The Great Accelerator
A week ago I wrote that Covid-19 is quickly becoming the great equalizer. Today I started reading a new book, Post Corona, from Crisis to Opportunity, by Scott Galloway.
He starts the book with two theses. First, the pandemic’s most enduring impact will be as an accelerant. Second, in any crisis there is opportunity; the greater and more disruptive the crisis, the greater the opportunities.
As exhibit A, prof G points to the recent and large changes in e-commerce, video conferencing, tele-healthcare and grocery delivery.
I am only at the beginning of the book. There may be other examples later-on. Yet, I wonder what changes Covid-19 will be accelerating in two specific areas.
First, we need a change in how we share information and news.
Thomas Jefferson wrote:
An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.
The recent years have shown that an educated citizenry we are not. Knowing what is fact from fiction has become much harder. When you listen to the Whitehouse press briefings, you even wonder what the title journalist still stands for.
I sense we are on the cusp of a major change in how we write, fact check and distribute the news. Content moderation at Twitter*, YouTube and Facebook are still using training wheels. Fox News appears to realize after so many years, that lies and deceit may be bad for business*. Yet, the answer to the question what information can we trust, is not always clear to me.
The second area I wonder about is infrastructure. The United States is due for a major overhaul and investment in our infrastructure: roads, tunnels, bridges, energy distribution, and high-speed internet access.
Elon Musk is leading the way on multiple fronts. There are the Tesla Powerwall, Solar Roof and panels. Starlink is bringing internet to previously hard to reach areas of the United States. The Boring Company makes tunneling easier. Another Musk brainchild is Hyperloop. Virgin Hyperloop demonstrated on Nov 8, 2020 the first passengers traveling safely on a hyperloop. However, the first true applications will be outside of the United States. As trains don’t deal well with sand, the first hyperloop project will be in Abu Dhabi, and eventually to Dubai. The first hyper loop project in the US may be the Great Lakes project and connect Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Its timeline is unclear to me.
Nevertheless, Elon Musk is only one person. Jeff Bezos focusses his billions on e-commerce, distribution (planes, vans, warehouses) and groceries. Bill Gates is looking at education, global health, fighting infectious diseases, and a new nuclear reactor design, through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and TerraPower. The Google guys have the X moonshot company with some really interesting projects. Some infrastructure-related projects are Taara and Loon to provide internet access, Makani and Dandelion in the energy generation space, and Waemo self-driving taxis.
Which other billionaire is pouring in money to accelerate a better US infrastructure? How much is the US government investing? Covid-19 will change where we work from, where we travel and how travel. It is another major opportunity to pay close attention to.
December 29, 2020
Under the Tree
This Christmas Santa brought T-shirts, pyjamas, a newspaper, and a homemade tool belt for the barbecue-chef, spices included. Our son gifted us a yearlong subscription to the New York Times — so we are no longer limited to 3 articles. Our daughter crafted a tool-belt for when I am outside tending the smoker. I love all the gifts.
Thinking about all this for a moment, I realize I am both quite content with all the things I already have. It must be very hard for my family to come up with gifts.
I also realize I start to appreciate the things associated with older age. Nice pyjamas, a cup of poor-over coffee, and a newspaper (even if it is in electronic format), and you can picture my weekend early mornings.
So, I went this morning on my regular 4 miles run in the neighborhood, and an afternoon hike up the Santa Cruz mountains.
Now, get off my lawn!
December 26, 2020
The Great Equalizer
Covid-19 is quickly becoming the great equalizer, where location or how deep your pockets no longer matter as much.
Soccer teams have to play behind closed doors, or at least with a fraction of the supporters in the stadium. Home team advantage is no longer a factor in the quiet stadium. The 12th player is absent from the stands and unable to sway the momentum. Also the revenue stream from ticket sales must be dwindling. While match-day revenue is smaller than broadcast or merchandise revenue, it still represents $150M annually if you are Manchester United or Barcelona. Or to put it in competitive terms, $150M in match-day revenue equals the cost of two Kevin De Bruynes. Of course, with season ticket holders, the revenue isn’t all gone. Manchester United is reporting $30M less match-day revenue in 2020.
Also the US university education system is going through a transformation. Universities are putting more and more of the lectures online and are figuring out how to serve students remotely. Why pay $50-$70K/year to be on campus at these elite universities, when you take the same classes online? Of course, taking classes over Zoom is not the same as being on campus. Taking the classes from your home is not the same as taking them in person. And then there are the evening social events and student parties. I am not advocating that we move to an all-remote university system. However, I can see how this can make education more available, and at a lower cost.
Lastly, this pandemic will have an effect on housing costs. We are getting more comfortable working remotely. More and more people are moving away from the expensive areas such as Silicon Valley. This will likely stagnate house prizes in the area or worse. More people will be able to join some of the big tech companies, while working from other locations. Some companies are creating satellite teams, bringing multiple team members together in a new location, others allow people to work from anywhere in the US. Regardless, proximity to the Bay Area will no longer be as big of a factor as it is today.
December 20, 2020
Ningxia
Rotten is a fantastic documentary on Netflix about the global food supply. It appalls and is informational. As I was grilling fish, chicken and tons of vegetables tonight, I watched the wine episode, Reign of Terroir.
Little did I know how the Ningxia is becoming the up and coming wine region in the world. Just as Napa surprised the world in 1976, Ningxia wine surprised the world in 2011 when it won the Decanter award.
I never tasted a Chinese wine, except for a rice wine. And the last time I did, it cost me a pretty penny. Around 1996, as I returned from Hong Kong, I brought home a few bottle of Chinese rice wine. Except I wasn’t a US citizen yet, and needed to pay customs on all the things I brought back with me.
After watching the documentary, I am now very curious to taste a real Ningxia wine.
December 19, 2020
Chariots of Fire
I never watched the 1981 award-winning movie Chariots of Fire. Yet, the theme song by Vangelis is engrained in my mind as a sad song.
I have a vague memory of a story my parents told me, about how the song was used while the names of the death scrolled daily across the television screen. I was too young to remember the actual international crisis or war which lead to this tragedy. However, the story left a lasting impression on me and forever associated the song with death.
As Trump has been commander-in-hiding for a while now, and the GOP is the party of accomplices, it would be an impressive video to repeat my memory and to truly never forget. It would be a testament of failed leadership to list those who died of covid, while playing Chariots of Fire. It would take a while sadly, as of today in the USA, over 331,588 people have died, attributed to covid-19.
Although Christmas and New Year should be a peaceful season, and a season of hope for a better year, we should never forget the past four years.
December 18, 2020
Management Discussions in the TikTok and Netflix Era
Read a book, attend a conference, listen to a podcast. The last thing you want to do after you got through your to-do list is to dig into a fascinating article on burn-out or how to scale from a small to mid-size company. The call for getting “outsight” can be a lot for the management group.
So we tried something different. I paired up the managers and each team got assigned to watch an episode of Netflix’s The Playbook (Youtube trailer on coaching and leadership. There are five episodes:
- Los Angeles Clippers’ Doc Rivers
- Two-time FIFA World Cup-winning coach Jill Ellis
- Premier League’s José Mourinho
- Serena Williams’ famed tennis coach, Patrick Mouratoglou
- Hall of fame basketball player and coach Dawn Staley
Watching an episode is light-weight and fun. Also the homework was easy:
- Tell me about the coach and their coaching lessons
- What do you think applies to our group and how can you implement it.
- Would you hire this type of person or coach? Why? Why not?
We made small fun presentations and had a great discussion. This was much easier than doing a bookclub on how Amazon scales. Season 2 is around the corner.
December 17, 2020
About the Education of an Idealist: A Memoir by Samantha Power
Today I finished my favorite book of the year. The Education of an Idealist, a memoir by Samantha Power is the most interesting book I have read in quite a while. It tells the story of a woman, who immigrated to the US from Ireland as a child. After being a war correspondent, she aided Obama’s presidential campaign, served in the Obama administration as part of the National Security Council, and ultimately served as the US Ambassador to the United Nations. Describing her career in this manner would make for a boring book. Her memoir on the other hand is anything but boring. I could not put the book down. I was falling asleep with my Kindle in hand, and would pick up the story when I woke up at 6:30am in the morning.
The first chapters cover her early childhood and relationship with her father in Ireland. They provide an important backdrop for what comes later in the book. The book gets really interesting in the chapters about the Bosnian war. Her years as a war-time journalist during the Bosnian war in the 90s shaped much of her later career.
Reading the book, I kept getting side tracked in looking up stories online about Bosnia, the siege of Sarajevo, Mladic, Karadzic, and others. And I was only 125 pages into the book. When I shared this tweet on the book, I was surprised how many people agreed, and had a similar experience.
What stuck with me about her life thusfar is that, she didn’t waste a moment to further her causes. For example, during a Holocaust remembrance event, when she caught president Barack Obama on his way to the bathroom, she kept pressing him to recognize the Armenian genocide. “Hi Sam, how is your pregnancy going?” “Good, but let’s talk about the genocide.”
Regardless of having degrees from Yale and Harvard, and being part of Obama’s inner circle, she comes across as level headed, insecure, and second guessing herself. Living among the A-players in Silicon Valley, it is refreshing to read such humble and honest account.
The later part of the book provides a behind the scenes of the Obama administration and what happens in the corridors of the United Nations.
At first I was turned off by some of the stories. The US felt content winning seemingly theoretical arguments at the UN: we snuck in word similar to genocide, or the UN maps still show Crimea as Ukrainian. It seemed like a Harvard academic debate. I don’t think the people living in Sebastopol, Yalta or Kalynivka experience any difference whether the UN map draws the line here to there, when the flag at city hall is white, blue and red, rather than blue and yellow.
However, as the stories evolve, it becomes clear how real the work is at the United Nations. Real people get real food, real medicines, and real protection by the blue or white helmets. Communities in East Ukraine, Darfur, Syria, or the LBGT community around the world experience a real difference because of the actions by the United Nations. What looks like an academic exercise in words, is not an academic exercise at all.
It also is very clear how evil Russia and Putin are, whether it is by refusing humanitarian aid into bombarded cities in Syrian or by objecting to “vulnerable populations” in a document about the LGBT community. At first Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, comes across as sympathetic. He even joined the Sunstein-Power household for Thanksgiving one year. However, it quickly becomes clear he is only a Putin-puppet and fully complicit.
Reading the book, I became also a lot more aware and amazed by the US response to the Ebola outbreak in Africa. It also made me think about how we would have handled the covid pandemic if it had happened 4 years earlier. I know we would have been in better hands and with better leadership. Coincidently on the day of reading the Ebola chapter, while running, I also listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History episode Druid Hills, about the work at Emory University in Atlanta, the unsung hero in pandemic response and important medical research.
The book ends as the Trump administration is about to take office. As I raced to the final chapter, I wondered what Samantha Power must be thinking about Trump’s undoing of all the things she worked so hard on: the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord, a pandemic response, standing up to Russia, or merely the basics of diplomacy and respect for women. As a fellow immigrant to the United States, I already know the answer. An isolated United States is worse off than one who would leads the world by example.
I hope Samantha Power will have the opportunity in the Biden administration to pick up where she left off, and restore a dignified place in the world for the United States.
December 13, 2020
The Way I See It
While preparing a Belgian staple food, vol-au-vent tonight, I watched Pete Souza’s documentary The Way I see it.
It is such a great behind the scenes look at the Obama presidency. Reading Samantha Power’s The Memoir of an idealist and having now watched the documentary one gets a great behind the scenes look of what a decent president looks like. I even got me curious to search on Youtube for Jon Favreau, Obama’s speech writer, and not Chef-Swinger-Iron-Man-Jon-Favreau.
Many of these stories only see the day of light a long time after the president leaves the Whitehouse. Sadly (I presume), don’t hold your breath for such stories from number 45.
December 12, 2020
Markdown All the Way
At work, we primarily use Google Docs for collaborative writing. However, on my laptop Markdown rules the desktop. My todo list, my status reports, many emails, notes all start as a simple Markdown file.
My favorite editor is iA Writer. It is a great distraction-free editor. It supports some nifty features. For example, I can export directly to Medium.com. It allows for importing pictures, reference and embed other Markdown files, and even CSV files for tables. I wish it was easier to create a custom html template, and that iAWriter would support the folding feature on the MacOS version.
I enjoy the simplicity of Markdown so much that I even moved my blogging to a Markdown powered platform called Blot.im. I simply write in Markdown, save the file in a predetermined folder in DropBox and the Blot.im service automatically renders the HTML. If I am really paranoia, I use a revision control system to manage changes. The write-edit-publish cycle is very fast. I can also quickly edit the content from any device with access to DropBox. Lastly, all content fully remains under my control.
One capability has remained elusive: a collaborative markdown platform for the masses. GitHub does support Markdown, allows for multiple editors and revisions, and even allows for “code review commentary”. But it was not designed for this. Glitch tries to bridge the two worlds as well, but lacks the suggest/comment capability.
Google Docs support for Markdown is the platform I was originally looking for, with suggest and comment mode, with real-time collaboration, and with revision control. Perhaps it could even be smart enough to allow one to access the Markdown file in Google Drive directly with external editors. I could then keep using my favorite editor, iA Writer. Such platform would appeal also to non-techies.
HackMD shows promise. I can write, invite collaborators and add and reply to comments. You can even import and export Markdown files from DropBox. Although in that case you are not editing the same file in Dropbox. HackMD appears to make a copy. My write-edit-publish cycle would thus be (1) write in iAWriter and save your first version in DropBox, (2) import, collaborate, edit, update a copy in HackMD, (3) export version2 back to DropBox, (4) rinse and repeat steps 2 and 3, and finally (5) publish.
As I use Markdown more and more, the idea of dealing with the formatting later, has become less of goal. The simplicity, easy of use and focus on the content is what makes me look for more integrations and use of Markdown everywhere.
December 12, 2020
Preparing a Memorial Is Very Difficult
This week I have been preparing a memorial for a colleague.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/janvanbruaene_i-am-sad-to-share-that-irwin-moiseff-lost-activity-6742231342894977024-as1o
This has not been easy. Although I have help in organizing the event, people ask me to review the slideshow, or what they want to say during the event or write the blogpost. It is very sad to read all those nice words.
I have no experience in putting this together at all. Let alone, I am not the type of person who easily finds the words for this.
Here’s what I wrote about Irwin.
Irwin joined RTI around the same time as I did. He was at RTI a bit earlier. As I was in the services and support team at the time, and Irwin was teaching quickstarts to our customers, our paths crossed often. After a few years, travel was becoming a burden to him. So I asked him, why don’t you join us on support. You’ll keep working with the customers directly and you don’t have to travel. And the rest is history. Throughout the years, he would bring it up regularly: “Jan, I “blame” you for bringing me to support.” But I don’t regret it. Every day you could tell he loved it.
Irwin was a smart engineer, with lots of debugging experience. He was the customer’s best advocate. He was humble, honest, direct, and very often funny. He said it the way he saw it. Especially if he didn’t like something in our products, he would call the developers and let them know in colorful explanation why … “It didn’t make any sense”. Or there was that time at one of our company kick offs, where we normally discuss big picture things, strategy or roadmaps. “Are there any questions?”, the presenter asked at the end of one of those presentations. … and Irwin’s hand went up. He didn’t want to waste the opportunity to share his opinion about a very specific Quality of Service field “I got this one thing I got to tell ya, when customers use that Qos …”. He was always caring about the product and the customers.
Irwin was also very caring for his team. He admired all in the support team and spoke highly of them. Later in our professional relationship, when I wasn’t his direct manager anymore, I would call from time to time. He would always answer with “To what do I owe this honor?” He appreciated the call.
During those calls, he would always make sure I knew how great each and every individual support engineer was. “You hired a great new engineer for the support team.” or “I am proud to work for your new support manager” or “That young kid straight out of school is smart as a whip. Make sure you keep them.” No matter your age, your experience, your background, or your title, he respected you.
I admired Irwin’s spirit, how he was forever young at heart. Those who worked with Irwin knew he still rode dirt bikes, his Harley Davidson. He seemed happiest when it started to snow and he could go ski or snowmobile.
One of my favorite visuals of Irwin - and yes may not be suitable for work - was after one of those ski trips. He was working part-time already at that time. He had just returned from a morning on the slopes. He must have been thinking about a support case on the slopes. Maybe he had figured it out, or something was bothering him and he wanted to check in on it. He didn’t waste a moment. He skyped me right away, and not even fully changed out of his ski gear he wanted to run something by me. His hair was a mess. Bare-chested in his ski-pants and full of energy. … “I think I figured it out .. let me tell ya” … and off we went into the technical details. It took me a moment to catch on, as I was just thinking: I hope he shows up like this only with me.
That’s the Irwin I will always remember: thinking about customers, caring about his team, and full of energy.
I will miss you!
December 10, 2020