An interesting little MBA project from UC Irvine provides a view of books and reviews based on the point of view of particular experts. There may be something like this out there already but i haven’t seen it.

It’s called Expert’s choice - and all profits from using their site go to charity. Take a look.

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After speaking at MX-East Tuesday, in the quaint retreat at Normandy farms, I hopped in a cab for the 30 mile ride to my hotel in downtown Philly, the Windsor Suites by 9pm. I got lucky: it’s in a sweet spot for a tourist, near the train station, a few blocks from museums, full kitchens and on a quiet street for $169 a night.

Looking to maximize my remaining 29 hours, i dropped my bags and headed south from Logan square down to towards Rittenhouse square, seeking a fun place for a late dinner and stumbled onto Alfa, for some sliders (small burgers), crab mac and cheese, and a spinach salad. After a few beers in the high-style digs with a thin yet friendly Tues 10pm crowd, I walked the streets for fun and then got some rest.

Wed morning: My train to Villanova U. for a speaking gig left at 2pm, so I had to cram any museums or further food adventures into the morning. Woke up at 10am, further closing the window of fun. I scrambled east over to the Reading Terminal Market, and felt as if I was back home in Queens. The east coast food so impossible to find in the Northwest was here in droves and after my whitefish salad sandwich, spinach knish (5 times better than any knish in Seattle) and Dr. Browns Black cherry soda, I lingered in the halls, soaking up as much of the smells as i could.

We the people…watch movies. With about 2 hours before my train, I had a tough choice: which bit of history to explore? Everyone told me to check the liberty bell, but I know it’s patriotic trash - a poor relic, made famous by accident more than by right (The myths of Innovation explains more about this). Instead, in these difficult times to be an American, I went to the National Constitution Center, the largest museum in the U.S. about the Constitution, seeking much needed USA inspiration.

The unusual museum centers on a special movie theater: a mix of live narration and projected multimedia was surprisingly captivating, but also expectedly patriotic, with no mention of current constitutional issues in the USA. After the 15 minute flick, you exit on the 2nd level and enter a round hall with hi-tech and interactive exhibits about the constitution and the bill of rights.

The great comedy of my visit? They wouldn’t let me take pictures. That’s right - in the main exhibit hall about the freedoms of the constitution, no photographs are allowed. As an expression of resistance to tyrany, here are three photographs from inside:

Next, in part 2, talking at Villanova, plus my first east coast Chinese food experience in years.

Posted in On Tour, Travel, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Some good friends at Carnegie Mellon University are researching online privacy policies, and have a clever little survey for you. If you make it all the way through, you have a shot to win $250 in amazon.com credit.

The purpose of this study is to collect data that will improve on-line privacy polices. This research is part of a Carnegie Mellon study and is overseen by Professor Cranor.

If you’re interested all you have to do is head here and survey away.

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The slashdot review and everyone’s support pushed the Myths of Innovation up to a #98 sales rank, and the #2 slot for the entire Computer and Internet section! Thanks to everyone who’s spread the word and bought the book!

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It’s only been a few days but I’ve been blown away by Moscow - Yes, I did see much of what I expected. The architecture is overpowering, the history is awesome, and the sense of being somewhere that only a few years ago would be nearly impossible never quite fades.

But what I can’t get over is how much I’ve seen that i did not imagine: lavish, decadent bars that rival those in any world city. The fact that you can hire ordinary drivers as taxis and just put out your arm and hop in cars to find your way. To see people walk around with open containers of beer, something verbotten in the states (apparently it’s illegal here too but tolerated).

There is so much going on here that I’ve never heard about - and as I sort it out I’ll be writing more.

Here’s a photo from St. Basil’s cathedral near the Kremlin.

Posted in On Tour, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Last month my e-tech talk was right after Peter Biddle and Cory Doctorow’s session. The schedule gave me 10 minutes to set up so I got up there as soon as they finished. This is always a perfect storm, as there are often people waiting to chat with the previous speaker, the speaker him/herself loving their moments of glory, while I’m trying to get my slides going and make sure nothing has exploded. They all want nothing more than to stay, and I want nothing more than for them to leave. (This drama is repeated hourly at every conference everywhere).

I hop on stage but hang back, trying not to be rude - first thing Cory says to me is “Sorry for running late.” I check the time - they finished a minute early.

Sure, in the grand scheme it’s trivia - but anyone gracious enough to worry about me while stepping down from the podium, on time, deserves kudos. Being nice when everyone is watching is one thing, but when there’s no one around is something else entirely.

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scottberkun.com & scottberkun.com/blog are undergoing some changes over the next day - so if things are weird or pages 404, you know why.

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Confession: I am in serious essay debt and I need your help to get out.

The story: I made a commitment when I quit MSFT in 2003 to publish an essay a month on the website. That’s 12 a year. Here are my stats:

2006: 5 (!)
2005: 12
2004: 10

So I owe the universe or myself (whomever cares more), 9 essays. That’s right. Not to mention the 3 so far this year that haven’t materialized yet.

I have plenty of ideas, but I’m bored with my ideas. I want yours. That way I’m guaranteed at least one person other than myself will give a shit when I post the thing.

So here’s your chance: If you could rent my brain to write something, what would the title of the essay be? What topic do you think I’m chicken to write about? What mean scary question do you want me to answer?

Lets get it on!

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I recently met Jonah Burke, one of the directors of the darfur foundation, to chat about innovation. I came across his project, darfurwall.org, at Ignite Seattle, a local tech-sector meetup.

Months ago I wrote a preechy essay about difference making: well, here’s an example of someone doing the real thing.

Not only is darfurwall.org a clever piece of design and engineering, it serves a purpose: all the money people chip in for lighting up the digital wall goes straight to helping people in need. Like a physical monument, it gives a sense of both the impact of what has happened, but also offers a way to participate. Check it out.

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I remember when I first entered the full time working world, I was clueless about how to best use vacation, and I followed the herd like the good young sheep I was. Here in the U.S. the annual average is a measly 13 days (Compared to Italy’s 42 and France’s 37): a pittance if you include time-off needed for weddings, complicated mid-week errands, parole violations and the odd humdinger of a hangover. Yet somehow more than 1/3rd of Americans don’t use all their vacation each year. Yikes.

Over the years, like a blackjack player timing his double-downs, I learned which vacation days earned the most bang for the buck, and which were stinkers: it’s not rocket science, but hey, I cherish all the nuggets I know. And now that I’m self-employed all that knowledge is going to waste, so here it is.

In a nutshell: The week between Christmas and New Years, is the worst time to use vacation. It’s when everyone else is on holiday, turning even the most stressful workplaces into calm zones of highly indepenent and low interruption work time. Spending your vacation dollars to avoid a paid vacation in the office, is the worst bet in the vacation world: sometimes it’s a forced bet, as family plans force your hand, but it’s still a lousy value.

The ideal time to use vacation is when there is peak value, in your own psychology, for escape (say when you feel creative burnout). This rarely coincides with what everyone else is doing (or in the above case, is the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing), as weekend trips with friends or sports team schedules put heavy emphasis on using Fridays and Mondays, regardless of when it is you need relief.

For awhile I found choosing periodic Wednesdays or Thursdays, every few months, was the best possible value for a spare vacation day: like a happy hour martini, they provided a dose of relief at the peak of a stress, and neatly divide up the working life into more manageable pieces. Catching a matinée, having a late breakfast and wandering my favorite bookstore, going for a short hike, or shopping in the calm of a mid-week crowd, were all low key, super mellow, high value vacation days.

Taken to an extreme, this strategy falls apart: it’d be a mistake to take vacation only at stressful events, or to dodge your responsibilities (”Hey boss, are you ready to present at tomorrow’s BillG review?”, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I’m off tomorrow: it’s all yours”). The goal isn’t to avoid hard work, it’s to maximize the value of time off so you’re of most use when you are actually there.

Consider these factors:

1. When do you need stress relief the most?
2. Are you, your friends, or your family, driving the use of your vacation days?
3. When are other people at work on vacation or away, calming the workplace?
4. Can you offset your own schedule, arriving at work before/after your coworkers, to make each morning a semi-vacation, free of interruptions or high stress?
5. Can you make part of your daily schedule include time at the gym, the bar, the coffeeshop, or with friends, breaking up every day with some kind of psychological reprieve?
6. If work is really so unpleasant that you don’t have enough vacation to survive, perhaps it’s not the vacation that’s the problem, but the job itself.

So what tips and tricks for maximizing vacation days do you know?

Posted in Management, Uncategorized, lifehack | 16 Comments »

Here’s my notes from the past week’s power outage experience:

• For all the fears and whining, I thought often, even when cold and tired, that this experience was a cakewalk as disasters go: 1.7 million without power for a few days is a trifle of suffering compared to any recent tsunami, hurricane, volcano, genocide or revolution. You can switch power back on. Frustrating yes. Devistating, no. It seemed Seattle lost sight of this: we’re babies. This was no New Orleans or Darfur.
• First two days were scary: no gas, no wood, no ice, no stores open. It’s unsettling when the magic trucks that bring sustenance stop coming: it’s a smack in the face reminding us how dependent on distant forces modern lives are. By Saturday stores opened (though wood and gas were gone) - Home Depot proved the best source of firewood, as even if out of bundles, you could buy 2×4s.
• KIRO 710 AM Radio was fantastic - They provided 24 hour coverage for 4 days straight, replacing talk radio with storm reports, live interviews with officials and powerco reps, and call ins with people giving tips and advice on where to find gas, wood, etc. It was an awesome resource, and they provided a great public service: heroes of the experience.
• The worst of people. KIRO reported every 10 minutes on the 100s of thousands of folks without power, but that didn’t stop angry callers from claiming how they had been abandoned - crisis makes some people very small and selfish: it was depressing to listen to - suffering doesn’t require having someone to blame.
• On the other hand, we met many generous neighbors who volunteered time to clear the 100ft tree from our driveway with gas chainsaws, and offer wood and gas.
• My sleep cycle improved. With no electric lights I easily woke at first light, and went to bed earlier than usual. Jill made the connection and it makes sense: all the computer and TVs screens are likely contributors to my periodic insomnia.
• I did not miss TV or e-mail. We charged cell phones in the car and that was as high tech as I got. Later on I’d try to write in coffee shops, but mostly failed.
• It took 2 days to work out the daily chores: starting the morning fire, making breakfast, dousing the fire, walking the dogs, negotiating who would be home by 4pm to start the fire up again (so the room would be warm by 7ish). Once we had the system it wasn’t that hard.
• There is an art to fireplace cooking: it’s harder than camping as there is a shallow roof over the fire, and we didn’t have grills for the fireplace. The secret is you can’t warm the room and cook: if you cook, you want even temp, if you want heat, you want big flames (I know - duh - but it took me 2 days to sort it out). We tried charcoal in the grill and it worked fine, but log ambers worked just as well. Like camping, lots of soups, chilis, and tin foil wrapped knishes made up many meals.
• Food was easier in the cold - first few nights were ~30 degrees, so we could keep food from the fridge on the deck. But it warmed up later and we had to trash much of the food. We tried to make ice one night (for the fridge & freezer), leaving out small water filled containers, but it didn’t quite get cold enough.

Lessons:

1. A pre-storm trip to the store would have done wonders. Refreshing batteries, wood, toping off gas tanks, etc. would have made this much less stressful.
2. Neighbors matter. Oddly we met more neighbors through this experience than in 7 years of living in this neighborhood (little else forces seattle-ites out of their homes). Pooling resources and skills makes life much easier in a near crisis (duh, but I’d forgotten).
3. Gadgets are over-rated. I knew this already but had it proven - all I needed was an AM radio, fire and some books and I was happy. With the extra work I needed less entertainment, not more, and was happy just to sit and listen or read.
4. I have no idea how power works. I spent more time staring at the various electronic bits hanging destroyed from trees and wondered what they all did. What does a transformer do exactly, and why are power lines above ground, not below? I have no clue. I’m trying to find a book on power grids and how they work, suggestions welcome.

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Power came on late yesterday. We called Puget Sound Energy, our power that morning are were told we wouldn’t have power until late Friday night - but Thursday, ~4pm, the answering machine picked up when I called and I raced on home.

Thanks to all who dropped kind and humorous notes of support or mild mockery - definitely helped get through this.

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