Bono, Cat Stevens and This is THE Week

Bono talks with Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens and his wife, Backstage at the Echo Awards 2007 at the Palais am Funkturm Berlin, Germany - 25 March 2007 Credit:WENN

Last week, Bono was on The Late Show and told Stephen Colbert that in one week in 1976 he met his bandmates and his wife. In the same week! What better reminder that everything can change in an instant.  The same holds true for heartbreak. In an instant I have lost loved ones to bike accidents and heart attacks. Even more reason to make this week count.

I have used up a lot of years, and I have no musical talent.  So, I could meet just about anyone this week and still not become an epic rock star and philanthropist.  Even so, I’m keeping my eyes open for new and interesting people to know and new and fantastic things to do.  This could be the week.

Crazy? Because today it feels like the world is about to spin off its axis! Angry people everywhere, and “existential threat” is in every news story. I will try not to spend energy on things that don’t matter or with people on a dark path.  And I won’t miss the chance to vote.

I could go on, bla, bla, but will never come up with a better way to say it than Cat Stevens in the second stanza of Oh Very Young:

Oh very young what will you leave us this time
There'll never be a better chance to change your mind
And if you want this world to see a better day
Will you carry the words of love with you
Will you, will you ride the great white bird into heaven
And though you want to last forever
You know you never will
You know you never will
And the goodbye makes the journey harder still

Could it be that every week is spectacular, and we only notice from time to time?  Thank you Bono and Cat Stevens for reminding us to pay attention.

Wingfoiling – Year One

Wingfoiling in the Keys

I have jumped into the wingfoiling pool. As a lifelong small boat sailboat racer, I felt I already knew how to swim, so how hard could it be? One year in I’m still very much on the steep part of the learning curve. Yet I’m as excited as I was on day one.

My learning journey has introduced me to awesome new people, taken me to sunny and windy places in Florida and Mexico, and caused me to think hard about how to learn something new and complicated.

Nothing focuses the mind like a good wingfoiling crash. And, unlike other parts of life and work, no amount of mental gymnastics or optimism can change a crash to anything other than a crash. I have learned volumes about myself and about learning. Here are a few lessons I don’t want to forget:

It’s About the People

Everyone says surround yourself with great people -- because it is important and true. My wingfoiling journey started because a friend inspired me and shared his time to get me started. From there I met people in the industry that went way beyond just selling me stuff. Then I found peers to travel alongside me, and now I am even teaching others. I can barely believe there are newbies that know less than me, but giving back is super fun too. Every part of life should be like this. Challenging, demanding, difficult, but also exciting, all consuming, full of spectacular fellow travelers and fun. If your boss is a nut, get a new one!

Learning is Always Happening

There have been many days when things did not go as I expected. I talked to everyone, I watched the videos, I worked on conditioning, and I got out on the water whenever I could. But some days I had to wonder if my plan even mattered. I still believe that planning is important in any project, but the universe doesn’t follow the plan. Despite the meandering nature of the project, I can see that I was learning things along the way. The struggle somehow generated progress almost miraculously. Learning was happening all the time!

No Easy Street

Wingfoiling is much harder than I thought it would be. I have had to learn multiple interrelated things at the same time. Like riding a unicycle while eating a bowl of soup! It may look like standing on the board while it flies through the air – but believe me – disaster can strike at any moment. Now I am starting to jibe (fly the board through a turn) and I am completely amazed each time I make it. I would not have it any other way. The difficulty brings me back each time. I know I am never going to master it and that is the biggest gift at all.

I hope my wingfoiling journey never ends. When looking for a new challenge, pick a hard one!

Stupid, Really? Ask Why First!

A story from the old days…

As soon as I gained the authority, I banned all meetings.  Meetings were stupid. I had been in endless and seemingly pointless meetings, so I thought I would liberate everyone from the tyranny. Meetings were stupid. Period.

No long after my decree, it became evident that no one knew what was going on.  Our people were not connecting to projects, each other, the company, or our mission.  It turns out meetings were not as stupid as I said.

Later I learned I was acting out a construct called: Chesterton’s Fence.  In 1929 G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book, The Thing: 

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

And so, I learned not to call things stupid just because I did not understand them.  Instead I learned to ask why.  Without a clear understanding of the why behind any practice – improvements cannot be made.  Later we did manage to improve meetings, making them shorter, more meaningful, and more fun.  I would have been wiser to ask why first.

Asking why is an important part of sales and marketing. If you are interested in such a thing, check out this post on New Trade Routes.

How Are You?

“How are you?” has mostly been a throw away question.  People, particularly Americans, often ask it without expecting a meaningful answer.  And people usually answer with a platitude because they know the questioner is not seeking an actual answer.

Now that we are in a worldwide crisis, this throw away question may have gained renewed importance.  People need to know when other people really care about them, and are willing to help them. Maybe, under these difficult circumstances, people will just start giving a complete and honest answer.  So be ready the next time you ask “How are you?” because your friend might say: “I’m worried that my mother is going to run out of insulin.”  

If you get the usual “fine” as the answer, it might be good to convey that you really do want to know about them and their situation.  You could offer something about yourself to prime the conversation. You may be worried about your sister, who is stuck on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and no country will let them dock.  Or you may have a son that thinks he is impervious to the virus. Sharing your story and anxieties might help get the conversation started. If not, just knowing they are not alone in their fears may be more helpful than you will ever know.

Depending on how well you are acquainted, you could signal your sincere concern by asking:  “Is your family safe?” or “Do you have the supplies you need?”. If they are not technical, you could help them understand how Teams or Zoom works.  If they are feeling trapped at home or overwhelmed by the TV, you could tell them about your favorite book or show them how the Metropolitan Opera is streaming on the web.

Whether you are 19 or 91, you know these are extreme times.  While under the stress of these conditions, it will take focus and energy to be our best selves and care for our families, our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, and maybe even people we have never met before.

Book Review: Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell

“By 2029 no computer - or "machine intelligence" - will have passed the Turing Test.”  This is the $20,000 bet made in 2002 between Mitch Kapor (betting for true) and Ray Kurzwile (betting for false).  In case, like me, you are not sure of the double negative, it is Ray that thinks a computer will pass the Turing test and exceed human general intelligence by 2029.  

In her new book, Melanie Mitchell goes into this wager in detail.  Spoiler alert: she is with Kapor: computers will not pass the Turing test by 2029.  The book is excellent and worth reading. My very short summary is that computers are going to get very very good at the things they are naturally good at, but may never equal humans in general intelligence -- no matter how many doublings we get with Moore’s law.  We under appreciate human general intelligence. A four year old human can make inferences that we may never see artificial intelligence achieve. Computers will get better and faster at translating spoken commands into an action, but may never be able to discern if a person is happy or a threat.

Mitchell brings some rational thinking back into the prognosticating about the advances in AI.  She does not think we will see a computer reading and understanding War and Peace or programming themselves to overthrow their masters anytime soon.

While everyone talks about the computers taking over all the jobs, it is easy to forget that six million Americans lose or leave their jobs every month.  And when times are good, a few more than six million people get new jobs every month. It is the net change that gets reported in the media like this:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 225,000 in January, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 3.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Notable job gains occurred in construction, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.

There is rarely a mention of job turnover rate or the math that 25 times more people changed jobs last month than the net change in employment number. 160 million people have jobs in America so at a turnover rate of six million a month it takes a bit over two years for the entire workforce to turn over.  Sure, some people hold onto their jobs for many more years, and some people change jobs every few months, but the point is, the US economy is extremely dynamic, and will adapt even if computers or robots take some of the jobs.

Daniel Suarez, in his 2009 book Daemon, introduces glasses that can see through walls.  Unlike superman’s x ray vision however, the glasses are connected to a network that has access to the security cameras.  In Suarez’s world, no one needs to actually see through the walls because there is a camera on the other side of the wall streaming the video.  Just as useful but not in the way we expected.

Change is on the way.  It is likely the change we are expecting will take a different form than we expected.  We never got the flying cars or the lives of leisure predicted in the ‘50s. But we did get computers in our pockets that can beat us at chess, call us a cab, book us a flight, and execute complex stock trades.

If you take the time to read Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell you will be better equipped to see what shape the changes are taking.

Book Review: The Topeka School by Ben Lerner

Play Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson and there is no way to avoid the image of Ben Braddock driving his red Alfa Romeo boat tail spider.  I love that song and the memories of Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross.  Ben Learner’s new book does the same thing. He conjures up lost memories - vividly. There I was back in high school, sneaking out as if it were yesterday.

The Topeka School had plenty of story to carry the reader along even without the memory reel.  The memories kept streaming though.  Relationships, parents, raising kids, therapists, and lawsuits were right there fresh.  Adam, the main character, learns how to do the “spread” while rising to the top of the high school debate rankings.  It makes sense that the common trial lawyer tactic of creating a flood of low quality arguments forcing the other side to respond to each one would be employed in high school debate.   As the name implies, it does “spread” the competition thin, but it also makes me grateful that my girls didn’t participate in high school debate.  The world already has too many mean and unhappy lawyers. 

In another reading experience I thought was unrelated, I just finished Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch.  Turns out it also was a young white male blathering on endlessly about youthful anxieties in the 90s.  I think I have had my fill of that genre for a while.  I am sure I had a very active inner dialogue during my teens and early twenties.  I am just glad no one else heard it!

As far as recommendations go, read The Topeka School – it is a fun ride and I’m going to go back and read his other books.  For Nick Hornby, I think I will re-watch High Fidelity.

Book Review: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Even though it was written in 1939, and most Americans read it first in high school, The Grapes of Wrath is a timely read right now.

I am not going to add much to the large volume of writing about this book. For a good / recent review, check out this on from 2014 in The Globe and Mail.

Here are however, three things I want to remember from this reading:

Computers are the new cars: In the mid ‘30s the “personal car” had been around for about as long as the “personal computer” has been around for us. The car enthusiasm and mechanical capability of Al, the book’s leading auto enthusiast, is a mirror for computer devotees now. Even though we think our computers are advanced, families still need someone, usually a young person, to be the family tech support person — just as Al did with the family car on the Joad’s journey.

Displacement then and now: In the 1930s depression and drought in the midwest weakened the small farmers. Then the banks and automation pushed the farmers over the edge. Ultimately, 2.5 million people were displaced and 250,000 went to California. There were 123 million people living in the USA in 1930, and 5.7 million of them lived in California. So 2% of the overall population was displaced and California’s population increased by 4%. This does not seem like that much to me. Sure, in today’s numbers a 2% national displacement would be 6.5 million people. However, we regularly have over 6 million jobs change hands every month in the US. So my take away is that a small number of displaced and visible people can have a big impact on a country or region.

We have a homeless problem in Seattle. The 2019 point in time count shows over 11,000 people experiencing homelessness in King County. This is less than half a percent of the 2.25 million person population in King County. The same report shows that 1,276 people live on the streets in tents or homeless camps. There is no question this is terrible for those 1,276 people. However, this 1/20th of 1 percent of our county population has dominated our city and county government for several years with no end in sight. A small number of displaced and visible people can be very disruptive indeed.

Women on the Rise: My final take away from Steinbeck is the change we saw in the leadership of the family… or fambly as he recounted it. When a decision was made in the beginning of the book, the men got in a circle and made their decision and then informed everyone about it. By the end of the book, Ma Joad had taken over the leadership from Pa as he became withdrawn and indecisive. I find this dramatic, particularly when considering that women only got the vote in 1920. Steinbeck must have been making an intentional point along these lines — particularly in the final scene!

I joined a new book club a few months ago and would never have re-read this book had we not agreed to in the book club. In fact, I am three books in with this group and would not have read any of them without the structure of the group. Trying to decide what to read is indeed a vexing problem!

Blogging Again!

After a five year vacation from blogging I woke up today feeling the urge to start again. If you like what you read, or want to add to the conversation, please comment.

I plan to write more short book reviews, comments about the news, and more about sailing. I just added a Sailing Links page where I will continue to post links to good sailboat racing media coverage.

You can reach me on the About Me page.

The Pursuit of Happiness

On the fourth line our Declaration of Independence we find examples selected by our founding fathers of our unalienable rights… Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Today there seem to be more people than ever working to reduce our happiness.  I will never understand their motivations, and I suspect that if they have tied their own happiness to ending ours, they will be bitterly disappointed.  

Everyone is responsible for their own happiness and has their own definition.  For me, sailing up the inside of Vancouver Island last week in shorts and bare feet with friends old and new made me feel happy like a kid again.  We were on a journey around this 275 mile long island as participants in the Van Isle 360 sailboat race.  We experienced the rugged and remote beauty of the BC coast.  The mountains, glaciers, forests, eagles, and otters saw me and my eagerness to be there.   We had great wind and waves reminding us to respect the forces of nature.  It was a rare chance for me to disconnect from regular patterns and reconnect with friends, the sport of sailing, and spectacular surroundings.

As the newest member of the team, I was eager to do my job and contribute however possible.  My teammates were very good sailors, making this much easier to say than do.  Not only were they experienced on the Dark Star, but they each had many years of time on the water in all types of boats.  Only rarely was I able to conjure up something to add.  So I added learning to my list with disconnecting and reconnecting.  What a perfect combination.

Our team was together all day for ten days and the time just blew past.  We got to know each other and learned how to work together.   By the final day we had been tested under demanding circumstances and had improved every day.  And then, on the final day, we found ourselves there together at the very north end of the island staring out at the Nahwitti Bar.  The waves were reported at 10 feet, but who knew how big they would be as they went from the deep waters of Queen Charlotte Sound to the shallows at the bar.  We tacked and sailed parallel to the break for a bit and then we all held on as we tacked again and headed into the breaking waves.

It was the perfect representation of what we had accomplished and how we had come together.  We were in this together.  I was a bit nervous, but could not think of better people to be with.  The team and the boat sliced right through the dreaded Nahwitti Bar.  The waves turned out to be confused, more like a giant washing machine than Hawaii Five-0.  Even so, we later learned there was a time that the guys on the boat next to us said they saw our keel come out of the water.  Fortunately not all of it!

Then came the frosting on the cake.  We rounded Cape Scott for the 20 mile run down to Winter Harbor.  What a ride!   Just when we were smoking down the waves thinking 14 knots was great boat speed, the breeze increased and we were blasting at fifteen, sixteen and then seventeen.  At one point a jellyfish washed on deck and all of the way back to the cockpit.  With the whole team working as one, sun, wind, and nearly flying, it would be hard to think of anything better.  But then we passed the boat that had been pounding us upwind all week.  They had five miles on us at the turn and we passed them just before the finish, beating them by just one minute after more than nine hours of racing.  

I will forever be grateful to my mates on the Dark Star team.  Jonathan and Libby: thanks for putting this all together and trusting us on the H1 team with the Dark Star.  Brian, Erik K, Katherine, Erik H and Morgan:  you made this an exceptional experience and I will pursue happiness with you any time.  To our amazing H2 team: Jonathan, Herb, Chris, Erik, and Katherine, good luck tomorrow.

The 2015 Dark Star team.

Wind and sunshine!

Ripping downwind to Winter Harbor.

Looking back at the competition.

Let's do it again!

Book Review: I Must Say by Martin Short

Martin Short's new memoir is a treasure and even if you are not a big fan, his book is worth the time -- and the audio book even better. It is a risky proposition for an author to read for his audiobook, unless the author is Martin Short (or Steve Martin or Billy Crystal). 

Marty has had a full life and he does a masterful job of weaving together the comedy and the tragedy of it.  His life has been full of both.  Losing his older brother and both of his parents early might have given him the grace to suffer through the other hardships in his path with a strength of character that I hope to have when life hits hard.

Martin Short by anyone's measure is a successful comedian.  He got there by measuring himself.  He has developed a nine point assessment that he self administers regularly. I am not sure of the dates exactly, but I would guess that he developed his before Steven Covey's 7 Habits came on the scene.  

For me though, it is the quality of his relationships with family and friends that makes the ultimate measure.  From poker with  Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Tom Hanks, the night before trips to the colonscopy doctor, to late night talks around the campfire with Nancy, Martin Short invests in his relationships.  A truly successful man.

Book Review: The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

Despite the many tellings, this is still a great story. Even though we have all read about the people who brought computing to life and the people who made the most of it, Walter Isaacson tells the story again very well. Somehow he threads between the tedium of an often told tale, and the urge to skip the detail because it is an old story. He gives us all of the detail and then some and it does not seem tired at all.

All of the familiar names are there from Lovelace, Babbage, and Turing, to Gates, Allen, Jobs and Woz. In between he brings out some that we have not heard from as much including Atanasoff and Grace Hopper. While engrossed in this account of the coming of the information age, there were a couple of things that I wanted to remember:

1. New things take a long time to happen: Zuckerberg is really just finishing a job that Stuart Brand started.
2. Moore's Law is still going and makes yesterday's crazy idea possible tomorrow.
3. AI is never going to happen, but that does not mean that computers will stop getting smarter, its just that they will not get smart in a human way.
4. The new new thing becomes a thing when all of the parts have been invented.

For real professional reviews, here are the big names:

Washington Post

 Wall Street Journal

New York Times 

Give the world the best you have anyway

The Paradoxical Commandments

by Dr. Kent M. Keith

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.

Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.

Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

Remembering My Dad

Enough people have asked for the text of my eulogy of my dad that I thought I would post it here.  He was the most amazing guy and we all miss him so much.

The three things I want to remember most about my dad are the way he met people where they were, the example he set, and the way he never moved from where he was.

Weddings were one of dad’s favorite things. In keeping with his enthusiastic outlook on life, he performed a lot of weddings.  I suspect many of you have attended his weddings or are among the 1,100 people he married.  He told me that he liked weddings because it gave him the chance to meet new people.  His churches always grew because of his interest in people and his ability to connect with them.  I have had the distinct pleasure of meeting many of the people that he influenced, and often a wedding was involved.

Just last year my dad performed one of his last weddings, this one for Lindsey and me.  It was a very special occasion for many reasons but the reason I am telling this story is that dad accepted me for who I was and Lindsey for who she was and then delivered a message that resonated so much that the people in attendance still talk about it.

He had a way of taking a thought with multiple parts and layers and putting a handle on it – so we could easily bring it with us through life.  That day the handle was the word “Anyway.”  In spite of our shortcomings and hardships he wanted us to love each other “Anyway.”  It was perfect.

His genuine interest in each person he met could be felt in his warm smile, sparkling eyes, and enthusiastic embrace.  He really wanted to know you and you knew it. My dad met people where they were.

My dad shaped my life in so many ways.  He loved telling me about his first car, a Model A Ford, so I loved cars.  He loved the University of Washington, so I went there.  He was an Alpha Delt, so I became an Alpha Delt.  He was a Rotarian and so I am a Rotarian.

There were elements of my dad that were not as easy to follow.  He was a great speaker, cared deeply about the people around him, he worked hard, and he dedicated his whole life to his faith.  I start every day with the hope that I can one day do those things too.

Life continuously reminds me of my good fortune to have my dad’s example to follow.  He and my mom were deeply in love and were married for 53 years and my dad wanted Lindsey and me to have that too. I have two amazing daughters who have given me a great appreciation for the demands of parenting.  I often find myself in situations that require me to say things without the time to think or plan, but the words come out of my mouth and I think… that is something that my dad would say.  And it always sounded better than what I would have said if I had had the time to really think about it. He led by example and I am very lucky to have his example to follow.

Growing up it was a challenge to encounter my dad’s unwavering faith.  My dad had so much confidence in his faith, and he had thought so much about it, and he dedicated his life to it.  I was not in any position to meet him in that place.  Now I am glad that my dad’s faith was immovable; that he never moved from where he was.

I will forever marvel at my dad’s ability to simultaneously pursue his interest in people, to meet them where they were, to make them feel special because he was so eager to know them, all the while not diluting or even disguising his beliefs or values.  He loved us all “Anyway.”

God watched over dad for each of his 79 years, all over the world, and through all kinds of situations where he could have been harmed.  Dad never got a scratch.  Then one week ago, God sent an angel down and whisked dad away.  I have never been so sure that my dad’s example was true, and even though he is no longer among us, I will do my best to follow him “Anyway.” For a video of the complete service, click here.

Winning is More Fun on a Team

I started racing sailboats at the age of 8 and have done just about every type of racing except offshore (crossing oceans).  Some of the boats I have raced only hold one person (Lasers) and others require a dozen or more.  Like most people, I think winning is more fun than losing, and I also think winning on a team is more fun than winning alone. 

There is a certain magic that happens when a team comes together to do a great thing like win a race or accomplish any objective.  You can read books all day long about how to put together a great team, how to motivate and inspire them, and how to drive for success.  Here are my top three thoughts about teams and teamwork:

All About the People:  Teams are made of people and without the right people -- nothing great will happen.  This does not mean that everyone has to be a rock star.  The Seahawks trading Percy Harvin this week is a good example of that.  The chemistry is much more important than the skills or experience.  Fill your team with smart people with big hearts.  Pedigree and experience are secondary.  Here is a little more on the subject.

Make it Safe to Fail:  If someone gets fired every time there is a failure -- experimentation stops, and the winning will stop shortly after that.  Get your team to realize that failure exists in between where you start and where you want to go.  Figuring out how to deal with it when it happens is the key.  Last night the Dongfeng team was leading the Volvo Ocean Race and lost a rudder.  They didn't try to blame anyone, they got right to replacing their rudder (at 2 AM) and only got passed by 2 boats.  That is awesome.  Here is a little more on the subject.

Give Away the Glory:  I hope everyone gets the chance to stand in the back of the room and watch their team take credit for an awesome performance.  I think it is even more fun than taking the podium.  The greatest singular experience is knowing in your heart that it was you that put the team together and kept it from falling apart and pointed it in the right direction. 

These principles apply to winning sailboat races or hitting a revenue number or any other goal.  Winning is definately fun.

And the Winner is: Edward Snowden

The 20 member board of major newspaper editors and six academics including the president of Columbia University awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service to the Washington Post and the Guardian (US) for their:

revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, helping through aggressive reporting to spark a debate about the relationship between the government and the public over issues of security and privacy.

The award carefully avoids mentioning Edward Snowden, the source of the material.  Of course when this same award was given to the New York Times in 1972 for the publication of the Pentagon Papers, there was no mention of Daniel Ellsberg either.

I join with those who think the board does not consider Edward Snowden, or his principal collaborators Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, to be traitors.  Today there are many good posts analyzing this.  Here are a few for you to dig into:

Jay Rosen on Pressthink: There is a great part at the end of Rosen's post where he recounts how Bob Woodward said Snowden made a mistake by not coming to him.  

Jack Mirkinson on Huffington Post

Jason Abbruzzese on Mashable

Xeni Jardin on BoingBoing

With a bit of luck, maybe one day Edward Snowden will be able to return from Russia without fear of the firing squad.

Goldman Sachs Looks Funny in a White Hat

Today in the Wall Street Journal, Goldman Sachs calls for more regulation and says everyone should support IEX, the new exchange started by Brad Katsuyama and featured in Flash Boys by Michael Lewis.

The article references in internal email that says:

"While we think that a regulatory response may be needed to address these market structure issues, it would be best for the overall market if IEX achieved critical mass, even if that results in reduced volumes in our US dark pool, Sigma X."

It took forever, but it finally happend.  Back in 2010 I wrote this post saying that more regulation would not happen on Wall Street until the Wall Street guys decided it would be good for them.  At the time I thought that they would want it because individual investors would be leaving the market.  Any maybe that is why they are calling for it now.

Another potential motivation comes out in Flash Boys however.  Goldman Sachs is way behind the other high frequency traders.  This could be because they cannot get or keep good programming tallent -- because they got the FBI to jail one former employee.  They also show their neaderthal tendencies when they refuse to participate in the open source community and proclaim all open source code to be proprietary to them.  So they were losing to the other scammers -- what a perfect time to call for more regulation.

Book Review: Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

I met Michael Lewis when he was on his The Big Short book tour and I asked him why John Gutfruend would meet with him at all?  You may recall that Gutfruend was the guy that took Solomon Brothers public in the '80s, which was like giving all of the Wall Street piranhas steroids and testosterone supplements.  At the time Michael Lewis worked at Solomon Brothers and he was so affected by the way the industry gleefully devoured its own customers that he left the firm and wrote Liar's Poker.  Thirty years later, and it would take at least that long for anyone to get over begin skewered the way John Gutfruend was in Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis called him up and asked him to lunch!  And he went!  And Michael Lewis wrote all about it in The Big Short.  

Anyway, the answer Michael Lewis gave me was illuminating, he said (and I am paraphrasing) that John Gutfruend was incapable of understanding how people outside of Wall Street perceived him and his industry.  The converse to his incapacity, is the ability to understand what is going on inside an industry when viewed from the outside.  It is just that understanding that makes Michael Lewis so fun to read.  Time and again he pulls back the curtain and reveals the inner workings of very complicated, mostly financial, businesses in a way that educates and entertains all at once.  Clearly, I am a Michael Lewis fan.  I eagerly anticipated the release of Flash Boys last week and read it right away.  So if you don't like him or you want a balanced review, just skip to the reviews I linked to at Slate or The Guardian.  

This time around the fun of reading the book was followed up by the fun of reading all of his detractors right after.  The Wall Street Journal is on the attack and every day comes out with another effort to discredit Lewis. On April 2 they published a piece by money managers saying that your money is safe (with them!), and that Lewis is pumping up IEX for personal gain, and on 4/3 the editorial board said Lewis was just selling books, and yesterday they tried to get the blame to stick to the regulators.  (see my twitter feed for links to all of these articles)

Felix Salmon on Slate did a pretty good job, but dismisses the book as just more of the same from Michael Lewis.  John Naughton at The Guardian delivered the most balanced review agreeing that in fact front running is bad and manages not to get sucked into the argument that we should be happy that there is less corruption on Wall Street now than there used to be.

Just about every Lewis detractor takes the angle that high frequency traders do front run the market (make risk free return by profiting from the prior knowledge of investor's intent in the time between when they know what the investor wants, and the time the trade is placed), but that they front run less than they used to.  Good point.  It is getting harder and harder to skim money off of each trade, but at the same time it is getting easier and easier to do so systematically with the aid of computers.  Who knows if the aggregate skimming is more or less than before.

I cannot speak for Michael Lewis, but if I had to guess I would say he is mostly aiming to again expose the culture of Wall Street and how everyone considers the customer a fool and easy prey.  Just like when he was at Solomon Brothers in the 80s.  

I'll Take My Data Just Right

The amusing thing about the trade press, any journalists actually, is they are all looking for the next scoop.  They want something new to say that no one else has said before so they can stand out from the crowd.  Strangely, these new things usually turn out to be just slight variations on the things everyone else has said -- therefore propelling the reader and the industry further in the direction they were already going.  Until all of the sudden, someone breaks away from the lemmings and sends the herd back from whence they came.  

This is how we get a string of economy is improving stories, each with a unique spin, and then all of the sudden an economy is not improving story hits, sticks, and sends everyone back the other direction.

We are seeing this right now in the data and analytics field.  For the last 5 years it has been all about Big Data.  I challenge anyone in tech to get through a day, even at this late date, without someone saying something about how amazing Big Data is and how Big Data is going to change everything.  Yes, it is nice to know that someone out there is collecting all of the data about everything (insert your favorite joke about a three letter agency here), and people are finding new and better ways to put that big data to work.

Mid last year however, the articles started appearing about Small Data, and how it was going to change everything.  By this summer it will all be about Small Data.  The articles are going to say that the inustry is going back to Small Data because not black is white, not up is down, not east is west, and not Big Data is Small Data.  I propose that Small Data is not what came before Big Data.  Small Data is some other color, some other axis, and some other point on the compass that we have not seen before.  So to make it just a bit more natural, because in nature, small almost never comes after big, let's call this next new thing Just Right Data.

This is what I mean by Just Right Data: 

1. The Data I Care About:  Clearly, getting just the right data is what Goldilocks was thinking about when she said "just right".  Big data is awesome because it means that all of the data is being collected (instead of sampled, here is my post about sampling from 2012), making it possible for me to get all of the data I care about.  
2. Properly Adjusted:  Each of the data points are not of equal value.  The ones that mean more to my analysis should be amplified.  In some cases the most recent data points are more valuable, in some cases clusters of data points are more valuable.  
3. Action Enabling:  We cannot lose track of the reason we analyze data -- to make better decisions.  We do not analyze data to create cool looking graphics.  We analyze data to enable better decision making.  Timing is the biggest part of this, but noise is also important.  No use getting great analysis after it is too late to use it, or mixed in with so much other stuff that it is impossible to absorb.

To Illustrate, here is an example from the channel marketing industry:

Let's say we have 100,000 channel partners enrolled in our channel partner program.  We have their profiles, their certifications, their competencies and a bunch of other pre-big data stuff.  We add in the amount of sales they generated for us last year, another pre-big data element.  Now we add in the big data stuff:  every lead we have ever sent to every parter, the outcome of every lead, who from our company has worked with them, everything we know about each employee that works for each of the partners and their history, how much revenue was generated from each sale of each partner, each customer from each sale, and when each of these events happened.  Big data is indeed named accurately.

Now in comes a new lead and my Just Right Data experience begins.  At the start I get just the data I want to analyze (just the 5 partners that are in the right location, and that have achieved sufficient status for example) which is pretty much a pre-big data thing.  And I get all of the big data stuff that is relevant to the those partners.  This is the data I care about.

Now I rank the partners by their relative status to the others, or the status of other leads already delivered, or the fine points of capabilities or personnel ratings.  This is the data adjusted.

Now the lead hand off to the selected partner (hopefully algorithmically selected, but manually works too) happens and it must happen before the lead expires.  As we know from being customer focused and customers ourselves, leads are perishable and must be acted upon in a timely manner.  This is action enabling.

Thanks for staying awake to the end, (unlike Goldilocks).  And thanks to the Big Data people who have set the stage for us to do Data Just Right.

Discovery of News is Good for Journalism and Twitter

Twitter might be blamed for disrupting the reach of newspapers by diverting readers to other news outlets, but it would be difficult to say that Twitter is hurting journalism.  News readership has declined somewhat over the past decade.  But still, Scarborough Research reports that between 71% and 78% of adults read the newspaper in print or online every week.   Given the news industry’s lack of comprehensive measures for old media and new media — it is not impossible to believe that the overall audience for print plus online is actually growing.  And Twitter should be credited for some of that increase.  

The story about technology and journalism has recently been dominated by how technology has taken away the money. The blamers cannot help but warn about how dark our future will be without adequate funding to pay for quality journalism and the blame is thick on those taking away the revenue.  

The most notorious takers are those that killed the biggest cash machine for the newspapers - the classifieds.  Craigslist and eBay and the help wanted sites (monster.com; careerbuilder.com) diverted classified advertising revenue away from news organizations some time ago.   Twitter shouldn't be blamed for stealing the advertising money because it has only been very recently that Twitter has been getting any of it (about $900 million in the last 4 quarters), and it is hard to say specifically how the traditional news media is losing ad revenue to Twitter.  The Newspaper Association of America reports US advertising revenues of $25 Billion for 2012 (last year reported), which is down from its peak of $46 Billion in 2003 and more or less equal to the run rate in the early ‘80s.  But any causal link between Twitter and the decline is just too fuzzy to make a big deal about.  

Twitter does require journalists to exercise some new muscles.  Not everyone likes concrete measures or immediate feedback, particularly the unfavorable kind.  Last week David Carr wrote a good piece about this in the NY Times: Risks Abound As Reporters Play in Traffic.  

When Jack Doresy and Evan Williams founded Twitter in 2006 they did not set out to disrupt anything. They were hanging by their fingernails at their company Odeo and seemingly on a whim built a status update system patterned after AOL’s status updates - but for mobile users.  Twitter had its Cinderella moment at the South by Southwest conference in 2007 and the rest as they say is well known by everyone.  

Six years after its launch Twitter is an essential tool for journalists.  Sean Evins (@evins) of the Twitter Government & Politics Team and Simon Rogers (@smfrogers), Twitter's Data Editor, declined to comment for this article, but the fact that Twitter has capable people in those roles is a leading indicator that Twitter is investing in making journalism better.  In addition, the media section of the Twitter website has a good list of best practices for journalists that range from promoting content, to collecting feedback, and maximizing the impact of photos and videos. 

Discovery of breaking news is certainly the killer app for Twitter and news junkies and casual readers alike know to turn to Twitter first when a plane be lost in the Indian Ocean or an earthquake hits Los Angeles.

Do We Dare Say that Journalism Has Hit the Bottom?

Last week the Pew Center released its State of the News Media report for 2014.  While the report reinforces the headwinds faced by traditional media outlets (ad revenues down 52% from 2003), it also illuminates growth in digital only news outlets that now number over 500 and employ about 5,000 full time professionals. Could it be time for the journalists to stop blaming technologists for depriving them of the means to pay for the essential service they provide?

Jeff Jarvis anointed Johannes Gutenberg as the original technologist in his 2012 book Gutenberg the Geek.  Whether or not Gutenberg needed Jarvis’ endorsement, journalism and technology have certainly been dance partners for hundreds of years.  Gutenberg’s movable type printing press brought about revolutions in business, religion, and politics and gave story tellers the ability to reach a larger audience than ever thought possible at open mic night in 1439 Strasbourg.

The advertising industry traces its roots to the very same 15th century when the practice of paying artists including Michelangelo to produce art that contained certain messages.  Many of these new visual advertisements were religious in nature. Soon politicians and business people were the fast followers of this new technology; commissioning works that were clearly promotional.  In early renaissance Italy, everybody who was anybody had a portrait with a 3D background showing off the Filippo Brunelleschi’s new technology of perspective drawing.

About a hundred years later the Gutenbergers and the Brunelleschis joined their ability to print things cheaply and their desire to encourage readers to buy things and gave birth in 1525 to advertisements as we know them today.  In fact the New York Times Book Review was not an original idea, because those early ads were mostly for books and were found in the precursor to newspapers, the broadsheet.

All of this is to make the simple case that technology is just doing what it does.  Yes, Craigslist, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the techies have stolen away the revenue the newsrooms needed to survive.  However, their geek ancestors created the technology that enabled advertising and newspapers some 500 years ago for the same reason the newsroom is in the emergency room today.  The geeks are still just doing what they do.

Technology people don’t under-appreciate Ed Murrow.  23 generations after Gutenberg, they are still in the business of delivering as much information as possible to as many people as possible as cheaply as possible.  The argument that we are replacing the system that brought us back from the brink of McCarthyism with a system that serves up the best grumpy cat videos has been used to cling tightly to the way that it was for long enough.  We have now seen how new media actors like Julian Assange, Ed Snowden, and Glenn Greenwald, have worked with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Der Spiegel to revive the fourth estate.

Certainly, there is much work to be done.  A flood of technology energy is being applied to this industry, and not just the high profile purchase of the Washington Post by Jeff Bezos, or the founding of First Look Media by Pierre Omidyar.  New media organizations are everywhere, both succeeding and failing fast in their pursuit of good journalism.  We know that 5,000 jobs created in the new digital world do not fill the hole created by the tens of thousands of jobs lost in traditional newsrooms, but it does seem possible that the bottom has been reached and working together journalism and technology are building something we should be watching.