You've Never Seen a Girl Like ThisI played hookey last night and went to a concert in San Diego — The Laura Roppe band was playing. Laura is one of my oldest and dearest friends — we met in second grade and then went to junior high and high school together. The title of this post is the title of her first album and its first song. It's also true of Laura — she's one remarkable person. Her web site is here. If you like country rock and female singer-songwriter music (think of Shania Twain or Norah Jones as comparables, although Laura is more versatile than both), and if you like discovering new up and coming artists, listen to the…
Archives / May, 2009
First day at Techstars: Where do you start?
First day at Techstars: Where do you start? I’m a new mentor this year at Techstars, a program in its third or fourth year in Boulder (and this year also in Boston for the first time) that provides a couple dozen companies with seed capital, advice and mentorship, and summer “incubation” services in a really well conceived for-profit venture started by David Cohen in Colorado. Yesterday was my first day up there with my colleague George Bilbrey, and we met with three different companies, two of which we will tag team mentor through the summer. I won’t get into who they are at the moment, mostly because I’m not sure what the confidentiality issues are offhand, but I’ll make the…
Book Short: Entrepreneurs in Government
Book Short: Entrepreneurs in Government Leadership and Innovation: Entrepreneurs in Government, edited by a professor I had at Princeton, Jim Doig, is an interesting series of mini-biographies of second- and third-tier government officials, mostly from the 1930s through the 1970s. The book’s thesis is that some of the most interesting movers and shakers in the public arena (not elected officials) have a lot of the same core skills as private sector entrepreneurs. The thesis is borne out by the book, and the examples are interesting, if for no other reason than they are about a series of highly influential people you’ve probably never heard of. The guy who ran the Port Authority of New York for 30 years. The guy…
A Network of Teams, Not an Integrated System
A Network of Teams, Not an Integrated System We were in and out of the hospital a lot back in March/April for the last few weeks with one of our kids (she’s ok now). One of us was with her 24 hours a day for the 10-11 days she was hospitalized, with lots of down time, which gave me lots of time to observe health care in action. While she ultimately got very good care at a very good hospital, it was incredibly clear to me that the hospital functioned as a network of teams, not as an integrated system. The nurses were great. Followed their routine practices and responded to doctors’ orders on cue. Same with the nursing assistants. …
Five Years On
Five Years On As of this past weekend, I’ve been blogging on OnlyOnce for five years. My main reflection as I was thinking about it during this morning’s run is that blogging is different. I started blogging to try out what was at the time the “new, new thing” (there were almost no CEO blogs at the time), just like I have tried out lots of other new technologies or web services from time to time over the years — from Skype to Facebook to Twitter to about 50 others. You’ll never see a tweet from me about an anniversary of using Twitter. Or any other comparable from that above list. Blogging has ended up being fundamentally different. It’s not…
The Party's Over?
The Party's Over? American party politics have had a few major realignments over the 220 years since we adopted our Constitution. I took a class on this in school, but that was a long time ago, and I'll never remember all the details. What I do remember is that they're somewhat chaotic. And that they typically take several election cycles to take root. I think we're in the middle of one now. Arlen Specter's decision to become a Democrat is a particularly poignant example of it, though the fact that something like only 25% of the country now identifies with the Republican party is another. With Specter, it's not that he changed his ideology — it's that his party changed…