When we were children, we were taught how to spell words. (Personally, I was never fantastic at this.) I see the value of spelling, and look scornfully on documents wrought with spelling errors. You may say, “Lucky for us, we live in the land of spell-checkers, and we don’t have to worry about that.” Ah yes. And this brings me to my point.
Spell-checking is a valuable tool. I couldn’t possibly write without it. This post is a commentary not on spell checking, but on its cousin, auto-correct. Auto-correct is the tool that changes “teh” to “the” and “freindly” to “friendly.” I used to think that this was a fantastic utility. These days I have a different take.
Auto-correct takes away the punishment for misspelling and mistyping words. As a result, you being the clever person you are, adapt and start to exhibit more careless behaviors. After years of training myself in this way, I realized that I could barely type an intelligible sentence when left to my own devices. I was constantly on backspace, and messed up certain words habitually.
As an experiment, about six months ago, I decided to go on an auto-correct hiatus. I disabled it in all programs. Furthermore, I made a promise to myself not to right-click misspelled words to get the correct spelling. Now, if I type a word wrong, I fix it. If I don’t know how to spell a word, I look it up. The results are fantastic.
My typing accuracy has improved dramatically, and I am learning to spell again! Words that I noticed I never *ever* spelled right such as “available” (I always did “avaliable” and auto-correct fixed it) have come back into the fold. Maybe its not necessary. Maybe I’m just a purist. But I like that I can type again.
For a about a week now I’ve been on a mission to remove two words from my vocabulary: “cool” and “sucks.” I think these words are completely non-descriptive and their inclusion in the vernacular promotes imprecise speech and a general under-utilization of this beautiful menagerie of words we call the English Language.
I find these two words offensive, but they are a habitual part of my everyday speech. As such, I require a constant reminder to stay focused and choose appropriate, descriptive alternatives when expressing myself. To give myself this focus I decided to use a variation of a technique employed by author Tim Ferris (whose book should be arriving at my door any day now).
This technique involves wearing a bracelet. Its purpose is to remind you not to do whatever it is you wish to stop. When you slip up, you change which wrist the bracelet is on. My goal is to make it one full month without “cool”-ing or “suck”-ing. So far I’ve only been able to go a few days at a time, but its getting easier and easier. I’ll post a follow-up when I finally succeed!
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama has come to Atlanta. He will be serving as a visiting professor at Emory University over the coming days. To celebrate his arrival in Atlanta, the weekend was filled with seminars and talks (one of which my Mom came up for!). However, I didn’t get to see him until yesterday when he gave a public address from Centennial Olympic Park.
Before his Holiness came on, a contingent of monks from the Drepung Monastery took the stage to perform some of their traditional chanting. Check out this video:
After this, the Dalai Lama took the stage. This man is wonderfully compassionate, and it shows through in his gentle mannerisms, and warm smiles. He is a captivating and engaging speaker despite English not being his first language. He spoke for about twenty minutes on topics mostly related to compassion and kind-hearted-ness and how these tools can result in peace and happiness for their practitioners. It was an inspiring talk, and I left feeling exhilarated and unusually happy.
I also took some videos of his Holiness’s talk, but the audio needs some work. Keep checking back as I hope to put some of these videos online soon.
As with any other person who has been a VC or angel investor, Steve was incredibly sharp, and seemed like he would be impervious to BS either on the giving or receiving end. Steve began his talk discussing the pros and cons of starting a business in the Southeast. He went on a diatribe about how ludicrous the spending in California is. Then he pointed out that although there isn’t much VC investment in Georgia and the surrounding states, there is a better tax situation, and much better access to real estate, talent, and customers.
Steve continued by discussing the cyclical relationship between institutional investors, VC’s, and entrepreneurs giving some insight into how that relationship drove VC’s behaviors. Some interesting take-aways were that VC’s want the entrepreneur to get rich, and that they’ll only have to be brutal and cruel if they have to in order to make the returns they promised their investors.
After giving some insight in these areas, he began enumerating the things that you must convince investors of when trying to raise capital for a business.
You have a large, fast-growing market segment
You have a technological advantage that will block competition
You have reasonable financial terms
You have measurable milestones for success
He went on fleshing these out for most of the remainder of the talk, but kept peppering in useful tips. I’d like to point out some here:
Get a good referral (from another investor, an attorney, etc.) If you’re plan comes pre-qualified it. You’re in.
Make a 20 page business plan with a 2 page executive summary. No More!
Power-Point deck using the 10-20-30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point type)
In all of these documents, sell the company, not the product.
Do your homework on the investors you’re presenting to and tailor the presentation. It will help you and impress them.
Choose your investor wisely. Don’t just follow money; find someone that can help you with experience, expertise, contacts, etc.
Check out Steve Fleming’s website as well. Here you can find his blog as well as some useful information about starting companies.
Furthermore, here is a list of other resources and websites that Steve
suggested:
I just completed this book, The Myths of Innovation, by Scott Berkun after receiving a recommendation (and borrowed copy) from my friend/colleague Jimi Malcolm.
This short, fast read talks about the myths that people have about the process of innovation, and some steps on overcoming these myths and innovating well anyway! Although I found the book inspiring and informative, I think I can sum up all of Berkun’s talking points briefly below and save you the trouble of reading the book : )
Work hard.
Work on meaningful problems.
Work on hard problems.
Work diligently and tirelessly, but take well-earned breaks to reflect. He belabors the point that innovation comes from persistent effort, not “ah ha” moments.
Frame and re-frame the problem you’re working on. By following the same rules and same metrics for success that everyone else follows, you’re doomed to mediocrity. Re-examine the problem and re-frame it.
Work really, really, really hard.
Finally, here is a video from the “Google Tech Talk” series. I haven’t watched it yet, but I’ll bet you can get the gist of the whole book over the 1 hour video.
I recently entered the world of podcasts (below is a list of some favorites). I had long resisted this idea (for some unknown reason). I’ve now filled all kinds of idle moments with interesting audio updated daily from the internet, and I would recommend you do the same!
As this discovery occurred, I also purchased my new little ipod shuffle! This guy is small enough to be attached to one’s person very easily (no special arm-bands, and no bulging pockets). That makes it ideal for taking everywhere with me. As a result, I now cook, ride, drive, run, work out, and walk with it.
Here is a quick list of the podcasts I like:
Common Sense with Dan Carlin
Hardcore History with Dan Carlin
Business Week Cover Stories
Entrepreneurial Though Leaders
Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog
Upload Experience
Wall Street Journal Tech News Briefing
NPR: Science Friday
Science in Action
Check these out, and definitely suggest more if you know of some good ones!
Recently I wrote about some startup companies in computer vision. However, this is only part of a good industry analysis. I also want to explore some of the interesting research going on in the field. Below is a list of some of the vision research that I’ve come across that seems most interesting (and applicable/marketable).
This is brilliant (and brilliantly simple work). It solves a problem, and in doing so gives us tools to solve problems we didn’t even know we had! Its hard to explain, check the video out.
Dr. Ariel Shamir has a host of other interesting research as well: link.
I have spent some time researching startup companies involved in computer vision. This has largely been in an effort to understand the marketability of computer vision research (which I spend much of my time learning about and contributing to). In this post, you’ll find a list of some notable companies. Let me know if you know of some other good ones. (Of course this doesn’t include the big, big companies like Siemens, GE, Phillips, and HP that are working on medical image processing every day! Click to continue →
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