A friend of mine had recommended I watch this TED talk by Dan Pallotta, titled “The way we think about charity is dead wrong”. I finally got around to watching it last night and wrote up my notes in an email to my friend and then figured I might as well post them on the […]
Stewart Brand and Paul Saffo at the Interval
A couple weeks ago, I went to see Stewart Brand and Paul Saffo give a “salon talk” at the Interval (recap and audio of the talk here). It was a packed house – the talk had sold out in less than an hour, but I was lucky enough to be checking email when the tickets […]
One step at a time
I was helping an entrepreneur friend with his investor pitch last week, and something was bugging me – the pitch didn’t feel right, even though I think the idea is good. He is passionate about how to run a company, so he was describing his philosophy of management in the pitch. And I realized that […]
Setting the context
Sometimes I wonder about the value of what I do at Google[ref]To be clear, my manager values the work I do at Google – I just sometimes question myself[/ref]. In the search ads organization where I work, there are hundreds of people building new features and products. And then there’s me wandering around, looking at […]
2014 Year in Review
After 2013 was the Year of Yes for me, I would characterize 2014 as the Year of More. I didn’t start any new activities in 2014, and instead did a lot more of what I was already doing. Job: I am still in the same job as last year (Chief of Staff to Product VP […]
The challenge of humanity
[This is a response to an email prompt from a design-y list I’m on, where the original poster posited that “Computing is all around us” and “we are a part of the computer”, but after writing the response, I thought it was general purpose enough to post here] I think it is a mistake to […]
The Generalist Is In
I really enjoy giving feedback to people on their ideas and thoughts. In the past week alone, I have: Given feedback to an architect friend on their entry into a memorial design competition Talked through customer segmentation and business plans with a new startup as part of the MIT Venture Mentoring Service Talked through engineer […]
Challenging oneself
In my last post, I talked about instigating unhappiness as a way to spur change at organizations. I’ve also been thinking about it in a personal context of challenging myself, and when I should be satisfied and happy with where I am vs. stretching myself for the next goal. One of the reasons for the […]
Instigating unhappiness
Michael Anton Dila, one of the cofounders of Overlap, recently gave a talk at the BIF conference. He starts with his frustration with the question “What do you do?”, as he can never answer it. He then talks about Overlap and the community that has built around it (Overlap is full of people who don’t […]
There are no shortcuts
I was having an email thread recently with a friend where she pointed me at this article on the middle class getting ripped off. I don’t agree with most of the article, but this quote stuck out to me: For my entire life (and I don’t think this will ever change) I’ve watched friends and […]
