Spent most of the day watching The Men Who Killed Kennedy on the History Channel. I’m speechless about the whole thing.

Here’s an interesting test to take - BeliefNet.com’s Belief-O-Matic

EMAZING.com Proudly Presents - Small Business Tip of the Day

Your Comfort Zone

I’ll bet that this is one of your favorite places. You
probably feel warm all over when you’re in your comfort
zone!

But doing the things that make you comfortable can result
in an unwillingness to embrace changes. Change is usually
necessary in an organization to continue growth and improve
market viability.

So, don’t get too comfortable. If you wait for discomfort
to move you along, the price you pay may be too severe.

something cool to do in cleveland this weekend, from StaticBeats.com

XON XOFF - October 12, 2002 : Cleveland, Ohio
Posted by StaticBeats on Friday, September 27 @ 11:46:22 PST

Headroom Digital and Experimedia Present:

XON XOFF- a night of sight and minimal tech-house and IDM sound explorations.

online flier: http://www.four09.org/xonxoff

SATURDAY : 10/12/02 : 9PM @ THE TWO DOLLAR BOOKSTORE : 6820 Euclid Ave :
Euclid and E.69th Streets : 216.881.1800 info-line : $7 : BYOB.

FEATURING LIVE:

STEWART WALKER - Persona : Force inc : Minus
GEOFF WHITE - Edit : Force inc : Cytrax
TWINE - Hefty : Bip-Hop : Komplott
THREE_M - 409

DJ’s

Nopan vs J_bible - Lektro-tech tagteam style.
Jugoe : Nitty-Gritty : HD - Smoked out dub and future blunts.
Boompsie - Lektro/Techno style.

Visuals by Phase4 - Bip-Hop : HD

From the Daily Guerilla Communique -

Marketing Daily:

No, no, no, no! Most prospects will say “no” four times before saying “yes.” Most salespeople stop asking after two “no’s.” Once the prospects say, “yes,” they feel a tinge of remorse, so offer support for their decision.

my friday five is abbreviated this week to the fridayone.

What are your favorite aromatherapeutic smells? Lavender is the best. Followed closely by clove.

NEOSA’s TechThursday last night at the Great Lakes Brewing Company. It was packed!

Got to talk with Shasta! and Jeff Stacklin of CrainTech. Jeff was telling me that he thinks things in the area are starting to pick up because there is more advertising in the papers, therefore he has to write more articles. An interesting metric. I’m going to call it the Stacklin Key Indicator. Shasta! had to go home early to watch ‘friends’. She told me what Chris was really doing in Silicon Valley, but I promised I wouldn’t repeat it.

I had a long conversation with Rich Spinner at Trusted Tech. It sounds like they’ve got a good project that’s going to pop.

It was great hanging out with Jason and Christine of ThunderTech (two of the many JCU alum there). They’ve also got a project about to go up - ClevelandIntern.com.

All in all TechThursday was a great evening out. I’d encourage you to be there the 3rd Thursday of every month!

Thomas Mulready - Secretary of the Cleveland Chapter of the Association of Internet Professionals - self described “Performance artist. Arts activist. E-commerce consultant. Gadfly” answers CrainTech’s 3 Questions:

What is the one thing Cleveland needs to shed if it’s going to attract more entrepreneurs and young knowledge workers?

If you know me, you know ideas don’t come to me one at a time. I think in bullet points. So here’s a few things that Cleveland needs to stop doing right away:

• We’ve got to stop wearing suits and ties to every damn meeting
• We’ve got to stop refusing to set foot on a city sidewalk (Playhouse Square’s garage walkway, Cleveland Clinic’s overhead bridges, suburban malls)
• We’ve got to stop staying home every night watching reruns of the Drew Carey show rather than checking out the town
• We’ve got to stop finding out what the boss thinks before stating an opinion identical to his
• We’ve got to stop creating little dynasties (political, economic social) rather than working together in collaboration
• We’ve got to stop ignoring Cleveland’s bounty of world class arts and culture right under its nose
• We’ve got to stop banishing our annual graduates from the 23 colleges and universities in the region, rather than offering them internships, mentorships and work study programs
• We’ve got to stop worrying about what everyone else thinks of Cleveland
• We’ve got to stop thinking that big league sports is the only culture worth supporting
• We’ve got to stop pretending that the problems of the City of Cleveland aren’t the problem of Solon, Strongsville, Bay Village and Beachwood.
• We’ve got to stop treating gays and lesbians like they come from another planet
• We’ve got to stop ignoring the lake and the river
• We’ve got to stop allowing the city center to become a ghost town
• We’ve got to stop being afraid to cross the river
• We’ve got to stop being afraid

What is the one thing Cleveland needs to add to become cool?

You’re already cool, Cleveland, you just need to convince yourself of that fact.

How would you bring together various forces and institutions in the community to elevate Cleveland’s cool quotient?

No one that’s actually cool goes around trying to elevate their own cool quotient.

One project I’m working on now brings together disparate institutions here in Cleveland. Its called “One Week in the Life of University Circle,” and it’s a collaboration between students at three universities. During one week in September, they will capture on digital media what goes on behind the scenes at hospitals, museums, businesses, transportation services, security departments, observatories, garbage bins, dance halls, and in public spaces. Then they will process the digital work, turn it into twenty-six separate projects, and present digital video, CD-ROMs, virtual reality caves, interactive DVDs, high tech performances, GPS devices, virtual museums, web sites, dances, films and sculptures during Holiday CircleFest in December.

Actually, the goal of this project is to demonstrate how partnerships between different institutions can be useful in creating something that no single entity could do, regardless of how wonderful they are. And to demonstrate the opportunities of having a world class digital media center in the region. Another goal is to demonstrate how digital media technology can be used to document, communicate, and virtually express the human condition and to show how cutting edge digital media can enlighten, educate, entertain and engage.

This is more than about “cool,” although it is undoubtedly one of the coolest projects Cleveland has been involved in recently. It’s about assuming and understanding that we are cool, and what we can do with that.

Another cool thing to do here in Cleveland - The New Center for Art & Technology, known as NewCAT, is opening its door this Friday. NewCAT is a nonprofit organization that will show off technology-inspired art created by local, national and international talent.

I like quotes. Here’ a list of people’s dying words

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great wrote a column for Fast Company Magazine in March 2000 -

“Built to Flip. An intriguing idea: No need to build a company, much less one with enduring value. Today, it’s enough to pull together a good story, to implement the rough draft of an idea, and — presto! — instant wealth. No need to bother with the time-honored method of most self-made millionaires: to create substantial value by working diligently over an extended period. In the built-to-flip world, the notion of investing persistent effort in order to build a great company seems, well, quaint, unnecessary — even stupid.”

He’s followed up that article with another where he talks about Enron, WorldCom, and Qwest. He comments:

“All of those stories were connected by one underlying theme: the built-to-flip ethos. I began to see that the dotcom IPO bubble was just one particular strain of a larger pattern, a reflection of a deeper trend in American corporate culture. We didn’t just have a built-to-flip IPO bubble; our entire business culture had become a version of built to flip. We became a built-to-flip economy, perhaps even a built-to-flip society.”

Here’s an article that attempts to answer the age old question “Is business intellegence an oxymoron”? - The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Business Universe

From eMarketer.com - According to the The Yankee Group’s “Third Quarter 2002 US Wireless Forecast,” there will be 23.4 million mobile data service subscribers in the US by the end of this year.

In a way, I feel assured. In a previous post, I talked about the philosophy of Ayn Rand being timely. This from Tom Peter’s blog:

“An interesting article in USA Today suggests Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged is helping more than a few corporate executives get through today’s anti-business climate. “Executive headhunter Jeffrey Christian says many of his clients are re-reading the 1,075-page novel to remind themselves that self-interest is not only the right thing to do from an economic standpoint but is moral, as well.”

The 2003 IT Budget Pinch: Belts Get Pulled Even Tighter - CIOs say they’ll be spending their precious dollars on finishing large projects such as ERP and CRM (customer relationship management) deployments already in the works. They’re also paying more attention to projects that provide quick improvement in existing systems and, in relatively short order, could have a large impact on the business. That includes videoconferencing and VOIP (voice-over-IP) deployments. And, conscious that some technologies require long-term investments, organizations continue to spend briskly on a few infrastructure items, including security and storage technologies and application integration middleware, in preparation for Web services and Web-based systems.

With IT Spending Studies, Estimates Run the Gamut - “Depending on which research company you ask, IT spending budgets for next year are everywhere from modestly positive to downright flat or even gloomy. As a result, it can be tricky for IT buyers to figure out what competitors are planning and whether they should budget conservatively for continued hard times or aggressively in preparation for an economic recovery.”

Got back from lunch with Jason from ThunderTech. TT is an excellent local web design firm with some nice applications that are customizable to your specific requirements. They’re also looking for talented people!

We had lunch at Slyman’s, a historic landmark in Cleveland. I had one of their legendary corned beef sandwiches. They’re everything I’ve heard.

Lawrence Lessig suggests a bounty on spammers - “Spam is a blight on our high-tech civilization. Lawrence Lessig has an idea: force spammers who don’t label their junk e-mail to pay $10,000 to the first recipient who finds them.”

from the emarketer daily newsletter - IT Execs Plan to Spend More

According to a September 2002 Aberdeen Group report, �2002 User Buying Intentions Update,� global senior information technology (IT) executives plan to increase their budgets by 3.7% over the next 12 months. Aberdeen surveyed members of its Technology Forecasting Consortium and notes that in February 2002, the same respondents planned to decrease their IT budgets by 1.4%. Aberdeen finds that popular categories of applications respondents plan on buying include force automation applications (48%) and query, reporting and analysis tools (45.2%). Popular technology infrastructure categories, in terms of buying plans, include systems management networks (72%) and security gateways and services (60%).

Tom Peters is one of my favorite authors, when it come to writing about business. He’s got a great article in Fast Company - Leadership Is Confusing As Hell. “You think the past five years were nuts? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! It’s only going to get weirder, tougher, and more turbulent. Which means that leadership will be more important than ever — and more confusing”.

tompeters! blogs here