendly dog or two in the early part of the hike. 

But once we were done fording the creeks, and crossed over to the other side, ready to begin the ascent to the way back, the hike got significantly harder. This was the part that made the label "strenuous" fit. By then we were running low on water, did not have a much by way of snacks and easy was well behind us. The scenery turned more and more spectacular as it to compensate for the arduousness of the path to get there. We had grossly underestimated the degree of difficulty of the hike and also how long it would take us to complete it. On an easier trial like the ones we typically do, this would take is maybe three hours. Today it was closer to five. The last mile was the hardest. The sun has set, there was not much to see anymore. Our phones had run out of battery and there was no food or water. A tiny crescent moon popped up in the sky and it was such relief to see headlights of cars driving in the distance. 

Starting strong because the going is easy, not understanding fully what is to come and how to prepare for it, feeling burnt out when the finish line seems to be at an undefined place are all lessons from this hike that transfer to life itself. The body definitely learned some lessons in those five hours and my hope is that I will be able to translate them to the flow of life as well. 

Success Formula

Per this Inc article, there is a succinct formula for success: S = Qr. 

"...Success, or S, is the product of r, the potential value of a given idea, and Q, a person's ability to execute on that idea--i.e., their "Q-factor," or combination of innate talent and skill, which makes them effective or not in their chosen field."

Could be some truth to that. Though timing may play a part too. The same values of Q and r would yield a very different amount of success based on timing. Back in the dotcom boom times, the threshold values of Q and r to achieve high and sustaining value of S were pretty low. Once the tide turned, you had to have a much higher product of those to values to arrive at a number of S where the enterprise might take off and grow. 

That is one aspect of timing - are the conditions in the environment such that you will benefit from it. The other factor is arriving upon the idea when the time is right and the market is ready for it. Too early or too late the potential value will suffer. Would be good to see a modified approach where T is given due consideration.

Cure All

Ran into this quote while looking for something completely unrelated:

“If you go out there and start making noise and making sales, people will find you. Sales cure all. You can talk about how great your business plan is and how well you are going to do. You can make up your own opinions, but you cannot make up your own facts. Sales cure all.”

It made me think about a conversation I recently had with someone I used to work with a while back. He is in sales. During the time we worked together, for a variety of reasons mostly not under his control, I never saw C close any deals. I have seen him in action with vendors, partners and customers and would rate him a good sales guy yet the objective reality is that he did not close anything during the time I worked with him. I did not have the heart to tell him I have no proof point to base a referral upon even though I think he is hard-working and has good instincts as far as sales. 

On the flip side, say I thought C was crazy difficult to work with and  generally unlikable but the fact was that he has closed many a deal. That would indeed cure all. I could refer him around to friends in companies he wishes to target and tell them like it is - they would need to judge if C is a culture fit but I could vouch for the fact that he had closed deals at a certain run rate. The rest is detail for the prospective employer to vet.

Maternal Desire

Reading this HBR article hit too close to home for me. The observations about what women do in the job market was bittersweet - glad I am not alone here but that is such a pity overall. 

Unfortunately, many people (particularly women) focus on potential jobs for which they are already overly qualified. There are upsides to doing this: they will “hit the ground running,” which often makes an employer happy and can boost the person’s self-confidence. But it’s unlikely the job will lead to much growth and being stagnant in a role can make it hard to transition to the next position. In particular, an upward trajectory in the workplace requires consistent acquisition of the set of skills needed to take on the next position. Learning these skills when you’re in a position for which you are overqualified will require that you learn “off the clock” rather than incorporating learning into the daily performance of your job.

When J was a child, this was the best option for me and I have observed over the years many mothers of school age kids make very similar decisions. My friend H got her dream job in the middle of the pandemic but was too worried about the learning curve and being able to raise her ten year old son at the same time. Specially that he goes to school online now and can't participate in most activities he did in years past. 

So she took a pay-cut and returned to a previous job that she can do in her sleep. I understand the decision completely and yet this move will set her career back a decade if not more. She will fully understand the impact of her current decision when her son is grown up and she finally feels free to pursue her own goals. It does not have to be this way though. It was hard for me to make the case to H given my own track record. I wish she would talk to women who had the courage to do both at once - be a mother and have a career. 

Insect or Human

I have resisted the tyranny of specialization - in personal and professional life. It could be viewed as lack of focus and inability to put in the effort to master just about anything. Such may well be the case but if I don't have it in me to produce music like Martha Argerich no matter how many lifetimes of effort I apply, I would much rather be a dabbler "doing this and that" a phrase I learned from J. Reading this quote where the author opines "specialization is for insects" almost vindicates my lack of innate talent combined with mediocre work ethic. 

"Specialization is for insects," the science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein famously wrote. "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly."

While not nearly at the level of self-sufficiency that it takes to be human, but I could check yes to some items on the list. So based on the operating definition here, I must be some creature not quite insect but yet to be human. 

Sowing Chaos

I routinely get to  work with people who are very senior level individual contributors and also peers who have chosen to manage people like them. The leadership style varies a great deal between these two categories. The people managers need to corral a group of high functioning, high performance, Type A individuals who are not afraid to voice strong opinions and can be stubborn. They don't feel like they need to be managed - most have at some point managed others and don't feel like it anymore, In some cases people management never felt like a good fit. Managing a crew of this variety and getting results is no joke. So the person who has chosen to do that work has to a lot of skill and stamina. 

F is one such manager and people around her can feel disoriented by her quiet persistence, it is so relentless. She will have people work together on things they don't agree on at all and force consensus. At that point she is just as likely to rubber-stamp it as she is to ask them to return to the drawing board. After a point, the work teams realize they are better off co-operating with each other so they can process what she throws at them. Through sowing apparent chaos, F is able to herd the cats she has to. There is a method to the madness that the new person in the mix starts to see after a while. It is no wonder F enjoys the utmost confidence of her leadership team. It is something anyone who desires to manage a high performing team could stand to learn.

Degrees of Freedom

Slang holds a mirror up to society. Was interesting to read what words are in circulation around the world even if the list is far from comprehensive. The degrees of freedom one in Mandarin was quite instructive;

.. “bubble tea freedom,” “cherries freedom,” and “lipstick freedom,” respectively. Each describes a different (low) level of financial independence, signaling that you have enough money to afford all the bubble tea (about ￥20), cherries (about ￥100+/kilogram), or lipstick (￥200+) that you want

Made me think about the degrees of freedom J achieved before leaving for college since she started working every summer since middle school. At first there was a bit of money but no sense of freedom. She was excited to have a bank account and be able to deposit her check. Beyond that there was nothing. Next came the ability to take me out to lunch on my birthday that coincided with her getting a learner's permit. It was an annual "splurge" and I could see her feeling "rich" as she signed the check. 

The following year, she made a bit more money and also had a driver's license. Now she was able to pay for gas and going where she wanted to go was easy - a whole new degree of freedom. Over time, there was an occasional iced-coffee added to the mix, along with lunch and dinner with friends and then finally a Spotify subscription - an ongoing financial commitment and the first in her life.

Too Sweet

 Interesting story about some bread being too sweet to be bread. Such classification was desired for tax purposes apparently and failed to pass muster in court:

According to the Subway Ireland website, the chain's six-inch and footlong subs are available on six different kinds of bread, including nine-grain multi-seed, Italian white bread, Italian herbs and cheese, nine-grain wheat, hearty Italian, and honey oat. And, according to the country's Supreme Court, all six varieties are too sugary to legally be called "bread" at all.

Now being barred from bread status, it is no longer a staple food and so there are tax consequences. Makes you wonder if that fact of such product (legally bread or not) as sugary as it is, is good for the consumer. There was a time in my life when I was working on a project with a bunch of folks who did not want to think about lunch - it was always a six-inch sub. We went to the same store every day at the same time, the same group of five. There was an overwhelming preference for this meal - no fuss, no thinking, no planning required. Just get up and walk across the street. 

We followed the routine until the project was wrapped up. Maybe there was something about the nature of the work we were doing that put us in the collective robotic mode of operation. We had to deal with too much uncertainty and change each day at work to have the stamina left to think about lunch options. Subway was the obvious choice. After six months of this routine, I took a multi-year break from Subway. While I am no longer on the hiatus, it is not among the places I prefer to go if there are options.

Value of Boredom

Read this Bertrand Russell quote in The Geography of Bliss and could not help thinking it was such an apt description of the world today

 “A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.”

We for sure struggle with boredom and for that reason there is such a thing as attention economy. 

"..Our attention has always been limited, valuable, and scarce. But what distinguishes the present day is that technological advances have made an overwhelming amount of information available, strategically aimed at capturing our attention. As for the general public, it has never been easier to garner such personal levels of attention though means like social media."

Capturing attention at the rates we see currently is only possible because we struggle and cannot endure boredom.

Geography of Bliss

Reading The Geography of Bliss and find it very engaging. Maybe the style draws the reader in right away because it is written by a journalist and has the feel of an investigative report. The author describes a research related to our happiness as a factor of connection to nature:

In 1984, a psychologist named Roger Ulrich studied patients recuperating from gallbladder surgery at a Pennsylvania hospital. Some patients were assigned to a room overlooking a small strand of deciduous trees. Others were assigned to rooms that overlooked a brick wall. Urlich describes the results: “Patients with the natural window view had shorter post-operative hospital stays, had fewer negative comments in nurses’ notes . . . and tended to have lower scores for minor post-surgical complications such as persistent headache or nausea requiring medication. Moreover, the wall-view patients required many more injections of potent painkillers.” 

This reminded me of my dentist's office. The seat he has patient's seated faces the woods. So as I am having my teeth cleaned I am looking out a large window that frames the greenery outside in a pretty spectacular way. My appointments are generally late in the afternoon and the sunlight does its magic on the tall strands of ornamental grass. Being able to be part of that serene view of nature goes a long way in my feeling that the visit was not too bad and I was in no pain at all. This is the only dentist ever that has not made me dread appointments. Dr. C is a good dentist but so are many others I have seen over time. The big difference is no one had a seat that looked into the woods and had a window that framed the scenery so perfectly. 

Algorithmic Error

It makes for funny news when an ad for onions gets flagged for being overtly sexual. Things stop being cute when similar error have serious consequences for the lives of people and yet nothing is known or done about it. Mainly because the nature of the errors are such that it does not result in some very obviously wrong outcome as was the case was this banned onion ad. 

The company appealed the decision, and a Facebook Canada spokeswoman confirmed the ad's rejection was an algorithm error.

"We use automated technology to keep nudity off our apps, but sometimes it doesn't know a walla walla onion from a, well, you know," the spokeswoman, Meg Sinclair, told The National Post. "We restored the ad and are sorry for the business' trouble."

A person could be flagged a credit risk by algorithmic error for example and be set for more than business trouble. Job applicants are already dealing with AI that screens them in or out and the  process is likely not fair and unbiased. 

Ice Cream Jingles

Very interesting story about who makes the jingles for ice-cream trucks in America. Something I have always wondered about but never bothered to find out.

.. the ice cream truck business has a strange quirk: it typically sees a bump in the wake of a financial meltdown.

COVID-19 has been no exception.

A record unemployment rate coupled with stay-at-home mandates has been good for ice cream trucks: scores of people are signing up to drive them, and sales are booming.

“You have a huge labor force available right at the time people are at home,” says Mark. “It’s the perfect circumstances for a little bit of a revival for the industry.”

Reading this brought back memories of J in her pre-kindergarten days with my mother during the summer. She would rush to the balcony of our apartment when the ice-cream truck passed by. Once in a week, grandma would buy her an ice-cream. In the tooth-fairy days, J had an independent source of income to pay for her treat. When she started piano lessons, I did notice a strong affinity for the Entertainer. It was the one piece J did not need reminders to practice. Thinking back that could have been the subconscious connection to the ice-cream truck memories of her early childhood

Unlikely Switch

Interesting that the editors and such are treating Walmart Plus like its its a walkaway and Prime is yesterday's news already. Its like the 15 year head-start does not matter and the perfection of the machinery that has been achieved over that time is also a super-trivial thing to replicate. It's great that consumers will have more choice but the celebration maybe a bit premature. The CR article on the topic is a bit more balanced. As a consumer equally familiar with both stores, what clearly stands out for me is the quality of customer service. 

When in a Wal-mart store looking for something, the chances that an associate can point you in the right direction is about 50%, the fact that they will care enough to do so is also 50%. So as a customer, your odds are not that hot. I expect that quality of care will manifest itself in the Plus world as well - culture does not magically change just because a digital version of the product was launched. Customer experience with Prime has been nothing but great. Just that will make the decision to switch unlikely for many like me. 

Making Yarn

Love the idea of recycling old tees into a new sweater. Never a fan of H&M as a business, but this seems like a good move:

"the system cleans garments and shreds them into fibers, which are then spun into new yarn, which is knitted into new garments. The system doesn’t use any water or chemicals, and the process is designed to have a lower environmental footprint than making clothes from virgin materials. Looop is now beginning to scale up this technology to an industrial scale, and when that happens, H&M hopes to start manufacturing clothing using these recycled fibers."

Would be great to see this concept set up as a service where people bring in their old clothes and get yarn out of it which they can they proceed to convert into knit-wear by hand or machine. Could be a great maker-lab type of set-up for customers to take charge of recycling their old clothes into things they could use. Having the facility in-store is a great first step. It would definitely make even folks like me want to visit even though I don't shop H&M.

Feeling Squeamish

Reading this essay reminded me of how I feel every time I light up some of my favorite incense sticks bought from a well-know handicraft store and an ashram in India. They smell beautiful and I want to believe no child labor was involved in their making but I am all but certain that is not true. So each time their fragrance fills my home, I also experience guilt for being complicit in the exploitation of children. I gave up wearing glass bangles in my early twenties after I learned about the cruelty that goes into their making, over time that carried over to many other things I loved but had child labor involved in making. 

Becoming a mother myself was probably the hard stopping point for me. A child was no longer an abstract, conceptual thing - that person was someone just like my own J. It became too close for comfort. The incense stick has been the only thing remaining from that list that I still use and continue to feel squeamish about. To assuage my guilt, I make sure to use them very sparingly as if it would be less harmful that way. 

The unfortunate reality is we have to find some balance between what we want and need and our appetite for enduring guilt over it. The clothes I wear were made is some sweatshop - I can take comfort in that I shop very little and am not big on street fashion. The food I eat could have dubious provenance - there is no other way to get a good deal on something that is labor intensive to produce. 

The farmers in my town do sell their produce every Saturday not far from my home but its not my primary source of supplies. If that could be an affordable option my conscience might rest a bit easier. When J was back from from college, we discovered that our local grocery store was selling some very nice eggs from a local farm - we bought it once and got hooked. It was pricey for a dozen eggs but a minor indulgence given how little of it we consume. And cooking them is easy on the conscience.

Self Promotion

My former colleague P was complaining the other day that she hates all social-media because its all about self-promotion and she is too old for it. P has come out of retirement to try something new - she does advisory services in her area of expertise and enjoys work much more than she ever did before. Her income is no longer required by the family. Kids are all grown-up, living their own independent lives - its just her and her husband who does some freelance work post-retirement. They organize their lives around the schedule of their grandkids and finally feel free as P  puts it. This is certainly not the time or phase of her life where she feels any need to broadcast her career to the world. 

That conversation for some reason reminded me the Seth Godin rule for effective marketing - if the first ten you share the news with don't share it on, then its time for a do-over. 

You can no longer market to the anonymous masses. They’re not anonymous and they’re not masses. You can only market to people who are willing participants. Like this group of ten.

I don't know if that's true anymore. Influencer marketing would not exist if it were. These folks have legions of followers none of whom them they know - so they are anonymous to the marketer and certainly their count far exceeds ten. The only part of the rule that holds is they are "willing participants" and just that apparently makes the process work. If P were to tell a group of willing participants how a day in her post-retirement life looks like, I think many could draw inspiration from it and maybe she would not feel like she was self-promoting

Math Sense

A friend forwarded me a TED talk by Clio Cresswell after hearing me praise the Eugenia Cheng's book I had read recently. The talk was entertaining and made me want to read the book itself - Mathematics and Sex. It's definitely not my kind of book - the pace is too choppy, there are too many ideas competing for attention and none seriously delve into either of the subjects referenced in the title of the book. 

If you were looking to be edified one way or the other you will be disappointed. If you expected to understand how math drives our primal instincts or perhaps predict our likelihood to find and keep love in our lives, you will come up short. That said, it makes for an easy and entertaining read. 

The math people in my life would find such writing ridiculous but for folks like me who don't have advanced math degrees, it could be amusing - for instance this bit about the curse of dimensionality as manifested by increasing the number of questions people are asked on a dating site to help facilitate a good match:

But, here is my second thing: this all works until we’re confronted with the curse of dimensionality. It turns out the more questions there are, or in other words the more dimensions you take into consideration, the harder it can be to find a concept of similarity that makes sense. Why? Because all calculated differences can end up being around the same number. The difference between the differences can be so small that how different you are to someone or similar to them becomes open to many interpretation

Quarantine Entertainment

We watched an improv comedy performed by a local club last weekend, The event was on Zoom and our first time trying entertainment in these covid times. There were six comedians and the show lasted a little over an hour. A lot of dark humor about the pandemic and race relationships from all of them. Everyone stayed away from election year politics. Sex, relationships and dating only made brief appearances. If I had watched any such show in the early days of the pandemic, I might have had a reference point for how the mood has shifted over time. Generally, people expected to stay in limbo for an undetermined period of time and make the most of it. Audience members who volunteered to show up on video were relaxed in their living rooms on a Friday evening. 

The cost of admission to the event was way lower than it would be if it were live. The comedians showed up with various degrees of preparedness. One was seated inside her car and joining by phone. The audio and video quality suffered a great deal because of that. There was one that had a full studio set up in his home and delivered a near perfect performance. I have been meaning to try an Airbnb experience for a while but was not sure if it would be enjoyable. After this show, I feel more ready to give that a go. The idea that live and somewhat curated entertainment could come home to you feels like rather novel. There is no end to how much that could scale because people are so diverse in their idea of what comprises entertainment. 

Truncated Rows

Another sad misadventure by way of Excel. For anyone in IT, this is absolutely mind-blogging - there is no excuse of such mishap given the variety of options available to do the job many of them free and open-source

"..one lab had sent its daily test report to PHE in the form of a CSV file – the simplest possible database format, just a list of values separated by commas. That report was then loaded into Microsoft Excel, and the new tests at the bottom were added to the main database.

But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can only be 1,048,576 rows long. When a CSV file longer than that is opened, the bottom rows get cut off and are no longer displayed. That means that, once the lab had performed more than a million tests, it was only a matter of time before its reports failed to be read by PHE"

We talk to clients about modernizing their IT infrastructure all the time. There is some top down push to make that happen though people with the pocket-books don't always understand what such modernization entails. Deep in the trenches of the organization, there are often hold-outs like these folks who decided to use Excel as their database to work with data from millions of covid tests. Good luck trying to modernize their way of doing their jobs. 

Far Cry

Interesting to read Reid Hoffman's take on LinkedIn connections and the pointlessness of that number beyond a point:

So, for example, early in LinkedIn we created a connections game. The number of connections you have with other members was your score. We put that score front and center on your profile so that people would play the connections game. It was an excellent way to drive user growth — and we could have just let that game go on, ad nauseum.

There was just one problem: As users got a bit too hooked on the game — and inevitably, some of them would — then that connection score would signify nothing. It would represent a pointless tally of how many hands a user could shake a day. In fact, I remember one person on LinkedIn who amassed 32,000 connections. There’s no way he knew 32,000 people. So we capped the score at 500. After that, the score remained fixed and you got stuck with a boring old “plus” sign. 500-plus. Game over.

Being among the early adopters of LinkedIn, I have been able to observe the changes over time - in my own behavior and those of others. When I had just a handful of connections, invites often came from people I had known for a while. They would often include a thoughtful message with the invite. There was an expectation that we would meet in real life if we had not already and that we would introduce each other to people we were connected with. All of these expectations were routinely met.

That is such a far cry from where things are today atleast for me. Getting value from my feed is all but impossible - there is an overwhelming amount of self-promotion and people cheering and celebrating it. After a point, it does get old. First time my buddy posted that he had achieved some important certification, I congratulated him. Second time, it was a Like and by the sixth time I had to unfollow him. So if some day in the future C has something interesting to share (which he likely will), I won't know about it. 

So, for example, early in LinkedIn we created a connections game. The number of connections you have with other members was your score. We put that score front and center on your profile so that people would play the connections game. It was an excellent way to drive user growth — and we could have just let that game go on, ad nauseum.

 

There was just one problem: As users got a bit too hooked on the game — and inevitably, some of them would — then that connection score would signify nothing. It would represent a pointless tally of how many hands a user could shake a day. In fact, I remember one person on LinkedIn who amassed 32,000 connections. There’s no way he knew 32,000 people. So we capped the score at 500. After that, the score remained fixed and you got stuck with a boring old “plus” sign. 500-plus. Game over.

Office Mom

 I was doing some conflict management training at work recently and discovered what should have been obvious after all these years. Women seem to think resolving conflict, keeping peace and not escalating to superiors is part of doing their job and being competent. 

This was not called out explicitly but the situational responses certainly pointed that way. The first time I was complimented by a client for having a calming presence and being able to making peace among feuding team-members was a long time ago. Being younger and more unwise than I am now, I took that to be a positive trait. 

Turns out that was pretty far from reality. Being a mommy at work is necessarily desirable - that persona should remain at home where it belongs. I am nowhere close to being the office mom but I have some attributes that do work against me. At this point in my life and career, I doubt much will change for me but I will share my learnings with J and hopefully she will avoid the traps I have fallen into over the years. 

Before and After

Was looking through some old pictures last of J and I last night and was filled with a sense of absence of one of three dimensions. In many of the pictures, J appeared to be making an effort to smile when it did not come naturally. This was a very hard phase of our lives - a time of misadventure and mistake. In some pictures she looks at me curiously as if wondering why I am headed down this treacherous path. She is too young to have the words or the questions to shape her thoughts but her expression is unmistakable. 

There are pictures of J from a period before this one and after when the third dimension of her happiness is back. It is tentative at first, like she does not fully believe that the tough times are behind us. Then like sunshine through clouds, her smile is back. She is happy and has moved in the direction of her dreams. Seeing those mirthless pictures of my child from a long time ago left me sleepless for the night. That time is gone, the days that J found nothing to smile about cannot be relived - this time correcting the mistakes I made. I have to take comfort that there were good years before and after. 

Past Relics

Reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Earlier in the week, I was recounting my childhood experiences to a friend who has been to India only once for a couple of weeks. H knows it would take a couple of years to explore India satisfactorily. My accounts of growing up in semi-rural India many decades ago is like time travel to a place no one can visit anymore. 

That afternoon, I was telling H about the two common fixtures of autumn. One was the guy who came around to refurbish the balding shil-nora that my mother could no longer use to grind wet spices. He will chisel the pattern of indentations on both the shil and nora until they had the required friction to do the job. He would hawk his services in the quiet afternoons as "Shil Katao" and the ladies in need of his help could come out the door. 

The other guy was in the business of fluffing the cotton inside the razais (lep in Bangla) we would start needing the colder months to follow. He would usually come with a helper and they would agitate the cotton with a device that looked like a one-stringed harp. The "Tulo dhona" when done would give the blankets fluff and warmth. These were the ordinary trades-people of the time. I am pretty sure kids growing up in India these days have no idea what these words mean or why these jobs are even needed. In my day, they were essential. Opening up the Indian economy was the start of a certain homogenization of culture with the Western world and such crazy relics of the past became irrelevant.

These thoughts were strangely enough triggered by reading these lines from the book:

In 2018 the common person feels increasingly irrelevant. Lots of mysterious words are bandied around excitedly in TED Talks, government think tanks, and high-tech conferences—globalization, blockchain, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning—and common people may well suspect that none of these words are about them. The liberal story was the story of ordinary people. How can it remain relevant to a world of cyborgs and networked algorithms?

Using Feedback

Read these lines in the book User Friendly recently about the value of feedback and how that keeps our world in order:

Feedback already defines the world we live in today. For example, we tend to assume that the internet’s great revolution was connecting people. That’s partly true. But consider the birth of buyer/seller feedback. eBay was an unknown startup until it rolled out a feature in which buyers and sellers could rate one another. Today, buyer/seller feedback is what has made us comfortable with the online economy—from buying products that we’ve never seen before on Amazon to staying in the homes of people we’ve never met, through Airbnb.

What is true of the online economy is likely true of our personal and professional lives too. Where feedback is regular and trust-worthy people tend to feel comfortable, understand where they stand with each other and what issues need addressing. When that loop breaks, it could lead to the dissolution of a marriage, estrangement from kids or the need to find a new job.

An interesting read overall but not quite I had expected - to better understand the basis of user-friendly being that each user is so different. When you try to please a constituency that diverse you should logically please no one. Yet user-friendly does work. To example, many of us iPhone users stay with that brand of phone only because we got used to it and don't want change and surprises. We are willing to pay a premium just for that. I know that is true for me because I am not any kind of serious Apple fan.