Ponderings 8/26/14

1. Earthquakes and wine don't go together. 

2. Today it’s a lot easier to work across countries and time zones. But depending on the time difference there can be no overlaps in working hours (I defined this as 8am-6pm). Similarly, keeping in touch around the globe can be hard if there is no overlap during non-working and non-sleeping hours (defined as 7-9 am & 5-11pm). I created a table to visualize compatible cities for work collaboration as well as compatible cities for communicating outside of working hours.

Some interesting findings:

A. San Francisco and the Pacific Time Zone don't share work hour compatibility with Europe, Africa, and most of Asia. PST is fairly compatible with East Asia and Australia.

B. European and African Cities can find time to work with most places in the world but rarely will find downtime to communicate with friends around the world during non-working hours.

C. It is pretty difficult to communicate between US coasts during non-working hours. Especially if the person on the west-coast works late.

D. It should be pretty easy to keep in touch with a buddy in India

3. Lebron James is the best general manager in the NBA. During the offseason he managed to build a younger big 3 that has immediate championship potential and more upside. And this time people love him for doing so.

4. Recently there has been a lot of backlash against the ALS challenge. The two main contention points are the waste of water and that this challenge is moving the attention away from other global issues. 

Here’s my stance:

A. If you are going to do the challenge find a clever way to reuse the water. Do the challenge on grass, find a water substitute, or use a smaller ice amount.

B. Find 1-2 recurring ways to save water and pledge to do these in your video. For example, collect the water you waste warming the shower up or shower for 2 minutes less each day. These will have more impact on the drought than the water wasted for the ice challenge.

C. Donate a recurring amount to ALS. Fundraising is difficult and viral campaigns are hard to recreate. ALS donations will likely drop back close to pre-ALS challenge levels once the campaign dies down.  Recurring donations will help ALS have sustainable funding.

D. Speak up about/find ways to support the other causes and issues you care about. FB may not be your venue of choice but find some venue.  

5. Services need to be careful about providing too much in free trials (especially to cheap folks like me) when the free service may be all the customer wants.

A. I signed up for a free 30 day trial for Amazon unlimited. During the 30 days, I finished the 5 books I actually wanted to read in their unlimited list. Now that I have unsubscribed it will be hard to get me back on the service even if their list of available books increase. (Remembering to unsubscribe is hard though)

B. I wanted to print out digital photos so I signed up for an account with Shutterfly that offers 50 free prints. 50 free prints was more than I needed and I didn't gain any loyalty to Shutterfly.

6. You know you need to ease up your competitive side when you find satisfaction repeatedly lapping 60 year olds swimming in your lane. But luckily the 13 year olds that speed past me bring me back to reality.  

Ponderings 8/19/14

1. Introductory e-mails are fairly awkward but I don’t think they need to be.

Common introductory emails are for: 1. A person moving to a new city with a person who lives in/knows the city, 2. A person looking for a job with a particular company with a person who works for that company, 3. A person debating career paths with a person who picked one of those career paths, 4. A person looking for information in a particular industry with a person with experience in that industry etc.

In all of these scenarios there is someone who could clearly get value (the “receiver”) from the introduction as well as someone who could provide value (the “giver”). This dynamic unfortunately makes these introductions awkward. It is unclear which party should respond first and its unclear whether e-mails took place behind the scenes privately between the introducer and the “receiver” and the introducer and the “giver”.  There are introductions without a clear “receiver” or “giver” but most introductions I do have some element of this.

To make this process more transparent and less awkward I propose the following rules:
A.     If you are being introduced to someone, regardless of whether you are the “receiver” or the “giver” you respond immediately thanking the introducer and following up on it. This removes the scenario where both parties are waiting for the other person to reply.
B.     Schedule a short phone call (It can be 15 minutes). This is not only a favor to the “receiver” but also a favor to the introducer. And for folks who do this a lot they know that more often than not the “giver” and “receiver” roles can quickly change and the “giver” often gets more value out of an introduction.
C.     Move the introducer off the thread but follow up with the introducer to let them know what came out of the introduction.
D.     Say no immediately if you don’t have time. Don’t lead a person on and don’t keep moving a meeting you don’t have the bandwidth to make. Be upfront if you don’t have time or no longer are interested in the original introduction. The first impression reflects not only on you but also the introducer. 

2. The popularity of selfies has made everybody understand the arm length of all of their friends. In each of our groups we know the person with the longest arm that also has the technical know-how of proper selfie phone positioning.

3. The NFL Pre-Season has minimal upside but a huge risk of downside. You do get to see young players improving and get your first glances at the potential highly touted draft picks but you inevitably see injuries to key players for your team. Since the games don’t matter the joy of any touchdowns is immediately erased by any injury. It is also hard to judge how your team is playing since many starters don’t play or play sparingly.

4. Levi’s Stadium, the new 49ers stadium, has some ground breaking technology. The stadium boasts great connectivity and apps for viewing replays, finding bathrooms, and ordering food. Watching a few stadium tours got me thinking about what I would really want as a fan watching a football game in a stadium.

A.      The ability to watch and listen to the broadcast audio feed. When something questionable is happening on the field (challenges, injury status of a player etc.) it is hard to determine what happened. Every once in a while it is nice to be able to view the TV broadcast and hear what the announcers are saying.

B.      “Viewing rooms” – I want the ability to have a synced audio feed with all of your buddies watching the same game regardless of where your buddies are located. (i.e. Buddies can be in the stadium or at home) Once you are synced the experience is like a conference call where everyone can hear each other and share reactions live. (I am assuming you can come up with a solution to make sure everybody is watching at exactly the same time. So maybe we start with stadiums first.)

C.     Google glass like devices that allow you see the first down line, instantly watch replays, and give you real-time information on a player you may be looking at with the glasses.

D.     Comfortable seats that can give you massages to calm you down during tense moments.

E.      Seat controls that let you control the height of your seat. The feature would help short fans and fans that don’t like standing. (Stadiums should just mandate standing in most sections to avoid this feature)

5. Cell phones should automatically try to find out as much information about a caller not in your address book when you receive a call from them.

A.     Revealing where the call is coming from

B.     Search to see if this is a number registered with a company or an individual and if it can find anything display the result

C.     Determine whether it is a cell phone or land line

D.     Mention whether the number has called you before and if so when was the last time

6. We as humans are really bad at walking in other people’s shoes. If you aren’t personally near an issue or haven’t had experiences with the issue take time to talk to people who have had that experience (wear the shoes). Also don’t dismiss an issue just because you haven’t encountered it. If you are wearing the shoes don’t automatically reject anything someone without the shoes may say. Take time to inform people not in the know of what you know.

Side Note: Women tend to own more pairs of shoes than men and also seem to be better at the above. Just pondering…

7. To celebrate national left hander day I would like to complain about the lack of lefty gloves and golf clubs in PE class, scissors, can openers, knives, spiral notebooks, driving rules, and ink pens.

8.  It is pretty fun and great as a consumer to watch Uber and Lyft fight it out. We should all make bold and detailed predictions about the battle. 5-10 years from now one of us could be writing the best-selling novel: “How I and only I knew who would win the car sharing battle for 10 key reasons”

I last pondered on 8/19/12. Today is 8/19/14. During this 2 year hiatus I tried but failed to improve my writing, spelling, and grammar skills and I tried but failed to get Merriam-Webster to make “ponderings” a word. After a 2 year break change to this blog is long overdue. (i.e., Why does the background still look like a 5^th grader is writing this blog) I am hoping to get back to a regular blogging rhythm but looking for new ideas and collaborators. If you have suggestions or are interested in collaborating let me know.