Ferran Adria (yes, that Ferran Adria) stopped by Google today while in town for his book tour promoting A Day at elBulli. He spent most of the hour talking about innovation and his approach for trying to invent a new culinary language within the universal language of cuisine, with pictures of some amazing nature-inspired desserts, […]
Everything is a Story
I’ve been thinking on and off about this post for weeks, and it’s not coming together, so I’m just going to write up what I have and see what happens. Or at least put it up to instigate comments that will help me clarify what I mean (as the comments on my “Faking it” post […]
Meeting Dynamics
As I am learning the lay of the land at Google, I’ve been initiating one-on-one meetings with people around me so that I can learn what they do and gain some different perspectives on what my group produces. I wrote up my notes after my meeting with one coworker, and after he reviewed what I […]
Self Haxx0ring
As noted in my last post, this is my first week as an employee of Google. I’m trying to get up to speed on the types of things that I will be doing, which meant spending most of today learning about the ad system, revenue forecasting models, how the Google backend works, etc. Unsurprisingly, there’s […]
Language Games
My last post on faking it engendered some discussion that made it clear I hadn’t communicated my point very clearly. To paraphrase one uncharitable commenter, one interpretation is that I’m looking for ways to justify my tendencies towards self-aggrandizing attention-seeking egotism. And there’s certainly an element of that, as I thought I covered in that […]
Faking it
I have a bad habit of trying to fake knowledge when I don’t have it. Whether the topic is world politics or art history or technology or postmodern sociology, I like to pretend that I am knowledgeable on the topic and keep on talking. This habit drives some of my friends crazy, as they feel […]
Being a generalist
In a continuation of my reflections on my personal brand as a generalist, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a generalist in corporate America. What is the value proposition that I as a generalist bring to companies and how can my skill set contribute to a company’s success? To put it more […]
My favorite things to do in New York
I’ve been meaning to put together a list of my favorite New York things to do for a while, and it seems like this, my last day as a resident of New York, seems like a good occasion for doing so. I’m mostly recording them for my own interest, and so if anybody ever asks […]
Nonfiction Roundup August 2008
I’m finishing up packing my books, and came across the pile of books that I read this summer but haven’t reviewed yet. So this is going to be a quickie placeholder post with short reviews of each book, and hopefully I’ll have time to come back and do a longer review later on a couple […]
US Open
The tennis US Open is held each year at this time in Flushing Meadows, in Queens. Each of the past two years I thought about going, but couldn’t quite convince myself to take a day off work to really enjoy it, plus I always figured I could do it next year. Alas, with the movers […]
