I've been considering the "yoga" post from the other day.  I think I learn towards two paths in terms of what kind of "yoga" I reflect in my day to day life: jnana yoga, or the yoga of knowledge, and karma yoga, the yoga of selfless action.  I suppose this isn't surprising, really, given my Jesuit education.  Pursuit of knowledge and being a person for others are central themes in Jesuit education, and obviously, that's been a major influence on me.  While I may not be building huts for the poor in Botswana, I definately feel closer to my truest self when I help other people.  I really do live to see others succeed, and to help be a part of that success.  Sure, I take great pride in that, but that's not why I do it.  I like seeing other people learn to believe in themselves and its incredibly rewarding for me to help create a rewarding experience for others.  I'll never forget the Emmaus retreat that I led...   during the Mass afterwards, people were coming up one after another talking about how emotionally meaningful it was to them.  Being a part of that, I felt like I was in the right place doing the right thing... but more so than being the "right" thing.. it was MY right thing... what was right for me to be doing.  Thinks like that make me feel closer to doing what I was intended to be doing.

There's also a part of me that is thinking...  ALWAYS thinking and mentally discovering things about the world around me.  When the little mouse on the wheel gets going, I get excited... I feel focused and strong.  When I brainstorm and ponder, I feel full of life--but its not full of extrasensory stimulation, but full of a driving life force from the inside.  That is how I know that knowledge also brings me closer to my truest self.  Too often, people confuse a lot of sound and fury from outside of themselves with a full life experience...  music doesn't inspire the force of life, nor alcohol or drugs or sex or sports...   when I am truthful to myself, I recognize that it comes from inside me, perhaps sparked by these outside events, but definately not eminating from them. 

Breakfast of Champions, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

I always have a Met-Rx shake in the morning.

I'm waiting to meet up with a friend to go see the Moby thing at the Planetarium...   I got hungry, so I tried to find something somewhat healthy.

Me...and my....

**Please read this entire post, think about it, and do something about it.  Either a) seriously consider what I have to say or b) please pass this on to all of the Fordham alumni you know.**

I got this note last week...

"Fordham University would like to thank the 1,166 young alumni (classes of
1995-2004) who have already made a gift this year.  We still need another
834 gifts to reach our young alumni goals of 2,000 donors and 17%
participation.

Every gift moves us closer to achieving our goals."

Here's my question:  What does 2,000 donors mean to me?  Answer: Nothing.

That's Fordham's reason for me to donate, but its not my reason.  No one is going to give back to Fordham so that we can reach some psychologically satisfying, evenly divisible number.  Why 2,000?  Why not 2,106?  Either way, it sucks that our goals are so low. 

What sucks even more is that my class, the Class of 2001, is one of the worst giving classes.  As of today, only 9.81% of my class donates back to the school.  The best class, the Class of 1947, gives at a 29.38% clip.  Overall, the whole school is sitting at 15.19%. 

So, I'm throwing down the gauntlet.  Why can't my class be the top class?  For once, why doesn't Fordham pick a ridiculous goal and go after it.  So I did the math.  To get up to a 30%, our class needs 276 more givers by June 30th.   That's about 6 people a day.  So, screw 9%.  If you read this post, especially if you're in the Class of 2001, and you decide to give back, please comment at the bottom.  How cool would it be to actually get 276 people commenting and changing their mind about making a financial contribution?

How?  Well, you just can't spam people with "Go Fordham!" e-mails and expect people to open their wallets.  Nor does the "reaching 2,000 givers" thing really work either.  People need to want to give back.  They can't be convinced to.  If you didn't enjoy your Fordham experience and don't believe in the school, there's nothing anyone can say or do to make you want to give.  But, I know that at least 30% of the people I went to school with had a really positive experience (obviously more than 30%) so, somewhere there's a disconnect.  So, to help promote the idea of giving back, I'm going to put up a few of my own reasons why to help people rethink the whole giving thing.

1. Other people gave to me so that I could attend Fordham.   My parents were semi-retired when I graduated high school.  We weren't sure what we were going to be able to afford, and had I not gotten the scholarship and financial aid I got from Fordham, I would have gone to a state school.  Nothing against state schools, but the ONLY reason I went to Fordham was because other people that came before me donated enough to provide scholarship and financial aid funds.  Most of the people I knew at Fordham got financial aid--enough that it enabled them to go to Fordham to begin with.  This is my number one reason for giving back.  I am attempting, and I hope I get there, to try and give half of the money I got from Fordham back over the next 20 years.  It just seems only fair to me, because that money came from people who sacrificed to give before me.  Do the math for yourself.  Compare that with a $25 or even a $50 donation.

2.  Don't complain if you don't vote.  I'll say it here: If you just sit around and complain that you don't like something about the school, and you don't try to help the school with ideas and support, you're not helping.  If you decide to give back... Don't give online.  Don't send a check.  Send a handwritten note directly to Fr. McShane with your check enclosed and ramble off a list of things you'd like him to do with your money and everyone else's money.  Tell him if you don't see positive things coming from the school on the things that are important to you, you'll disappear into the woodwork again.  A threat?  Sure.  But why not?  Its your hard earned money.  The school should listen to you and by sending a donation, you remind them that you're out there and that you'll support the school when you see it going in a positive direction.  My friend Brian sent them a check when he read about all the expansion plans at Lincoln Center to show his support.

3. Fordham's ranking sucks because people don't give back.  You've heard it all before, but its really true.  National rankings for colleges weigh the percent of alumni that support the school very heavily.  With a small investment every year, and a little more convincing your friends to do the same, you can actually make your degree worth more by bumping up that number.   Don't let all these special giving levels deter you.  ANY giving amount is enough.  The people who want to give more will do that, but the really valuable giving means raising that number across the board.  Think about it.  Two years from now, if that giving number crosses 25%, its going to be all over the news and it will generate a lot of positive publicity for the school.... and for you and your degree.

4. Because it keeps you interested, like going to the gym because you're paying for it.  Silly reason?  Maybe not.  I guarantee you that if you send Fordham a check every year, you're going to be happier when their incoming SATs go up, and more pissed when things go wrong.  It just like making the decision to get your ass out of bed early each morning to go to the gym, if only because you don't want to waste the money you already paid on it.  Financially contributing keeps you interested and you know what?  You should be interested, active and involved.  You have a lasting relationship with your school because the name of your degree will stay with you for the rest of your life.  You should foster that relationship by staying in the loop on what's going on, offering your feedback, and keeping Fordham in mind when you hire people, recommend schools, etc.

5. And finally...  because you'll blow that $25 on something stupid anyway.  Why not contribute to something bigger than yourself?  What do you spend your most wasted $25 on all year?  You know what $25 is?  Its, once every othera month, buying a girl a drink who is clearly not interested in you.  Its taking, every other month, one wasteful cab-ride that you really should have walked, but you're always in a damned rush.  Walk somewhere for once.  Watch the people's faces as they walk by.  Look up at the buildings.  Think about where your life is going.  That's more Jesuit than a cab ride.  What is $25?  For me, its 25 ill-conceived Fantasy Baseball player pickups.  I will not pickup Mark Grudzielanek.  I will hold on to Kevin Brown if it kills me.  $25 is 5 coffee mocha latte thingys at Starbucks.  Just get a green tea.  Its healthy.  It has anti-oxidents.  Its cheaper.  Save yourself.  Support Fordham.  Two birds.  One stone.  Thanks for your time.

Despite the Mets' losing two of three to the Yanks, I've got baseball on the brain thanks to the Subway Series.  In fact, the way the Mutts tossed the ball around the infield over the weekend, there was only one movie I could possibly pick today to add to my list.

Major League.

Major League is, by far, the most quotable baseball movie out there, and as soon as it came out, whether I was playing baseball or wiffle ball, that's all we did growing up--quote the movie.  It seems like every team has one of the characters on this team.  The bad-kneed veteran catcher.  The old junkballer.  The huge guy who can't hit a breaking ball. 
So maybe Major League didn't win or get nominated for an Oscar.  However, its definitely in the same park as my previous movies.  (Yellowstone.)  When you play baseball, there isn't a moment in the game that can't be summed up perfectly by this comedy classic. 

Booted groundball?

"Come on, Dorn.  Get in front of the damn ball.  Don't give me this OLE bullshit!"

Team not hitting?

"Harry Doyle: That's all?  One goddamn hit.  Assistant: You can't say goddamn on the air. Harry Doyle: Ahh, don't worry, nobody is listening anyway."

Pitcher not going after the hitters?

"Forget the curveball, Ricky.  Give 'em the heater!"

And of course, uncorking one six feet to the left of the plate?

"Juuuust a bit outside."

Link: WSJ.com - America Online Launches AOL 9.0 Security Edition.

First of all, I'm at the Heritage Partners annual meeting, wirelessly connected and using Database 2.0 live, our new monitoring software that Jeff the Intern and I created.  This is truly the bleeding edge of the GM PMI group's technology usage.  There is one bizzare bug that I'm sure Jeff will fix...  for some reason you can't type in apostrophes in any of the comments.  I use a lot of contractions, so its an issue. 

Anyway, I was reading this article on AOL and also MSN's agreement to continue using Yahoo for ad placement.  Yahoo, MSN, and Google are quickly dividing up the net, and its just amazing to me how far AOL has fallen and how many missteps they've made along the way.  They realy need to just blow the whole thing up and start all over again...   pitching this clunky and glitchy software for a fee that doesn't justify its value.  Basically, they failed to call the future.  They failed to catch the broadband wave, and worse, they failed to understand how their users used the net.  Subscribers are fleeing in large numbers and AOLs response is to keep throwing new versions of its software at them.  Now security is the big selling point...   I guess when your software slows end users' computers and crashes all the time, its hard to keep pushing the "making the web easier" pitch. 

One big misstep was failing to capitalize on their stickiest asset...  AOL IM.  AOL still has the most widely used instant messenger by far, but a lot of good its doing them as people drop the service and switch screenames for a free one. 

Guarantee you, though...   my dad will be the last paying dialup customer.

This just speaks for itself.  Classic male. 

"You wanna know what we're thinking?  I'll tell you what we're thinking...   Nothing.  We're not thinking anything.  We're just walkin' around, lookin' around.  Our minds are a complete blank."  -Seinfeld

This is photographic proof that if I went colorblind one day, dressing would not be a problem.  Think I have enough grey t-shirts?  What's that blue one doing in there?  That doesn't belong there.

NOTE:  DOESN'T WORK YET...   DAMN!

For those of you that can bear my awful layout, you might have noticed a new little gray box on the left.  That's a discussion group completely seperate from the posts on my blog.  Anyone can participate, and anything they write will get autoposted to my sidebar.

Here's the discussion group concept:

We've been talking around a lot of things about Web 2.0, but I'd like to get down to the nuts and bolts.  What's missing in the user experience?  Who has it right?  What is "right"?  Lots of people have been talking theory (including us at USV!) and that is important, too, but this group is about where the rubber meets the road.  Who's in?  Add your name and reply.

Here's my opening post:

"First there was mashing.  Lately, there's been bashing.  While a lot of people believe in the promise of Web 2.0 (even if they can't define what it is) there's definitely been a clamoring for more substance and less theory.  This open discussion, being hosted on the side column of my blog is meant to focus on real applications of Web 2.0 theories, including specific companies, real suggestions for improvements, new ideas for applications that would  work, and how to create a differentiated user experience that drives adoption. 

The first topic is whether or not we flipped the wrong model--whether or not user-centric business models have actually changed the value to the end user and their experience.  Has "Web 2.0" actually changed the value proposition of the web or have we spend too much time building businesses differently and not enough time rethinking the way people actually want/need to use the web?  What specific areas have truly improved and what's lacking?"

If there's anyone preferably in Northern NJ (but NYC possible) who listens to podcasts that would be willing to sit for an interview for a couple of hours, please contact Bill Bartlett at: billb@subassoc.com

Thank you all for my geeky 15 minutes of fame.   Please excuse me if I fawn over this whole thing for a moment.

Fred started me off by sending me some link love, but then it was obvious that much more of the traffic was coming from del.icio.us...  from people who were clicking on both the popular list and the "web 2.0" tag.  Here are the results from my (continuing??) stay near the top end of the del.icio.us popular list from my last top ten post:

I normally get about 500-700 pageviews a day.  In the last 24 hours, I've had 6500.

I received 100 new RSS subscribers.  (Now I have the pressure of holding on to all of you folks.)

I normally don't get much in the way of comments and trackbacks.  That post got 15 and 8 respectively.

MOST importantly, it led to discussions with three interesting  people who share my interests and have great blogs of their own.  I only talked to them for a little bit, but I got great insight into what they think because they all blog.  I IMed with Brian, Keshava and Greg.  Brian and Greg are new and had both linked to my post and Keshava dropped me a comment I think.  I'd e-mailed Keshava before a few times, but we'd never IMed before and it was a good excuse for us to try Google Talk.  We're going to do the Shake Shack next week (hmm...  probably should invite Greg, too...   Brian's a bit far for such a trip, regardless of how good the shakes are). 

Blogs and social tags connect people in a way that wasn't being done just a couple of years ago. 

Imagine the analog:

Let's say there are no blogs or tags.  Just conferences.

1) First off, no one would have invited me to speak anywhere.  So, blogs enable me to invent my own "This is going to be BIG" conference.

2) Even if someone did, after I spoke, my connection with the crowd would have been limited.  There wouldn't have been time for the 15 comments.  Perhaps afterwards, I could subject myself to the post panel crush, but I'll bet most of those people would have been more interested in showing us deals than just having a discussion.  Deals are great, of course, intellectual exchanges are nice, too.

3) Statistically, I probably never would have circulated around the room to these three guys, and besides that, even if I had, without the context of their blogs, links to what they were working on, etc. our conversations would have probably went more like, "Yeah... so... um... good conference, huh?   Did you try the cookies?  The rainbow ones are sweet." 

4) Follow up.  How many business cards to you get/give at a conference.  How many times do these lead to great connections?  Its kind of forced b/c then you have to talk on the phone, or meet, and maybe you don't really have anything to meet about, but you're searching for a connection somehow.  I'd rather passively pay attention to someone's blog, then start a conversation if I see our interests align.

So, that post was invaluable from the perspective that now I have a better connection to people around me that are thinking about the same stuff.  The traffic was nice, but people are better.

Link: Newsday.com: A new Met TV deal.

Elliot Spitzer just won my vote for Governor in 2006, provided he doesn't do anything really stupid between now and then.  Getting the Mets back on TV... that's all it took.  I'm an easy vote.

Is it me, or are there a few people talking about video lately?

And if that's not an enough of an understatement, New York City has a small vermin problem.

Its fascinating to what how many people are trying to play this every which way.

Here's the video technology list of lists... a random collection of small bits loosely joined that I'm putting out there as fodder for discussion:

The goal in figuring out where video is going next is (depending on who you are):

1. To make a lot of money by investing.
2. To not lose a lot of money you've yet to invest.
3. To make more money than you're already making.
4. To not shoot your current business in the face.
5. To figure out what consumers want and make them happy.

The players are/want to be (jeez, this is a big list):

1. Consumers
2. Cable operators
3. Television stations
4. TV producers/publishers
5. Movie producers/publishers
6. Content archive owners
7. Advertisers
8. GYMAAA (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Amazon, Apple)
9. Flickr for video startups
10. These guys?
11. Box and chip companies (Phillips, Intel, etc.)
12. Tivo
13. Netflix, Blockbusters
14. Bittorrent
15. MySpace, Facebook (My friends are watching...)
16. Big Telecom
17. Handset manufacturers
18. Homebuilders
19. Akimbo, Brightcove, etc.

Top ten conflicts/bottlenecks that will cause the consumer to get the short end of the stick:

1. DRM
2. Video on demand cannibalizes recent release DVD sales
3. Royalty streams for actors not setup for content ubiquity (Someone told me this, not sure if its true)
4. Home media server setup expensive and complicated for video
5. The $1.99 price point
6. No way in hell all three four (iPod) screens are going to cooperate enough so that, if I buy episodes of the A-Team once, I'm going to be able to watch them on my laptop, Video IPod, TV, and my cellphone. 
7. No universal video format (can we just lock everyone in a room and fix this)
8. Watching DVDs in your pimped up SUV likely to cause accidents
9. Add your addition here.
10. Ok, so I only came up with 7... so shoot me.

What consumers want:

1. Everything
2. Anywhere
3. Cheaper than we pay for it now, and growing cheaper  everyday, because that's supposedly the reason why we invented technology in the first place.
4. Search, Discovery, Recommendation (because, the new adage is, "You can't have everything... how would you find it.")

So, if anyone wants to piece these things together coherently in an essay or maybe in a little chart or something, feel free.  I haven't come up with a unified theory yet.

Link: TRENDWATCHING.COM Newsletter | Global Consumer and Marketing Trends | April 2005.

Thanks to Liesbeth den Toom for pointing me in the direction of the permalink for Trendwatching.  They've got an interesting site up and this month's newsletter highlighted "Tryvertising".  The idea:  "Give me free stuff and if I like it, I'll keep using it."  Sure, we've gotten little packets of shampoo in the mail, but did you know that there are some hotels that will let you drive around in a Maybach for free?  I hope this catches on, because I'm all about free stuff.  That's how I got hooked on Fresh Direct.  They had this free $50 of groceries offer and I'm all about food, so it was a can't miss.  Now, I don't think I've bought groceries in a regular supermarket more than twice.  The other day, I ordered mangos.  No mangos in Gristides... at least nothing that looked like a mango anyway.  We used to do the same thing at GM when people tried to sell us data services or research.  The message:  Get us hooked!  Not enough companies are doing that.

I first heard Mitch Hedberg on the XM Radio comedy station.  I think the first think I heard him say was that he wanted to be a race car passenger that bugs the driver. 

"Say man, can I turn on the radio? You should slow down. Why do we gotta keep going in circles? Man, you really like Tide ..."

I thought the Tide thing was hilarious and from then on, I was hooked.  I saw him on Comedy Central once... hair in front of his face, just barely audible, deadpan delivery.  Think of what Steven Wright would be if he looked like Kurt Cobain, and he was more random.  That was Mitch Hedberg.  I missed it, but apparently they found him in a hotel room in Minnesota two weeks ago.   I'm really sorry to see this guy go.  I was actually online looking for tickets to shows and they had an announcement on his site.  Here are some other Mitch quotes:

I hope the next time I move I get a real easy phone number. Something like, 222-2222. I would say sweet. People would say, "Mitch, how do I get a hold of you?" I would say, "Press 2 for a while, and when I answer, you will know that you have pressed 2 enough."

I think Pringles' initial intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day that the rubber was supposed to show up, a big truckload of potatoes arrived. But Pringles was a laid-back company. They said "Fuck it. Cut 'em up."

I get the Reese's candy bar. If you read that name Reese's thats an apostrophe S. Reese's apostrophe S at the end of that name. That means the candy bar is his. I didn't know that. Next time you're eating a Reese's candy bar and a guy name Reese comes by and says "let me have that", you better hand it over. "I'm sorry, Reese. I didn't think I'd ever run into you."

I was in a bar, minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, "You're gonna have to move, you're blocking a fire exit." As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.

When you go to a restaurant on the weekends and it's busy they start a waiting list. They start calling out names, they say "Dufrane, party of two. Dufrane, party of two." And if no one answers they'll say their name again. "Dufrane, party of two, Dufrane, party of two." But then if no one answers they'll just go right on to the next name. "Bush, party of three." Yeah, but what happened to the Dufranes? No one seems to give a shit. Who can eat at a time like this - people are missing. You fuckers are selfish... the Dufranes are in someone's trunk right now, with duct tape over their mouths. And they're hungry! That's a double whammy. We need help. Bush, search party of three! You can eat when you find the Dufranes.

Link: apophenia: impression management: blogs as terrible representations. 

Last week, we got to meet some of my readers, which was very cool.  Now, I'm thinking about, after reading danah's article, what the impression is that I give off.  I don't think I've ever really met anyone through my blog after building up any kind of substantial online relationship anyway.  I wonder what kind of impression I give off here and how that compares to my offline persona.  I think part of the issue is that a lot of people only blog on one topic.  Fred and I are probably very much like we are in person as we are on our blogs.  In fact, Fred is pretty much his walking blog.  As for danah, I'm sure she's probably much more chill in person as she is on her blog, because she tends to get into some heady academic thinking on there.  In fact, as I get into some of the more well known bloggers I met through their blogs first and then in person, like Mena, Jarvis, and Steve Rubel, I think they're pretty much what I expected.  If you keep up with a blog, I think a lot of someone's personality comes out.  Its difficult to write everyday and hide major aspects of your persona... at least for me it is anyway.  So, I think I'm probably much like my blog.

Perhaps someday I can tell you where this picture is from.  Maybe...  hmm..  Valentine's Day?  If you knew, you'd understand how fitting this message is.

I figured I'd take the picture now just for the record before I have to shovel the letters out of the snow....

_________________________________________________________________

Maybe I don't have the coolest tattoo...

Link: Recapping the year for Autoblog - Autoblog - www.autoblog.com.

The guys at Autoblog do a great job satisfying my car fix and its very cool to hear the personal story behind how they flourished in the Blogosphere in 2004.  I hope 2005 is an even bigger year for them.