In my various leadership roles in government, engineering, law, teaching, and executive entrepreneurship I see evidence of students who accumulate on lists such as school enrollment who are mentioned (name, email address) but fail to engage until after they graduate. It's like they expect to flower only after they've been crowned with credentials. However, the one who gets my dollar is the one who has already picked up the broom-- because its their nature to be a 'doer'-- without first asking for payment or credit to do so.
Greybeards in a recent board meeting murmured how we can learn about applicants by picking through chunks of social vomit such as are written on Facebook. I disagreed but said blogs are our 21st Century version of a white paper or any manner of professional publishing. Blogs are (to me) is one form of volunteerism, and I know I am enriched by others who unselfishly make time to share insights, such as Tom Kuhlmann's The Rapid eLearning Blog or Hack A Day creative engineering site to crack open everyday wireless, cell phone, and electronics.
Blogs encapsulate and personify someone's pith and personality, coupled with their desire to freely generate output, and expect it to contain insights into the measure of what occupies their minds. They're unlike the typical fat-faced "gimmie gimmie gimmie" Jabba The Hutt types.
Blogs, I submit, are the bona fide measure of irrepressible value measured BEFORE someone thinks they merely get an award for survival, or because they've endured elective coursework. More accurately, the absence of independent action as demonstrated through blogs or white papers are good indicators of intelligence insolvency, which, for me, precludes any serious hiring considerations.
Cheers!
Lee
12 October 2011
30 April 2011
v|100 Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs 2011
vSpring Capital announced the 2011 class of vSpring Capital Top 100 Venture Entrepreneurs, also known as the v|100. I won! Since it’s sorted by first name, you can find my name in the “Rs."
Honored to make the list. Even more excited to rub shoulders with Utah’s most recognized entrepreneurial leaders. It sounds cool and will give a rocket-sled boost to stuff I've got going.
Enough said. Want to see who else made this list? Press release upcoming mid-year at http://vspring.com, with articles everywhere in Connect magazine, the Deseret News, and more.
To each of you who helped me get here, thank you. It's my opportunity to give back and serve.
Cheers
Lee
Honored to make the list. Even more excited to rub shoulders with Utah’s most recognized entrepreneurial leaders. It sounds cool and will give a rocket-sled boost to stuff I've got going.
Enough said. Want to see who else made this list? Press release upcoming mid-year at http://vspring.com, with articles everywhere in Connect magazine, the Deseret News, and more.
To each of you who helped me get here, thank you. It's my opportunity to give back and serve.
Cheers
Lee
30 March 2011
Bread and Circus
I was but a teen when I read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I've retained a powerful memory of the shock of societal downfall indicators... especially now witnessing it with our wholly-dishonest Socialist President, Mr. Obama, at the helm. Even someone who should know better, like Senator Harry Reid, states every bald-faced lie as if the truth.
Two thousand years ago Rome's citizens were not concerned as long as they had 'bread and circus' (food and entertainment). That's precisely our lot now. We're not quite at Bob Marley's lament over revolutions falling to the party who 'keeps their bellies full,' because we have sufficient to eat. Gas prices are rising, but it's a frog-boiling... we're not furious because at a nickel and dime more each week, we're not really shocked. And with five hours per day our Internet Hulu and cable TV keeps us docile. We're at bread and circus. We're at the door to ruin.
Not debating politics in the usual sense (twaddle for pseudo-intellectuals), my gut simply aches over the turn from truth... a simple matter with no complexity. Speaking of pain, I recall all too well the pain I experienced at the hand of an apparently-sincere girlfriend who one afternoon made a very impassioned case about the goodness of marrying her. I kept feeling "wrong" as she detailed how she'd be a great mother and a wonderfully-committed wife... and then later admitted she was pregnant with some other guy's baby. When I pointed out that glaring moral inconsistency (not to mention her attempt to trick me), she merely shrugged and went on her way as if no big deal; the carefree implication, well, just get over it.
With similar pain I watch as people merely shrug when it comes to truth. People no longer live based on facts, truth, evidence, law, logic, reason, or the merit of personal promises. I lament the loss of honesty and "what is right." Increasingly associates numb this concept with 'whatever.' Even 90-year blue-hairs who, by now, have lived a century with Victorian concepts of honesty, still trick with alacrity. I'm frequently lied to, with the accompanying sneer and implication "...so what can you do about it? Nothing. Ha! Sucker..."
Fools mock but they shall mourn. (Ether 12:26)
Some pick at the Book of Mormon as irrelevant or fictional history, but even if it were wholly-fabricated, it tells a solid moral story. So too President Ronald Regan represents truth and Mr. Obama represents deceit. Many other harbingers of societal decay as Gibbons' 1776 treatise on Rome's last days bespeak the truth that we degrade and disintegrate unless we remember that a lie is a lie; a crime is a crime, and wholesale ingratitude is tantamount to crimes against humanity. But first learn the lessons of the garden-- the Lord is judge over all.
If for no other reason, in your own shoes stand tall and prove honest.
Two thousand years ago Rome's citizens were not concerned as long as they had 'bread and circus' (food and entertainment). That's precisely our lot now. We're not quite at Bob Marley's lament over revolutions falling to the party who 'keeps their bellies full,' because we have sufficient to eat. Gas prices are rising, but it's a frog-boiling... we're not furious because at a nickel and dime more each week, we're not really shocked. And with five hours per day our Internet Hulu and cable TV keeps us docile. We're at bread and circus. We're at the door to ruin.
Not debating politics in the usual sense (twaddle for pseudo-intellectuals), my gut simply aches over the turn from truth... a simple matter with no complexity. Speaking of pain, I recall all too well the pain I experienced at the hand of an apparently-sincere girlfriend who one afternoon made a very impassioned case about the goodness of marrying her. I kept feeling "wrong" as she detailed how she'd be a great mother and a wonderfully-committed wife... and then later admitted she was pregnant with some other guy's baby. When I pointed out that glaring moral inconsistency (not to mention her attempt to trick me), she merely shrugged and went on her way as if no big deal; the carefree implication, well, just get over it.
With similar pain I watch as people merely shrug when it comes to truth. People no longer live based on facts, truth, evidence, law, logic, reason, or the merit of personal promises. I lament the loss of honesty and "what is right." Increasingly associates numb this concept with 'whatever.' Even 90-year blue-hairs who, by now, have lived a century with Victorian concepts of honesty, still trick with alacrity. I'm frequently lied to, with the accompanying sneer and implication "...so what can you do about it? Nothing. Ha! Sucker..."
Fools mock but they shall mourn. (Ether 12:26)
Some pick at the Book of Mormon as irrelevant or fictional history, but even if it were wholly-fabricated, it tells a solid moral story. So too President Ronald Regan represents truth and Mr. Obama represents deceit. Many other harbingers of societal decay as Gibbons' 1776 treatise on Rome's last days bespeak the truth that we degrade and disintegrate unless we remember that a lie is a lie; a crime is a crime, and wholesale ingratitude is tantamount to crimes against humanity. But first learn the lessons of the garden-- the Lord is judge over all.
If for no other reason, in your own shoes stand tall and prove honest.
07 February 2011
Amagasaki Train Wreck
Condolences to families of those killed in the commuter train wreck in Amagasaki, between Osaka and Kobe. Although I rarely traveled the remote mountainous train to Takarazuka, one of my homes was in nearby Mikage, Higashi Nada-ku, all within range of a few dozen kilometers.
Thus I potentially knew some of the people who would have gotten off that train on their way to work, like my work-mate Hiroshi Tanaka who lived in Takarazuka. He was devastated by the Great Kansai Earthquake (1995). When I last met with him in Osaka years later, he'd just finished fixing his mansion doors and windows. His concrete apartment had shifted out of plumb so all the doors jammed during the earthquake. All windows shattered in the whole building. He was one of the lucky ones in that 200-apartment building, but because the building wasn't condemned it didn't generate insurance repairs. Furthermore, the 200 apartment dwellers themselves had to cough up the money to uncover the foundation to make repairs. In other words, for years Mr. Takana was not only living with plastic over his windows and doors, but that natural disaster (earthquake) drained him of every yen he earned.
In the west we hoot about "safety first" and the like. It's all idiocy. Life brings with it a fatal disease that ensures we don't get out alive. Face it, whiners. More to the point, this train crash was attributed to a 23-year old driver with 11 months of experience driving trains. In the west we'd all start wailing about inexperienced youth, but we want it both ways-- experienced, seasoned workers are not in vogue and cost too much so we don't hire the 'gray beards' and then we whine and wail when inexperienced youth makes a mistake.
"Experience costs blood." (Yiddish proverb)
Thus I potentially knew some of the people who would have gotten off that train on their way to work, like my work-mate Hiroshi Tanaka who lived in Takarazuka. He was devastated by the Great Kansai Earthquake (1995). When I last met with him in Osaka years later, he'd just finished fixing his mansion doors and windows. His concrete apartment had shifted out of plumb so all the doors jammed during the earthquake. All windows shattered in the whole building. He was one of the lucky ones in that 200-apartment building, but because the building wasn't condemned it didn't generate insurance repairs. Furthermore, the 200 apartment dwellers themselves had to cough up the money to uncover the foundation to make repairs. In other words, for years Mr. Takana was not only living with plastic over his windows and doors, but that natural disaster (earthquake) drained him of every yen he earned.
In the west we hoot about "safety first" and the like. It's all idiocy. Life brings with it a fatal disease that ensures we don't get out alive. Face it, whiners. More to the point, this train crash was attributed to a 23-year old driver with 11 months of experience driving trains. In the west we'd all start wailing about inexperienced youth, but we want it both ways-- experienced, seasoned workers are not in vogue and cost too much so we don't hire the 'gray beards' and then we whine and wail when inexperienced youth makes a mistake.
"Experience costs blood." (Yiddish proverb)
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