B minor

I lived in New York City for 8 years. My need for a GPS device other than my phone was virtually zero. Then, I moved to Boston for grad school. After some research, I popped over to Best Buy to pick up a Garmin GPS for my car. I don’t remember which unit it was now. Moral of the story is: the unit was great. It did everything it promised. I only encountered one minor problem during the device’s two year tenure. At some point in the first, harsh Boston winter, the screen went on strike. It still functioned, just not well – there were lines, weird coloration. After having the unit on for 20-30 minutes, the problem would usually drift to an unnoticeable level.

This summer, I relocated to Los Angeles. I decided that a “dumb” GPS wasn’t going to cut it in the traffic in LA and decided to upgrade. After doing more research, I again settled on Garmin, this time on the just-released 3760T. The “T” means Traffic. With the new device, I received an FM receiver which would pick up traffic signals over the air and display them on my device (and re-route me in the event of really bad traffic).

On my first drive with the new Garmin, I saw a yellow stripe along the highway shortly after I got on it. Almost magically, just as I hit the yellow strip on the screen, the traffic slowed. Sweet (when have I ever thought slow traffic was cool?!).

This carried on, and I was in love.

Then, one morning, no traffic. No colors, no warnings. According to the device, everything was smooth sailing (when it was not). Something was broken. Being the man that I am, I tried everything I could to fix it on my own. I reset it using the normal GUI. I then researched how to do a hard reset using a special/hidden control panel. No dice.

I finally conceded defeat, and began to think about contacting Garmin. The hours for their call center weren’t terribly convenient for someone who works all day and can’t really jump on an hour-long tech support call. (Also they operate on Central Time, which isn’t very helpful for users in Pacific Time). Mentally, I inflated this call to be such a hassle that I put it off for 3 months. For that time, I drove around with my Garmin telling me LA didn’t experience traffic. Ever.

One day I hit traffic that was so bad, I got frustrated enough to call Garmin from work. Much to my surprise, getting to a human being was a remarkably fast process (I wish they’d advertised that the support experience wouldn’t be incredibly painful – as it so often is elsewhere). I think I spoke with Wally, and he walked me through an FM receiver reset that I hadn’t been able to discover in my own research. The device came back to life, this time with traffic. Love all over again.

A few days later, I was stuck in traffic trying to do a re-route when an AD (!!) popped up on the screen as I was trying to adjust my route. Yes, an ad. It was for Red Lobster – a place I’ve never visited. This, I thought, was odd:

1. Why am I getting advertising on a device I spent several hundred dollars on? Isn’t Garmin’s business model to sell devices, why are they now also selling ads?
2. Why am I getting overlay advertising while I’m trying to interact with the device? This is a tragic user experience.
3. Ads appear to be triggered by non-motion. Meaning, when you’re stopped or moving very slowly, an ad pops up. Which is A) likely to be a time you need to interact with the device and B) an indication you’re likely stuck in traffic, possibly irritated.
4. From a brand advertiser standpoint, I wondered why you would want to be advertising in this channel in the first place. If the user is going to get the ad when stopped/slowed, there’s a high probability they are stuck in traffic and likely to be irritated or angry. Do you really want your brand becoming associated with that emotion?
5. Since they’ve started, the ads have been only for Red Lobster and Best Western – neither of which are relevant to me. If I have to suffer through advertising could I at least get some ads that are relevant to me? Which brings me back to…
6. I paid a lot for this device. Why do I have to be subjected to advertising? I would understand if there was a cheaper version with ads, but I paid full price for this. I don’t want ads in this experience. I just want directions.

I will likely look for an ad-free device next time I make an investment in GPS for the car.

Foreword : updated September 2010

Much has changed since the events of September 11, 2001. Our nation has new and different enemies, I have new friends and a new home, and life has an altogether different feeling.

The internet was a proving ground for story sharing and discourse in the days after September 11. I was fortunate enough to have a website at the time and the following is what I posted in response.

Writing my experience down was a way for me to record my thoughts and avoid having to tell my story over and over. Surely there are thousands of stories just like mine. I shared mine, at the time, so that friends and family not physically near New York might have a more personal connection to the event.

Today, this little document remains a reflection of a 19-year-old on the brink of change – and the experience that would ultimately lead him to never stop asking “why?”

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Monday, September 17. 2001 – from New York City

This is my story. Though it accounts for nowhere near the amount of terror some have experienced in recent days, it is what I experienced. This is my way of sharing with friends and family where I was, what I saw, and what I felt in the hours that America came under attack on September 11, 2001. Writing has always been a great therapy (most significant next to music). Since I am still afforded no access to my personal belongings, including my music, this is how I am coping now.

First, let me say to each of you: thank you. After witnessing, firsthand, the worst act of terror ever committed on U.S. soil, I have found much comfort in the incessant support I have received from friends and family. I find myself in a continued state of shock, something I suspect will last for quite some time. Something about looking down 6th Avenue and seeing nothing in the sky just does not “click” with me. Though I know I have not felt terror in the way that those who lost loved ones and especially those who perished have, I know that I will forever be scarred by that dark Tuesday.

I commented once last week… ironically, not only has this been the most terrifying event I have witnessed, but it has certainly been the most unifying event I have witnessed. People have been brought together, nations have united, and New Yorkers have suddenly become polite. It is simply amazing. Not since the time of the colonies has this nation seen such a unified level of patriotism. I only hope that this continues to resonate in our generation; a generation that has known only peace and nothing of inconvenience for 20 years, and a generation that may be faced with one of the greatest struggles this nation has seen.

I hope that this retelling finds you well… It is most of my story, for now, though I will be revising and adding for several days. I most certainly welcome feedback, and would love to hear from everybody, as CNN no longer seems to fill the void of displacement. Please feel free to email me.

Monday. September 10. 2001

The day was spent continuing to get into the swing of things, as it was only the fourth day of classes for NYU. I had an early morning class, discussing the media in America. Little did we know that our entire syllabus would be changing because the biggest news story in decades would be occurring in less than 24 hours.

I spent lunchtime having peanut butter and jelly (they have a whole restaurant devoted to it!) with a friend, Julia, in the West Village. In the afternoon, I headed home to do laundry, take care of some organization, and then headed back to the Village for Chinese food at Suzie’s with Diana and Laura. By this time, nasty thunderstorms had set in for the evening.

I wasted a lot of time in my room on Monday night, talking on the internet, cleaning, and avoiding homework. I didn’t have class on Tuesday, so I didn’t feel too guilty about this.

After getting in touch with my friend Andrew to wish him a happy birthday, I settled in for the night, and went to bed. This was about 1AM.

Tuesday. September 11. 2001

8:50am – I remember the first time I looked at my clock.

I gather now that I was jarred from a state of deep sleep by the first plane hitting the World Trade Center (WTC). At 8:50, I was brought to full awareness by an unusually loud and bizarre siren which passed outside my window (and 12 floors below). I looked over at my roommate, Zack, who had also been awakened, and was staring back at me. I looked at him puzzled, and after a moment, we both dismissed the noise as part of the city.

I had put my head back on the pillow, and was on the road to sleep again, when our phone rang – single ring, so I knew it was a call from within the building. Zack answered, it was his girlfriend, Jessica. He came back in.

“Guess what?” he asked.

“What?”

“The Trade Center got hit by a plane.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Everybody’s talking about the plan by a church in Florida to burn the Quran this weekend (Google News). It’s been on the radio during my commute all week. I’ve been thinking about it.

I’ll state my opinion upfront, and then move onto what I’m left pondering.

I think the plan to burn the Quran is a bad idea. I don’t think there should be laws against it and I don’t think the government should intervene to stop it.

But I think it’s a bad idea:

Not because it is incredibly disrespectful. (It is.)
Not because it puts coalition forces in greater danger abroad. (It does.)

But because IT IS NOT PRODUCTIVE.

It’s the cheap and easy way to get attention for one’s own feelings. How about, instead of protesting by burning another religion’s sacred text, you protest by over-emphasizing the positive aspects of your own? Instead of protesting at all, why not engage the people you seem to dislike so much in an actual conversation? That would be challenging, rewarding, and productive. Burning books is not.

Next, I turn to the media. It is the first amendment of the US Constitution that extends to this Pastor the right to say whatever he wants in whatever form he wants. The same first amendment establishes his right to practice the religion of his choosing. That same amendment enables the press to operate freely in this country.

The media paying all the attention to this Pastor and his protest is a bad idea:

Not because it is giving too big a voice to someone who doesn’t deserve it. (It is.)
Not because it puts coalition forces in greater danger abroad. (It does.)

But because IT IS NOT PRODUCTIVE. Don’t we have more important issues on which to expend our national collective breath? The economy? Education?

Doesn’t the attention this man is getting just make him more likely to carry out this protest? And to carry on being noisy afterwards?

What is he protesting anyway? I’ve read a dozen articles and can’t figure it out. Do the journalists covering it even know?

If a religious text caught fire in a forest, would anyone notice?

I’ve now spent 24 hours with the iPad. Everyone keeps asking what I think of it, so I’m formalizing my thoughts and posting them here:

The device:

It’s pretty. This is no shock, coming from Apple, though I do find myself impressed with the quality of the display every time I fire it up.

The battery is good. Pogue said 12 hours of straight video play. Haven’t tried that myself but at the rate things are going, I’d believe it.

Downside: it does not charge when plugged into my mac (older machine) and the cord isn’t really long enough to plug into wall and continue playing with it, so you do have to take a break when you want to charge it. Fortunately the battery seems good enough that that shouldn’t be a problem.

The thing is heavier than a kindle and holding it for a while, while not painful, can get awkward. I got a case. I’d recommend it.

The content:

The Apple apps (mail, calendar, etc) are top notch. They feel like they are the full incarnation of what the iPhone version wanted to be. Disappointingly, Apple does not provide a native chat application (still) which feels like a missed opportunity for the device – perhaps that will come in the next OS.

The third party apps I’ve tried so far are also quite impressive. There does seem to be a thinness around the offerings at the moment though, particularly among the free ones. Also, there is no Facebook app, which seems weird to me. I’ve been much less active on Facebook because of that.

File handling is an annoyance. I can’t download a PDF from the web to view later (I can bookmark it and view it in safari – but there is no way to get the file in an offline state – and no way to mark up the PDF unless it’s imported into Pages – which I can only do if I email myself). Access to Mobile Me iDisk (available on the iPhone) is also noticeably absent.

One would presume the apps will catch up as they begin approving in the iTunes Store again this week.

The experience:

The thing moves fast. I imagine that the next iPhone will also process this quickly and finally we will have a powerful smartphone instead of just a smartphone. The apps all load quickly, video runs beautifully, the speaker is good enough quality to watch tv shows with.

Most importantly though, is the lack of multitasking. This will upset power users, but I found myself consistently more relaxed as I was doing only one thing at a time instead of the usual 4 or 5. I wonder if this will help combat ADD overall – I doubt it.

(I should also add, that while typing is obviously not as good as with a keyboard, it is lightyears better than with the iPhone. I can type at near keyboard pace on the iPad screen.)

So what?

Ya, I agree with the sentiment that this device is more about consuming than creating. But I’m okay with that. It’s been a pleasure to consume with it so far and I do now understand the middle zone between the phone and the laptop that this device will serve – I was skeptical about it before.

The verdict: if you like toys and consume a lot of media, it’s worth the add. But yes, there will likely be a slightly cheaper, better one in 12 months. (That said, this does not seem to suffer from the bugginess or rough first outing effects that iPhone 1 did – so don’t make that the excuse.) I like mine, and it’s been an excellent couch companion for the past day.

This post was written from the iPad.

Feel free to ask specific questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

Someone said to me recently that they thought that in the decision criteria for choosing a job, who you work with (or for) was a much more important factor to consider than what you actually do. Put simply: the who matters more than the what.

I can think of times in my life where I’ve done things I didn’t enjoy per se simply because of the opportunity to be around certain people. And I’ve experienced this in both the professional and personal environments. With friends, I may go see a movie I don’t particularly want to see because I want to spend time with friends I haven’t spent time with in a while. At school, I may choose the less interesting (to me) of two project topics simply because the team is one I’d rather work with. While these experiences tend to make me think there’s some validity to the hypothesis, I can also imagine a situation where someone takes this to the extreme, chooses to do something they truly hate with people they really like and the hatred for the task leaks over into the relationships.

This notion isn’t offered as a comfort for those taking jobs they aren’t particularly thrilled about, but rather as a prod for those trying out potential employers: it may behoove us to figure out whether we’ll truly appreciate being part of the team, given who’s already on it.

There’s been an interesting conversation happening in the world of blogs I read over the last week or so about the role and value of MBAs in startups. It started with this post by Charlie O’Donnell. This post was tweeted around the HBS community with some fervor last weekend and I read it and this reply by Rob Go shortly before embarking on an errand expedition (and ultimately a debate about these posts) with Rafael Corrales last Sunday night. Rafael wrote a great response to them, which I mostly agree with, and Kyle Doherty then added his two cents here.

I really have no desire to engage in a debate about MBAs’ approach to recruiting here (at startups or elsewhere) because I think most of the issues have been covered by Rob and Rafael and Charlie (particularly in the comments on Rafael’s post). I do, however, want to say one thing. And I should caveat that this is general commentary inspired by the above conversation and my experiences over the past year and a half, not a response directed at Rob, Charlie, or anyone else.

It frustrates me to no end when people bucket MBAs. An MBA is not a race or a religion. It is a graduate degree. That’s it. There is almost nothing I can generalize about any of the people I’ve ever met in this MBA program (or from any other MBA program for that matter) except to say that they either have or have had an interest in studying business administration.

People who make the assumption that MBAs are X, Y, or Z, simply because they have an MBA are as guilty of lunacy as the MBAs who throw themselves at startups with the expectations of red-carpet-rollouts simply because they have an MBA.

Contrary to popular belief, not all MBAs are flocking to finance and/or consulting. Further, not all MBAs *come* from finance or consulting. There are a ton of people here who come from interesting operational and functional backgrounds and have every intention of returning to operational and functional positions. These are the same types of positions that any startup seeks to fill.

So, what’s my point?

When Kyle said:

While it seems unfair to bucket a whole group based on the actions of a few, it’s human nature to do so.  Those who are really dedicated will figure it out, the perception doesn’t matter.  So I guess my approach is to think: who cares?

My answer to this?

I do.

I care a lot. I don’t want a few people who lack a social compass representing me in the world. I don’t want anybody to assume anything about me when they see MBA on my resume except for that at one point in my life I had an interest in studying business administration. And I want to fight those generalizations that get made (and the people who cause them to be made) for the sake of the rest of us who don’t behave like this. Then maybe the people who use criticism of MBAs and B-schools as a way to sell newspapers and display ads will have to find another way to write about us.