Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

What is it with the punk tatt'ed, spikey haired starbucks barristas? They flirt with everyone, right or do I need to adjust my adwords?

So a week back, I'm chillaxing in Vanille with one of the preeminent social satirists of the listhost underground. Ironic he's feigning incredulity that I get a kick out of watching people watch me...

Top 5 unsolved mysteries:

1. Who decided to search on Bermuda +"sausage party" and how did they land here?


2. What's with all the vanity searching, hax0rs? You may be on Noscript, but if you came in through "<> defcon" there's only so many people you could be


3. Who went nuts on Nov 19th? Amped average time on site up to 10 mins across all visitors... Ozy?


4. Who are the 5% who have visited 101-200 times? There's only 40 some posts, might be time to invest in an RSS feed...


5. How is this blog China-compliant? I feel like my content is the equivalent of a UO toon running around named "freedom of speech." Should insta-boot all the Chinese farmers.

Beauty & the B*tch

It had taken Him the better part of a week to pick 30 minutes out of the dozen+ business hours I had suggested for our phone interview. I was no longer free. Yet with less than 24 hours' notice, I rearranged my schedule to uphold this long stale commitment to be on call. And here I was making up missed class, bleary eyed crouched in the back of Wong amongst 3 oceans of people I didn't know early on Friday morning... Listening to some professor talk about negotiations.

"Imagine you were to take the first salary figure you were offered," he began. You want to signal you're agreeable, selfless, etc.

"Imagine you're the employer and a recruit took the first offer you made." You'd feel cheated and suspicious, he accepted so quickly, he must not have disclosed his full intentions, I should have made a lower offer. Do you think this employee is agreeable? Selfless?...

Save kindness for people who value it, as Nauman so concisely put it.

This was not a Buddhic epiphany but rather, the unraveling a quarter century of conditioned response. I still am too quick to volunteer, rearrange my schedule at the last minute, and sit through a mind-numbingly dull lectures in the name of fulfilling unarticulated obligations no one appreciates.

But in the process, I've learned you don't need to drop everything to clean up other people's messes, letting your West Point escort know you've compromised curfew to go to Fall Ball gets you princess treatment, and that happily ever after sometimes means standing in your own damn shoes!

Blogging 'The Examined Life'...

Have you all had a chance to check out t. riley's "exploring the 'examined life'"? Ping him and get on it!

This read was a little like shuffling through a museum, speaking in hushed tones about masterpieces of yore. Living next door to performance/installation art guru Jay (see her live at tonight's C-Function), I've got to say... why aren't we sounding our own courageous yawps over the rooftops of the world?!

Here are 4 of my personal beliefs, sparked by reading/questioning Ted's philosophy:

Conviction has 3 levels. Our minds need logic, our guts need stories, and our bodies need habit. The 3 enforce each other and make conviction stronger. This is how education limits itself. Teachers are seldom strong at both logic (Wang, Grubb) and stories (Fernandez, Weber) and even at MIT the "manus" part of "mens et manus" is treated with a light hand.

Humans aren't wired for long term planning. We may be able to appreciate our death and form some goals, but by and large we are like the Solver function in Excel. We improve by testing to see whether neighboring options are better. We waste a ton of energy overzealously optimizing (i.e. do we stop checking people out when we get married? stop shopping when we make a purchase? stop formulating witty retorts after our nemesis has left the room?).

Relationships are what you put in. We can never honestly experience the feelings another person is experiencing. What we feel for others is how much we have invested in them. We also impute this is how they must feel about us. The trick to avoiding unrequited relationships is to keep this investment rate equitable across parties (though investment currencies may differ).

The greater the civilization, the less you have to think... the more you need to think. As technology advances to make our lives easier, we need to fill the void and find ways to make our lives more meaningful (reality TV, OCD email checking, and punching the clock are not the answer). Our greatest danger as we distance ourselves from those first ugly prototypes is to forget that we too can tinker.

Cyberposium and Futurism

Yesterday, 75% of the Henhouse headed up to HBS to check out a tech and media conference an acquaintance had helped organize. "Emerging and Converging" indeed.

Trivia:

• Amanda pointed out that The Guy from the Appex case also moderates panels


• The Confused in Calcutta blogger turned out to be a very buttoned up BT exec
  

Notes from the margin:

• Cyberposium = "convergence" of MIT on Harvard.


• MIT spots/teaches emerging trends earlier; HBS revises when argument and delivery are tighter but info is not as timely... This conference felt more retrospective than prospective


• Panels pressure people into converging soundbites. If you want really edgy emerging controversial stuff, you've got to follow a model like Ted Talks and give visionaries more uncontested air time and less conformist social pressure to say their piece....

What the Future Looks Like

Mapping the future is like putting together a puzzle.

• Straight edged borders, or elephant in the room issues clearly have to frame the future: healthcare, personal finance


• Similarly colored pieces belong in a group, but it's unclear where they fit in the bigger picture: brain research, renewable energy


• Paired pieces that fit together but could go anywhere in the larger picture: inbound marketing companies + bloggers


• IMPORTANT pieces you glimpsed on the box cover and know are a big deal, but have no clue where they fit: nanotechnology


• Leftovers that get crammed in through trial and error, sometimes yielding surprising results: SMS

If we all saw the pieces the same way, it would just be a matter of brute force time investment to put the puzzle together.

But we can increase the velocity of assembly. The pieces don't look the same to everyone and may even morph over time. A border straight edge may blur into a frontier. Someone might see paired pieces where I only see leftovers. If we figure out how to help people isolate how their view is different than the herd's and get them a seat at the table to take a crack at making it a reality, we may never finish the puzzle , but we'll cover more ground.

Late to Class: Marketing or Ops Problem?

We can pledge allegiance to professional standards until we're blue in the face; Bob Mugabe can ask us "please don't go" on google groups; make late comers fall on their swords for attempting the unsolvable linear optimization of max employer face time and OP-enabled education.

These are marketer's reactions to what is fundamentally an operations problem. As creepy as it is when taken to the Disney extreme, we'd do well to engineer an environment that minimizes defects...

Clocks. Did anyone else notice the untrustworthy digitals last week? The probability the building clocks are inaccurate > the probability I am late for a class. Smells like double standard.

Internet. The last thing I want when I'm trying to pull down that clutch CDO email about a room change is for MITnet to boot me off the radio. Given the no laptop per student rule, I am limited to passing time logistics-- we're talking JIT versus 10 minutes late... Maybe we could put baggage claim-esque monitors up to help us figure out what is going on where? Though absolutely not like the ones in ORD that hang over the causeway and cause powerwalkers to halt in the middle of traffic...

Crowd Control. I *hate* the 3rd floor hallway. It is always a moshpit with lecture halls vomitting their contents into the fray at the exact same time. One way to relieve the traffic: do away with the couch 'coves and tables. No one can get any work done there between 8:30 and 3 anyway, such is the traffic and noise. Push them into the skyway between e51 and 40, people would enjoy the view of the construction in peace.

Things went from bad to worse when someone decided the 1st floor hallway was the ideal place to hold a multi-day LFM networking events. Sure, maneuvering the biz cas cocktail table obstacle courses in my parka and galoshes, very running of the bulls meets china shop as I show up for an 8:30 at 8:36.

Classroom Floorplan. I have never entered a theater from stage right unless I was performing. Why did we design classrooms that dump tardy arrivals in the lecturer's lap? You wouldn't believe the relief I felt when Josh showed me the secret back entrance into 345*... I often sit in accounting and fantasize about mcgyvering a duct tape handle for the exterior of 395. C'mon, MIT hackers invented backdoors, why not install a few more? Or better yet, what if we had the teachers move and the students stay put?

Species of Consultants

In a moment of on the job effusiveness, I went so far as to describe an engagement partner as "visionary" to his face. A few days later a BNET field guide to bosses hits my inbox.


Good start, but what we really need is a field guide to consultants... NB: like bugs and drugs in the rainforest, I've probably missed more species than I've captured...


007's

• Smooth-operating Renaissance men. Highly competent, they cut a sophisticated swagger in 1337 & greets, but are ultimately drawn to the job out of a desire to avoid long-standing commitments (work, women, or otherwise).
• Fitness: High- though gravitate towards free agency after getting reamed about teamwork in performance reviews.

Blue Colla-Balla's

• Upwardly mobiles from the mid/lower that genuinely don't mind the lifestyle tradeoff. Toxic results if reporting to or managing over-educated resources.
• Fitness: Medium- persist because livin large preempts saving for a livin largesse exit. Career usually plateaus back in the bayou: long-haul implementation projects that require more tenacity than smarts.

World Travelers

• These guys don't mind living out of a suitcase because the points and compensatory airfare can underwrite getaways to exotic locales.
• Fitness: High- unless staffed on a local project, or audited by T&E

Massiahs

• Hyper-nerds out to save the world. They can't be pigeonholed in overly-prescribed industry roles, so they spread the good word as consulting subject matter experts.
• Fitness: Low- seniors are biding their time until their book deal goes through; juniors are crucified in reviews as very few of their many consulting bosses understand what they do.

Snakes

• You know these guys. They sound like 007's in the interviews, but lack the skillz and have strayed from socially aloof to sociopathic. Fortunately, engagements only last 8 weeks and it takes at least 2 for their team to believe what they're seeing and at least a year for even the most robust 360 review process to start seeing their destructive wake
• Fitness: Low- They cause much suffering, but when retaining talent (economic boom) or clients (bust) gains a priority, they're the first to go

Indigo Children

• Gravitate to consulting as they do towards multitasking. Quickly wear out their welcome in wanting to be the center of everyone's attention and yet focusing on nothing. Fall is often catalyzed by a blackberry, iphone, or broadband wireless upgrade.
• Fitness: High- pull Peter Gibbons stunts with ease. The manic multitasker looks like the lone value-adder on an otherwise tranquil team.

Undeclareds

• Over-educated college/grad school hires who still haven't the foggiest what they want to be when they grow up.
• Fitness: Medium- lack the self-discipline to end occupational inertia, but as gen y'ers, slow and capricious promotions mean they are at high risk of being sniped by clients and grad schools.

Conscripts

• Indistinguishable from undeclareds in interviews, but with a much better sense of direction. Consulting is a tour of duty to pick up the business skills their liberal arts colleges neglected before taking the helm at daddy's company.
• Fitness: Low- their BATNA is higher and even if they are lazy, a small army has been mobilized to prod them out of consulting as a career choice

**bonus species in honor of this, the most trafficked post so far**

Belles with Balls

• Attracted to career flexibility and healthy financing to accomodate beaux' uncertain intent or career trajectory. In advanced stages, have jettisoned the dudes to focus exclusively on career.
• Fitness: Medium- $1,000 strollers don't fit in the overhead bin and few men groove on being treated like checked luggage on a weekly basis, but women that choose to travel light usually enjoy short flights to to the top.

Looking back on election forecasting

Old school: As a kid, I remember asking Grandma from the Lee side whether Robert E. was racist (not to worry, I posed a similar question to the German Au Pairs about Hitler)... Grandma just smiled and said, "he picked the wrong side." Nearly 150 years and one gianormous cemetary later, looks like VA has buried the hatchet.

Next Gen: I wish Google Insights had worked... maybe it did, but at the very least, the McCain y-intercept needs to be amped. By search volume, it looks like Obama took everything and the election was a wrap in mid-September... I wonder if search was higher in less/more decided states? Are people searching to confirm or inform their decision?

I noticed all 3 states I could have qualified to vote in went blue. Then I realized I barely know more than one or two people from any state that went red. Am I an aberration or are FL and the West Coast the wrapping on an unlikely product bundling? What would happen if we mapped social networks over geography?

Got Nanobamas? (excellent find, Joost, figured I'd add as bonus footage for this, the most trafficked s10an post yet...)

Get Branded: Explanation of "$" Tattoos

Several comments over the past few weeks (ranging from "that's soooo MBA" to "speaking of tramp stamps..." and "what do you charge?"). Leading me to think maybe folks at MIT aren't nearly as well-read as their Chicago bretheren....

Ayn Rand & Objectivism ($)

I like Rand. We deserve feedback as to whether our actions are adding value... Currency seems like the cleanest way. But the fact that we add value should not ipso facto oblige us to society. It's like Clendenin & Xerox; play by the rules and make a killing. Just because folks are envious doesn't mean you owe them anything.

Achilles (placement)

That said, I understand there are limitations to a purely capitalist world view. Sometimes fortune favors the unscrupulous. Sometimes we chase after free and easy feedback and compensation rather than forcing ourselves to take risks and run in the red.