Not only is it possible, I've a double blister on my right heel that proves it. At least, these photos of our backpacking weekend starting at Loon Lake, Calif - going up through to Rockbound Lake in Desolation Wilderness - prove why it was totally worth and I'd do it again in a jiffy. Might get some new boots though, like, oh these Kayland Zephyr's or perhaps these Salomon Wings :-)
All the photos >> MobileMe Gallery <<
I mean, who doesn't love goats? @mutgoff certainly does and so do I - a topic we've chatted about over Twitter (twatted?). Whilst I admit that there's something deliciously nostalgic and reminiscent of childhood in the smell of a lawnmower, and freshly mown grass, albeit faintly tinged with mulched dog shit (enough to make you suspect, and therefore quietly confirm in your mind - but never out loud - that a turd, indeed, escaped the shovel and ended up splattered by the blade) - this is no time for nostalgia and childish attachments to such things. Mega-millions of litres (the rest of the world's measure, America, about 3 and 1/2 of those equal one of yours) of crude oil have pissed into the Gulf of Mexico yet again, and continue to do so on a daily basis, although we really haven't blinked an eye in most places. Oh we may complain and roil over the dinner table about "those a-holes at BP" but as long as we continue to blithely fill our tanks, and primarily worry about the price of gas, as opposed to the collective damage it causes; well I put it to you that we're not actually doing much at all.
So I thought of a goat-herd out here today. Imagine roving goat-herds going around the city, enjoining their bearded stock to quietly and pleasantly munch and fart their way through the long grass issues at Dolores, Duboce, and other neighbourhood parks. Imagine the delight of local kids getting to pet a goat and receive a sound butting upside the head for their troubles (it's a life lesson every child should have at least once). Imagine the useful, ahem, fertiliser applied directly to the resultant close-mown lawn (here's a hint: goat poo is safe for edible potagers. So it's also fine for your average water-wasting lawn). It was a fun little fantasy...until I realised it could certainly work. So that's my suggestion for our out going hunky god mayor. A little bit weird for you change-fearing city slickers perhaps. Too bad; change is upon us already. Why aren't more of us concerned with the business of making it one that's enjoyable, quiet, and environmentally useful?
(full disclosure: I have no car. I live in the city so I can get away with it. How? Walking (remember that?), bikes, Xootr, and Zipcar maybe twice a month. Oh, and I grew up with some goats. And one of my favourite ever films is Manon des sources - and it has goats.)
I have a friend who roasts his own coffee beans. It's amazing, the coffee is truly fabulous and no doubt rewarding for him. But I don't have the commitment or the roaster, so for me Illy coffee makes a pretty good second place. American coffee is typically over-roasted, burnt, and smoky. Illy is subtle and complex, and highly rewarding.
This is a great read from Charles Scicolone's blog if you're interested: http://ow.ly/21asq Sent from my iPhoneLike many, I'm really enjoying watching the best nations in football (as opposed to American Football) play their matches at the World Cup. It's the pinnacle of the sport, the top competition, with countries from all over the planet playing in a true world championship. Something about it always gets me going. And of course, I'm disappointed that my home country Australia isn't doing well. I'm writing this before Australia's 3rd (and probably final) group match today - there's something I want to "get off my chest" - pun intended.
Two things happened in recent games that got me thinking about the business of football. There's been quite the fuss about refereeing at the 2010 World Cup; I think it's an incredibly high-pressure job, FIFA lays out strict rules on areas they want ref's to crack down on during World Cup matches, and the rules of the game lay out some pretty clear situations too. What I did get to thinking was that football is simply a business, and like any business making a product, you can't mistreat your biggest most important customers, favour your smaller customers, and expect your revenue to continue growth as it did before.
Let's look at the Fabiano second goal from Brazil vs Cote D'Ivoire. Not only did Fabiano admit to a handball after the match there was actually 2 in the same play for that goal.
Handball 1:
He's fighting for the ball, in a tangle with an opposing player. I give him the benefit of the doubt on the first one.
Handball 2:
Hold on a second, moments later we also see this? In case you're thinking that one's also "accidental" consider a supplemental view...
Handball 2 supp:
Yep - that arm looks (to me, remember I'm not a football qualified official) to be unnaturally extended, both up, and behind a ball that might have otherwise passed his shoulder. Which handball do you think Fabiano is 'fessing up to?
Compare and contrast that with the handball that saw Australia's Harry Kewell sent off with a straight red card under the DOGSO rule:
Does Kewell look like he unnaturally extended his arm in the fraction of a second that this incredibly fast-moving ball came at him? I don't know, but it seemed like a very harsh red card. And I'm not even talking about the completely inexplicable disallowed goal for the USA (who move through the round anyway! :) ). If you want to dissect it further for yourself, watch the video.*
So besides my griping, what does all this mean? Football is a massive business, generating billions of $USD in revenue both for FIFA and in merchandise and licensing businesses around the game. And virtually none of that comes from Australia. In this older analysis it's clear from FIFA's financials that the biggest revenue source for them is, the World Cup, and the biggest markets are "Europe" followed by the "US" and then Latin America. This revenue stream includes marketing rights, licensing rights, venue rights, and sponsorships. FIFA is a non-profit and uses that money to fund clubs, players, and events, and promotion of football. It's huge in Europe and Latin America, the US loves the World Cup, it's played year-round in Latin America, and millions of people are dedicated to it. 28.8 billion (that's with a "b") viewers watched the World Cup in 2002, as an aggregate that's most of the world watching 5 matches! FIFA's sponsors and partners in 2010 have massive businesses in Europe, the US and Latin America.
Australia has about 22 million people and virtually no market when you look at relative $$ USD generated by football. To cater to Australia's needs and worry about Kewell's red card would be a business equivalent of insanity. But Brazil is a huge country that's getting richer, with a massive football market, a long-standing dedication to and passion for football, a great team, and several (5, I think) World Cup stars already on their jerseys. To compare, this would be like me ignoring the requests of my customers who pay me $1M+ USD for our software, in order to resolve the support needs of my customers with 10 people in their company. I like those 10 people and they often have an amazing company, I hope they use my software, but they just don't pay me enough to spend more than a relatively appropriate amount of time with them. I spend a lot of time making my $1M+ customers happy. *** Update after comments *** To be clear, I don't think anyone in football has instated a policy that sees leniency granted towards bigger countries or better teams. It's simply expected that they'll do well, at all levels. And expectations can be powerful things, particularly when there's a lot at stake.
So, I hope to see a great game later today where Australia redeems itself somewhat, even if we are leaving this tournament today. I hope my Brazilian friends don't mind me pointing out this kind of discrepancy; their players and team are still one of the absolute best, and a joy to watch. And I hope not to see another red card. But I won't be surprised if I do. Australia just isn't 'supposed' to do well at the World Cup. I'll still be cheering though... Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi!
*BTW, you won't find any of these as photos or videos on FIFA's site, which is a little odd as you normally find photo's of great players scoring, both to celebrate that play, and promote the game amongst the millions of fans. Such is the nature of a business, you don't spend time pointing out your own inadequacies.
Lately it seems that quite a number of my friends have been moving jobs and companies. I hear a lot about how interviews go as a result, which is interesting because I haven't been through one myself since 2002 (and that was basically "do you like working hard, and beer, and sports?" Go on, guess my answer). I also interview people myself (more on that at bottom). As a result, I've heard a lot about the recent rash of trends to attempt to figure out a candidate's analytical skills, or their general knowledge of a specific subject matter, or personality traits. I was thinking about this on my walk this morning and a couple of things occurred to me about 2 of these trends;
1. Logic and analytical gamesThere's a huge trend right now to asking questions about the minimum number of steps to find a ball of lower weight from a collection of 8 or 9. Or what happens if a boat is in a pond and a man in the boat throw rocks out of the boat, over the side...blah blah blah. It occurs to me that these are all great questions if you're hiring an analytical thinker, say a business analyst or a development architect. Can that business analyst figure out what happens if they create a new report that intersects sales trends with individual rep figures? (Hint; if the answer is yes, then you are shortly going to be further along the path of figuring out which of your reps need to move on right about now) That's a great question for an analyst. But what does it have to do with G&A staff? Here's what I think they illustrate; you're great at solving logic problems which might or might not be entirely relevant, OR, you were trained how to answer these questions at business school/your last 3 interviews. Are you really hiring on that basis? If so, great, then go for it. But what if you want a creative thinker? You might be worrying about floating the wrong boat on the wrong pond as it were, and I'd encourage you to think about screening differently. 2. Questions about how I would change your product (this is my personal favourite)
I've even seen this one myself of late (sure, we all browse around even if we're not looking, right? Right? You are keeping yourself informed aren't you?). If you're a product person and you fill out an application for a new role you might find yourself answering a question along the lines of "How would you change the/our product?" This really is a loaded question and poor screening technique, and here's why. I don't know your company, I don't know your product (I might know a bit, but certainly not a lot) and I don't know you. So how do I know what you're looking for? There's at least 4 categories (and likely more) that you could fit into and the lack of assumptions and other guidelines means I have no idea what you want to see in response, which might be any of the following;
a) you really do have a shitty product team and are actually looking for ideas. Some companies actually have no headcount at all. It sounds crappy and it is; but you might as well be aware that some companies are doing it.
b) you want to know if I care about your product even before coming onboard. Why does that matter? If I'm a great candidate I'll care as soon as I am onboard, but let's be clear; I'm approaching you to earn money, and that's why I'll care. Not kudos (unless maybe, you're Google and I'm fresh out of MIT).
c) You want to see that I know about Product Management, in which case the answer is that I wouldn't change your products at all. I'd start by listening a lot, and asking questions. Of you, of your customers, of your partners, of your industry analysts, of your fans, and so on.
d) your recruiters really don't know what they're doing. In which case you're just going to get random candidates from prior target companies you've communicated to those recruiters. I suggest this might not be the best way for you to get fresh perspectives and broaden your base of potential A-player candidates.
So which one of these 4 (and possibly more) are you then? Meaning, what sodding answer do you want to see? The answer I think you're going to get is that you'll screen out really good potential candidates on a weak basis. If you're flooded with candidates that might just be ok, but I suspect you can do better.
Well those are just some things I thought of. What am I looking for when I interview people? I'm looking for a personality fit, and some indication of a passion for getting things done. I should know about your background before then. As Jamie Zawinski said of success at Netscape - they had it because they found people that were happy with this statment, "you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products." and I want to find those kinds of people (regardless of company/industry/role). Read more about Jamie over at Joel Spolsky's blog.I'd love to hear your comments.
Seriously, do I really need to know how to make my personalized (just 'personal' wasn't good enough) news rack 2 to 3 times a day? It's bad enough that I see Guy's face, but I know it's the ghostwriters' work. Now I have to suffer this iterative loop of useless. Sorry Guy, but I enjoy the articles, with the exponentially greater exception of this one. Until Twitter lets me kill this one for you (say, by filters), we're over. Please don't take it personally.
*** Edit 9/20/2009. Oh dear, Mashable just got it too. Ghostwriters? Check. Annoyingly handsome face of someone else on every tweet? Check. Unfollow? Check. Yes, it's a personal gripe I have with promotion of an invidual over a team's work. But you know what? Anything useful from Mashable gets retweeted by several people I'm following, so here's where I'm at, for now. ***