Its that time of year again when all things good and bad draw to a close, vacations and paperwork and last minute business intersect, and the Champagne sellers have a ball.

As do, frankly, the Champagne consumers.

In the spirit of the season, a recap of the year:

Seasons Greetings, Happy New Year and best wishes in 2012 to all!

My venture into the world of video, enlightening all about the panel I'm on at Le Web 2011 on "Mobile Local Social in the Enterprise":

Hope to see you there!

More and more these days, I'm asked for "my bio". Or perhaps I should say "something called my bio". (My autohagiography?) I put it that way as "bio" really means a couple of different things depending on who is asking:

1. What is the summary of your work accomplishments or resume? Ie "What do you do?"
2. What is your background as a public speaker? Ie "Why are you so great?"
3. What kind of person are you that might make you interesting to talk to? Ie "Why are you so damn interesting?"

Sometimes they also ask for a picture. This can mean several things too:

1. What do you look like?
2. What is your corporate headshot?
3. What is a picture of you that captures your personality?

Or even:

1. Hey, is there a video of you?

There isn't a video of me. That I know of. There might be some soon though. I'll let you know.

Anyway, let me consolidate the answers to the above…

Today, having abjured all allegiance to foreign potentates, I became an American citizen.

And, because Americans like me are efficient, I instantly did all the various paperwork updates required. So, in the short passage of a few weeks, I shall be able to wave around things like a fresh new American passport.

The process was actually astonishingly simple. Having gotten a Green card (which was not simple), and waited around for the requisite time, one fills out the paperwork and sends it in. I did this the end of April. Then about a month later, I was given an appointment for "biometrics" (basically fingerprinting). Then by early August, I got an appointment for an interview. I waited about an hour, was asked a few Americana questions, plus puzzlers like my name and date of birth, and then told it could be up to 120 days for a decision. Instead, in three weeks, I got a letter inviting me to the ceremony to become an American citizen.

I'm not 100% sure what that is called: the Oath Ceremony, maybe? Anyway, it was in lower Manhattan, at the building known to all cab drivers as simply "the immigration building" (though this time I managed to leave enough time to take the subway, as per my eco-want). There were 148 people from 48 countries, dressed in various permutations of finery. A collection of very decent and civil people from USCIS and a few other government agencies addressed us, gave us different forms and packages (including a nice little booklet with quotes from various notables from the Pilgrims onward). We were taken through the Pledge and then the Oath (not sure which was which actually). We promised to bear arms, to abjure foreign potentates and the like. At a suitable number of points, there were pauses for clapping and flag waving (small flag supplied), and friends and family who had come were allowed to wander around at different points and take pictures.

Initially, they asked us to stand as our country names were read. This was sort of interesting, with appropriately broad representation. The initial "stander" was from Aruba (and very enthusiastic in his singing and flag waving, in a friendly, Aruban-American sort of way); the final from, I think, Venezuela. There was one other Canadian, fifty two Dominican Republicans. The guy in front of me was from The Gambia.

The staff did a nice job of balancing seriousness and humor, telling attendees that one of the perks of the day was that their friends and families had to do whatever we new Americans wanted for the day, and if they didn't, we should call up the agency and they'd sort it out, while at the same time being appropriately congratulatory. My process was very smooth, but I imagine for many, it wasn't at all smooth, and the result of the day gave them permanence in a new country, the ability to come and go, and the ability to bring family over. Interestingly, the USCIS guy made that point a few times and it was in the docs they gave us: "Now you can bring your family!". Not saying thats bad - just a funny thing to emphasize!

The final speech was from the woman who runs voter registration for the City of New York. They enjoined us to register to vote on the way out the door. The woman next to mean turned and asked (in halting English): "Is this one really important?" I wasn't quite sure how to explain that part to her, so I just said "Yeah, if you want to vote!"

And that was it! Nice N-550 forms with fancy print and our photos were handed out at the end, and post voter registration we were told to go and get our social security numbers updated to say "Citizen!" (done!) and to apply for our passports (done!).

Now the only complexity: do I keep flying a Canadian flag on the boat (its registered as a Canadian flag vessel), or switch it to American? The boat is on the hard right now, so no rush. I like the way the Canadian flag looks with the boat's color scheme, and it gets one recognized on the way into the harbor.

But… the annual paperwork is a pain.

And America has a much bigger Navy.

As many of you know, I was recently off in Tokyo, then Singapore and Malaysia for business reasons. At some point, I'd like to post some broader observations. At this point, just a couple of things.

First and obviously foremost: A week after my departure, Japan was hit with the terrible combination of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe. Like many, I am challenged to understand the scale of the disaster, made especially poignant by my recent visit and my appreciation of the kindness and talents of my new friends in the Japan team. Please forgive my not making those reflections a further part of this post: the right words have not yet been found, not here and not by me. Fortunately, those friends old and new and their families and colleagues are all safe. Many, of course, continue to face challenging circumstances.

Second: while its of dramatically lessened import compared to the above, I wanted to reflect slightly further on the subject of my last post, about groups of individuals using "social business" to re-organize in a more open/democratic fashion, about essentially moving from using their org chart as their primary information processing tool to using more advanced techniques like filters, recommenders, activity streams and the like - approaches pioneered in the consumer realm by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. It was an open question whether this would be a useful message in cultures as different as Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia. The initial feedback I had was that at least among some in the audience, there was great openness to the approach. It will as ever be intriguing to see how culture and technology connect and evolve here. Lengthier thoughts coming soon.

Third: I had the privilege of trying out prezi as a keynoting tool, and of meeting the CEO and Founder, Peter Arvai. I'm certainly a rank amateur at the use of the approach, but the groups I worked with found it an enjoyable alternative, and Peter was patiently encouraging :). I'm looking forward to playing around more, and open of course to pointers to other such innovative re-thinks on how to engage an audience in what can so often seem like a rote pushing of information. For those interested in seeing what I presented, you'll find the presentations on Prezi at the following links: my Tokyo keynote, my Singapore keynote, and my Malaysia keynote (all pretty much the same), along with a more business audience spin that I gave to a CHRO (HR exec) audience in Singapore. Its a long way from clear that these presentations stand alone without my verbose explanations!!! Anyway, I enjoyed the chance to experiment with communicating in a new way, and I think you can actually grab them and copy/mod/play around yourself with the presentations using prezi. All part of the social business experiment!

Its been a while (okay, five months…) since I've posted, and many of you could well wonder if this blog had died the unfortunate death of so many similar efforts.

Alas! The blog lives! The same morbid fascination that drew you in earlier to read my rants and bizarre opinions will rear up its ugly head and do the same again!

But first - let me explain whats gone on in the interim.

I fell gradually off the blogging bandwagon as I had let my militaristically strict regime flag, then finally, come World Cup time in June, I replaced blogging time with World Cup time. What the hell, I figured. The World Cup only comes every four years anyway! It won't disrupt my blogging much to pause thirty days out of every four years.

Of course, it didn't work out quite that way. As I queued up more topics, the spring of the World Cup rolled into a fine summer in the Northeast, and time on my sailboat ate my blog. This is ok, I figured. Summer doesn't last forever.

Yes, well… As sailing, sun, summer, and consulting from my mobile office (that is, my boat) gave way to fall, I found myself embroiled in a number of deals. Whereas the previous center of gravity of my consulting practice had been around "innovation", I found "innovation" was increasingly meaning "mergers and acquisitions", and so I felt I had perhaps best not yet resume blogging. Not until some of these deals cooled off.

Yes, well… The deals didn't cool off. Things got exciting in a number of areas - consumer, social software, emerging markets. Exciting enough that various clients and prospects began to say, "You know, why don't you just come and work for us?"

I have to say, this became quite a challenge. I had rolled off from startup land into consulting and slogged through enough of the hard stuff - defining the business, defining the customers, slowly building a brand dimly recognizable among a subset greater than my immediate family - yet I had to say a variety of these companies were doing pretty interesting things. And offered me some pretty interesting opportunities.

In the end, much to the surprise of many (perhaps even of me!), I found that the most interesting offer was to return to IBM, and run M&A around enterprise social software. Why? Certainly that will be the subject of more than one post, but at least several secular trends are at play here:

1. The industry is consolidating.
2. The value generated in the consumer world is impacting the corporate world.
3. Buyers are expecting integrated propositions of greater and greater breadth.
4. Emerging markets are increasingly important.

All these made IBM an interesting place to go and play. Certainly, IBM plays less in the consumer space, which continues to be compelling, but, as VCs like Fred Wilson have noted, valuations are beginning to get frothy there and the locus of returns may be shifting.

We've all shifted our personal lives to "play" differently in the last three to five years, yet many of us still essentially interact with our co-workers, clients, and partners using the same tools. The big enterprise players like IBM will play lead roles in changing this.

Its intriguing to be, once again, tangled up in Blue.

Well, it finally happened. Again. My MacBook died, stone cold dead. I press the power switch - perhaps a slight, barely perceptible flash occurred, perhaps not. It might have been my imagination. In any event, it died, and won't turn on. The second MacBook in a couple of years. Perhaps the third piece of Apple equipment. All the home built stuff? Still running fine. The stuff from Oldi that we'd bought liketribe in Moscow? My understanding is that that stuff is still running fine. Only Apple's stuff died.

Of course, good things come in threes, and disasters come in droves, so this wasn't the only thing that failed. I returned from Europe the night of May 24th, toting a Kindle that had died during the trip, forcing me to watch movies and read a paper book. On May 27th, I had scheduled going up to Rhode Island to open up the boat for the season. And that weekend, the laptop died. The air conditioner in my apartment died. The building's Internet was cut off. And my 3G connector went AWOL. Harrumph.

Anyway, I hastily shopped around on my iPhone to get something delivered for…. at best Wednesday the 2nd, as I wouldn't be back until the 1st and it was a long weekend anyway. I decided the Apple fail rate was too high, and I run OpenBSD mostly on the laptop anyway (excepting the boat navigation software, which is Mac only, but I have a MacMini that will likely get drafted into service for that, and replaced with an AMD64 home built machine that is nice, reliable and running Ubuntu), so I figured I'd get a netbook. Various reviews indicated that the Asus UL30 in varying incarnations was a good deal, so I ordered one of Amazon for overnight delivery.

And? Come Wednesday am, I had a nice confirmation from Amazon that my laptop, ordered for overnight delivery on June 1st, would be arriving on June 8th. Whose definition of overnight was that? I am still trying to figure out how to cancel that and meanwhile bought the same machine (actually slightly better, for the same price) from J&R in downtown Manhattan.

This is my first non-Mac laptop in a while, including friend's purchases, so I was intrigued to see how Windows 7 et al would work, though I fully intended to OpenBSD-ify the machine. I must say the machine seems pretty nice - 4gb memory, 50gb drive, and 12 hour (allegedly) battery life for $650 plus tax. The out of box experience was, of course, not up to Apple standards, with weird cryptic phrases and such. But colors were nice. Of course, Windows 7 seemed really sluggish, notwithstanding people saying its an improvement on Vista (which I'd never touched), but, again, I didn't care - I was going to add OpenBSD.

First, however, I wanted to make sure that I had a complete system backup, like a good boy. For the price of four DVDs, Asus didn't include any media, so the benighted user needs to make his/her own. Four or more hours later (and good thing I bought the external DVD drive!), I had my DVDs. Its now 2:30 Wednesday afternoon.

So, I install OpenBSD. The drive partitioning stuff is predictably cryptic, but works, and miraculously the OpenBSD instructions on how to dual boot using the Windows boot loader actually worked first time as well. I had fully anticipated hosing the machine, but, so far, not. By 7pm, I was finished installing OpenBSD, ready to start setting up all my software, AND I'd backed up the original Windows machine. "Man," I was thinking, "this isn't so bad." I spent Thursday day loading up all the stuff I use, giving praise to my newly found Verizon 3G card as it sucked down tarball after tarball to aid in all the installs. "This really isn't so bad!" I trumpeted. By late afternoon Thursday, my peculiar needs were 95% addressed. In a few minutes, I'd be finished.

Now. I'm a long time computer user. I should've known that you NEVER say to yourself "this isn't so bad." Thats when the Zeus who hates computer software installations throws a thunderbolt at you. And so it was with me, as I promptly copied a bunch of files in the wrong direction, hosing the installation.

I said a few bad words.

And then a few more.

Then I repeated those, for good luck.

And I began again, forcing more coffee into the La Pavoni to leave me hopped up on espresso to work late into the night. By midnight, plus two gin martinis, I had it reinstalled. Even the weird email config stuff with sendmail, that makes one want to stick forks into one's eyes, that I had not documented correctly in my own notes from before, and had not completed before hosing my install.

And now? I'm backing up the new system, writing this blog, and answering all those emails, letters, phone calls, text messages, tweets, IMs, etc that I've been blocking out while heads-down resuscitating this thing.

I was asked (at, ahem, a rather importune moment in this journey) whether my strange OpenBSD setup is worth it, given the time it adds to my install. I'm guessing its just a little north of four hours time now, about the same as the Windows 7 backup media creation, so its not so terrible, and that includes all the little tweaks and customizations that one makes on any system. So I'm going to still argue that my set up didn't really slow me down.

But Apple dying did. And my fumble fingers on the install did. And the need to create my own media did.

So now I'm back on-line. If I play this album backwards, will my truck start working, my girl come back, and the factory re-hire me? I don't know much about country music, but I sure didn't enjoy my brief experience with the lifestyle.

Yet again I have fallen into a several week "Cone of Silence" in blogging land, but this time I at least have a good excuse: my dog at my homework. More correctly, I was off (for a portion of the period at least) doing another home exchange, this time to Verona, Italy. All the good things I had to say about the Christmas/New Year's exchange to Belgium apply once again. Home exchanging is really a fabulous way to travel.

A brief review of the tactics: we debarked from the UK, driving down to the ferry, crossing, then staying the night at Reims. The morning began with a quick jaunt about the center to take in the cathedral and buy a few bottles of champagne (which was very good, nice and extra-brut). We then drove through Switzerland, entering at Bern and exiting at Lugano, heading down to Milan, whereupon we hung a sharp left, ran south of Lake Garda and into Verona itself.

As in the first exchange, we'd arranged to arrive the night before our exchange partners departed. This affords an opportunity to actually meet one another, learn about the home and the community, and generally establish a comfort level. It can also really assist in the logistics of exchanging keys, etc. In this case, the Italians meeting us (Roberto and Marina of Punto in Movimento, a Veronese theatre group) were kind enough to wait for us and prepare "a small snack". In Italian terms, this meant having a full dinner, wine, champagne, and desert with them and a bunch of their friends! Fantastico! :)

We stayed that night at their friends place, a kind of bed and breakfast in Villafranca, a town a few miles outside Verona. In the morning, we had breakfast with the friends, who then promptly volunteered to take us to Borghetto and Villareggio sul Mincio, a couple of interesting nearby towns. Thereafter, we returned for lunch with the entire family, and were begged to remain another day! We demurred, thinking we really ought to commence the exchange and not impose unduly on such kind, friendly, interesting, etc people.

We relaxed in Verona for a few days, took in the sites, hung out with Cristina, a friend of Roberto and Marina's (another benefit of home exchanging!), and did some side trips to Venice, Trento, Mantua (voted the most livable city in Italy in 2005! Imagine the competition?!?!), and a few smaller towns: Torre del Benaco on Lake Garda, and the spectacularly situated hamlet of San Lorenzo in Banale in the Dolomites (nothing there but the view, but what a view). Thereafter, the long return drive took us back through Milan, and this time we veered a little westward in the Alps, offering the chance to pay 35 euros to drive through the Montblanc tunnel. A weekend in Paris (staying, unfortunately, at a hotel, but fortunately with a chance to catch up with a few old and new friends) topped the whole thing off.

The end result? I'm convinced that a terrible mistake has been made, and I was meant to hang out in Italian piazzas by day, retreating to my ancestral villa by night. Something tells me 99.99% of humanity, however, might well feel the same.

Until the next exchange! In the mean time, sailing season nears, and some truly interesting things are brewing on the business front. All subjects of future blogs…

So Tuesday, sitting in the warm sun of an early spring in Manhattan (sheesh - sounding like "Sex in the City"), the unthinkable happened: my iPhone suddenly lost its grasp on reality. First, it failed to find the network for a while. This is not entirely abnormal in this nexus where high demand meets AT&T's network, but after five minutes or so, it seemed a bit suspicious. So I reset the phone.

Ooops.

Now I got the little Apple picture. And nothing else. So I did a hard reset (hold down the home button and power on/off button for at least ten seconds).

Real oops! Now the phone would bring up the Apple picture for a while, then ultimately fade the picture out, and reboot again. Hm…

Some wags online had suggested doing the above while plugged into iTunes. I came home and did that. Nope!

Finally, at long last, defeated and weary, I stared unthinkable reality in the face, and trudged over to the Apple store. My neighborhood Apple store is the flagship glass cube at 5th Avenue, and the retail experience there, while lauded by thousands, to me is about as enjoyable as sticking forks in my eyes. I hate the crowds, the noise, the overly hip casual greetings of the staff, the dumbed down experience. I've been in tech for decades, I think to myself. Can't I get a little more… technical experience?

Upon confessing my complaint, I'm immediately sent with the other petitioners to the Genius Bar.

I hate being in a place called "The Genius Bar".

I now have to make an appointment and stand in line. Don't they know who I am? rings through my mind. Can't I pre-diagnose or read some instructions or something to avoid this mob of the hoi polloi (properly speaking, the ων πολλών (with a rough breathing, but I cannot figure out how to type that), but who studies Greek grammer any more, really?)? Apparently not. Apple likes to keep their instructions dumb, and their customers dumber, so I must stand.

To give credit where credit is due, I arrived at 7:25pm, managed to get a 7:40pm appointment, and was served by 7:47. Then another twenty minutes while they "hooked it up to the diagnostics".

This turned out to mean "reset the entire phone". All one needs to do is hold down the home button and power switch while connected to iTunes, then release the power switch when the Apple logo shows up - but keep holding down the home button. Then it eventually goes into recovery mode.

And now you can…. restore the whole phone to factory settings! My phone was, barring an app or two, recently backed up, so I was fine with this.

However…

I didn't realize that the backups (or at least the backups I made) didn't include my notes (my fault - but never using that app again - I'll stick with stuff that backs up over the air, thanks), or any of my application settings. So for every single app I needed to go back in and reset the userid, password, customizations, whatever.

Harrumph. My phone is, at least temporarily, back to life. Provided I'm within sprinting distance of a laptop with all my apps in it, it can be quickly restored in the future. Of course, since the battery only lasts a few hours, one can seldom be untethered for long, but still - somehow this tech approach feels ancient and unworthy of what Apple reaches for for its brand. Couldn't there be an over-the-air storage and sync?

Maybe there is… But I don't have it. At least I once again have a working phone, and hopefully the instructions revealed to me at the Apple Temple will enable me to keep their shuddering retail experience distant for the foreseeable future.

I was thinking about time today, and the unforgettable imagery at the end of Proust's "En Recherche de Temps Perdu" (variously translated, once as "Remembrance of Things Past", then "In Search of Lost Time", now apparently its vogue to consider it multiple works and refer to the last portion as "Time Regained" - which is more or less what he titled it). I was going to blog about this, but realized on rereading that an image that takes a writer of Proust's stature 1285 pages to arrive at is probably not best summarized by lesser folk. Here, then, is the thought in its entirety. Sorry its so long - Proust is not exactly renowned for brevity - but bear with him (and me) to the stunning image at the end:

..It was that notion of the embodiment of Time, the inseparableness from us of the past that I now had the intention of bringing strongly into relief in my work. And it is because they thus contain the past that human bodies can so much hurt those who love them, because they contain so many memories, so many joys and desires effaced within them but so cruel for him who contemplates and prolongs in the order of time the beloved body of which he is jealous, jealous to the point of wishing its destruction. For after death Time leaves the body and memories — indifferent and pale — are obliterated in her who exists no longer and soon will be in him they still torture, memories which perish with the desire of the living body.

I had a feeling of intense fatigue when I realised that all this span of time had not only been lived, thought, secreted by me uninterruptedly, that it was my life, that it was myself, but more still because I had at every moment to keep it attached to myself, that it bore me up, that I was poised on its dizzy summit, that I could not move without taking it with me.

The day on which I heard the distant, far-away sound of the bell in the Combray garden was a land-mark in that enormous dimension which I did not know I possessed. I was giddy at seeing so many years below and in me as though I were leagues high.

I now understood why the Duc de Guermantes, whom I admired when he was seated because he had aged so little although he had so many more years under him than I, had tottered when he got up and wanted to stand erect — like those old Archbishops surrounded by acolytes, whose only solid part is their metal cross — and had moved, trembling like a leaf on the hardly approachable summit of his eighty-three years, as though men were perched upon living stilts which keep on growing, reaching the height of church-towers, until walking becomes difficult and dangerous and, at last, they fall. I was terrified that my own were already so high beneath me and I did not think I was strong enough to retain for long a past that went back so far and that I bore within me so painfully. If at least, time enough were alloted to me to accomplish my work, I would not fail to mark it with the seal of Time, the idea of which imposed itself upon me with so much force to-day, and I would therein describe men, if need be, as monsters occupying a place in Time infinitely more important than the restricted one reserved for them in space, a place, on the contrary, prolonged immeasurably since, simultaneously touching widely separated years and the distant periods they have lived through — between which so many days have ranged themselves — they stand like giants immersed in Time.1

I just came across this excellent post, written a few days ago (in fact, coincident with my birthday, though I didn't see it on that day… And thanks by the way for all those gifts :)). In it, the author writes about the eventual realization of what one is not going to be, and refers to a poem called "Turning Forty" about "closing the door softly" on those dreams deferred that are now denied.

It was a beautiful post, written by someone with the insight to combine their business experience with a broader view of life that one sees all too rarely. He addresses directly the question "How do you know when to give up?" that haunts those cresting the peak of middle age. I see this around me all the time, as those who've achieved economic success, or at least stability, forget all those radical dreams they once had (once this was termed "selling out", I think?). And in those whose economic peace has been crushed in the Great Recession as they face the fact that they've sacrificed and compromised, only to find themselves beached as the tide went out. And yet, I feel personally very different, or at least the same in a different way.

I feel more and more that the price of forgetting those dreams, those things that, in essence, we were really "made for" is too high. In his post, Jerry refers to Dylan Thomas, advocating that his mortally ill father rage against the dying of the light. This he ties to the notion of "walking into the kiln", of living fully as we understand that the unlived life is seeking our attention. Tennyson, whose poem, Crossing the Bar is often contrasted with Thomas' raging as a poem of acceptance, I think instead writes of a life fulfilled, asking "…may there be no moaning of the bar,/When I put out to sea."

Socrates wrote ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ, "for mankind, the unexamined life is not worth living". In our age, and in my own life, this is perhaps "the unexplored life" - one that fills stunted if it is not moving to the boundaries of experiencing and possibilities, and, thus, partially rages ever at not finding itself near enough to the peak, or at least the precipice. This is captured famously again by Tennyson, in Ulysses, as he exhorts his friends, and thus himself, "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield".

I agree with Jerry's post as he writes "the emotional burden of being an entrepreneur is high–just as high as the cost of not disappearing into the fire" (read "entrepreneur" for whatever one's dreams may be). Does age matter? For me, I feel ever more the child, urging, like Tennyson's Ulysses:

"Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. 1

Last week, I read the obituary in The Economist of Tsutomu Yamaguchi.

I hadn't heard of Mr Yamaguchi before. His story stuck in my mind though, so I thought I'd mention it. For Mr Yamaguchi was, apparently, one of a very few <em>nijyuu hibakusha</em>, or double survivors of the atomic bomb, and the only so noted officially by the Japanese government. What this means is that he was at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were bombed.

The Independent called him "the luckiest man alive". Surviving is lucky, surviving twice is unbelievably lucky, and surviving until age 93 after two such events seems incredible. Its probably luckier, though, not to have been there at all. He writes of crossing a river "full of carbonised naked bodies…floating face-down like 'blocks of wood'" and using these bodies as a raft to get to the other side. The burden of seeing and remembering this is not lucky.

I thought the same last month reading of the deaths in 2009 of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, aged 113 and 111, respectively. They fought with the British Army on the Western Front in World War One. Mr Allingham spoke of men waiting to go "over the top" at Ypres:

"They would just stand there in 2ft of water in mud-filled trenches, waiting to go forward," he said. "They knew what was coming. It was pathetic to see those men like that. I don't think they have ever got the admiration and respect they deserved." 1

Occasionally obituaries offer insight into a life well lived, or a life of great accomplishment, or even one of great evil. Reading of these very old men, otherwise seemingly very ordinary, having lived so long to survive historic events that so few did, offers one a longer view on how people's suffering affects them, and how they move on.

All lived quiet lives, though becoming anti-war activists near the end. As I researched Mr Yamaguchi, I came across the same few <em>tanka</em> translated. This one, written in 1969, describes his burden of memory, so heavy still twenty four years after the events, and one that he bore more than forty more years until his death:

Thinking of myself
As a phoenix
I cling on until now.
But how painful they have been,
These twenty-four years past.

Today I went, as I do almost daily, to the local grocery store to get a few things - juice, pasta, etc. In other words, I went on a pretty ordinary journey.

In line for the checkout, I noticed a sign taped on the cash register "Donate to Haitian earthquake relief". I thought about what a good idea this was: you simply round up your purchase, and/or add a dollar, and the collected funds are sent to Haiti. It links a small, everyday action to global relief efforts. I had blogged earlier in the week about texting to give $10 to the Haitian relief effort, and this seemed like a great incremental way to contribute.

As I got closer, I saw that the donations went to a particular faith-based charity, however, and began to have second thoughts.

Why?

It wasn't because of an intrinsic opposition to faith based charities, or because it wasn't a charity or faith that I belonged to. But the charity in question, beyond (I guess) supporting Haiti, supports, due to their faith, a few things in society that I strongly disagree with, and that, in my view, cause particular harm in the developing world.

If they were the only charity available, I'd view that the short term necessity of getting aid to Haiti surmounted the longer range harm of the organization's policies.

But they're not the only organization available. In particular, the Red Cross is available and very engaged in Haiti. I consider the Red Cross (together with the Red Crescent) to be as straightforward, non-partisan, and secular in their global work as organizations can be. They're particularly appropriate for suggesting to broad segments of society, as the White House has done, and as the ads interspersed with the football games do. They're effective, active, and on the ground in Haiti.

So why does the grocery store tie itself in with the faith-based charity? I can only guess its because they support the organization's broader, perhaps more controversial, goals, as well as the immediate goals in Haiti.

As a result, I said "No, thanks" at the register, and endured the icy stare of the cashier and people around me. In a small way, this makes each trip to the store less pleasant. I can protest and say "No, I give to the Red Cross" nice and loudly - but that seems self-aggrandizing.

Maybe instead I'll just shop elsewhere.

No charity organization is free from baggage, and none are perfect. Its unfortunate, however, to think about how many organizations will use this fundraising occasion to bring in funds for purposes unrelated to the cause at hand.

I was thinking a little today about rudeness, and etiquette.

"People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!" you begin to admonish me…

Letting aside my own imperfections… I wonder about the small rudeness of everday things (kind of like the Design of Everyday Things. A new book perhaps?) Like the people that stand at the top of an escalator to discuss their next move, blocking everyone behind them. Or like people that don't move their groceries to create space for the people behind them to set theirs done, thus forcing people to carry heavier things for longer. Or like slow moving groups of people that walk in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking traffic.

I could go on. (Note these "petty" things and contrast them with eg these Victorian rules of etiquette. How many of the small faux pas detailed therein are commonplace actions today? Imagine going back in time, opening the lid of hostess's piano, and instantly being dropped from the social circuit as a boor…)

The particular one that strikes me more and more recently, however, is electronic rudeness. I don't mean outright flames - those are usually in the context of heated debate, or from the various psychos that troll on-line fora. I mean the rudeness of non-response.

We've all experienced this, and probably all done it. Hopefully, those of us perpetrating it are aware, and try to do it less over time. At the risk of taking a rosy view of the past, though, it seems to be that in earlier times a failure to respond to a written note would be deemed the height of rudeness. In fact, elaborate rules governed just how a letter should be written.

In our age of instant, free, electronic communication, we no longer bother to write elaborate replies. We rarely even send personalized cards for holidays and birthdays (getting instead a Facebooked "Happy Birthday" - a message so trite and so obviously generated in response to an electronic tickler that its almost more insulting than receiving nothing).

In fact, in our age, we don't even reply at all.

Perhaps non-replying is the new "yes" or the new "I've got it" or the new "I agree". I think, however, instead that its the new "plausible deniability". By not replying - when really we're thinking about it, failing to act on it, ignoring it, or looking for a better offer, as the case may be - we buy ourselves time to say later "Oh, I didn't see that - must've gotten lost in my spam folder".

Maybe it did get lost in your spam folder. That's the reason to reply - so that the sender knows you received it.

There are, of course, reasons to ignore some email. Some are spam. Sometimes you need to delay - in a negotiation, perhaps, where some alternatives are being evaluated or maybe a little posturing is being done.

Many times, though, a simple reply is the faster route: "Thanks for the link!" takes only a few seconds longer to write than simply pressing the delete key. (In fact, I recall a few years back when I was in the speech recognition business someone (I can't find the link! help somebody!) giving a demo of replying to his email using speech macros: he would say, for example, "Bugger off!" and the email text "Thanks for your note. At this time, however, we don't have a need for one of those" and so on, would be sent)

We're all busy. Its hard to keep up with correspondence. Perhaps, though, we'd all be better off taking a leaf from how Nabisco treats communications:

"Why respond to every résumé when that’s clearly not necessary?" someone asked.

The Nabisco manager smiled and replied, "Because — everyone eats cookies." 1

At some level, life is a reference business.

Last Saturday I went to Vimy Ridge in France.

I've had a longstanding interest in World War One, and was really interesting to see the Ypres salient earlier in the week, then make it down to Vimy.

Vimy has a history as a kind of birthplace of Canada as a nation, as it marked the first time all four divisions of Canadian troops fought together, and also the first time Allied troops on the Western front had actually overrun an entrenched position (more than three years into the war). It has been a much studied battle for Canadian nationalists, but also for military historians, trying to absorb what the battle taught, and why it took so many years and lives to learn it.

My interest is more in the individual in the battle. I've been fortunate enough not to have to have endured war personally, but I am fascinated by those who confronted those situations. In short, the psychology of the soldier in the trenches amazes me.

I cannot comprehend sitting through a bombardment, standing on the fire step, waiting for the whistle, then jumping out of your trench with 80 pounds of equipment and walking through machine gun fire to the other guy's trench, to then have to battle it out with bayonets assuming you survive the journey.

People did this for years.

At Vimy, they've left the shell marks and mine craters intact, though of course they are now overgrown with grass (and in some cases trees) to prevent erosion. Seeing this moonscape extending so far in each direction further makes one imagine the terror of the conflict.

On a plaque in one of the cemeteries at Vimy, it said that in the British Commonwealth, 750000 people died in World War One, of which 300000 were never found. (Modern figures claim 1.1M deaths in the British Imperial Forces) The cemeteries are filled with markers reading simply "A Soldier Of The Great War".

Humbling.

Its Russian Christmas Eve (apparently) and I'm in Swindon, UK, with flight plans for 5pm today.

Who cares? Perhaps nobody but me! But they've got N inches of snow (where N keeps climbing, and seems essentially to be "greater than we're able to manage"), so I'm on pins and needles wondering if I'll actually make it out. Heathrow Airport is showing flights leaving, though some BA flights and particularly flights to Scotland seem cancelled. The traffic details for M4 seem to be improving. Of course, the last 1km could be blocked and I wouldn't be able to make it, but this is all a good sign.

Still, when not worrying about my flight, this all got me thinking about risk and rare events. Essentially, the attitude in the UK (and in Belgium when we were there) towards winter snowstorms seems to be: "We get a couple a year. Its cheaper to shut the country for a few days until it melts than buy snow equipment". When I was growing up in Saskatoon, in the bleak wintry expanses of the Canadian plains, the attitude was: "We never close anything. Ever".

Of course, there was a lot more snow in Saskatoon, so it wasn't a rare event, and make sense to try and budget for.

It nonetheless made me wonder if in our computerized age there isn't a midway point. For example, in the UK, they must have enough information by this point to be able to predict what load they can handle, given the limited snow equipment. Taking just the example of flights of out Heathrow, the constraint seems to be deicing equipment for the planes (which is run by the airlines). If any flights at all are moving, then it means that they're able to get snow off of the main runways. Perhaps there is a limitation of how many gates they can open too, but lets pretend there isn't for the moment.

Using my above example, British Airways for example might be able to predict with 90% confidence that they only have enough de-icing equipment for 50% of the planes to take off. Obviously, the triage could begin by removing from scheduling those planes flying to airports which they can predict will be closed (ie it appears Glasgow and Aberdeen are not open today).

The next step might be to predict which planes are the most reasonable to run. This is probably based on customer satisfaction, cost of rebookings, etc. Would it also be possible to send people emails or texts the day before saying "There's a very high probability of heavy snow tomorrow. Would you prefer us to book you for the next day (no cash from us or you), or you want to gamble on leaving when you planned?" This would give further information to rescheduling algorithms, and probably make people a little happier. For example, if you're two hours drive from the airport in good conditions, you might get realistic and simply rebook.

With all this data, they could then rerun the scheduling algorithm and decide which planes to cancel in advance, based on which customers would prefer to rebook, which can be rerouted, which planes won't go anyway given the destination airport's probable status, and so forth.

I wonder if anyone has done this? The real issue, of course, may be that its not worth doing from the airlines point of view. They may well view their customers' time as "free" and therefore prefer you sitting in the airport on the chance they can move you than have you reclining in comfort at home with beer and potato chips, watching the storm pass through. Like many businesses, they may have the marketing department spending millions on brand image and customer acquisition, but not look at operational improvements and day to day interactions with the company (and therefore the brand) as, effectively, part of "marketing".

So the question: is the problem unsolvable, or simply not worth solving?

I thought I'd write up a little about home exchanging, in the spirit of all those "what I did for my summer vacation" essays one was compelled to write as a child. More seriously, I had been "home exchange curious" for years but never quite got around to trying it until now. The verdict? While I haven't made it all the way back to my apartment to see if my exchangers stole the TV and the cutlery, this was a very good experience and a good way to visit a new place.

What is it: You trade houses with a total stranger you meet on the Internet. Sounds weird, huh?

How it works: In my case, I used the site HomeExchange.com. You upload pictures of your place, write a catchy description, and - oh yeah - pay 100 bucks to join for a year. This is refundable if you don't get an exchange within the year, so if you're wondering whether your toxic waste dump in the Nigerian Delta can be exchanged, there is no risk (apparently) in listing it and trying.

This then proceeds a little like online dating. You look at other places and write them notes, they look at your place and write you notes. HomeExchange.com doesn't do anything from here on in: you receive requests and replies to your notes in whatever email box you registered, and manage your own process. This was slightly tedious, as I got about 50-60 inquiries (apparently Christmas in midtown Manhattan is a popular choice), and there was a lot of email back and forth to work on details, prioritize, and select between different possibilities. Some people seem to come back and say things like "I also have this other place. Would you like it?" which struck me as a little strange. For me, I was more comfortable responding to inquiries concerning a posted property, not some other thing which they hadn't posted. Whether this was a scam on their part, or an attempt to save money, I'm not sure, and so cannot offer further advice on.

Our exchange wound up being negotiated fairly late in the day (late November for a December 22nd swap), so in the end a number of criteria like travel costs and flight times ventured in to the final selection. In the end we selected this place near Ghent, in Belgium. Why? It was easy to get to from the UK (by ferry and car, which turned out to be a lucky choice as our travel weekend was the weekend of a huge snowstorm in the UK - the tunnel and Heathrow were both closed!). We wanted a house, so we'd have space to relax in and not feel the need to pound the streets 24x7. And, in addition to all the "normal" sites in Belgium (museums in Brussels, designers in Antwerp, beautiful medieval town of Bruges, Ghent itself, restaurants, beer, mussels, chocolates, and fries…), I have an interest in World War One and wanted to visit some battlefields near Ypres/Ieper as well as the Vimy memorial in France.

How it went: Very smoothly. We got in touch via email, negotiated the details, and on a snowy Monday showed up in their driveway. We chatted for a while, went over all the details, and Born and Lotje (the home owners) grabbed their things and headed out. We exchanged a few emails and one phone call (when the dishwasher looked like it might be flooding), and otherwise had a simple, relaxing time, got to see the country differently than we would have otherwise, and, of course, saved a significant amount of money compared to if we'd had to spend money on a hotel for the period.

My advice: This seems to be a great way to travel. Obviously, it depends on how you are able to write up the place you've got available to exchange: good photos (like you're trying to sell your place), and a good write up emphasizing whats interesting will really help, I should think. Also planning in advance for popular dates (Christmas, Easter, and August for Europe, for example) is required. Its worth looking at what others include: for example, those with homes not in dense city centers tend to offer their vehicle as well. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, it might make your place less attractive.

Would I do it again?: In a word, yes. If only I could arrange my plans to see a few months in the future, I'd be planning April's exchange now!

Welcome to the "new new" blog and "new new" website.

Its been a while coming, and in the interim I'd done a number of things, finally using Weebly for a while. While Weebly looks like a pretty good tool, I thought I wanted a little more flexibility, so finally put everything together and moved this blog (and this site) to a new server.

The primary subject I'll be writing about is, not surprisingly I guess, innovation. I'll be writing about how people innovate, things I find innovative, and innovations I'm pursuing. Frequently clients I'm working with will generate interesting insights on this subject, which I'll try to detail as best I can without revealing things that they'd prefer to keep under wraps for the moment.

For those who are into such things, I've chosen to use some static blogging tools rather than a more conventional approach to blogging. Time will tell if this is a good choice, but in the interim you should at least be able to see familiar ways to comment, get feeds, and such. One reason I chose to do it this way is that I can use org-mode and emacs, which is pretty the set of tools I use for everything else these days if I have any choice in the matter. The detailed reasons are likely subject for another post, but basically I can easily work offline in simple text documents, customize anything that irks me, then upload when I get it all looking right. Its indeed an acquired taste - but, I've acquired it!

You'll likely find a mix of subjects on the site, but you'll find everything tagged. If you only want "innovation" entries, for example, just click on that tag, grab that feed by clicking on the little RSS icon on the sidebar, and you'll have only the stuff you're interested in.

With that I'll close for today. Its Thanksgiving week, for those of the American persuasion, so I know its a short one for many people. To those celebrating, have a great holiday.