Netflix Culture

This is a popular set of slides from Netflix outlining their corporate philosophy. There are many timeless nuggets within those slides.

Culture

Creativity

I'm currently on a quest (for want of something better to do) to get a better understanding of the creative process. As always, I start by reading and learning from whatever I can get my hands on on the topic.

1. http://www.goalsys.com/books/documents/DESTRUCTION_AND_CREATION.pdf.This article is just mind blowing stuff. It's one of the few known articles by an ex-fighter pilot known as John Boyd. Boyd was an extremely interesting character. He was legendary as a fighter pilot known as 40-second Boyd. The reason for this moniker being that he could beat any fighter pilot in a dogfight in 40 seconds or less. Jockness aside, Boyd also developed the Energy-Manueverability (E-M) theory that revolutionized air combat and fighter aircraft design for the American military. Somewhere along the way, Boyd started thinking about the creative process.
2. "Borrowing Brilliance: David Kord Murray" Murray states that innovation and creativity is really the use of existing ideas, but combined in a unique way to solve a specific problem. The process starts by gaining a good understanding of the problem from many dimensions. Murray is also a good storyteller making this book an enjoyable read too.
3. Ken Robinson's talk at the 2006 TED conference, titled "Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity"
4. "Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention", Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Mihaly is a psychologist who has studied the creative process for decades and came up with a theory called Flow to explain how individuals are able to unleash their creative side. A very interesting read.

Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol

Came across this interesting piece of info on the Seattle Tech Startup DL.

OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing) protocol is a really lightweight mesh protocol that can run on mobile handsets over WiFi. It's been known to run over a 2000 node mesh.

See http://www.olsr.org/?q=about

I found this really interesting because I've been thinking (background low priority thread) about a low-cost way for peer-to-peer communication.

Adding this to my "list of things to look at" this year.

Starting your own business

This post is to put together links to useful information about starting your own business:

1. New York Times' Small Business section: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/smallbusiness/index.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1259524816-DEabVUyXrN6xmccjLiYHng
2. Small Business 101: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/business/smallbusiness/01websb101.html
3. Networking sites for startups: http://smallbizbee.com/index/2010/02/02/ultimate-list-40-social-networking/
4. SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives): http://www.score.org/index.html
5. Seattle SCORE: http://www.seattlescore.org/default.aspx

Because it's there! (and free)

So someone asks the avid mountain climber why he climbs mountains. His answer? "Because it's there".

Last weekend I stumbled on an interesting blog about Sun's VirtualBox virtualization software. So I decided to give it a try. What the heck, it was free anyways. And yes, because it was there.

Surprisingly (to me atleast) it installed without a hitch on my home machine.

Once installed, you can setup what's called a Guest OS, to virtualize. I decided to choose Linux. That's right, because it's free, and it's there. So I downloaded Ubuntu's desktop iso, setup the necessary settings in VirtualBox's Guest OS UI, and presto, had Ubuntu Linux up and running. Again surprisingly (to me atleast) without a hitch.

Very impressive.

Update on Life

Yesterday I attended Startup Day 2009 that was held at Meydenbauer Center at Bellevue. It was pretty neat and an eye opener for me. Startup Day was held by the Seattle 2.0 folks.

One the the neat websites I came across as a result is this one: Programmable Web. Which lists many web-service APIs available.

Now to carve out some time to go through all this stuff

Healthcare Reform

Everyone knows that the healthcare system needs reform. And yet I see this weird trend where people are still not getting it, and once again being swayed by the spin machinery.

Also, the messaging on healthcare reform is not clear at best, and confusing at worst. Most messaging I see coming out of the White House groups all the issues together under the Healthcare Reform umbrella. My suggestion is to begin to separate out the 2 core issues being addressed: 1) healthcare for all 2) bringing down the price of healthcare. And then explain to the American people how each is being addressed. The American people need to understand that these 2 issues, though connected, need to be addressed with a separate set of solutions. Bottom line, simplify the message and beef it with more hard facts on how the change is going to happen, and less on political talking-point blather.

So here's my attempt to sort out the facts from the noise and spin:

Spin (what the insurance industry and supporters are saying\doing):

• Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer
• Freedoms you will lose under proposed health reform plan: http://finance.yahoo.com/insurance/article/107408/5-freedoms-you-would-lose-in-health-care-reform.html?mod=insurance-health
• Heritage Org's 10 reasons why proposed health care reform sucks: http://www.heritage.org/Press/FactSheet/fs0036.cfm

Anti-Spin (what others are saying):

• Business Week article on insurance companies "purging" (dropping) small businesses: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2009/sb2009087_865725.htm
• Excellent (as always) Bill Moyers program on health care reform. Moyers interviews a former Health Insurance industry VP who is now retired and on the side of ordinary citizens to expose the corruption and crookedness of the health insurance industry. A MUST watch: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/watch_excl.html

Mythbusting:

• Factcheck.org fact checks "Guv'mint is out to kill seniors": http://www.factcheck.org/2009/07/false-euthanasia-claims/
• AARP Responds to Health Reform Scare Tactics :http://www.aarp.org/aarp/presscenter/pressrelease/articles/mccaughey_statement.html
• The medical malpractice myth: http://dartmed.dartmouth.edu/fall05/html/disc_myth.php

Facts:

• Rising premiums:
  • http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/54522.php
  • http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml
• The full bill: http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf(615 pages of terrific soporific reading)
• AMA announces it supports health-care reform: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/ama-affirms-support.shtml
• AMA's FAQ on HR 3200: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/399/hsr-hr3200-faqs.pdf
• A summary from the House Committee on Education and Labor: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BILLSUMMARY-071409.pdf
• St. Petersburg newspaper's fact checking: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/jul/30/e-mail-analysis-health-bill-needs-check-/
• KFF report on health-care and the middle class: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/7951.pdfInteresting point here is that 70% or so of those insured are via employer-provided insurance. I wonder what those numbers are now with unemployment at 9.4%?
• "Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis---and the People Who Pay the Price" by Jonathan Cohn