On our roof, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Taking pics for our website

"...You know what they don't realize?   

People are smart.  They're not stupid--especially smart people."

        - Fred Wilson

When I was at Fordham, the students wanted to see teacher ratings.  The teachers weren't a fan of making those public, because they didn't want it to become a popularity contest.  Several online efforts were tried, but they failed because it was tough to get one to become the central place for everyone to rank teachers.

Well, teachers, sorry, but you can't stop information from being free, because now the biggest student network has added teacher recommendations.  MySpace now has a place where students can rate their profs--something that a lot of schools either couldn't do or tried to squash.

I'll add my own ratings, but I was curious about some of my faves... here's how they fared:

Prof. Bob George, Finance... I took him like four or five times.  Fantastic teacher... tells it like it is and doesn't let people shovel the bs in class.

4.37 out of 5.0, even though he's not rated as being so easy, which he isn't for finance novices.

Comments:

Tests may be intimidating at first and you may not be satisfied with your first few grades, but if you work hard and study the book and his notes (do problems, etc) you'll get a good grade at the end. Take him, to the point and smart.

Great teacher...very sarcastic. Doesnt take attendance but he knows your name and will hold it against u if u don't show up. Doesn't really teach out of the book...he doesn't have to...as far as I know he could have written the whole thing in one night. V

The only option for finance majors. Untouchable when it comes to his subject matter (go figure - Wharton MBA, Chicago PhD). You will learn so much in his class and will see if you have the mind to handle true finance. The most difficult class at FU.

And of course:

DON'T TAKE HIM - You got it?

As for Dr. Darryl Tress, Philosophy:  4.23 out of 5

The intro course to Aristotle was ambitious reading, but Tress does a very good job of examining the basics, and certainly keeps in mind that the course is intro level. Extremely helpful--don't worry about the big words--she'll explain!

Dean Nancy McCarthy:   4.8 out of 5

If it were not for this woman I would never have graduated. If you ever need anything, she is the person to talk to. One of the best

Pier 96 (56th Street) Open for Free Kayaking, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Come on down...I'll be here all day. This is our new boathouse and we're running the same program we run at Pier 26.

In the last few months, I've seen so many instances of philosophies and strategies that we espouse for entreprenuers and businesses actually apply to my real life.  I think its one of the drivers of the whole "Web 2.0" phenomenon that what's happening how is that we're making the web match how we actually want to live, versus living on the web and changing our habits to do so the first time around.

Therefore, I'm going to reapply my recent list for life...  so be happy, healthy, live long and prosper...

1. Solve small problems.  Instead of trying to do everything at once, divide your issues into smaller ones and get them out of the way.  Keep your solutions simple.

2. Surround yourself with a "responsive and chatty audience"--people who challenge you, give you feedback, and tell it to you straight.

3.  Do something new and different.  Now.  Tomorrow.  Every day.

4.  Distribute.  Distribute.  Distribute.  Get out there and reach people with similar interests, pursue your interests.. i.e. get deeply intertwined in the world around you as opposed to waiting for the world to get deeply intertwined in you.

5.  "Don't hold users against their will."  Don't hold on to relationships with people who clearly aren't excited about being in your life.  All you can do is be the best person you can, if they still don't want in, let them go.

6.  Be mindnumbingly simple.  Don't over complicate your life.

7.  Get people hooked on free--give back to the community by volunteering your time, knowledge, etc and demonstrate your value not by asking for big compensation, but by not asking for any at all for a lot of the things you do.

8. Don't waste any money on marketing... i.e. Don't go tooting your own horn.  If people want to sing your praises, fine, but keep the singing of your own praises to a minimum.

9.  Don't overfund.  Money isn't everything.  Too much of it will also cloud your head.  Just do what you find interesting and don't worry about the money--live within your means.

10.  No one sucks.  Strive to find the unique beauty and interestingness in everyone you meet.  Everyone has something to teach you.

And if this doesn't work for you... try the Sunscreen Song.

Last Friday, I was pissed.   I waited around all day for a bedroom set from Levitz via Furniture.com that never arrived.

So I blogged about it.

But I didn't just blog about it.  I went to LinkedIn and found the guy at Levitz all the way up the chain of command that this delivery screwup led up to... the Senior Vice President of Logistics.  I called him out:

"You know who the buck stops with?  Ward Dingmann, SVP of Logistics at Levitz.  If you leave your image to the guy at the warehouse, forget your company.  So, maybe Ward will Google himself or someone who know him.  He's on LinkedIn, but I'm not connected to him.  So, if anyone knows Ward, let him know there's a pissed off blogger who is without a bedroom set."

Then... I got a comment, for someone at Levitz corporate:

"I read your blog about the problems encountered with your delivery. If you will provide me the delivery document number, your e-mail address, or the phone number you used when you placed the order, I will get the information to Ward so he can personally look into the situation."

Then, at 5:08PM on Tuesday, I hit the jackpot.  One business day later:

Mr. O’Donnell

I wanted to personally apologize for the problems with your recent delivery attempt.  Definitely appreciate any feedback (good or bad), and always attempt to improve our service. 

While it is certainly no excuse in your case, we are in over 3,000 homes nationwide each day and try to perform all deliveries timely and to the satisfaction of our customers.  I’m sorry that it did not happen in this case.

I can assure you we have already looked into the specifics of your delivery, and identified what might have happened.  I have asked our VP of East Coast Warehousing to call you (on Wednesday) once he has all of the facts around what happened, and more importantly, can make a commitment on our attempt to correct and re-deliver.

In the meantime, please to do hesitate to call me directly with any other concerns or comments.  Thanks again for your patience, and we hope you give us an opportunity do earn your trust again.

Sincerely,

Ward

And, like clockwork, Mr. Housein, head of East Coast Warehousing, called me up first thing Wednesday morning.  He was apologetic and didn't pull any punches...  saying they "screwed up" and explained to me in detail, exactly what happened.  Basically, the stuff got barcoded or scanned wrong, and the person who did it didn't doublecheck when it got mixed up and came up cancelled.  That's why there was no follow through, no notification... b/c someone just took a "cancelled" scan and accepted it without doublechecking and following through. 

They do 1200 orders a day out of that place.  It happens.  One slipped through and it happened to be mine.  So when we rescheduled for Saturday and I asked if he could get it to me earlier rather than later, he said, "We'll get it to you first...   we've got to do this one right."

PLUS, I have a later order pending that's supposed to come the first week of October... a couch.  He said that he was getting a shipment in on Friday, and if the couch came in, he'd put it on the truck and get me my couch (a month ahead of schedule) and the bedroom set at the same time.  He even gave me his cell number in case I needed to get in touch with him!

When I asked him about the time that I lost in waiting around and what they were going to do about that, he said he was going to talk with customer service and "do the right thing to make you happy."

So there it is.  After blogging about it on Friday, I get a response the next business day and I hear exactly what the plan to solve the problem is the day after.  I got a total admission of failure by high level people in the company and full transparency into what happened. 

So today was the rescheduled delivery.  8:30AM, the doorbell rings and the furniture is here--both my bedroom set and my couch.  The delivery guys were courtious and quick.  On top of that, after they left, I got a phonecall from the warehouse doublechecking to make sure my stuff arrived.

I have to say, I'm pretty wowed by this whole chain of events and the level of personal care taken by executive level people in the company to make good on a warehouse mixup.  Basically, the won a lost customer back, and hopefully even got a few new ones because of this post.  You should really check out their stuff at furniture.com.  It was reasonably priced and it really looks beautiful now that its here, one week late for the bedroom set and over three weeks early for the couch. In the end a good result made possible by some very dedicated Levitz employees.   Nice job Ward and Housein!

Admin Area, originally uploaded by fredwilson.

So, apparently, I don't work in reception... I work in the "Admin Area". That's how Fred described where I sit next to Kerri when he was taking pictures of the office to give to a friend's architect.

I wasn't at my desk because I went up to Greenwich, CT, to visit with my old co-workers at GM. They're now called Performance Equity Management.

Link: New York Daily News - City News - Man sues landlords for $13M.

An 87-year-old upper East Side man who says he was callously tossed out of his rent-controlled apartment filed a $13 million lawsuit against his landlords yesterday.

Link: New York Daily News - Home - More schools than ever for 1.1M students.

Some 74 new schools are making their debut, swelling the ranks of public schools to a record 1,408 to house more than 1.1 million students.

I'm so fascinated by who reads this, especially because of the great people I've met through this blog so far.  That's why I did a demographic survey last week.  I got 95+ respondents, and given my estimate of 2000 readers (roughly 4x the people that show up on Feedburner), that's statistically significant.  Thanks to Pollhost.com for their cool survey service.  It was really easy to setup.

So here are the results:

Selection   Votes Male 76% 74 Female 24% 23 97 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

Selection   Votes Under 25 17% 16 26-30 33% 32 31-35 21% 20 36-40 8% 8 41-45 10% 10 46-50 7% 7 Over 50 3% 3 96 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

Selection   Votes NYC Metro Area 20% 19 Boston/New England 13% 12 Southeast 8% 7 Midwest 10% 9 Silicon Valley area 2% 2 Other West Coast 15% 14 Europe 12% 11 Asia 1% 1 Somewhere else 19% 18 93 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

What do you do?

Selection   Votes Entreprenuer 32% 32 Investor 7% 7 Programmer 15% 15 Other IT 16% 16 Non-IT 29% 29 99 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

First, I was a bit surprised by the gender gap, not because it was so wide, but because I figured it was even higher.  Blogging, especially vc/tech blogging, is so male-dominated, that I was glad to see 24% female readership.  However, I have a feeling that most of that female readership is more of my friend base than anything else.  I don't know very many female entrepreneurs and technologists and I don't think I've had any of them comment on my blog or contact me through it. 

As for the age spread, this I wasn't surprised by.  I've had this theory that I get a good chunk of the younger end of Fred's more normally distributed age spectrum, mostly because people can more relate to me being a guy on the bottom end of the ladder.   

Location turned out to be really screwy.  I can't believe that only 2% of my readership is Silicon Valley based.   Perhaps it is, in fact, true that more of the Web 2.0/web services crowd is more diversified geographically because they're not as tied to hardcore tech centers.  Perhaps it is, in fact, true that more of the Web 2.0/web services crowd is more diversified geographically because they're not as tied to hardcore tech centers.   The other screwy thing is the 19% somewhere else crowd. Is that Canada?   South America? Where are those people?

No surprises in the job area...and in fact its what I want..  While I do like hearing from other investors, I'd much rather be chatting with the creators, operators, etc. than have this blog be a bunch of VCs chatting with themselves.

Link: VentureBlog: Pandora and Persistence.

So many things to blog about.  So many people to get back to.  Lots of connecting to do...

I've been thinking a lot about Pandora lately.  A few months ago, Toby from MusicMobs came to meet with us and we talked about whether or not people could make businesses out of recommendations when content was widely available and approaching incremental costs near zero.  When you get the "music dialtone", finding new music (new to you) becomes the challenge.

Pandora was free for a while and now they're going to start charging $36 a year...  so, are recommendations worth $4 a month to me.  Maybe, but for how long?  Admittedly, I did find some groups from my Pandora station Rammstein Me, including Icon of Coil, which I LOVE and listened to on my bike ride into work today.  (Great sound, kind of cruddly lyrics, but I'm not a big lyrics guy).  But, I don't want to just listen to the stream on my computer...  I want to take it around with me.  That's why I have XM.  I can take the console out of my stereo and plug it into my car when I get it.  Mobility is worth something to me.

Plus, recommendations without a built out download service remind me a little bit of a social network for social network's sake.  If Pandora would power iTunes or Rhapsody, that would be great, but to just listen... I dunno...  my own streaming internet radio station really isn't worth $4 a month to me...  not if you compare the value I get out of the same price for Flickr.

I'm really curious to see if they can built a sustainable service out of this.  I'm really surprised they couldn't make enough from affiliate sales of the tracks or at least didn't try to.

Wolfgang...

...Amadeus...

...Mozart.

I don't know which is more brilliant, the title charactor or the movie.  (Well, I know the answer to that, but still, the movie is pretty damned good.)  F. Murray Abraham narrates the movie as Salieri and we obviously get his perspective of the story, otherwise we'd probably see someone a little less childish than Tom "Pinto" Hulce playing Mozart. 

Most of the composers of the past are pretty dead to us as charactors.  What Amadeus did was to bring Mozart alive in our pop culture minds...  to tell his struggling artist & tortured soul story.  It put a fresh face and a story (and a laugh) on a body of music centuries old.  Its really hard to imagine that all that music tying dozens and dozens of instruments together into melodies even little kids know all came from one man.  How much of the story is true to life?  Who knows...  but even a fictional retelling loosely based on fact gets us closer to his life than stale old engravings on a CD cover. 

I wonder what Mozart would listen to today.  I wonder what his Pandora radio station would sound like.

Photo 506, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

I'm finishing up painting the bedroom. This is my most ambitious decorating move to date.... the blue in the bedroom. I'm much more of a grey, black, wood, kind of guy... color isn't my forte. But, I took a risk, and I think it paid off.

Photo 508, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

This was just stuck on the bench by the Downtown Boathouse yesterday.

Once again, Sal Pugsley proven right...

Love is it.

The Red Cross has put up a banner page that links back to places for you to give.  Its textbook sell side advertising.  They put up the ads and people just come and grab them.  Smart idea!  So, in addition to donating a few bucks, if you can donate some pixels to spread the word on where to give, that would greatly be appreciated.

I voted for George Bush...  not the first time, but the second.  I really didn't see much to John Kerry and didn't think I knew enough information as everyone else thought they knew to look back at Iraq and say it was a bad decision.  Actually, I still don't think it was a bad decision--its just obvious that there was no execution.

And now, again, our management team is proving they can't execute.

I don't think George Bush is evil.  I don't think he's a religious fanatic...   but right now, at this very moment, he has failed millions of Americans in the South.

Jason wrote a great post about what it would be like if Rudy was President now and I feel exactly the same way.  After September 11th, Rudy Giuliani's actions made him the Mayor of America.  He stood in the trenches, walked the streets, pitched in and got the job done.  He went to most of the firefighter and funerals... often times several a day.

We don't have that kind of leader right now... its obvious to me.

In fact, its not just Bush.  Its the whole damn government.  Check out Sen. Mary Landrieu getting raked over the coals by Anderson Cooper.  She was thanking the President who "will be here tomorrow 'we think'".  And she's a DEMOCRAT!!  What the hell was she thanking him for?

Frankly, I think all these people would have been safer if we bused them to Bagdhad.   At least there are some National Guardspeople over there from what I hear.

There are two tragedies here.  One is Katrina.  The other is our government leaders.  We knew this was coming...  a flood in New Orleans was one of FEMA's top three concerns just a couple of years ago.  And yet, its taken days for supplies to arrive, and armed looters run the streets.  And yet, no one wants to take responsibility.

Is it because they're poor and black?  I don't know.  I'd hate to think that.  I think its more the case that our government became obsessed with terrorism and forgot about anything else.  19 assholes hijack some planes in a really hack operation when you think about it... boxcutters... jeez...  and kill off three thousand people.  If that justifies every man, woman, and child fearing for their lives for "what Osama will do next" and $190+ billion to fight terrorism then what should a destroyed city (yes, New Orleans has been destroyed, let's not kid ourselves), potentally 10,000 dead, and millions homeless justify?

How about getting the bodies off the streets?   How about fixing a levee or two?   A few buckets of food airdropped from a plane wouldn't hurt either.  Days after the tsunami, I remember seeing footage of airdropped food...  how come I haven't seen it here?

What the fuck are we doing?

I think everyone in New Orleans should get a tax refund.   Every dollar they've given the government for the last ten years should go back to them, because clearly we haven't spent dime one for their benefit. 

I backed you George...   gave you the benefit of the doubt for going into Iraq... didn't quite like what you were doing with the place... but this...   this is awful.  Its unforgivable. 

For more good links on this top, check out everything tagged both Bush and Katrina on del.icio.us.

Link: Nerdvana: A Better Tool For Communication (I Can Dream, Can't I?): Corante > Get Real >.

Stowe (Who is hilarious to watch tear apart panels at conferences, btw...) is trying to tackle an issue that I've been discussing with Keshava.  The current modes of computer communication, particularly with people that you know, suck.  They don't tie identities together.  He's totally on point that having a meeting with someone, an IM convo and an e-mail exchange with the same person should all sit in the same place or at least be viewable from the same place.

But there's one application/communication form he missed... its collaboration around a subject and wiki's or wiki-like things.  My world isn't just divided up by people, its divided by people+subject.  For example, Fred, Brad, and I have continual reply alls about firm management.  Are we closed today?  Aren't we?  Should we try a cheaper conferenceline service, etc?   In a people focused app, these conversations would be tied together with conversations about one of our portfolio companies.  That makes no sense, and what's more, what you want to do with those conversations differs greatly depending on the subject matter.  A conversation about the a/c that hardly works in our office doesn't need to be tagged, indexed, collaborated on, etc...    It just needs to be a priority for all of like 10 minutes and then hopefully we come to a quick conclusion on it and then its done.

But what about a conversation around Indeed?  What if Brad writes something really insightful over e-mail?  Perhaps we want to revisit that again, or even build on it.  Fred can't build on top of Brad's e-mail... he can copy and paste and resend it, but that's just kind of a silly, cludgey way to do it.  Plus, what if we want other people in on it?  Perhaps Brad's interesting comment is best built upon by Paul and Rony--the guys at Indeed, or John Battelle.. all of whom were never part of the original e-mail.

Well, we could go and build a wiki and then ask everyone to collaborate on it, but that's not very lightweight.  Plus, maybe we don't want the whole world in on it.  Maybe its just for our little small group.  Its so much easier to reply to an e-mail thread, and some e-mail threads can be very interesting and insightful reads.  The problem is permissions.  Paul and Rony can't read our e-mails...  and even if we cc'd them, an e-mail to you kind of implies that we want you to write something and you're rude if you don't.  No, what we want is to give people permission to get into our small group discussions.

Ok, so we could probably cc the Indeed guys, b/c we know them well enough that it wouldn't be too random, but what about loose connections.

For me, its more about random new people who are loosely connected by subject interest, like Greg.

Whereas Stowe seems to have met Greg and even had dinner with him, according to his mockups, Greg and I have only exchanged IMs and read each other's blogs.  So, for me to start randomly cc'ing him on my identity related e-mail would be sort of weird.  But what if there was a place that Greg could connect to that he could post all of his identity related thoughts to, and see the identity related thoughts of others who wish to include him in a small group.  I'd give him permission to contribute to my little small group thoughts on that.

Its kind of like wikis remixed the way del.icio.us remixes content.  On del.icio.us, you can find the most popular stuff related to blindness, and you don't really care that much about where it comes from, whether its the AFB or a gaming magazine.  Tags take all the content from everywhere, organize them by subject, and make it easy for people to consume subjects, often in a socially connected way. 

But what about the two-way web for collaboration?  How do you colaborate and communicate in a remixed way?  Blogs allow you to contribute to a group of interested parties, but they don't really allow you to collaborate--to build a knowledge base together.  Complaints about comments not being on the same level as posts are the tip of that iceberg.  What's bringing all the related blog posts together and letting people build on top of that in a social way?

Some attempts are being made to do this with
 

This is the Greenday I grew up on... "Sometimes I give myself the creeps..."

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Photo 486, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Ok, so he got clobbered last night... it was still nice to be at Shea late in August with the Muttsies still in contention for a wildcard spot. Plus, Pastore and I had great seats. Castro's shot was a bomb.... Mike who?

I'm just curious about who is reading.  If you wouldn't mind, please take 10 seconds to answer the polls on the left column on my blog.  You need to click vote after each selection, and don't forget to click "back" in the results page so you can answer the next question.  The poll will be up for a week.  Thanks for your time.  I'm curious about the results.