Disqus - Latest Comments for jmcaddell

Re: Game Thread: Matz Takes Mound vs Diamondbacks, 7:10 PM

jmcaddell — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 20:16:17 -0000

I vividly remember a tweet from last season, when McNeil was in the minors. The tweet asserted, "yeah yeah, this guy's doing great, but it's only the minors etc etc." And Pete Alonso, also in the minors, responded. "Hey buddy, this guy can really hit, just you wait." So awesome to experience both these guys coming up and crushing it.

Re: Tenacity

jmcaddell — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 16:27:26 -0000

Years ago, I attended an art-appreciation lecture at the High Museum in Atlanta, and the lecturer talked about how to look at a work of art. He boiled the requirements to really get the most out of a creative work down to five principles:

- (1) Persistence
- (2) Imagination
- (3) Explanations backed up by (4) Evidence
- (5) Resourcefulness

Since that time, I've found that these five principles are applicable to many different endeavors, such as building a product. Leading an emerging company also seems to require these things, with Persistence (tenacity) at the top.

Re: The Ashley Madison Hack: A Glimpse of the Post Privacy Future

jmcaddell — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 13:52:46 -0000

agreed, and... I believe most/all people realize the public nature of those forums and use some amount of discretion (though, as you state, they can't obscure themselves completely). I am thinking about real diaries. Things the purpose of which is to store your thoughts and feelings for reflection, catharsis, etc. I believe that data has a very important role to play in our health and well being. We are woefully unaware of our own feelings and it harms us. I want to use technology to assist in using that data, but I do not want it to be public or highly vulnerable to theft. That's the kind of data I feel needs to be secret and we should be working on/applying technologies to make that so.

Re: The Ashley Madison Hack: A Glimpse of the Post Privacy Future

jmcaddell — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 07:54:29 -0000

Hi, Albert, I know this is not the theme of your post, but I do think there are some secrets worth protecting. For example, one's innermost thoughts and contemplations. I would not like a world in which my illformed feelings and considerations were posted on a billboard for anyone to read (certainly while I was alive). For that type of data, I would like it to remain the property of the creator, and not be subject to hacking, Ashley Madison style, or even sale by an application owner. It should also be portable. Would this not be a reasonable application fr the blockchain identity applications you have discussed?

Re: My One Wish For All Startup Employees

jmcaddell — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 07:27:07 -0000

Hi, Mark, thank you very much for this post. I have had two independent ventures that, while not outright failures, were less successful than I had hoped, or that they could have been. As I've reflected on those, the gap was aggressive attention getting. In other words, marketing. I had always felt that I was a good marketer. What I realize now, years later, is that I am very good at understanding what a market needs and building a product for that market, then adjusting based on feedback from that market. I had a complete blind spot with regards to marketing as far as getting attention from your potential users. The next time I go into the new company route, I will invest in a great marketer like our supermensch to help me.

Re: Prime Numbers and the Prime of Life

jmcaddell — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 07:22:44 -0000

Happy birthday, Fred. I turned 53 yesterday. I am enjoying my 50's quite a lot. Staying healthy (knock on wood) and growing wiser by the day!

Re: Fun Friday: Summer Reading List

jmcaddell — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 13:37:20 -0000

TC Boyle, "The Harder They Come"

Re: Empathy and Product Development

jmcaddell — Fri, 01 May 2015 12:02:14 -0000

I agree wholeheartedly with you, Albert. With 3-Minute Journal, I am one of the busiest users of the project and have been since day 1. Also, we engage very deeply with our several thousand users - there's a daily email (that people have told us they value receiving), and a feedback form that we point people to regularly where users share their delight, frustrations, and recommendations. Whenever we get a problem ticket, we take that opportunity to apologize, ask them what they think, and thank them for their trust in us. Here's a quote from someone who pointed out this week some responsive design issues with our site on iOS: "Hi John, it's pretty cool that you answered."

Now I'm aware that it's nontrivial to scale this kind of model, but ignorance creates its own set of issues.

Re: The Leader’s Guide

jmcaddell — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 18:45:46 -0000

Late to the conversation here, but the Kickstarter model is really necessary for smaller projects with high fixed costs. My project (thankfully successful) was to raise $2500 to edit/lay out/print my book. The vast majority of that was fixed costs. If I had raised, say $1500, then I would be on the hook for $1000 out of my pocket to cover costs. People would have gotten the book, but at a personal cost. And many Kickstarter projects could not have absorbed a shortfall like that.

Obviously scaling up to $135K for a campaign has different issues, but at the heart of Kickstarter is support for smaller projects. And for many of those, "keep what you raise" is not workable.

Re: Some Thoughts On Workplace Diversity

jmcaddell — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 09:20:18 -0000

I have two kids (boys) in middle school at the moment. Their type is not underrepresented in the tech community. Nevertheless, last year one of my son's teachers told him that math "maybe wasn't his thing." This was lunacy - math was his favorite subject in elementary school and he had high aptitude (as an engineering undergrad, I had some experience in assessing this). My wife proceeded to find an alternate math program for him, and now he is excelling again at his favorite subject.

But the lesson is this - if a kid who fits the profile of a STEM kid can be so easily misdiagnosed, it is not hard to understand how girls and underrepresented minorities can be steered wrong right off the bat.

When I thought about our situation, it occurred to me that one reason kids could be dissuaded from the STEM track early on is that the teachers are not STEM people themselves. Here is a rhetorical question - are there enough elementary school teachers who like and enjoy math to adequately share with all students, of any race and gender, the wonders and vitality of math and science?

Re: Fun Friday: Year End Music List

jmcaddell — Fri, 19 Dec 2014 15:53:22 -0000

Central PA FTW! Hope all is well, Charlie.

Re: Changing Society, Startups, (My)Self

jmcaddell — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:23:42 -0000

Hi, Albert,

I noticed that as I was approaching 50, I started to become more contemplative and began to acquire something like wisdom. This sounds like the journey you are on right now - to become a better version of yourself, to treat others with more kindness and compassion, especially those close to you - these are things I've seen many go through (now that my awareness is raised!). My thoughts on the subject have brought me to interesting projects such as the Mistake Bank and 3minutejournal.com, which I use every day to log my experiences to reflect on later.

Best of luck on your journey!

Re: Toward a Better Patent System

jmcaddell — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 08:02:00 -0000

Albert, I don't know if you've seen this paper. It supports many of the points you and your colleagues have made about the bad effects of patent trolls: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/...

Re: The Mistake Bank: Eagles reunion concert set right by a mistake

jmcaddell — Fri, 08 Aug 2014 09:00:20 -0000

Unfortunately, I wrote that a year and a half ago - so I've forgotten what song it was. My apologies!

Re: No Pain No Gain

jmcaddell — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 09:20:17 -0000

This seems to me to be a general rule (with of course some exceptions) in internet apps - there are truly mass applications that are easy and sort of shallow - and there are deeper apps that are going to be adopted by a smaller audience, which demand more of the user but deliver more return.

The trick, I guess, is to figure out which one you are, and adapt as much as possible without losing that essence. For shallower apps, that means adding some stuff without messing with the simplicity. For Soundcloud and the like, it means making it easier without losing the depth. By this thinking, Soundcloud could never be as large as Pandora, and that's fine.

Each type of app has its own churn profile. For shallower ones, people leave because they don't get enough out of it or get bored. For deeper ones, they are not worth (for those who leave) continuing to invest the effort.

Re: Miguel Herrera is a blossoming star at the World Cup.

jmcaddell — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 09:58:30 -0000

What comes out clearly from this piece is that Herrera is aware he doesn't know everything and is eager to learn from everyone... and at the same time he is confident in his decisions when he makes them. This is a rare and powerful combination for any manager.

Re: More Women Starting Businesses Isn’t Necessarily Good News

jmcaddell — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 10:48:51 -0000

Let me give you another plain-English reason why talented women start businesses instead of working the corporate angle. If they leave the workforce for any period of time, the market value of experience quickly descends to zero. When my wife sought to re-enter the workforce, she found this. Jobs that were accessible to her (an Ivy League grad, by the way) were admin assistant jobs that she was crazily overqualified for. Other positions she could do with her eyes closed, such as project management, sales engineering and so on, were reserved for people who were already doing these for other companies.

And, really. Who wants to deliver $100,000 of value for a $30,000 salary?

What made this situation all the more puzzling to me was that my wife and I worked together at the same company when we first met. And I would still count her as one of the 5 top contributors I've ever worked with.

Her job future appears to be starting her own business, as suboptimal as that may be for the economy. Whatever she earns, at least she will capture her own value.

Re: KCRW DJ Gary Calamar Remixes The Who — “Eminence Front” (C.A.G.E. Remix)

jmcaddell — Fri, 13 Jun 2014 09:06:49 -0000

I love it... unlike some remixes, it honors the original - keeping Townshend's great vocal and that little 2-note guitar lick front and center. At the same time, it makes it completely current. I can imagine hearing that at a club tonight right alongside new songs from 2014 and it fitting right in. Thanks for sharing it!

Re: How to Raise Your Hourly Rate (Politely)

jmcaddell — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 13:31:42 -0000

I've rarely had a problem - and when there has been push-back, it's opened up a productive conversation on value.

And I don't view the process to be at all coercive. My presumption is we are talking about work for hire, in which you would quote a price for work. The client has every right to refuse a price increase, negotiate, or go elsewhere. If a client wants complete price predictabilty, I would be happy to sign a long-term contract that locks in a rate.

Just sayin' - four 5% price increases over four years is much easier to sell to a client than one 20% increase after four years. And earns more too.

Re: Writing Software Applications In-House

jmcaddell — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 13:25:18 -0000

One benefit of the ability to build your own software applications is a closer fit between requirements and code. Off-the-shelf software has inevitable compromises in which all clients miss features they need and pay for many features they don't use. Being able to inexpensively develop exactly what it wants has a significant value to a business.

Re: How to Raise Your Hourly Rate (Politely)

jmcaddell — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 15:17:04 -0000

I believe there is a better approach. One thing consultants do is set expectations with clients that prices don't ever increase. They do that by letting years go by without increasing prices! Then, they give themselves what feels like a well-deserved 20% bump after 5 years, and the client freaks out (no matter what added value goes along with it).

My mother-in-law helped me solve the problem. She told me about when she owned rental properties; she figured out that she lost fewer tenants and gained more revenue by increasing prices a small amount (5% or so) each year, as opposed to holding rents for a few years and then raising prices (ironically, the same small increase after several years of no increase still caused an uproar). The small price increase became something people got used to, and revenue went up every year. The small increase wasn't enough to give them an incentive to hunt around for a better deal.

I've seen this play out in several different contexts. A small yearly increase doesn't need elaborate justification. Then, if you do add on a new piece with significant value, you can charge for that, too, with the kind of explanation presented above.

Re: #labrat: Are Daily Logbooks Worth the Work?

jmcaddell — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 11:02:06 -0000

Sasha, thanks for doing this great exercise! In my experience (disclosure, I work with an app called 3-Minute Journal), one week is not enough time to either see the benefits of logging or certainly to build a lifelong habit. A month is minimum, and the real benefit comes if you can keep it going for a quarter year. The quarterly reflection is where you can see real patterns - understand what you like/don't like about your work, how much progress you've made, typical mistakes. If you can do it for 90 days, you'll have enough material to motivate you to keep it up forever.

I'd also recommend you keep metadata (things you can count) in addition to textual and graphic content. That can add to your reflection. Things you can count include accomplishments, days of gratitude, different moods, etc.

One thing i've learned from your project - there certainly a lot of ways to do this, and they're all good!

regards, John

Re: The Art of the Done List: Harnessing the Power of Progress

jmcaddell — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 10:51:13 -0000

This logging of progress thing is turning into a trend. I like it! No matter what tool you use - iDoneThis, http://3minutejournal.com, or pen and paper, it's a very valuable habit to build. I've read a couple of research papers recently that talk about the direct benefit of reflection and gratitude to our performance, and my experience (doing this logging most every weekday for the past 3 years) supports these conclusions.

Re: The Heretic’s Guide to Getting More Done

jmcaddell — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:40:13 -0000

I agree with this assessment of "spend less time on key decisions." Kahneman would also take issue with trusting your gut on important decisions. I do think that over-analysis is bad, but rigorous, fair analysis combined with consideration of various points of view, topped off with sleeping on the final decision is the best approach I've seen.

Re: The Heretic’s Guide to Getting More Done

jmcaddell — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 14:57:45 -0000

May I suggest an additional resource that fits alongside all these other excellent suggestions - a daily journal/analytics tool that allows you to increase your awareness of your daily work and progress. By logging and monitoring your activities, you can quickly assess what kind of work increases your energy, how much you do accomplish (it's more than you think!), and when you're drifting off track. You can do this using an Excel spreadsheet, a journaling template or our tool: http://www.3minutejournal.com/