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All in It's My Life
Why are markets for people horrifically bad?
Finding the right hire? Extremely difficult.
Finding someone reasonable to date? Darn near impossible.
The market makers--job sites, dating sites, extract a lot of value in the middle and never really seem to come through.
I think part of the reason is the lack of data and how to understand it. I want to throw my blog at a dating site and have it understand the semantics: The food I eat, the sports teams I follow, the career I'm in, and the places I frequent. But why stop at my blog? Throw in Twitter, last.fm, del.icio.us, and Flickr, too.
Sites like Spoke, Naymz, and Rapleaf will just point to people and their digital footprints, but no one really takes the time to understand them across various services.
It's pretty obvious that I'm a Met fan, regardless of what I list in any prepopulated field on a social networking site. I've talked about the Mets on my blog and I have Flickr pics of Shea Stadium.
Careerwise, it's also pretty obvious that I know something about social media from my digital presence...but the search that people really want is who in NYC has 4-8 years experience and just talks about "users" the most.
Its not just more data, but also understanding the data in its context.
Sometimes life moves faster than you can possibly imagine--like when a relationship suddenly sours. One day things seem fine and the next, every exchange is toxic and things are snowballiing out of control.
Things slow to a crawl at the worst moments sometimes. People in hospitals seem to experience time with unprecidented drag. My one hospital experience--sitting in a Bronx emergency room with 104.4 fever and Lyme Disease, seemed to take forever--even though it lasted only 36 hours so I could get my fever down. What went in the blink of an eye was the softball game I pitched directly after I got home. I'm not sure I remember any of that.
When I was little, little league at bats were so quick. II walked up and in the blink of an eye I turned around and walked back. I couldn't tell you anything about the short sequence of pitches I had just faced.
One day, I made contact finally, and everything started to slow down. I felt like you couldn't put one by me and I had enough control to place the ball into right field. I could see what used to be a blur.
Ever just lay around with someone special late on a Saturday afternoon? You move slow, but time moves fast. Doing absolutely nothing passes four hours in the blink of an eye. All of the sudden, you're amazed at what the clock is telling you. You and your significant other seem to have slipped through cracks in the space-time continuum.
If only all the rifts could be so stragtegically placed.
I was talking to my entreprenuership class the other day and made an important discovery--a lot of them lacked for inspiration from the people around them. A lot of us have great friends--mostly people that life just put in our laps by geography or by shared interest--and they wind up being people you share a lot of history with.
However, those aren't always the people that get your brain stirring the most. You know what I'm talking about--when you can actually feel, even hear, that little hamster spinning away on the wheel. Your mind races faster than you can speak, and you trip over your words as you try and get them out into a verbal blueprint of some big mental breakthrough.
Marc Andreessen once quoted Dr. James Austin on the topic of luck, and how just getting your mind going increases the chances that you stumble upon something big:
"A certain [basic] level of action "stirs up the pot", brings in random ideas that will collide and stick together in fresh combinations, lets chance operate.
Motion yields a network of new experiences which, like a sieve, filter best when in constant up-and-down, side-to-side movement..."
I have a friend that is always coming up with big and sometimes ridiculous new ideas. Once, he was going to get an aquarium for his apartment and populate it with agressive fish--"fish that eat other fish". He was so psyched about it. I couldn't help but be equally excited, but also somewhat suspect about the feasability of this endeavor. Either way, it got my mind going.
Nate has a similar effect on me, too. He has an idea a minute. Perhaps one day he'll settle on something, but for the moment, he remains the Wile E. Coyote of Silicon Alley--always working up blueprints for something big. You can't help but get the wheels turning when you talk to Nate, even if you totally disagree with him, because you're going to wind up exploring the idea and learn something along the way--or take something away from it that could help you with something completely different.
These are the kinds of people I go out of my way to spend time with. I probably take about three meetings a week with people who have inspiring ideas completely unrelated to what I'm up to, because it's a mental workout for me. It helps me think better and gain perspective about my own ideas--a rigorous cerebral exercise. What I was trying to explain to my students is that, if you're going to make a living off of your creativity and innovation, you need to set your life up in such a way that you spend more time with people who inspire you to think, as opposed to just spending your time with whoever lives on your floor, or the people next to you in class.
Along the way, we've all met pretty interesting people in passing, but we don't always stop them and demand more of their time. That's active management--making a point to be more deliberate in our scheduling, and its something we all should do more of. When's the last time you had a really inspiring conversation with someone? Who was it? What did they make you think about? How likely is it that you'll talk to them again soon? Perhaps you should ensure that happens sooner rather than later by asking them to grab coffee or something. My life is filled with what I call "onesies"--people not really connected to the rest of my world but that I've pulled in because my interaction with them really lights a fire for me.
Who does it for you? Why don't you drop them a line...
"charlie, can't believe someone took your bike. Hopefully they'll crash into a wall." -- Plugoo message left by my mom.
Perfect storm: I just started teaching my entrepreneurship class again at Fordham this semester, @shakeshack is tomorrow, I'm raising capital for Path 101, dodgeball and softball are starting up for the fall again... but no worries. No blogging hiatuses.
I had a VC ask me today how I have the time to blog.
It's 11:41PM right now. I'm in the office, and I'm blogging. I make the time.
Can't wait to bike home tonight... it's such a nice night out.
Last night, I stopped to see my friend Amy on my way home, because she broke her ankle. She's been pretty shut in over the last few months.
This is the x-ray of her ankle. You can actually see the faint lines of where she broke it, in two places. One break is right where the leftmost screw starts the grooves, just to the left of it... and the other is midway between the bottom two screws on the right.
Anyway, I locked my bike up in front of her apartment, but not right in front of the doorman, because there's construction and no place to put it in plain sight. I was maybe there for about an hour and when I came back, the bike was gone and all that was left was my broken lock and chain.
I wasn't that bothered by it actually. I never spend more than $250 on a bike, because I assume it will get stolen every two years or so. This one I got three years out of. Tack on the $200 of various accessories and maintenance I did and I averaged about a $12.50 a month cost. That's pretty good, considering all the train fare I saved--definitely came out ahead.
So now I'm in the market for a new bike. I definitely want something lighter and taller than I had, and mildly considering a single speed bike, but the ones I've seen are a bit hard on the suspension or seem not to have any at all.
So, if you know anyone selling a used bike that would fit a 34" inseam for $250 or less, please let me know.
Its been at least a week since I've taken the subway to work. I'm leaving for SF tonight and so I'm wheeling a small piece of luggage around with me. Tonight I'll be participating in the logistics olympics, trying to play a softball playoff game at 6:30, leave by 7:40 from 148th/Riverside and be at JFK for a 9:10 flight. As long as there are no major hiccups, I should be fine--especially for August. Hopefully we put enough runs up early that I can leave 10 minutes early.
Today will be research day at work... I need to put together a clear and consice picture of what's going on in the recruiting market, what's needed, and why we're it. The nice thing is that, because it's such a lucrative market, and that it cuts across enterprises as well as consumers, it's very well covered by some really smart folks.
I thought those two people, the dirty blonde and the tan guy with the goatee, were together when they walked into the car. I guess not. Still, they're standing next to each other, hands on the overhead bar, facing out towards the window. Maybe I should introduce them to each other.
People are so oddly shaped. I'm staring down at my phone typing this and I'm noticing what is obviously my grandfather's ribcage passed on through heredity. I'm sort of barrel chested. I don't know where to go with that. I'm just sayin'.
Glen Frey just randomly came up on my iPod. This always makes me think of the Mets '86 Championship video.
What company makes all these orange and red cellephane veggie bags that all the Asians who get off at Canal St carry? Whoever it is, they have a total monopoly.
The guy next to me is reading a comic book.
This seemed like a short ride.
The woman next to me is listening to a Podcast of WNYC "On the Media". I agree with @tismoi. Very few people look happy in this car.
Kilsy just came on....hard to miss. I knew it right away. They need to make more music or tour more or do anything... very good stuff.