Writing.
Essays since 2006, plus a few things first published at USV. Occasional by design. The podcast lives on its own page.
- Happy Thanksgiving everyone
Mmmm Continue reading
- Competitors at the time
At USV, we talk a lot about how the landscape is changing, as more entrepreneurs and investors get behind the idea of building networks around problems, communities & verticals. And that means that we are seeing more competitors in each space we look at, especially compared to what it looked like w...
- The no list (or, do less better)
Saying no to things is something I’ve always been bad at. I have always been (and to some extent, have prided myself on being) more of a “why not” guy than a “why” guy. This has many of advantages — I’m open minded and I end up doing tons of interesting things w interesting people.… Continue readin...
- Swimming like a shark
Andy and I were talking yesterday about how both of us really struggle on email, especially during busy weeks when we’re really focused on something (travel, a project, etc). I can’t tell you how many emails I start with: “I apologize for the long delay here…” I described it as being afraid of the ...
- Social Detox
There are a lot of great insights in Benedict Evans’ most recent report. It’s worth a read. One that stood out to me is this one: Because a lot of our social network lives at the phone OS layer (contacts), and because mobile social may be “sticky like nightclubs, not like banks”, perhaps the switchi...
- Wanted: Partychat for Google Hangouts
I’ve been a remote or semi-remote worker for a long time now. Which has a boatload of pros (flexibility) as well as cons (distance from “the watercooler”). Over time, I’ve tried lots of things to help forge a stronger connection among my distributed or semi-distributed teams. As you would expect, ...
- Exploding business models
It’s fascinating to watch the process of business models exploding. What apple did yesterday in announcing free OSX and free iWork apps is a great example of that. MS has traded on license fees for Windows and Office forever, and for a long time, Apple has followed suit, charging reasonably high (a...
- David and Goliath
Last week, I traveled to SF, and ended up on a flight with no internet (aaaaaaagh!). And, of course, I forgot to bring the book I’m currently reading. So, I went old school and bought a book at the airport bookstore. I honestly can’t remember the last time I did that. Actually, I bought two books...
- Organized vs. disciplined
I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of being organized vs. being disciplined. It’s easy to want to “get organized” — or worse, to spend a lot of time and effort getting organized — but then not actually have the discipline to see it through (this is also known as “systems to cover up symptoms“...
- Playing Hardball
It seems like everywhere I look right now, people are playing hardball. I.e., taking tough / extreme positions and sticking to them ferociously. The showdown in congress over the budget and Obamacare is one case. The republicans have shown that they are willing to take it to the wall, and the Dems ...
- Open311 Data Prediction Challenge
As the federal government shuts down, there is no shortage of predictions about how it will shake out, when it will end, and who will take the blame. Speaking of predictions (how’s that for a segue?), David Eaves (who writes a great blog for those who like the intersection of cities, governments and...
- Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia
Here’s a plug for Anthony Townsend‘s new book, Smart Cities (which I haven’t read yet but have discussed with him throughout the making). I can’t wait to get my hands on it, and suspect that it’ll be an enlightening read for anyone watching the “smart cities” / “civic hacking” space. The angle I’m ...
- T-Corps and the Community IPO
Janelle Orsi has an article in Shareable that should be of interest for anyone following the “sharing economy” (or “peer economy”, or whatever you want to call it). It tackles one of the most difficult and interesting problems facing sharing economy platforms: the relationship (technically speaking,...
- Being an Urban Planner Just Got Awesome
I’m here today at the Adaptive Metropolis conference at UC Berkeley, organized by ReBar. Which, as I suspected it would be, is awesome. The premise of the conference is how cities, and the way we plan, manage and engage with them, is changing — an in particular, how bottom-up, diy, adaptive, respo...
- The Adaptive Metropolis
I’m writing this from a plane en route to Berkeley for what should be an awesome conference: Adaptive Metropolis: User Generated Urbanism. Among the organizers is my favorite DIY city-making collective: ReBar. Back in 2005, ReBar did something amazing. They pulled up to a San Francisco parking spa...
- Systems to Cover Up Symptoms
Cescalouise and I have started using Wunderlist to keep track of shared to-dos (bills to pay, stuff to buy, etc). I’ve been a user of Wunderlist for a number of years now and have written about it before. The shared lists in Wunderlist actually seem to be working for us. Whenever she adds or… Con...
- Beyond Civic Apps: Making All Apps More Civic
(cross-posted on the MIT Center for Civic Media blog, the PBS IdeaLab blog, and the Harvard Data-Smart City Solutions blog) A few years ago when I was working on the Civic Commons project with Code for America and OpenPlans, I did a presentation at Living Cities called “Cities that Work Like the Web...
- Personal Equity
There are at least two startups that I know of (Pave and Upstart) that facilitate VC-style equity investment in individuals. Upstart describes this as “the startup is you”. In both cases, the idea is as follows: raise money from backers in exchange for a percentage of your future earnings. The ide...
- Uber and Safer Cities
For some reason I have always liked talking to taxi drivers about their business. Maybe it’s because my dad was a NYC taxi driver back in the 70s, or maybe it’s because driving a taxi is such a classic immigrant path to building a life here. And it’s certainly because of the amount of tech… Contin...
- Chromecast, Net Neutrality and the Rise of New Gatekeepers
For the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying starting to use my new Chromecast. For those who don’t know, Chromecast is Google’s new internet-video-to-tv device — plug it in, then stream web content from any device to your TV. The Chromecast experience has been eye opening, and it perfectly illustrat...