Archive: May 25, 2011

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go DeeDee, continued

Wednesday,  05/25/11  10:56 PM

You guys will remember my enthusiasm for cancer survivor and ace musher DeeDee Jonrowe, who I met when she spoke at an Aperio sales event in February.  I followed her performance in the recent Iditarod with great interest; she finished 12th, after competing for a spot in the top ten most of the race*.

Well guess what?  Aperio is sponsoring DeeDee!  How cool is that?  As a digital pathology company we don't do many corporate sponsorships, but the combination of DeeDee's cancer survivorship, her subsequent advocacy for cancer care and research (with a special emphasis on medical care for remote areas like Western Alaska), her successful efforts to raise money for a cancer center, her amazing sledding career (29 Iditarods, including 12.5 top ten finishes*), and her general positive attitude and sense of being combine to make her a perfect partner for us.

Tonight DeeDee addressed our Leadership team at an offsite event, and she was most interesting and inspiring.  A key aspect of her talk was the leadership of a musher with her dog team, and the leadership of the lead dogs.  It will be great being part of her team for the 2012 Itidarod - stay tuned!

* Tonight we learned the true story; DeeDee was running 8th when she reached the White Mountain checkpoint, within range of 7th, but all her dog food was stolen!  It seems amazing that such a thing could happen in such a major league race, but it did.  She had to race that last 75 miles to Nome with a team that was hungry as well as tired, and she ended up dropping 4 places to finish 12th.  Incredible.

 

Wednesday,  05/25/11  11:20 PM

Whew a long day spent in an offsite meeting, but it was great; many interesting messages to absorb and ponder.  Like the need to relax and recover.  It has me awake and blogging...

From Cringley: Google at Carson's Speed.  Given an optimum speed, there is always Carson's Speed, "the speed to get the most extra speed for the least extra cost."  Where speed means, um, building datacenters and caching knowledge. 

Have you heard of Rent the Runway?  It's a great idea for a business; essentially you can rent high-end fashion instead of buying it.  That makes so much sense because most people don't wear high-end fashion often, and in fact many only wear it once.  This was you can rotate around and everyone gets to wear everything.  I forsee great things for this idea. 

Zillow are going public, under the symbol "Z".  So be it.  Time was I liked getting emails from them, telling me how much my house was worth, but now I wish they'd stop already :( 

A cooperative cars competition - in Holland!  How cool is that?  You may remember I wrote long and lovingly about this idea, that many cars combined as a caravan could travel more efficiently. 

It has been 50 years since JFK's moon declaration.  After a frenzied start we did put someone on the moon, within eight years.  But then the program tapered off, and now the last shuttle mission is upon us.  Maybe we need a program to put someone on Mars?  That would be awesome! 

Good follow up thoughts from Rand Simberg.

And so the always interesting Peter Thiel is paying students NOT to go to college - and to develop business ideas instead.  Huh.  I get that college isn't for everyone, but in addition to the learning aspect there is also the growing up aspect; I'm not sure most teenagers are ready for business.  It will be an interested experiment to watch! 

This is awesome: TechCrunch has posted a video of Paul Graham's Office Hours at their Disrupt conference.  Amazing how he casually hones in on the key aspects of each business in like five minutes.  Without being obnoxious.  I love it! 

Truth is stranger than Onion: North Korea making its own PCs.  The jokes practically write themselves :)

 

 

creation myth

Wednesday,  05/25/11  11:48 PM

Malcolm Gladwell does a great debunking of the "Apple copied Xerox" creation myth in the latest New Yorker.  Many of the original concepts of Apple's Macintosh were developed at Xerox - such as a computer mouse - but the execution and refinement that Apple brought to their implementation was what enabled them to be commercialized.

I think about this a lot, and I guess everyone thinks about this a lot; what makes Apple tick?  It isn't just the concepts, because they didn't have the first laser printer, or the first ethernet implementation, or the first MP3 music player, or the first laptop, or the first phone :) or the first tablet either!  But they were the first to make them awesome, by eliminating complexity and maximizing design and emphasizing usability.

Try to compare an iPhone to a Blackberry or a Palm or an Android.  Sure, they all do the same things.  But only Apple does them as well as Apple.  And that's the key to their success.

I'm attending an Aperio offsite and we are talking about Leadership, and in my opinion the key to leadership is inspiration.  And this is why Steve Jobs is such a great leader; he inspires all of Apple to be "insanely great".  And they are :)

 
 

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