What I love about architecture and industrial design is the inherent constraint of usability that exists in those fields. You can make a pretty house but it has to be livable. You can make a beautiful fork but someone still needs to be able to eat with it.
Tara Mann, a product designer who has worked for Basecamp, Twitter, and Science, Inc. quoted in: Tara Mann walks the line between weird and sensible.
People care about security, but they also have a lot on their mind. They don’t want to think about security.
Syl Chao, CEO of Turing Robotic Industries, in Wired Magazine. (Your phone is your most vulnerable gadget.)
In my 24 years as CEO, I have learned one big thing.
All competitive advantages – price, quality, even technology – are commoditized over a long-enough time horizon.
The only way to have a sustainable competitive advantage is people.
Phil Shawe, co-CEO of TransPerfect, at GlobalLink Next 2016 in San Francisco. (Came across it while thinking through a piece on the translation industry, private equity, and Labor Day over at my political blog.)
“Here is the thing you must bear in mind,” [Theodore] Roosevelt said, clearly irritated. “I do not represent public opinion: I represent the public. There is a wide difference between the two, between the real interests of the public, and the public’s opinion of these interests. I must represent not the excited opinion of the West, but the real interests of the whole people.”
Morris, Edmund (2010-11-24). Theodore Rex (Theodore Roosevelt series Book 2) (Kindle Locations 10127-10130). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Not a life lesson to live by…or is it?
[Elon Musk] lost forty-five pounds over the course of the illness and had a closet full of clothes that no longer fit. “I came very close to dying,” Musk said. “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: vacations will kill you.”
Vance, Ashlee (2015-05-19). Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (p. 96). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
[Photo by Dow Jones Events]
Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.
Rothfuss, Patrick (2011-03-01). The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, Book 2) (p. 662). DAW. Kindle Edition.
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.… The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.… As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.
Schlender, Brent; Tetzeli, Rick (2015-03-24). Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader (p. 325). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[Image by martinshl]
“Hello world!” – those 2 words have always meant something to anyone who has every toyed with code. They are a symbol of success, of a success so small, and yet the first sign that you can speak a new language. And here they come as the first post to a WordPress blog, without any coding or work – here unearned.
This is the home page of an NYC resident working in B2B technology.
A Philosophy major from Holy Cross, I started out as a co-owner of RichDJ Web Services, an NYC startup. From there, I became a paralegal with the intention of going into law. After a number of years, I became disenchanted with the law, as I saw one wacky conclusion after another, and decided to build my career in technology instead.
This will be a place for quotes, for links to other places, for photos, for commentary on management and technology. (Not for politics – for that, I will write elsewhere.)