Why can’t we all be as rich as Mark?
In Venture Capital Deals, Not Every Founder Will Be a Zuckerberg - NYTimes.com:
It's the dream of entrepreneurs to sell their company for millions of dollars. But the dirty secret of venture capital is that the dream can be dashed as the venture capitalists make millions in a sale, leaving the founders with nothing.
Debunking the conventional wisdom
What do you think, are younger people better programmers? Are they more productive, more clever, work longer hours? Or do older people have some advantages? Here's a bit of research that says they do!
There is a perception in some tech circles that older programmers aren't able to keep pace with rapidly changing technology, and that they are discriminated against in the software field. But a new study from North Carolina State University indicates that the knowledge and skills of programmers actually improve over time - and that older programmers know as much (or more) than their younger peers when it comes to recent software platforms.
Yeah, I’m Dutch :)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjqf5F7PPGw]
The number of pages in a congressional bill
I have to do a little research. It seems to be a favorite talking point by politicians on all sides of a debate to criticize or dismiss a piece of legislation based on the number of pages it has. It's an odd bit of criticism: how long is too long, how long is too short, doesn't it depend on how many laws the bills are enacting? doesn't it depend on the number of amendments? Watch this space. I am going to find some answers. If you know some of the data, please post a response or send me an email!
Ongoing coverage of MOOCs: How good are they really?
This trend is now unstoppable - massive open online courses - or MOOCs - are constantly in the news. The angle often seems to be about whether or how or how much they will impact higher education and education in general. It's a topic I am very interested in.
- Professors: B+
- Convenience: A
- Teacher to student interaction: D
- Student to student interaction: B-
- Assignments: B-
- Overall experience: B
His telling comments about the convenience factor:
"Regardless of the convenience, you still have to carve out time for the lectures. Which is one reason the dropout rate for MOOCs is notoriously high: Coursera’s bioelectricity course, taught by a Duke professor, saw an astounding 97 percent of students fail to finish. My dropout rate was lower, but only a bit. I signed up for 11 courses, and finished 2: “Introduction to Philosophy” and “The Modern World: Global History since 1760.” (Well, to be honest, I’m not quite done with history — I’m still stuck in the 1980s.) Not coincidentally, these were two courses with lighter workloads and less jargon." (from NYT: Grading the MOOC University)
A fascinating story of Curt Shilling’s game company’s demise
This is from the New York Time's article about Curt Shilling's ill fated game company "38 Studios":
“It just felt really good, when this all started, to have the sexy sports celebrity from Boston who seemed to like Rhode Island and showed up in Rhode Island, and who built this exotic new business, even though no one knew what it was,” says the historian Ted Widmer, who grew up in Providence and works at Brown. “It seemed like the digital economy, or biotech, or whatever. But then it turned out that it wasn’t the new digital economy. It was some 13-year-old’s medieval fantasy.” (fromThe New York Times)
Read it, it's a fascinating story.
Oh and I had some comments about the story way back when: "Can Shilling focus on 38 studios and still be great for the Red Sox?"
88% of spreadsheets have errors — Still!
A long long time ago there was a product called Lotus Improv. Our premise was that complex spreadsheets were very difficult to maintain, to audit and to modify. So much so that we had heard stories about companies fearing making any change to the spreadsheets they run their business on.
Maybe the person who created the monster was no longer with the company or maybe the spreadsheet was so complicated (and untestable) that the benefits of making a change did not outweigh the risk of introducing an error. That was around 1987.
Here we are 25 years later and shockingly the situation seems to still be tolerated. From an article in MarketWatch:
"Such mistakes not only can lead to miscalculations in family budgets and distorted balance sheets at small businesses, but also might result in questionable rationales for global fiscal policy , as indicated by the case of a math error in a Harvard economics study. By failing to include certain spreadsheet cells in its calculations, the study by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff may have overstated the impact that debt burdens have on a nation’s economic growth." (from MarketWatch "88% of Spreadsheets have errors")
Improv has come and gone. It was ground breaking in its time, won some awards, but not the most important award, customer adoption!
What do you learn in college?
As you know the topic of the future of the university, the role of MOOCs, and online learning, is highly topical these days. I happen to be interested in it too so I refer you to this David Brooks Article, called, The Practical University. It's an interesting angle.
However I want to pull a single quote out of that:
"Think about Sheryl Sandberg’s recent book, “Lean In.” Put aside the debate about the challenges facing women in society. Focus on the tasks she describes as being important for anybody who wants to rise in this economy: the ability to be assertive in a meeting; to disagree pleasantly; to know when to interrupt and when not to; to understand the flow of discussion and how to change people’s minds; to attract mentors; to understand situations; to discern what can change and what can’t. " (from New York Times - The Practical University)
I don't know if that's David Brooks or Sheryl Sandberg speaking, but it does make we want to read her book. Anyway, watch how I turn this post into something about Olin College of Engineering 🙂
Why is it so important (in my opinion) that college students get lots of experience working in teams from the start? Because indeed it teaches them exactly those skills in italics above. And they are indeed very important skills. And don't assume that these skills and experiences are commonplace across colleges. In my experience this is one of the major differences of how Olin approaches its mission.
Great tips for dealing with email
This is a tired topic but this article from the New York Times does have some good tips on managing your avalanche of email …
"…There’s no quick fix. But set aside a few hours one afternoon, brew a pot of coffee, get a tasty snack, put on your favorite playlist and roll up your sleeves. It’s time to tame your in-box…" (from "How to Lighten the Crush of Email")
Theatre: Ryan Landry’s “M”
We saw "Ryan Landry's "M"" at the Calderwood Pavilion in the South End last weekend. I started out a bit suspiciously when the playwright (who's not famous) name is part of the name of the play being promoted. The play is based on a famous film "M". Here's a bit from an interview:
When asked, "A German film from 1931 about a child killer … what made you want to turn this into a play?" Landry says: "Because it is a beautiful masterwork. A goal to which other artists should aspire. I chose this film because I wanted to write a play based on the most unfunny thing in the world and still make it [the play] funny. It is a sad play too. It is a human play" (from interview)
My review: I was surprised that I liked it (didn't love it.) For me the play was not about a story - there was no discernible emotion or character development. For me it was fun, like the circus is fun - a spectacle.
Overall while I am on the topic: I've enjoyed this season of the Huntington Theatre tremendously, definitely one of the best seasons that I remember. (I'm no theatre expert by the way, so take that as purely one person's subjective opinion).
The Huntington is doing something great on their web site lately with media. They capture behind the scenes videos, interviews, and trailer-like promos of the plays. A really wonderful way to embrace social and multi media.