Month: September 2017
As my writing progress on my two books – Startup Communities 2 and #GiveFirst – continue to equal zero and the pile of unread stuff reaches higher into the sky than the stack of turtles going all the way down, I’ve decided to try a new process thing.
I’m going have a reading and writing week starting today and going through 9/17. Any excess time I have next week will be for reading the turtle pile and working on the new books. The activities are self-reinforcing – I write better when I’m reading a lot, I can only write productively for a few hours a day, and reading refreshes me a lot for future writing.
Amy’s birthday is next week (yes – it now lasts a week instead of a day) so I’m taking the week off. We are together for every possible minute, other than when I’m running and in the bathroom, so it’s a particularly great week to try this experiment since Amy also loves to read and write.
Once the US Open is finished on Sunday, we’ll have no reason to watch TV. The books and a blank screen beckon. This will either work or not. Either way, I’ll learn something.
I woke up from a dream about being in my early 20’s. It was a complicated one that included struggling to finish my graduate degree (yup – that’s clearly an anxiety dream) along with meeting with Bill Gates and trying to sell him my company (something that never happened but clearly has some fantasy element to it.)
As I was brushing my teeth, parts of the dream stuck with me, as some do. In my waking haze, I inhabited some of my memories from my early 20’s. The fantasy meeting with Bill Gates led to the Microsoft / Lotus battle for #1, which reminded me of several Lotus meetings I attended with my Uncle Charlie when I was in college and he was CIO for Frito-Lay (I can’t remember his exact title – I think it was something like VP MIS, but he was what we would call a CIO today). Mitch Kapor loomed large there and at MIT, even after he left Lotus and started On Technology.
I flashed to a meeting in my late 20’s with Dan Bricklin at a restaurant in the Boston suburbs where I met with him and the founding team of Trellis when I was considering joining them as president or CEO (I can’t remember what the title was going to be – but Dan and I were going to be partners.) This was during a phase after Feld Technologies when I was making lots of angel investments and considering being founding-CEO of a company for a year at a time and then hiring a CEO and becoming chairman. This led to a memory of meeting Lisa Underkoffler, the aunt of John Underkoffler (close friend and CEO of Oblong) in the kitchen of my fraternity. I think Lisa ran product for TK Solver, the product from Software Arts (Dan’s company) product that came out after VisiCalc was a monster hit (the first killer app for the Apple II.)
Lotus 1-2-3 was the killer app for the IBM PC, so there’s Mitch again. By this point, the dream was merely wisps as I thought about the early entrepreneurial heroes of mine. Steve Case then popped into my mind, and I remembered how central AOL was to my life at the time. The “bfeld” moniker that I use came from my AOL address, long before I was using it anywhere else.
Robert Merton’s On the Shoulders of Giants was a powerfully important book that I read in graduate school. As we fetishize today’s entrepreneurial heroes in the software industry, let us not forget that we are standing on the shoulders of many giants. Mine include Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor, Dan Bricklin, and Steve Case. There are many more, but these four shaped my entrepreneurial path and shone a bright light of inspiration that lit the way.
Ted Rheingold just passed away. He was an amazing guy beloved by many. Endlessly joyful, inspiring, and loving.
His autoresponder (typos and all) is one for the books, and like great poetry, worth reading over and over.
My cancer (ccRCC, metastic) has gotten the upper hand and I’ll be
putting all my resources into managing it.In my stread, please keep these very important messages in place:
* be good to each other
* enjoy evert day
* wanting is suffering
* The journey is still the destination, now more than every
* the trend of purpose is coming like a tidal wave, get out a heard of
it. enjoy the ride. die fulfilled.* Reframe your thinking of “what your career can do for you,” into
“what can your career do for others,” and wonderful, meaningful work
awaits you.”
Jeff Clavier introduced me to Ted in 2006 and we both invested in Ted’s company Dogster. We crossed paths periodically, usually online.
My last email to Ted was a few months ago, where I wrote “Sending you some love this morning” followed by
He responded quickly with:
Thanks Brad.
Sincerely.
Every day is hard these days.
Nonetheless, I’m very happy to be alive and keep fighting through.
t-
At some level, it’s all pretty simple.
Enjoy Every Day.
Ted – thank you for the gift of you.
I’m running my 25th marathon in South Dakota on 10/8/17. My training has been going well and I’m now in a zone of 30+ miles a week with a long run once a week in the high teens.
Today’s run from Aspen to Basalt was the best run I’ve had in over a year.
Just under a year ago, I did this same run in 4 hours. So, I’m in significantly better shape, which makes me happy since my October 2016 Marathon in Portland, Oregon was a debacle.
A three and a half hour run gives my brain plenty of roaming around time. I like to run naked (no headphones, no music) so the thoughts just drift around. My friend Matt Bencke was in my head a lot on this run. Houston and Hurricane Harvey floated around. The red mountains that I was surrounded by frequently caught my attention. I said hello to a bunch of cyclists and a few horses. Random company stuff made its way to the surface. I noticed lots of crawling bugs and scurrying animals. A bunch of jets flew overhead delivering people to Aspen for the weekend. I thought of Amy a lot.
On a run like this, I need more than two water bottles. I’ve been trying different running backpacks and finally found one I like – the Nathan VaporAir Race Vest. Yup – I’ve got a pile of others (from Camelback, Osprey, and Patagonia) all collecting dust in various closets. The Nathan VaporAir is a keeper.
In the photo above you can see Amy, in her Range Rover, waiting patiently for me at the end of my run (just after the bridge that crosses over 82.) She’s an amazing sherpa for my running, always bringing me a clean shirt, stuff to eat and drink, and transportation back to wherever I started. We went and got a pizza at New York Pizza in El Jebel before heading home. We’re on the couch watching Nadal vs. Mayer, Amy is knitting, and I’m typing.
Today is a day to treasure. Just like all of them, no matter what is going on.
Welcome to Force Friday, one of my favorite days of the year. I still fondly remember watching Star Wars with my dad when I was 11. As I walked out of the theater, I asked him if we could buy another ticket right then and watch it again. He denied me that night, but we went and saw it again a few days later.
Sphero just released two new droids, R2-D2 and BB-9E, which now rounds out the family that includes BB-8 and the Force Band (so you can control the droids with the Force).
Next up is the littleBits Droid Inventor Kit.
May the Force be with you.