Lake Tahoe

A Rare Day

Lake Tahoe is beautiful. We arrived last night from Napa and got to our VRBO home, it is great and we had a beautiful view of the lake out our windows. The sun was just going down and I captured this picture of the Sequoia outside our window.

<a href="http://flic.kr/p/mouxs6" title="Camera Roll-482 by -bnmnetp-"><img src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2840/13381667205_c6d0cc90bf_z.jpg" width="478" height="640" alt="Camera Roll-482"></a>

Today we drove the east side of the lake and met Jim and Karen for lunch, then we went to Emerald bay in the afternoon after Pete and Kim joined us. Its really hard to describe or write too much about this, so I will just add a few photos here.

Brought to You by the Letter ‘C’

I must confess, after all of the Chardonnay I’ve consumed, and I have consumed my share over the years, I have never really got the “buttery oaky Chardonnay” thing. Butter is just not something I’ve ever tasted in my Chardonnay, despite the fact that one of my all time favorites is Rombaur, which according to more than one person in Napa, is the “poster child” for buttery oaky Chardonnays. Really, who wants their Chardonnay to taste like butter? The whole describing wine thing is another thing I find really interesting. One of the tasting room hosts, recommended the movie Somm to us as we were chatting. I see you can get/rent it on iTunes, so I’m adding that to my list. Its about a group of guys preparing for the master sommelier exam, which may sound a bit dull, but the reviews for it are fantastic.

But after two days of tastings in Napa its all clear to me now. The key that helped me understand the difference, and I’m confident I’m now an expert, is Malolactic Fermentation. The science of it all, unsurprisingly, has stuck in my brain. Here’s a quick summary of more than you ever probably wanted to know.

Malolactic Fermentation is the process of converting Malic Acid (which tastes tart,and citrussy to my mouth) to Lactic Acid which is a much more mellow flavor. Malolactic fermentation occurs after fermentation and is the result of injecting a particular bacteria into the process.

Now, to each his own, but I can say that I am a fan of Malolactic Fermentation. Here are some of my favorites:

• Rombaur

• William Hill

• Carpe Deim

• Poseidon’s Vineyard

Conquering the Tannins

I’ve never been able to drink red wine much due to my allergies. What am I allergic to in red wine? Tannin is a chemical that comes from the skins, seeds, and stems of the wine. They are much more prevalent in red wine than in white. Now according to our host at Chateau Montelena (see also the movie Bottle Shock) I need to develop a resistance to Tannins in order to drink red wine. The way to do this, according to this would be allergist, is to begin with Pinot Noir, and work my way up from there. Well it sounds like a project, and I do enjoy a nice glass of Pinot. So, something to work on. All in the name of self improvement of course.

I left home on December 27 2013. When I left I had 3 bags packed. One for our trip to Mazatlan to celebrate the new year with our friends the Vermace’s. One for my January term class on the west coast, and finally a bag full of ski gear for the rest and relaxation trip to Breckenridge. Since leaving home I have travelled a bit over 10,000 miles. My means of travel has included several flights, two long train trips on Amtrak, some time in a car, and lots of time on public transportation.

In the last 35 days I’ve had more experiences than many people would have in a lifetime. I say this out of a sense of gratitude, and to remind myself how lucky I am.

• I’ve body surfed in the Pacific Ocean on the beach in front of our rented house in Mazatlan called the Sand Castle. Calling the Sand Castle a house is a bit of an understatement.

• I’ve been deep sea fishing, and reeled in a large Dorado (Mahi Mahi), which was cleaned dockside, and prepared on the grill at the Sand Castle just hours later.

• I’ve toasted the New Year watching fireworks over the beach from the fourth floor of the Sand Castle.

• I’ve gotten to know a group of 11 Luther Students well, and watched as they talked with and learned from some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country.

• I’ve had four days in Seattle to visit Pike Place Market, eat seafood, visit Pioneer Square. During the same period we visited Amazon, Microsoft, VMWare, and Percognate.

• The Amtrak from Seattle to San Francisco promised spectacular views and a comfortable ride. While the ride was comfortable, if I did it again, I would definitely spring for sleeper cars for the group.

• I’ve had four days on Fisherman’s Wharf, led a bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge, and beyond Suasalito. While in San Francisco we visited Strava, Pinterest, Moovweb, Bizo, Sqwiggle, Schwartz MSL, and Hummer Winblad.

• I’ve had four days in Menlo Park, including a 32 mile bike ride up Old La Honda road and along Skyline drive. I introduced the group to turkish food at Sultana restaurant. While in Menlo Park we spent a day at Google, a morning at SportVision, and learned about patent law at Fenwick West.

• The train ride from San Jose to Los Angeles lived up to its billing. The views were spectacular, and we got to see an amazing sunset over the Pacific.

• To cap off our trip we stayed in a house called Beethoven’s Trio in Santa Monica. Rather than eating out we were able to use the grill and the kitchen and prepare our own communal meals. It was fun to watch the students cook (and clean up) and eat in a very casual setting.

• We got to spend the weekend exploring Venice Beach and anything else in the LA area. Sunday morning I met a group of Chelsea fans at a local British pub. A fun way to get my soccer fix for the week.

• While in Santa Monica we visited with Capsule, Coloft, and Fullscreen. At Fullscreen we were hosted by three Luther alumni two of whom took the Entrepreneurship course and did the journey three four years ago. It is so gratifying to see your students succeed.

• Finally I’ve been able to spend six days “recuperating” in Breckenridge. Some might say that five days of skiing is hardly recuperating, and I would agree. However, we have had 30+ inches of fresh snow in the last three days, and the locals say this is one of the greatest storms ever. So to say that the skiing has been fantastic is a bit of an understatement.

After all of this, perhaps the best thing is that I get to go home tomorrow.

The weather report said we had 6 inches of snow overnight. From the moment we walked out the door it was clear that they had underestimated the snowfall by about 8 inches.

We were on the third chair up at 8:30 this morning. The steep parts of the hill were awesome, with powder over my knees, floating through the snow. On the gentle parts of the hill we all formed a single file line in order to get through it all.

By mid-day it was work. The powder had been packed in many places and it was work to get through it. The snow continued heavily throughout the day, and we are supposed to get another 14 inches overnight.

This has been the perfect few days of rest and relaxation to finish off January term. Its even better because we bought the Epic local passes this year, which means we don’t feel like we have to ski full time, but can actually just ski until we are ready to take a break, and then ski again later. Its been great.

My daughter Kaia is getting married next summer. This is not new news, the proposal was made an accepted last June. But planning is in full swing now, and I was kind of excited when secured a visit with Capsule, because capsule provides a service where all the guests at your wedding can download the capsule app and it will automatically upload all the photos to a special page for the wedding.

This company was founded by Cyrus, who set out to solve a simple problem, a problem we’ve been coping with on this course as well. When you travel, how do you share all your digital photos with the buddies you are traveling with. When you have a big party? When you have a wedding, bachelor party, bachelorette party? Capsule has solved this in a nice, elegant way. All the photos uploaded for a particular event, are shared with the participants in the event. Its that easy. No need to bore all of your Facebook followers with every photo from your trip. If you’re an Instagram user, its super easy to add a special hashtag to your photo and it will be automatically imported into Capsule as well as shared on Instagram.

What was incredibly interesting for me was to listen to Cyrus talk about business models, and monetizing the service. Cyrus is not a CS guy, he’s a business guy. Of course as an entrepreneur he can talk the tech talk but his home is on the business side. Here’s an example of how differently we tech people approach a problem than the business guys.

Problem: Each event needs to have a unique id, that can be given to the participants to use to join the event, and/or tag their Instagram photos.

Tech Solution: Ha, this is easy, we’ll just allow people to pick a unique identifier, lets say #TannerAndKaia No problem, this is easy just give them a text entry box, and a quick database lookup to make sure the hashtag hasn’t already been taken. No big deal, even an intern could code this up.

Business Guy Solution: Ok, just generate a random hashtag #JK286TJ. Now if the bride and the groom want to have a nice hashtag for their wedding, we can sell them that as a strategy to monetize the service.

Brilliant! We tech guys get so focused on the solution most of the time that we never stop to think about simple strategies to monetize.

Our second visit of the day was to Fullscreen. This is a Culver City company that employs three Luther Alumni! Two of which I am very proud to say are also alumni of this very course. Drew is employee number 3 of Fullscreen, and Aaron is number 15, Jacob is not far after Aaron. Fullscreen now numbers over 220 employees, and is a very fast growing new media company.

What do they do? What do you mean new media company? Well, this is where my age really starts to show. Apparently there are people in this world that spend a lot of time watching “shows” on youTube. Shows like that Marbles girl, or teenagegirl14, and thousands of others. As Aaron said, this is not your demographic Brad, this is targeted at a group of people that will probably never pay a cable bill. So Fullscreen is a Network in the sense that they aggregate all kinds of these new generation entertainers, and help them monetize their videos on youtube. Note that monetize is a euphemism for ad serving, but thats really only a small part of what Fullscreen is about. Its a great company and Drew, Aaron, and Jacob were excellent hosts. They even talked their CEO into spending about an hour with us answering questions.

Another interesting story around Fullscreen is that Drew and George (CEO of Fullscreen) met at Coloft Santa Monica. We were also lucky enough to meet with the founder of Coloft, Avesta, (@avestar). He gave the students a great no-nonsense talk on his views of entrepreneurship. The story of Drew meeting George is a great example of the synergies that can happen in a co-working facility. At the time, Drew and a partner were trying to start a little consulting company to do coding for hire. Avesta happened to be talking to George who was looking for someone with Drew’s skill set. So he introduced the two of them, and a successful company was launched.

I love this story on a couple of different levels. First, as a professor I take pride in the success and accomplishments of my students even after they leave the campus. As an alum and faculty member of a college that counts community as one of its defining characteristics, it is great to find other organizations that lift up community as a differentiator.

You know those yellow lines on the football field? They are harder to draw than they look. Think for a minute about all of the different field conditions. Natural green turf, artificial turf, mud, snow, cold brown grass. Now think about all of the different colored uniforms the players wear. Now, look closely. The line never covers up any part of a player, or the ball. Notice that? The ball doesn’t have a yellow strip, the ball blocks out the yellow line. The same with players shoes. Today we got to learn about the yellow lines, the blue lines, the down and distance information, and many more cool effects that Sportvision puts on our television screens.

Here’s the group on the “practice Field” They were moving the blue and the yellow line for us as we stood there. You can kind of see them on the big screen on the wall. The rack of equipment behind me is what they need to bring to each game, and the computers on the desk are whats used by the operator during the game. The operator can adjust all sorts of parameters based on field conditions and uniform colors etc. In addition, in the case of a really bad snow storm, they can also project all the yard markers on top of the snow so the people at home have a better view of the field than the players.

In addition to football, Sportvision is also a big provider of on screen information for NASCAR and Major League Baseball. In the case of NASCAR they display a box of statistics right above the car as it goes around the track. For Major League Baseball, they show the ball and strike zone, and a bunch of statistics about pitch placement. They also collect statistics about every player on the diamond. They track the ball and the players using an array of cameras placed around the ballpark. Here’s where the cool math and physics comes in. Based on the flight of the ball, they compute the spin! The cameras are not good enough yet to track the laces, but with some math, they can provide a visualization of how the ball is spinning! Very cool.

Sportvision is looking at lots of sports, and looking at newer ways to get more information about every player. For example Football players may have special chips embedded in their shoulder pads someday in the future. NASCAR cars already have a special box in them that tracks all kinds of information for Sportvision, Soccer players are not likely to have any special chips as it would likely inhibit their play, unless something could be put in their shoes.

Like most of the companies we have met with Big Data is an important part of Sportvision’s future plans. Right now their main customers are the television networks, but in the future individual teams will pay for data. One interesting aspect of the big data strategy for Sportvision is that they don’t have to productize the analytics part of it. The reason is because most teams just want the data, and they consider the analytics to be a competitive advantage. This doesn’t mean that Sportvision won’t productize some analysis software, because there is a market at the college level and below where teams can’t afford to pay for their own data scientists.

This is a post I’ve been thinking about for a few days. Its a serious post, but especially after today, its surrounded in humor. Here’s the problem, to me this is funny, but if you had to live with it every day of your life, it might not be funny.

My thinking about this goes all the way back to the first day of JTerm, when we walked, and walked, and walked… through miles of parking garage to get to the light rail that would take us downtown. When we arrived downtown, most of us could easily take the escalator conveniently up to street level. Where we hunted around for the elevator for the rest of the group. It turns out the elevator is never in a location that is convenient or close to the escalators.

The next day, I led the group into a coffee shop (not a Starbucks) that our host had recommended. I popped in, looked around, and quickly realized that we couldn’t stay, not only couldn’t we stay we couldn’t all get in the coffee shop. Stairs only, no ramp.

On the positive side, the Seattle bus drivers were all extremely knowledgeable and courteous. They were able to quickly help get everyone on the bus, and locked into place for a safe ride, without one word of complaint.

The train ride from Seattle to San Francisco was 23 hours. It was uncomfortable for most of us, especially when trying to sleep, but it had to be sheer torture for someone who couldn’t get out of their chair for the entire time. Things started to get humorous when we got on the bus outside the Amtrak station. It was like the driver had no idea how to operate the wheelchair lift! Hey lets just press some of these buttons and see what happens. Never mind, the picture diagram of what to do that was posted right there.

When we needed to use the super shuttle to go from San Francisco to Menlo Park, things got a lot worse. First, the super shuttle has yet to be on time. Second, even though we ordered an accessible van, the drivers once again clearly had no idea how to make it work. Luckily by this time our own guys had figured out the general principles of a lift and were able to quickly give useful advice. The real shocker was our bus from First Student. All jokes about being on the short bus aside, it blew me away that the driver showed up with a non-functional lift. He said the battery was dead, but that didn’t stop him from randomly pressing buttons while our crew figured out how to operate the lift manually.

Its been an interesting process of learning and discovery on our travels, learning to look for ramps and elevators. Learning to avoid crappy rocky roads whenever possible, and generally feeling a small part of the pain of a comrade that has to put up with this stuff every day.

Today we moved south, from Fisherman’s wharf down to Menlo Park. But most of the day was spent at Google. This was certainly a day that everyone has been looking forward to for most of the trip.

My interest in Google+ was renewed by a great tech talk by Ed Chi. Who said some very nice things about me in front of my students. They probably think I paid him. We heard about supporting an organization as large as Google from Luther Alum Charles Banta, and about i18n – i(nternationalizatio)n from Luther Alum and former CS faculty member Craig Cornelius. Yes there are 18 letters between the parenthesis! We had a fabulous tour of campus, a stop in the 3D printer lab, time at the gift shop, and of course, lunch at Charlie’s Cafe.

You have probably heard about Google’s famous slides, but they also have fire poles for people that want to quickly get down a floor. And, in case you don’t want to walk between buildings they have these cool Google Bikes all over the place. Guests are encouraged not to ride the bikes, but nobody said anything about posing with one for your picture.

The other talk we heard was from Brian, a member of the self driving car project, who gave us a quick overview of the Google X Chauffeur Project. The technology is interesting, and I have to admit I hadn’t really thought past the cool sensors, and modeling that would be required. But, what is even more interesting are the many social implications of self driving cars.

Brian pointed out a couple of interesting facts for us to consider. Most people dedicate more space in their homes to their car or cars than they do to their own children’s living space. He also asked us to think about all the cars in the parking lot outside the office we were in. What fraction of the time are those cars in use? Are they parked 90% of the time?

What if our self driving cars could take the kids to school in the morning, and then return a while later to bring us to work? What if we could just bring up our smart phone and request a self driving car to pick us up at work and drop us off at home. We might not need such large garages. Could we turn much of our driveway space into gardens? Would this mean the end of rush hour? Probably not, but if the car was self driving, could a self driving car pick up you and a couple of friends on a logical path to work and drop you off? On the freeways would traffic flow more fluidly if the cars could talk to each other and the automated sensor systems were good enough to ensure a nice safe drive with cars spaced out 10 feet apart? A self driving car has no need to slow down and gawk if there is an accident.

Would we collectively own fewer vehicles if our car could be called to pick us up with the touch of a button on our smart phone, or automatically scheduled to pick us up based on our daily calendar?

The big car companies will say that self driving cars are 30 years in the future. The researchers at Google feel like we are more like 5-10 years from reality. Who is better situated to make that call? The companies with the navigational, and sensor technology, with access to smart phone interfaces and calendars? In short a company like Google? Personally, I’m rooting for Google on this one, and can’t wait to buy into my first self driving car collective.

“Ann is on a roll, we are going to be late.” I texted to Phillip. Indeed she was. Ann Winblad was the first investor in my Company, Net Perceptions, back in 1996. She was an investor, a mentor, and a supporter of us for years. Today she was giving my students a lesson in the new economics and ecosystems of software development. I was taking notes as fast as I could to keep up with the stream of new companies and technologies that were must know things according to Ann.

After the lesson she opened up the floor to questions, and the stories began to flow. And flow, and when the students stopped asking questions she asked them questions and told them stories about their answers. We were long past the end of our scheduled time, and I noticed her long term assistant Katie, standing across the room arms folded, glaring at Ann. Heaven only knows what poor entrepreneur was downstairs sweating while she was entertaining us!

Ann repeated a number of themes we’ve heard throughout the trip. One I don’t think I’ve mentioned here but we have heard from several people: Don’t sweat your first job. or Your first job is just your first job, so don’t worry about it too much. This is such a change from when I graduated from college, and I think its a real shock for midwestern students to hear. But I think it is true. We tend to think of that fist job as a real important commitment whereas the truth is it is a chance to get experience for 2-3 years and then to help you really decide your direction.

One thing I’m not sure I agree with is Ann’s assertion that 90% of sofware will be assembled from already existing components. This may be true for some companies, but it seems to me that real, big, breakthroughs are still going to come from creating new and innovative components for other people.

This is continuing a trend/theme that we have picked up on in this trip, but that may also be a bit troubling. 1. It is so much cheaper for a software company to get off the ground these days. Amazon AWS, is just one contributor to this, Sonatype is another. 2. Automated sales and marketing software is yet another. Gone are the days when you need a big face to face sales force to sell enterprise software. 3. The result of this is that VC’s are able to make bets on software companies for a relatively small amount of money. The downside is that they may not be investing in the riskier, bigger companies that may result in really big breakthroughs.

For my own, and your convenience, here is a list of words of wisdom and interesting companies to check out:

• You need to know Atlassian, Github, and Sonatype

• Think about Engagement Moments These are the times that people are really paying attention to their devices and are good times to hit them up with an ad.

• Learn Hadooop

• Writing SQL is a requirement for everyone

• Plumgrid

• Hortonworks

• MongoDB

• Puppet and Chef

• Nuodb

• Baynote

The following is a republication of a post I wrote for Luther College’s “Ideas and Creations” Blog.

Changing the World: Understanding Entrepreneurship, January 2014

I have never been so glad to leave Minnesota as I was on January 6th. The temperature outside was -24 with a windchill that defied all logic. I was headed for Seattle with 11 Luther students to begin my course on “Understanding Entrepreneurship.” I really enjoy traveling with students. Their energy, their enthusiasm, their ability to eat a doughnut burger at the airport before getting on a three hour flight.

Our itinerary for the three-week course includes four days in Seattle, an overnight train ride, six days in San Francisco, four days in Silicon Valley, a continuation of the train ride to Las Angeles where we will conclude the trip. Notice the nice progression of temperatures, from -24 in Minneapolis to 48 in Seattle to 68 here in San Francisco today, to even warmer in LA.

The goals of the course are for the students to meet with people from a variety of companies, from early stage startups to very successful large companies, and everything in between. We’ll meet with technology companies, Venture Capitalists, Public Relations folks, managers, programmers, you name it. The point is for the students to hear stories. Sometimes the most interesting and valuable stories are the stories about failure. Sometimes they are about success. Almost always they are a combination of the two that demonstrate passion, persistence, and the willingness to take a risk. The students are from a variety of majors including CS, management, accounting, marketing, and communications.The mix of majors creates good discussion, and questions from a variety of perspectives.

Some of the companies we have visited you have probably heard of: Microsoft, Pinterest, Google, and Amazon. Many of the people we have talked to at those companies are veterans of smaller companies that have ended up in a large company. Some of the companies we have visited you maybe haven’t heard of, and may never hear of: Sqwiggle, Moovweb, Strava, Capsule, and Fullscreen. Some of these smaller companies are still in the “garage phase,” they are just a couple of people with a great idea and a huge amount of passion to change the world.

I have connections to many of these companies from my former life as a software entrepreneur, but what is even more exciting is that I am connected to some of these companies by former students, and other Luther Alums. What a great experience it is for the students to see Luther Alumni, here on the west coast, doing great things.

The students all have their own reasons for taking the course. Some want to see if the West coast is right for them. Some want to learn about the different job opportunities in the high tech area. Some are exploring. Some are looking for an internship for next summer at that one cool company.

It is the passion, and the willingness to take a risk on something you believe in that I really hope they take away from this course. Too often, our Lutheran midwest culture teaches us that failure is bad, something to be ashamed of. What they hear in Silicon Valley is that not trying is far worse. Everyone here has stories about failing. One, two, three or more startups that never made it. The reasons are as varied as the people. Something like 90% of newly started companies are not successful. But, people learn from their mistakes, move on, and do something new, sometimes they do something great. Always, they are trying to make a difference. If they learn nothing more than that, the course will be a success.

What a great day for a bike ride! We rented some bikes at Blazing Saddles, right next to the hotel. Then took off for the golden gate bridge. It was a beautiful day and no surprise, the bike paths were very crowded with all kinds of people enjoying the outdoors and the scenery.

About half of the group above rode across the bridge and back. Here is me leading the pack.

The other half followed me further on into Sausalito, with the goal of making it to Muir Woods. The second half of the trek started off very nicely with a long downhill. which was quickly followed by a steep uphill. All well and good until my riders started to figure out that “what goes down must be climbed back up!” The ride flattened out through Sausalito and beyond so it was a nice easy ride for a while. But it was getting to noon, and we’d already ridden about 12 miles. I misunderstood the directions from the bike shop and thought we had about 12 more to go. So, since the guys all had tickets to Alcatraz and had to be ready to board by about 3:30 we decided to turn back short of our goal. It turns out we were much closer and could have made it to the redwoods! Bummer.

In any case, we rode just over 25 miles, and it sure felt good to be on a bike outside again!

A 23 hour train trip? At some point that seemed like a really charming idea. Eight hours in, I’ll say that the bloom is off the rose. Its been a nice ride, and a good chance to catch up on some reading and blogging but for the most part its just a long ride on a train full of people. The views have been OK, but it is now dark outside.

What? There is no real way to know the answer to this question, but it is one that was posed to the group today. How do you handle uncertainty? How do well do you think on your feet? This is a typical interview question used by many high tech companies. At Luther we might ask prospective faculty, “how many cornstalks in the state of Iowa?”

This question definitely stumped a few people in the room, but others got the idea quickly. This question isn’t about getting the right answer. There is a right answer, but nobody could tell you exactly what it is. There is definitely a wrong answer: “I don’t know,” or “Its not possible.” are two examples of the wrong answer to this question.

So what do you do? You have to make some assumptions. What fraction of the state of Washington is forested, what is the density of trees in the forested area. If you use some reasonable numbers for those two items you can make a reasonable, and defensible estimate. That is something that startups have to do every day. Use the information they have available, and make their best guess. Check the assumptions, and be ready to refine the answer. This is not just true of startups, it is true for all businesses, projects, and life.

Here are a few more highlights and themes from today:

• When you interview, have a story. I’ve been telling my students this for the last several years, but it is much more compelling when you hear it from someone who is actually making hiring decisions. The story should be based around something you have built or designed yourself.

• You can have the best technology and still fail in many different ways.

• What is the one core competency of your company? Starbucks was not coffee, it was training, so that customers had a consistent experience. McDonalds was not making burgers, but rather distribution.

• Finally, it takes four kinds of people to make a successful startup:

  • The Visionary

  • The Builder

  • The Designer

  • The Closer

One person may take on multiple of these roles, but you have to have them all in order to be successful as a company. The Visionary is of course the person who is looking ahead five years and setting the direction. The Builder, owns the solution space. Builders are part of a spectrum. Architects – Hackers. Architects want to have a good strong lasting implementation, and tend to plan the whole system out before coding. Hackers, tend to code as they think, and the best of them have an idea coded by the end of the meeting where it was first introduced. Where are you on that spectrum? The Designers interpret the vision to the builders, they own the problem space, and understand the user experience. In the best case, the builder and the designer are the same person. Finally, the Closer, usually a sales person, often also the CEO is the person who can close the deal.

• The better a company is at serving their customers, the less likely the are to change. This of course goes against every lesson Steve Jobs and others like him taught us. You need to make yourself obsolete before someone else does. In an aside, I think this lesson right here is the achilles heel of higher education.

Jeff Bezos likes to talk about technology and civilization and where we are at in terms of the analogy that we are still at “Day One.” He recently observed that we are so early in Day One that the alarm clock hasn’t even gone off yet.

With new technologies, it’s very tempting to think that you’re further along than you are. But usually, you’re more primitive than you think. My guess is we’re still pretty primitive. We as a society, as a civilization. I doubt we have figured out the new technologies very well yet. At Amazon, we’re doing our part in trying to push things forward, but I have the feeling it’s Day One.

And so it was that we found ourselves in the building called Day One South, meeting with our very gracious host Sam. This was a great way to start, and although Sam had not been prompted in any way about what to say, he hit on some of key themes for the students to take away from the course:

• Passion – You are going to work long hours, so you want to find a place to work and a job to do at that place where you are passionate about whatever it is. If you aren’t excited about it, keep looking.

• Culture – This part of the discussion brought back both great memories and ulcers in my stomach from the days when Amazon was a Net Perceptions customer. I’ve never been pushed harder than I was by Jennifer Jacobi (JJ) when she was my primary contact at Amazon. She challenged us, held our feet to the fire, threatened to dump us, and ultimately helped us create a better product. Apparently this is how Amazon treats all its suppliers.

• Risk – High tech companies are full of risk takers. Sam was no exception as a young graduate who simply moved to Seattle in search of a job. Years later he is still at Amazon. Many more years later than he expected.

After our meeting with Amazon we found a coffee shop where we could take over a large table and had some group discussion. I told my own story of Net Perceptions, which I should probably write down here soon, and tried to relate my own experience with the themes I want the students to look for over the next three weeks.

Today was a big day. The Microsoft mother ship.

We began our visit with an hour in the Envisioning Center, this is Microsoft’s take on the future, 5 years out. There was some pretty cool stuff in there. If you’ve ever drooled over the fancy table on Hawaii Five-O where they can flick things from phone to table, table to screen, etc. You have a pretty good idea of where Microsoft thinks the workplace of the future is headed. I’m there, I want it. I’m already imagining myself walking into the classroom, iPad in hand, and flicking a copy of where we left off last class from my iPad to the board. Wait, thats a bit of a mixed vision, I’m pretty sure they were surface pads, not iPads. But you get the idea.

After the Envisioning center we moved to another of the 128 buildings on the Microsoft campus where we had time to have our daily group meeting and book presentation. We were escorted by Tina Wang, and she joined in to the discussion of Sara Lacy’s Once you’re Lucky, Twice you’re good. Tina works as part of Enwe’s group, but is the only one here in the US. After our lunch we had a really fun talk with Neil Leslie, who shared a lot of wisdom with the group. And finally Dave Maltz joined us for a final hour on scaling up the data center. Its fair to say that by the time Dave was done everyone had soaked up about as much information as is possible for brain to take in one day.

A couple observations. This is not the Microsoft of the 90’s. The Microsoft that I knew and worked with at Net Perceptions were, well, to be blunt, they were bullies back then, because they could be. I get a real sense that is gone. Instead they talk of change, how they need to compete, and if you’re comfortable, you shouldn’t be there.

Returning to key themes:

• Passion: I don’t think I need to say more about this.

• Projects: I’ve told my seniors this for a few years now, but it has a lot more credibility coming from an outsider. You need to have a project to show when you go to interview. Bring an app you have built on your phone. Show a website you have developed on the browser. Be prepared to talk about the challenges, trade-offs, and succeesses you have had in developing your project.

• Linked In: This is a critical tool for finding a job. If you are a CS junior or senior and have not created a LinkedIn profile. Do it now.

• Failure: We heard a lot of stories about failure today, and we will continue to hear of them. Startups, started and ‘buried,’ products and projects that failed and never saw the light of day. The most important message, that I hope students get from this trip, and talking to a bunch of successful people, is that failure is OK. Fail Fast, and learn from your mistakes. It is a cliche to say that you learn more from failure than success, but it is true.

In the evening it was fun to unwind with our first group dinner. We met up with recent Luther Alum Jake Nowosatka at Cutters Crabhouse. Its at the far end of Pike Place Market.

Loyal readers will remember that last summer we cruised to Alaska, and some very secretive things were happening on that cruise that I could only refer to rather cryptically. Well, with the airing of last nights episode of Top Chef the story can now be told.

We were on the set for the filming of the Quickfire challenge onboard the ship! Although the filming took several hours, we got less than 1 second of screen time. But here we are! Brian and I happened to be in a pretty good spot as the camera flashes past us several times. The ladies we were talking to turned out to be from Wisconsin, in fact from right by our cabin! The two in the print shirts actually got an additional 2 seconds of screen time along with their comments on the food. Jane, Brian, and I all made it on again towards the end of the challenge. Sadly there is no sign of Holly.

Of course since this was all way before the show started we had no idea who any of the chefs really were. I do remember really liking Sheldon's lettuce cups as well as Stefan's little potato soup cup. I could swear that I remember seeing Kristin on the ship, so maybe she got to come along since she would be competing in last chance kitchen in Juneau.

Right now I'm looking forward to the finale. I'm not sure who I want to win the most, with Stefan and Josie gone all the villains are off the show. I think it would be awesome if Kristin makes it through LCK and gets to compete against Sheldon or Josh in the Finale. Thats Josh, by the way, in the first photo.

Its been a great J-Term. A trip to Vail for some Skiing, and a trip to Florida to solve the worlds problems with great friends at the DeBary Institute. For those who do not know, the DeBary institute is a newly renowned think tank with roots in the Bone Lake Global Institute.

We arrived on Friday and spent a wonderful late afternoon enjoying the hospitality and home of our host, Tim Peter.

On Saturday we toured Stetson University in the morning.

Later we repaired to Smyrna Beach, it was a bit windy but we enjoyed it all the same.

The culinary highlight of our trip was dinner at the Swamp House Grill and Tiki Bar. We enjoyed some lovely alligator bites as appetizers:

(Yes, as the famous frog said, they do taste like chicken)

After dinner we sat around enjoying the music of Mark Moore.

Sunday was Football (European and American) and then Golf day.

Dinner was provided by Gregory and Brad who made a charming seafood alfredo.

Monday morning we left the house at 5:50AM. The temperature was 62 degrees. Five hours later we arrived in Cedar Rapids where the temperature was -2. Thats a big swing for a monday morning.

Already looking forward to next year!

I just got back from four awesome days of skiing in Vail and Beaver Creek.

The Colorado resorts have a really cool new way of handling the ski passes, instead of clipping a tag on your jacket you now get a credit card with an RFID chip in it. Talk about a ski pass that appeals to the Geek in me! But whats even better is that every time you go on a lift, there is an RFID reader that grabs your ID and logs that lift ride. So now at the end of the day you can go on to a website and see how many vertical feet you skiied that day. Very cool. Over our four days of skiing we did just over 95,000 vertical feet! If we'd only known how close to 100k we would get we surely would have had a shorter lunch break on day one!

Since snow started late and has been a bit sparse since Christmas there was a lot of snow making going on. The mounds of snow created by the snow machines remind you of a Dr. Seuss drawing:

I'm pleased to say that my skiing has really improved thanks to my Solomon BBR 8.9 skis. I've started to call them my magic skis because I can even do the moguls! Here's a picture I took of craig at the top of one particularly narrow and moguly run. Note that I got down first with enough time to turn around and snap some pictures.

Here's another shot of Craig just before he jumped off the cliff. Note once again who went first to take the picture: :-)

All in all it was a great four days of skiing with the guys. Can't wait until next year.

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How do you know you have an enduring friendship? When after more than 27 years as friends, and seven days of traveling together you can play Euchre – couple against couple – and still be friends at the end of the train ride from Seward to Anchorage. Now you might think that a simple card game means nothing, but there a few members of our party of 4 who are a little on the competitive side.

The controversy in this story came after our third missed bear siting on the train. “There’s a bear up ahead on the left side of the train… No now its on the right… no, now its on the left…” This is some kind of weird plan by the conductor to get the train rocking back and forth, or something to get the people in the back cars of the train to drink more. So, here it is dear readers, as we are all in a state of frustration over bear sitings, the up card is a heart, I’m holding three diamonds (but no bowers). Everyone passes, and it comes back around to me. I bid diamonds. This is when the trouble starts. As it turns out, Holly has both red bowers and only passed because she had better diamonds than hearts. Needless to say we get set, and I launch into some kind of self righteous tirade about “maur passing” just to set us. This scenario plays itself out three times again over the course of the train ride… Now last night I might have said some mean words about Holly’s card playing ethics, but today in hindsight, and in the spirit of type 2 fun, I can see that I might have been overly harsh in my judgement.

The card playing on the train was the culmination of a long day. The last day of a cruise is always a long hard day. For one thing, I think thats one of the things that all cruise lines suck at. You are an awesome person who must be waited on and pampered at every turn, until the last morning of the cruise. Then you yesterday’s news, who must get up early and off the ship as soon as possible, so your room can be turned over to someone new and wonderful who must be pampered at every turn. Or maybe I’m just grumpy that I’m not the new wonderful person anymore. In any case we love cruising and its ability to allow you to see great places in the world, all the while knowing that you have a safe comfortable place to eat and sleep each night.

We spent our day on a Kenai Fjord tour. We had another day of wildlife sitings. The new animals we saw today included Dahl Porpoises and up close views of Puffins and Stellar Sea Lions. The tour company was really good, it was Major Marine Tours. Its not the largest tour company in the marina but the service can’t be beat. When we got out into open ocean areas and the swells got large they were especially kind to the large number of people at the back railing “going for distance.”



As I post this picture of the sea lions – whose population has been declining for the last several years – I am reminded of one especially redeeming quality of the day. SUN!! This is the first day since we left Minneapolis that we’ve had a sunny day.

After a long day, we arrived at the Anchorage train station at 10:30 PM. We got our luggage and the hotel shuttle picked us up for our ride to the hotel. Holly and I transported all of our bags to our room, while Jane and Brian stayed on the shuttle to go to the airport to get our car. We lucked out on the emerald aisle and got a good sized Dodge. At least its big enough to hold all of our luggage and all of us. We had envisioned a number of scenarios in which we stored our luggage at the hotel while we went North to Denali.

As I write this we are in our room in the Mckinley Creekside Cabins. Its not quite the same as our cabin on board the ship, but as Gabe would say, in Alaska, “Warm and Dry is more than you can hope for” We had a pretty good drive in the rain to get here, including a swell stop at the liquor store in Wasilla, and some fake pictures of where we imagine Sarah Palin might have lived. We got our tickets for tomorrows bus tour of Denali and then spent some time visiting with the sled dogs of Denali. We took the very scenic Rock Creek hiking path back to the visitors center and then headed out to Prospectors Pizza for a delicious meal.

Tomorrow will be another long day of hiking and bus riding as we go in search of Bear and Moose here in Denali National Park. We are hoping for another clear day so that we can see Mount McKinley.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Alaska

Sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Safari this morning.  We've checked out and are just hanging here until about 11:00 before we head to the airport.  It seems like a lifetime ago that we checked in here, exhausted, and grubby after 39 hours of travel from the USA.  Now we are refreshed, our bodies are on the right time zone and heading on to the next segment of our journey.  Its really strange to think that I'm heading to Israel, while the rest of the group is heading to cape town.  One consolation is that I'll be enjoying nice warm 90 degree weather, while they will be in Cape Town's winter at 59 degrees.

Last night we had a very nice dinner at Nampa and Matty's house.  I'm very jealous of Matty's indoor wood fired oven.  He had obviously been grilling meat for us all afternoon.  Not only does it make delicious meat but it also heats their family room.  It was amazing to hear the story of these two Luther College Alums.  They were at Luther in the mid 90's, but by the time they found their way to college in the USA they were married and had small children.  They are so grateful to the people of Decorah for their hospitality and help that they are always eager to open their home to Americans who are traveling in Namibia.  We worked hard on their youngest daughter to convince her that she must come to Luther to go to college.

As I think about the two purposes of our trip, the philanthropic, and the cultural I am inspired to try to return someday, and to help to keep up the good work that EmpoweringLearnersNamibia has started.  There is so much more we can do to help, and it really doesn't take much money to accomplish a lot here.  For example a new Kindergarden school could be built to replace the 10x12 metal shack for about  $5000.00 US.  

Well, here we are on the B2 not 55km from Windhoek and the Safari Hotel.  Suddenly our coach makes a very bad noise and we begin to coast down the road.  Joey looks rather concerned.  We coast to a stop and pull over to the side of the road.  One of the few places in all of Namibia where there is almost no shoulder.  The diagnosis is dire, the clutch plate is out.  Luckily its only 1:15 in the afternoon and we are close to our destination.  David is on the phone getting another coach on its way.  This bus that we've spent so many hours with is not taking us any further.

So far we are all in good spirits.  The sun is out, the weather is nice.  We are joking about our plight and assessing our provisions.  In the cooler we have some apples, a half bottle of Riesling and one Windhoek light.  Suddenly Joey says… "I need a beer!"  We all crack up, we'd be happy to give Joey our last beer, he's been such a good sport with great humor this entire trip.

We are thankful that this little mishap happened here.  When we think of all the places this could have happened. The middle of Etosha, the middle of the desert, Each of which would be hours and hours from anywhere likely to have the ability to come and get us.  We'll be just fine, and this answers the important question of what to write about in today's blog.

UPDATE:  We're moving again, in a lovely, highly air conditioned coach.  Its just 2:55 so we were only delayed about 1:45.  When the replacement bus got here we formed a bucket brigade and transferred the luggage from one to the other in no time.  We're looking forward to arriving at the Safari and we'll still have some time to relax and refresh before we go to our dinner at Nampa and Matty's house.

"You must really like to fly"  was the comment of the  flight attendant from Scotland on our British Air flight from Heathrow to Johannesburg.  What prompted the statement was my comment that I would have the curried chicken because "that was good last night." -- We'll return to the concept of good airplane food later.   Its Monday.  We left Chicago on Saturday. Two overnight flights in a row with a nine hour layover in London.  I feel like I've been in the airport forever.  Now we are waiting out our final layover in Johannesburg for the final leg of our flight to Windhoek.  We are in Africa, but it doesn't really seem like it yet.  We've got to get out of the airport and into the real world.  The Empowering Learners trip is well underway.

Because we had such a long london layover we did leave the airport and take the tube into London.  We walked around the London School of Economics with Josh Martin, and then meandered through the South Bank area having lunch at Giraffe.  Yesterday was a hard day, the overnight flight with the 6 timezone change really messes you up.  This morning was easier as we flew mostly north to south, crossing only one time zone.  We are really thankful to the gate agent in Chicago who rearranged our seats on this flight so that we had the aisle seats in the middle section with nobody in between us.  We were able to stretch out and get some decent rest last night.

About this trip.  This is not just a trip for fun, this is partly a mission trip and partly a cultural experience.  The trip is organized by Empowering Learners, a non profit organized by Ethan Schultz, and Ann Sponberg-Peterson.  The goal is to bring 24 laptop computers and 50 calculators to the Oshigambo high school in Northern Namibia.  We also carried along an assortment of Braille books, and Soccer balls to distribute along the way.  There are a total of 12 of us on the trip and we got all of this stuff along with us in carry on and checked baggage, we are definitely going to be a lot lighter on the drive home than we on the trip here.  Once we complete our business working with the high school we'll be visiting the Etosha Game Park and the Atlantic Coast in Swakopmund.  More detail to follow.

For now we are safely checked in at the Safari Court Hotel.  After two nights sleeping on airplanes and having our morning coffee in airports, we are all ready for a shower!   As a group we will have a little break before meeting with our tour guide for the trip and then heading to downtown Windhoek for a meal at a nice German restaurant.

I think I said that the plan for today was to head to the Palm Springs tram, and do a little hiking at the top of the tram then enjoy a nice lunch in downtown Palm Springs.  But two minutes before we walked out of the house we changed our minds and decided to go to Joshua Tree National Park.  Since we both have boys named Joshua, and they are staying together while we are out here in California, it made sense for us to check out this national park.  We are glad we did.

The south entrance to Joshua Tree is only about 25 miles away from Indio, so its a short drive to get to the park.  But, once you are there you find out how huge the park is.  We drove another 23 miles through desert scrub before we got to some of the really interesting parts.  The Joshua Tree National Park is a mixture of climates, it is part Colorado Desert, and part Mojave Desert, microclimates abound.

Our first big stop was at the Cholla cactus garden, its weird how these pictures almost look like they are underwater photos of coral!

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In the national park there are these small mountain ranges that pop up out of nowhere that look like someone just drove in a huge dump truck and left a pile of rubble behind.  In fact these are all granite, and formed from volcanic activity.

Because of all the different climates that are part of the park, the whole southern half of the park doesn’t even have any Joshua Trees!  You have to wait until you get to a little higher elevation which is in the north and west part of the park.  Here’s Jim and Karen standing under a very picturesque Joshua Tree.

The Joshua Tree gets its name from the mormon’s who saw it and thought that it reminded them of the prophet Joshua stretching his arms heavenward.  In fact the “tree” is part of the Yucca family.  It has extremely sharp  points on the end of the leaves which the loggerhead shrike (a bird) uses to kill its prey!

Our last stop in the park was a great little hike in hidden canyon.  Here you can get a sense of how these little mountains were created out of blocks of granite.  Its amazing to see the Joshua Trees along with the scrub oak, and Juniper trees just growing out of the rocks.

On the way home, we drove through the wind farm in the San Gorgonio pass.  This is a great site for a wind farm as the wind blows here all the time.  There are more than 4000 turbines here that generate enough power for the entire Coachella valley!  There are turbines here of all ages, some very old and very small, some with two blades, for working in higher winds, and some very new and large turbines.  Poor Jim, we discovered too late that you can get tickets for a tour of the wind farm!

 

I’ve been back in Decorah for less than 24 hours, its been a little more than 48 hours since we got off the cruise ship in Valparaiso. It was great to get a good nights sleep last night after having an overnight flight from Santiago to Dallas. Boy do I wish I could sleep on airplanes.

The Celebrity debarkation process was about as painless as you could make it. We woke up, showered and dressed, got some coffee at the Cova Cafe, checked our email one last time, and then walked off the ship. Like Buenos Aires, the port in Valparaiso is not really designed for cruise ships, so we got off the ship and then took a bus through the containers to the actual terminal. We found our luggage right away and realized that this process was so efficient we still had about 45 minutes to wait before our guide, Mac, from La Bicicleta Verde It was a little odd this morning because Chile was supposed to go off daylight savings time at the same time the US was supposed to go on daylight savings.  So, in one day we would go from being 3 hours ahead of home to just one hour.  Strangely the government of chile decided at the last minute not to go off daylight savings time, so some people were really off.  Mac showed up just after 9:00, and we got our tour underway.  We started by exploring the hills of Valparaiso.  Its an old shipping town, started when Nitrates were a big natural commodity that was shipped out of here.  Before the Canal, and before artificial nitrates had been invented.  So there are many beautiful old shipping houses owned by the british that have been converted into small hotels.  Here you can see one last view of our ship from the hills:

We continued on past the first Lutheran Church in Valparaiso, and then had to avoid a pack of street dogs.  All chilean cities are full of street animals that are well feed and mostly well behaved.  The problem this morning was there was one female in heat and four males that were trying to get her attention.  Things got a little violent, so we headed off in the opposite direction hoping to lose the pack.

Mac told us that the day before this whole area of the city had been without power.  Now as you can see from this picture Valparaiso has a very modern system of electrical distribution:

We were told that whenever there is a power loss, rather than trying to untangle the mass of wires and fix the problem, they simply find an area of the city that has power and then run a new wire to the blacked out area from there.

After the hill tour we headed down the coastline to visit some of the beautiful coastal towns, suchas Vina del Mar.  This would be an awesome place to come back and visit on a land tour.  The beaches are spectacular, and there are some really awesome restaurants looking right out over the water.  Mac got us number one at the most popular restaurant along this stretch.  People literally line up outside this restaurant waiting for a table.  Something that is unheard of in Chile.  We started off with a couple of apetizers:  Machas ala parmesan (razor clams smothered in a parmesan cream sauce.)  The only way to sum up this dish is:  To Die For!  We also had Camerones pil pil (little shrimp scampi).  Then for the main course we had freshly prepared fish.  They have about 7 different kinds of fish on the menu, each one with several different preparations.  I had Albacora (swordfish) grilled, and Jane had the Corvina (chilean sea bass) also grilled.  We had a side of Arroz and thought we were in heaven.  What a great last meal of the trip.  Oh, lest I forget , I also had my first Pisco Sour.  Pisco Sour is a great chilean drink made of a distilled wine (kind of like brandy) served with lime juice and simple syrup.  Just one please!

After our delicious lunch we headed out to wine country.  The Casablanca valley is between Valparaiso and Santiago.  We stopped at the Emiliana Organic Vineyards, for a wine tasting and a walk around the vineyards.  We had a great wine steward, named Joshua, who served us samples of their premium Emiliana Adobe line.  This is sold in the United States under the Emiliana Natura label because of  a trademark dispute with the Adobe software company.  Please lawyers find something more productive to do with your time.  The highlight was their Gewurtztraminer, its not nearly as sweet as the German Gewurtztraminers and was very refreshing.  In addition to being organic they also practice Biodynamics (you’ll have to look it up).  This sounds like a lot of hokum to me, but you can’t argue with the results.

Finally, what trip would be complete without some cute animals.  The vineyard also raises Alpacas, which we learned are part of the Camel family.

With the vineyard tour over, our last stop was the Santiago airport.  We had lots of time to kill, since we got there about 5pm and our flight wasn’t supposed to leave until 10:05.  Of course at 5:00 the American Airlines counters were not even open yet. Then at 6:00 when they opened it was a mad house.  hundreds of tired cruisers all anxious to get home, and all accustomed to being pampered for two weeks were now forced to stand in extremely long lines like so many commoners.  It was not pretty.  An interesting thing about flying out of Santiago is that all the outgoing flights leave in the evening, this is partly because you want to time your flight to get in to the states at a decent hour of the morning.  Say 6:00 AM or so.  But all the incoming flights get in to Santiago at 7 or 8 in the morning anyway, so why not have an outbound flight at 10AM?  By Chilean law, all outbound flights must have a complete mechanical inspection within 12 hours of their flight by a Chilean mechanical team.  The reason for this law dates back to 1972 when the Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes and resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.  The Chilean legislature wanted to ensure that nothing like this would ever happen again so they passed this inspection law.  The result is that the flights that leave in the evening are never delayed for mechanical reasons, because they’ve had all day to inspect and fix everything.  Nice, makes you feel safe.

Well, that brings us as far as our last flights, which were pretty uneventful.  A bit of turbulence somewhere between Santiago and Dallas is about the only thing worth mentioning.  This was an awesome trip.  Thanks again to all the great new friends we made on board the ship for making it a fun time!