I don't think the multimedia in this post needs much explanation, other than the fact that, while I enjoy the music, I just want to make it clear that I do not condone all of the behavior that the music of the artist describes or inspires. :)

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Nice work folks.  I like the fact that this can only serve to make Rob Kalin more confident, because sometimes, I think that can be an issue with him.   :)

And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

Seriously, though, put $27mil. on the venture funding in Brooklyn toteboard.  No sleep 'til...   

Congrats!

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Once the Mets wrap up his contract in the next couple of days, Johan Santana will be pitching for the New York Mets...  in the National League.

Anyone want to take a guess what his numbers are going to be like?  I think it's fair to say that he's a lock for 18 wins and a 2.50 ERA.  In '04, he whiffed 265 batters.  Now, he'll get to face pitchers about 80 more times a year than he does now.  Can we say 300k's? 

The best part is, everyone seems to be in agreement that we got him for a song.  I liked Carlos Gomez, too, but I don't think the guy's ever going to hit .300.  I think the guy will wind up being an Alfonso Soriano type, without as much power...  bat .280, hit 25, steal 35, but whiff 130 times and rarely take a walk.  And the pitchers we sent over?  Meh.... You never know with pitchers.  Plus, Santana's only going to be 29 this season.

The Mets off-season went from a disaster to a huge victory in the blink of an eye, and you gotta hand it to Omar Minaya for getting his guy without giving up too much.

So I'm trying to figure out when Santana's Shea debut is.  I say its Saturday, April 12th, because clearly he starts opening day, but the Mets have two off days in the first 10 games... so they'll use Santana, Martinez, Maine, and Perez, with a day of rest, and probably use Santana again that first Sunday on the road against Atlanta.  It wouldn't make sense to push him back, because they're off that Monday, too, so it would be a week in between starts, and I doubt they're rushing to get El Duque more starts than necessary.

Anyway, nothing is guaranteed, as we saw last year, but with the best rotation in baseball, the Mets now have to be frontrunners for the World Series on day one.

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There's a man sitting across from me reading "The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God". This small paperback has a picture of some little figure, perhaps the distant cousin of a WeeMee, shooting himself in the head with the bullet exiting out the top in a small burst of splat. So, if I seem distracted this morning, its because I'm keeping a close eye on that guy for sudden movements.

There's a short girl standing next to me reading a a magazine article about traumatic brian injury. Very few other people are reading. I'd love to see an analysis of time of day, whether a person is reading, catching up on zzz's, playing video games or listening to their iPod or some combo.

This train is unquestionably a zzz train. I'd say that 60% of the people in this train have their eyes closed. It's 7:20AM and I'm on my way to Fordham to teach class. There's a banana in my tummy, but I'll def need my MetRx shake when I get back to the office at 10:30AM.

I gotta remember to tell my students to allow anonymous comments on their blogs.

There are two City Year girls on the train. They're in there big red winter coats. Those coats look pricey. I wonder what percentage of City Year donations go to buy coats for volunteers. Couldn't they just get hats? I never see them actually working or sponsoring anything...just collecting money. What does City Year do anyway? If my kid ever wanted to stand on the street and collect money for charity, I'd hand them a donation that covers there summer (if I had it) and tell them to go be an intern in a program management or policy making department within a non-profit or government sponsored social program. I think that's where you make a much bigger impact, especially since most donations come from corporations anyway.

I just switched to the 6 train at Union Square... I plenty of time to get to Grand Central. Look, there are Dominican Academy girls on this train...haha. DA!

Girls from DA were the first girls you met in Regis because we had a joint fundraiser with them in October... a Walk-a-Thon around the Upper East Side and the park, which basically meant that everyone in Regis dated a DA girl in freshman year. But I was cool because my DA girl was a sophomore. She taught me who the Ramones were. I feel like I told this story before.

This guy just walked onto the train. He's a dead ringer for Chin Ming Wang...and he's wearing a Yankee cap. Only... he's obviously a high school student.

I kinda feel like we have bigger fish to fry.  At least this model is pretty well covered up.  If I had a daughter, I'd rather her look at ads like this in Times Square than ads of half-naked women in sexually suggestive poses.  Isn't that a much worse objectification of women?

I dunno about you, if this ad makes you want to shoot things at women's crotches, I sort of feel like maybe you had some issues before you saw it.  Me personally, it makes me wish for snow.

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A few years ago, the Hudson River Park Trust evicted the Downtown Boathouse from Pier 26 in order to make way for a brand new pier, similar to the one we moved into up at Pier 96. We knew we'd likely be back, but, in the short term, that left us without an actual Downtown Boathouse location.

Then I heard we were moving a few kayaks to the south end of Pier 40. Of course, typical buracracy delayed the permit that would have allowed us to put a dock down for months and months. That meant that we started our Pier 40 program in 2006 midway through the summer. It started very slow. Construction around Pier 40 meant that you needed to walk halfway past the whole Pier to figure out how to get to us. The neighborhood saw the demolition at Pier 26 and thought we were gone for good. They didn't know anything about the "Downtown Boathouse" as an organization...they just knew about the free kayaks at 26.

Little by little, we started to get more and more traffic to Pier 40. I was there helping to run the program there every weekend. When we started up this season, we hung a big kayak by the jogging path with an unmissable arrow.

People climbed over concrete planters to get to us rather than figure out how to go around. Regulars to 26 started returning.

Pier 40, with only 15 kayaks, no trips, no classes, skyrocketed in popularity.

What also happened was that the whole Pier became a destination. We took people out for a paddle who otherwise couldn't get into the sold out trapeze school on the roof. We took kids out after the soccer games they played on the fields indoors, or runners who normally didn't think much about what was going on inside the pier, and previously just ran around it.  Pier 40 became even busier than our main location uptown. 

And now, the Hudson River Park Trust is voting this Wednesday on one of two commercialized proposals for the development of Pier 40.  The only politician who seems to be on the side of the people is State Assembly Member Deborah Glick.  She wrote an editorial regarding the Related Companies' proposal:

"Unfortunately, Related’s latest proposal for Pier 40, though it has improved from previous versions, remains one for a mega-entertainment center, complete with Cirque du Soleil as the anchor tenant, a huge banquet hall, 12 movie theaters and several large restaurants. Such large-scale uses do not belong on a pier in the midst of a park and bear no relationship to the park. Uses like Cirque du Soleil are not water-dependent and serve no local need. They could be just as easily — and more appropriately — located on 42nd St. or 52nd St. Related’s latest plan, which is expected to draw 2.7 million visitors each year to Pier 40, would substantially impair the park’s ability to serve as a safe and quiet respite, since it would bring large numbers of vehicles across the busy bike lane, endangering walkers, runners and bikers. In addition, the proposal would only add to the area’s congestion issues, running counter to the city’s traffic mitigation efforts in Lower Manhattan."

There's already a major movie complex right down the street, by Battery Park.  And Cirque du Soleil?  I doubt that most of the 20,000+ people who went kayaking with us last year can afford the Cirque du Soleil ticket price.  Plus, most of those people would probably have more fun if the trapeze school were given room to expand and they could fly through the air themselves versus paying more to watch other people do it.

Plus, last time I checked, we're supposed to be building a PARK, here right?  Isn't that what it's called?  Hudson River PARK.  Go ask a five year old what belongs in a park.  I don't think he'll answer banquet halls, movie theaters and restaurants.

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Outside.in, which is one of my favorite NYC startup teams, launched their discussions feature very quietly last week.

It's something similar to when Zillow launched their neighborhood and discussion features.  Zillow faced the aggregator problem of not having a site where people normally contribute directly to the site and now opening up a centralized community feature.  The great thing about these sites is that they reach out and find the community and bring it to you, but discussions require that the communities are on-site.  

My suggestion to Zillow at the time was to go seek out some Outside.in content.

Now what do I suggest to Outside.in?

I thought they should start pulling the comments off of the blog posts they aggregate and using those to start discussion.  The discussion topic could be my blog post title or some summary, and the comments could show up as discussion comments on Outside.in.

Wait... but isn't that "stealing" the community from my blog??

No, not if you resyndicate the comments back to my blog and leave them there.

So, someone could find an article from my blog about Bay Ridge through Outside.in, leave a comment right there on the Bay Ridge discussion board, and I get the benefit of the comment.  And vice versa, any of my comments get resyndicated out to Outside.in.

What would be the net effect of my traffic?  I'm not sure, but even if I sacrificed some of my Outside.in traffic, I'd get lots more comments and probably engage my own users a lot more, because they'd think of my blog as a much more lively place.

Also, maybe each comment on the last.fm discussion board could permalink back to my blog...   "Comment syndicated from This is going to be BIG!".   So, perhaps I'd get even more traffic with a whole new set of links.

Either way, it's going to be tough sledding to cause people to get interested in a new discussion board in a place they don't usually do community stuff on... and so I think you need to start greasing the wheels with some aggregated content. 

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2004 is over.  I really enjoyed myself this past year and accomplished a lot...  maybe more than I've ever done now that I think of it.  I went to California twice, Florida twice, to Chicago, DC, and to Boston--the most flying I've ever done in a single year.  I kayaked and helped others to take advantage of the Manhattan waterfront.  I put 10,000 miles on my car.  I started a website for college students, and saw a mentoring program through.  I helped put together the ILPA conference in New York.  I played on a kickball team and coached a corporate softball team to a winning record.  I started blogging this year.  I was in the newspaper not once, not twice, but three times.

I met some great new people, especially at the boathouse...  Kati, Sandy, Taino, Victor, Graeme, Gretha, Claire, etc...  rediscovered some old friendships, like Pastore, Kristin, Liz, and Susie, and said goodbye to a long friendship that didn't work.  I met lots of great people through work, like Fred and Brad at Union Square, Roger at Elevation Partners (and Bono, of course!), and Gina from the State of Virginia.
So how am I going to follow 2004 up?  I won't make resolutions, but I'll through out some goals.  I'd like to open myself up to a relationship, and while that's hardly a plannable goal, I think perhaps I've had opportunities in the past to create something and I wasn't ready for it.  Stanford remains a goal, whether I get in this year or submit another application in October.  A book is a goal--hopefully I have the right topic now and I'd also like to contibute as much as I can to helping people understand this new content medium.  I've been thinking that perhaps a return to church might be a goal... which I was never averse to, but I never set aside the time to be a part of a parish commuity, so it didn't interest me without that aspect.  And, finally, I'd like to start an alumni association for Fordham's College of Business Administration, which it is lacking at the moment.  Oh yeah.. and I want to buy an apartment this year, too.  That should be enough to keep me occupied.

• 12 Learnings From My First Turn As Startup CEO - socialmedian
  (tags: entrepreneurship startups)

Mmm....chicken, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Two grilled cutlets in the oven, seasoned with cayenne pepper, salt, lemon, and a little vanilla.  Nice.

"We're urging votes for a candidate whose political views we often disagree with. But this is a more complicated contest, and a more complex candidate, than the norm. This nation's next president inherits a war -- against terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere -- that has found many ways to divide Americans. Capitol Hill is gridlocked and uncivil. Our discourse is hostage to blame.

Obama can help this nation move forward. A Tribune profile last May labeled his eight years in Springfield as "a study in complexity, caution and calculation. In the minority party for all but his final two years in the Statehouse, he tempered a progressive agenda with a cold dash of realism, often forging consensus with conservative Republicans when other liberals wanted to crusade."Racial profiling, death penalty reform, recording of criminal interrogations, health care -- when victory was elusive, Obama seized progress.

He did so by working fluidly with Republicans and Democrats. He sought out his ideological foes. He listened closely to them. As a result, many Republicans in Illinois have warm words for Barack Obama.

Obama's key opponent, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, unifies only her foes. Her penchant for gaming every issue -- recall her clumsy dodging when asked in a Philadelphia debate whether illegal immigrants should be licensed to drive -- feeds suspicion of maneuvering that would humble Machiavelli.As this campaign has progressed, Hillary Clinton in moments of crisis hasn't been an ennobling sight. Her reliance on her husband, the less-than-presidential Bill, to trash-talk Obama reaffirms that the Clintons do whatever it takes to prevail. Depicting Obama's record on Iraq as a "fairy tale" is instructive: Think what you will of the war, but Sen. Clinton was an enabler when that was popular. In Kerryspeak, she was for the war before she was against the war."

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I hope the news that Facebook has just opened up its API to applications that sit outside of it is true.  Frankly, as cool as the concept of Facebook apps are, needing to build inside their little box is very constricting.  At Path 101, we were definitely going to leverage the Facebook platform around our personality testing, because we thought that comparing results to friends could be very viral, but, to be honest, needing to build that app to live within Facebook wasn't so exciting.

Now, we can just take the existing application and have the social aspect "powered by Facebook".  That's very compelling. 

It seems that Facebook understands that users don't spend 100% of their time on Facebook, so there's no sense trying to keep them there.  By extending out to the rest of the web, they're making membership in Facebook that much more valuable.  Even people who might not want to spend a lot of time on the site could see value in keeping their social network there, kind of like an address book. 

I wonder if there's a business model in here.  What if this made Facebook the defacto social dialtone on the web?  Could they charge for API access, kind of like Amazon is doing with S3?  What if it cost websites a few pennies everytime a user spread their app to their friends via the Facebook API anywhere on the web.  Certainly most sites pay for user acquisition on some way.  If they could set the right throttles and controls, I could see Facebook taking a small sliver of every single social transaction on the web--that's IF they get the social thing right.

In its current form, the viral spread of Facebook apps is, while trendsetting, still kind of hokey and it clutters up the user's experience.  I like the fact that they're continuing to experiment, and this move could give them a whole new playing ground.  When if you went to an app on the web, and it automatically told you that 25 of your friends have already used it and you could compare data with one click?  That would be pretty neat, I think.

Thoughts?

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• Businesspundit: How Five Years of Blogging Has Changed Me
  (tags: blogging fordhamclass)

• What to do if you’re laid off in 2008 recession « Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger
  (tags: careers path101)
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  A practical blog for impractical people.
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  Confusion disappears when everyone starts using the same screens.
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If I take the last downturn as my guide, I can say with confidence that venture investors would be well suited to continue to invest right through the downturn - in 2002 and 2003 terrific companies were formed and funded at very reasonable valuations and with business models that reflected the demand for capital efficiency and economic viability.

• Terraminds twitter search
  Terraminds micro search engine allows searches in tweets and users back to three months ago.
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You know what the Fake Reach is... You've either done it or expected someone to do it.

You're out at lunch with Bill Gates. He invited you to join him to get your expertise on social media. The bill comes.

You do the Fake Reach.

You have absolutely no intention to contribute any money to this meal and all social ettiquette rules dictate that he should treat. Still, you don't want to seem too entitled or expectant, so you fake willingness to pay just to acknowledge their gesture of paying.

You wait for them to waive you off...

"No, no... I got it."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, my pleasure..."

"Oh, thanks...I got it next time."

Ever been on the other side of a date where you knew you were paying or being paid for and the Fake Reach was used?

Giselle sneaks away from Tom Brady to go to lunch with you and the bill comes for your meals. Does Giselle even carry money? What would be the point? Does she need to pay anywhere for anything?

Still, she's gotta do the Fake Reach. Lord knows, given some of the outfits she wears, where she'd even reach, but still, she's gotta reach. Otherwise, in my book, she's definitely not worth the second date. :)

I got some good coverage on the Sportsvite blog, WreckSports...  apparently word is getting out about my phenom status in dodgeball.

Therefore, I'd like to announce that I am in training for the Beijing '08 Summer Olympics.  Yes, dodgeball is finally an Olympic sport and I've been selected to captain the team. 

Don't believe me?

Check out these videos:

Block, block, block, throw! from ceonyc on Vimeo.

Block and fast catch from ceonyc on Vimeo.

Throw, Dodge, Throw from ceonyc on Vimeo.

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• The myths of innovation » SlideShare
  Presentation from web directions 2007
  (tags: entrepreneurship fordhamclass innovation)
• YouTube - The Myths of Innovation
  Google Tech TalksMay 14, 2007ABSTRACTMuch of what we know about innovation is wrong. That's the bet this talk takes, as it romps through the history of innov...
  (tags: entrepreneurship fordhamclass innovation)
• Career 100 - A Ranking of the World's Top Blogs
  (tags: blogs careers path101)

My friend just had a baby... a completely unexpected baby as of about three months before she was born.  The details of how a baby can be unexpected so far along are unimportant.  The most important thing is that I witnessed a couple so singularly focused on this new little person that it really affected me.  This couple isn't married and they haven't been dating much more than a year or so, but now they're a family.

They're a family because they all chose to be so.  Well, the baby didn't choose, but knowing the parents, I'm pretty confident she would have made the same chose.

Does this couple know every last little detail about each other?  Nope.

Do they know all of their roommate idiosyncrasies, like whether there's drinking from the carton or balls of hair left in the shower?  Doubtful.

But this little person just seem to make all that insignificant  Maybe you're a match on paper, maybe you're not.  Bottom line is that you've got two people dedicated to figuring it out for the sake of another.

When I think of it that way, it doesn't seem like such a stretch to think that two people should be able to figure things out if they just do it for the sake of each other.  Love shouldn't be so hard and there's certainly too much stuff we let get in the way of it.

It seems like most of us clutter up our minds and our hearts with truly insignificant crap.  We're not good at reduction.  We can always think of more things to worry about, to ponder, to get excited about, but how often do we focus on less things?

This couple now has one thing to think about, and all of the sudden, their life, rather than being complicated by this beautiful baby, now seems so simple. 

They don't need a 72-point eHarmony diagnostic to tell them if they're a match.  They don't need to treat the other person like a discounted cash flow model--calculating whether or not they'll be able to support them in the lifestyle and social status that they're accustomed to.  They don't need congressional approval from the congress of friends in their life--mostly temporary people who have a nearly non-existent stake in the outcome of their lives and who probably won't be around for half of it.

We live in an age where information, in addition to informing us, pollutes us.  We're paralyzed by fear.  Rather than look at our own job security, we watch the unemployment number.  Rather than look at our own budget, we watch the housing foreclosure numbers.  We're so focused on staying at home to watch the consumer confidence index, rather than going out and buying the things we can afford that we really want.  And if we can't afford them, we spend too much time watching what other people have to appreciate the things we do have.

Its funny, too, when you think about what people choose to optimize for.  A lot of people decide that they'd rather be focused on careers rather than family.  Given the empirical evidence, I'd say that you have a lot better shot at reaching happiness through living for others than living for your job.  (Of course, I of all people still think its extremely worth it to also focus on reaching happiness in your job, but there's got to be some kind of priorities.)

So what's truly important to you in your life?  How long is that list?

I'd say that if your list is any more than about two or three things, its too damn long.  Focus, people! 

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