aniblog

summit basecamp

2012-01-31T06:42:00.000-08:00

"Oh, you're an old pro."

In the cadre of the nascent Summit Series community, it's taken less than two years to be considered a grizzled veteran. My first Summit Series was DC10 in Washington DC in May 2010 (recap), and my second was Summit at Sea in April 2011 (recap). Just twenty months after my virgin flight through Summit space, I have the pleasure and good fortune to go for another ride: Summit Basecamp in Squaw Valley, CA.

Summit newbies all ask me which was my favorite, but it's hard for me to say because each event has had a distinctly different vibe and I've loved them in different ways. Summit Basecamp was about interactive content, attention to detail, and intimate connections. It was more relaxed, more casual...like an entrepreneurial cup of hot cocoa wrapped in an après ski sweater.

The choose-your-own-adventure nature of Summit programming -- particularly at Summit Basecamp -- made for an infinitely rich universe of potential experiences that included everything from falconry to yoga to mountain lions to didgeridoos. I've written this recap largely for myself, as a personal reminder of all the experiences and people that made my weekend great. This is my story, but it is just one story of many.

::Friday::
My friend Cameron Sinclair met me in SF where we started our trek up to Tahoe. We stopped in Berkeley to pick up sustainability designer Dawn Danby and Wired reporter Andy Isaacson. Cameron founded Architecture for Humanity, and on the drive up, we got to hear about their latest projects, including a forthcoming throw-down with Pencils of Promise to be the first to build 100 classrooms this year. Cameron calls it "competitive compassion."

Carpool to Tahoe: Summit or Bust!

Fueled by Ikeda's (the Bay Area's favorite Tahoe-drive pitstop), we made record time to Squaw Valley.

Custom signs led the way

Check-in at the resort was a frenzied cacophony of hugs and high fives. The event's sylvan-inspired details were evident in everything from our wooden name badges to our leather wrist bands.

Summit Basecamp security wristband

When asked to describe my experience, I have always said that Summit Series is the greatest accelerator and incubator of friendships in the world. Basecamp was my third Summit Series event, and walking into registration felt like being welcomed into a turbo love-fueled family reunion. Words cannot describe how happy and grateful I was to be there.

Sleeping arrangements for Basecampers were split between the Resort at Squaw Valley -- where the majority of content was hosted -- and the Village at Squaw Valley. I stayed at the Village, and after registration, returned to check into my room. I knew I was supposed to have one roommate, but was surprised to find two women already in my room. I could barely contain my fangirl excitement upon learning that those two women were All Things Considered host Michele Norris and NPR Director of PR Danielle Deabler. We all headed to the lobby to get the room situation figured out. In the end, the hotel apologized for the mix up and upgraded me to a private room. My favorite part of the ordeal was when the hotel manager asked us each for our names. When I heard "I'm Michele Norris" in person, I almost cheered.

Ever since childhood, I've been prone to losing my voice, and as I we took a pass through the Summit Store (i.e., swag room), a noticeable huskiness took over my vocal chords. This year, Summit attendees were lucky to pick up all kinds of goodies including: PACT socks, a blissmobox full of great products like Yes to Carrots lotion, Donors Choose gift cards, Theo chocolate bars (we toured in November!), TOMS sunglasses, and custom Creative Recreation hiking boots.

Summit Store swag bag goodies

Creative Recreation custom Summit Basecamp boot (photo credit: Mike Del Ponte)

Back at the resort I ran into my friend Ben Bator whom I hadn't seen since he gave me a tour of the Mitten State last summer (partially inspiring my article on "Silicon Mitten"). After sampling some Handsome Coffee with education investor Nathaniel Whittemore, I bumped into social entrepreneur Nyla Rodgers (she's responsible for this amazing video) and The Lean Startup author Eric Ries. Basecamp was Eric's first Summit, so I filled him in on what to expect as we took our seats for the opening plenary session.

Entitled "Laws of Nature," the formal kick-off event for Summit Basecamp injected the 650 attendees with a power boost of wild anticipation. Dub step dancer Marquese Scott popped and locked, musician Jose Gonzalez crooned, and filmmaker Tiffany Schlain tried to persuade a crowd full of tech entrepreneurs to disconnect from their devices. The undeniable favorite of the session was Israeli mentalist Lior Suchard who previewed Saturday's full-length show by reading the minds of audience members. Say what you will about his "supernatural" abilities -- this guy is a killer entertainer. The plenary closed with new age reverend Michael Beckwith whose theologically-inspired hyperbole (he called us "entrepreneurial spirits of divine good") had some leaping to standing ovations, but left others scratching their heads.

After hitting the bar with LaunchRock founder Jameson Detweiler and Particle Code CEO Galia Benartzi, I made my way to the W+ mixer -- an event celebrating the community of Summit Series women. The Summit team's Director of Community Building Natalie Spilger shared a few words.

I found my pal (and digital marketing genius) Liz Cebron huddled by the electrical outlet, and we shared iPhone juice with filmmaker Ondi Timoner. Liz and I headed to dinner together where we learned about e-commerce from the Shopify guys (Tobi and Harley) and Israeli entrepreneurs from Dror Berman. Our table also had a great crew of digital media ladies including Google's Caroline McCarthy, ABC's Maya Baratz, and TechCrunch's Alexia Tsotsis. By this point, my voice was pretty much gone, but that didn't stop Caroline and me from going on a recon mission that ended with us giggling in the elevator carrying boxes of Jimmyjane products. It's sort of a long story.

Making off with our booty

We, of course, share our spoils with our loyal table-mates, and Liz and I head to a fireside chat with film director Gus Van Sant and NPR's Michele Norris. After a brief pop onto the dance floor to see Q-Tip and DJ Jazzy Jeff spinning, I headed to a friend's room to drop off my "box of toys" before sneaking into the Summit Speakeasy. It was impossible for me to talk, but I got to listen to my buddy Neil Blumenthal offer his advice about fundraising for his eyewear company Warby Parker.

On my way out, I bumped into Cameron and Summit's Director of Digital Audrey Buchanan (a.k.a. SummitD) who told us to check out the jam session on failure. We headed downstairs into a dimly lit room where chairs were spread into a rough circle. The candor and vulnerability shared in that room was powerful, not just from presenters like webvan founder Coppy Holzman, but also from other attendees in the room like Eve Blossom and Falling Whistles's Sean Carasso. I particularly appreciated the perspective of Reshma Saujani who shared her experiences as an unsuccessful Congressional candidate and pointed out gender issues affecting failure: "Women feel like they have to do the job before they can apply for the job." The money quote for the session came from Sean: "The depth of your failure will equal the breadth of your success."

Even though the "Silent Disco on Ice" at the skating rink might have been perfect for me, I decided to rest my voice and call it a night.

::Saturday::

When I woke up, my voice was completely gone. In 2012, I couldn't imagine a worse day to not be able to talk to people, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. On Saturday, I got to listen.

"Make no small plans"

I had to come up with a creative way to let people know I wouldn't be doing a lot of talking that day:

I met up with Eric Ries at the shuttle stop and we headed over to the Resort. With hot tea in hand and my friend Brian Forde (now an advisor to the CTO of the United States) by my side, I hit up a workshop on How to Shine in On-Air Interviews led by the "Ryan Seacrest of Australia," Andrew Gunsberg. Tons of specific, actionable advice for entrepreneurs who engage with the press.

We snuck out to catch the end of a panel on female trailblazers (titled: Is it Hot in Here? Or is it Just the Glorious Potential of Diversity, Progress & Gender Partnerships in the 21st Century?). There were a handful of men in the room, including former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. The conversation was heated, but I really liked this suggestion from comedian Baratunde Thurston that emphasized the need for allies and empathy: "A vision for the future is that each group works for one group over."

Since I couldn't really talk, I did a lot of listening at lunch with my sharktagging homie Kristofor Lofgren (creator of Bamboo Sushi). My hair twin Jake Strom (we share a stylist) and my dim sum partner Mike Del Ponte joined us, too.

After lunch, I got my DIY on in Erica Domesek's "P.S. I Made This" arts and crafts workshop. I made a sweet iPad and iPhone case. Other crafters included Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen, Yes to founder Ido Leffler, my cross-country crafting buddy Danielle Abes, Thre.ad founder Mimi Nguyen, and the human personification of a spirit animal Doug Akin.

P.S. I made these golden beauties

Although Summit Series attracts interesting speakers, content hadn't been their strong suit in the past. That definitely changed at Summit Basecamp. Content was structured as let's-talk-together-and-help-each-other roundtable discussions and jam sessions rather than let-me-tell-you-about-my-company panels and keynotes...and it was awesome. Much like the morning's workshop on talking to the press, the next session I went to (Exit Strategy: What You Need to Know About Selling a Company) was equally practical. Some of my favorite advice involved boards of directors (3 people is plenty for a small company, use term limits) and rules of thumb for valuation multiples (for tech companies: 10-12x profit or 3-4x revenue). Cindy Gallop hit the nail on the head when she exclaimed at the end, "This session is absolutely bloody brilliant!"

It was such a beautiful day, I headed outside to check out the grounds, including the Dome of Discovery, a temporary structure dreamed up by the Summit team. Ringed with lights, the dome's igloo-like door flaps were skirted by a sea of its tenants's discarded footwear and a fragrant wood-burning chiminea. I found author Michael Ellsberg (whom I met at the launch party for his book The Education of Millionaires) and took a seat next to him on a custom-made memory foam viewing couch. We hoped to catch some of the documentary "Connected," but it started too late, and we had to head inside for the discussion on Building a Massive Consumer Following Overnight.

Despite being next door to a competing keynote from the President of Georgia (yes, the country), the discussion on consumer following was well attended. Method founder Eric Ryan moderated mini-keynotes from Rohan Oza (Vitamin Water, popchips, Vitacoco) and Narry Singh (Talking Tom app). Rohan focused on the demand for great, healthy products in the market and the need to vet them with "influencers" (e.g., Summit attendees) before partnering with celebrities. Narry talked about tapping into users' core desire for self-expression and building an international user base.

I'm a big Twitter user, so I couldn't pass up a Q&A between Twitter founder Evan Williams and start-up investor Chris Sacca. I sat in the back with food system pioneer Ellen Gustafson and Donors Choose founder Charles Best. The discussion wasn't earth-shattering (Chris tends to ask high-level softball questions), but there were some great quotes when Chris described the dot com bust and Evan talked about his new venture, Obvious. My favorite quote from an audience member: "#hashtagscompletemylife"

Evan Williams and Chris Sacca

Charles and I hustled over to get good seats for "This Will Blow Your Mind," the full-length performance by supernatural mentalist Lior Suchard. I do not believe in magic or mind-reading, but I have to say, this guy's show is ABSOLUTELY UNREAL. If you get a chance to see him live, do it. Positively jaw-dropping entertainment.

Lior Suchard punks Brian Singerman real good

I headed back to the Village for pizza dinner with StyleSeat founder Dan Levine, Clothia founder Elena Silenok, Nathaniel Whittemore, and Cameron Sinclair. Cameron had, earlier that day, publicly challenged Pencils of Promise founder Adam Braun to a race to see who could build 100 classrooms first. It's shaping up to be quite the Summit rivalry, so we were all curious to hear how it went.

After dinner, I took a disco nap, then around midnight boarded the gondola to head up the mountain. I've ridden that gondola in daylight several times as a kid, but the Summit Basecamp experience was completely different.

Ceiling inside the gondola

As we crested the first tower, coordinated lasers shot out over the gondola and across the Valley. Look down, and a massive glowing Summit Series logo bounced off the snowy mountainside illuminating the atmosphere with a sense that something big is happening.

The largest gobo light I've ever seen (projected from Squaw Valley High Camp onto the mountainside)

Once at the summit, we entered High Camp for "Beats at 9,000 Feet" where Questlove was spinning. Summit's Director of Community Building Natalie Spilger presided over a dance competition in which she beat everyone by a longshot...

Natalie Spilger (a.k.a. Lt. Tutu) prepares to throw down

...except maybe Marquese Scott.

Marquese Scott

The EC Twins came on to finish out the party.

The EC Twins: beats at 9,000 feet

I eventually left the dance floor to chat with Learn Capital's managing partner Greg Mauro about Bridge International Academies and how they are revolutionizing education in Kenya. Last call came and went, and they shut down the music. After braving the coat check line, we were packed Tokyo-subway style into a gondola for a dark ride down the mountain. Perhaps unsurprisingly, someone produced speakers and before you know it, house music was blaring and the gondola was pulsing in time with its dancing contents.

Back on the valley floor, a bunch of us piled into Nicole Patrice Johnson's suburban for the short drive back to the Resort. Dhani Jones jumped in the trunk as we pulled out of the parking lot, and we all listened to 88.1 KSQR, local radio station pirated by some secret squirrels to play badass sets of music specially curated for Summit Basecamp. I certainly don't know who these scofflaw squirrels are, but if I knew and if I had hypothetically been involved, I would have outsourced my set to one of the most talented DJs I know: DJ Wait What. But of course, I know nothing.

88.1 KSQR: squirrel pirate radio

A group singing jam session led by Bear Kittay was in full swing in the Resort lobby when we returned, but we heard the pizza was all gone, so Mike Del Ponte, Jake Strom, and I headed over the the Dome of Discovery to lay in a dog pile of pillows, surrounded by ambient beats and blanketed by the planetarium-style visual art projected on the ceiling.

Dome of Discovery

Since the shuttles stopped running two hours earlier, by 5AM a group of us had to beg the valet to give us a ride back to the Village.

::Sunday::
I woke up fairly early, and found my friend Jameson for some much-needed breakfast. We went to a discussion on The Currency of Cool: Brand Building Through Creative Collaborations. Like many of the discussions, this one was in a room with a circle of chairs and a Summit Series flame in the middle. This roundtable-style conversation quickly got away from the speakers (including former Gap CMO Ivy Ross) and turned into an all-out argument between different voices in the room, but that made it kind of awesome. The Summit team took risks this year experimenting with different content formats, and I actually really appreciated the opportunities to meet everyone on an even playing field to share and debate the real issues we all face as entrepreneurs. Someone suggested that companies hire a Chief Listening Officer to make sure brands are listening to customers, and I liked that idea. Because I work in digital marketing, I was particularly struck by a comment from Brooks Brothers' Ken Seiff: "The industry used to be aligned around having the biggest audience possible, but now we need to align around having the truest audience possible."

Packed room for the Currency of Cool discussion

I grabbed lunch with Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg (introduced to me by my boy Matthew Rosenberg of One Blue Brick) who successfully convinced me to move his company's placement in my graphic depicting the internet landscape (Type vs. Hype). We also ate with superhuman memory expert Jim Kwik (I was bummed to have missed his Friday afternoon session on remembering names) and Batman aficionado Michael Uslan.

After lunch, I walked through the Summit Impact Trip Fair where various non-profits showcased impact trips attendees could take to both learn about and support the charity's work abroad. I stopped by the Invisible Children table to fist bump Jedidiah Jenkins and Jason Russell and then hit up the Mama Hope table to support my friends Nyla Rodgers and Amy Vaninetti.

Amy and Nyla showcase Mama Hope's 2012 impact trip

I wandered around a bit with my buds Anthony Adams and James Reilly, but eventually saw the Great Polar Plunge of 2012 starting by the pool and figured I better go watch. I had no intention of joining them (I was not wearing a swim suit), but when I arrived, Change the Ratio founder Rachel Sklar was the only woman in the group and I thought, "Dammit, I have to change the ratio." With only slight hesitation, I stripped down to my skivvies and joined the plunge. The intrepid group, which included musician Cisco Adler and marketer Pelle Sjoenell, prepared to follow the lead of pro kayaker Eric Jackson. First, we sat in freezing cold fresh water, the astonishingly frigid temperature of which would literally take your breath away. Then, we hopped into the hot tub, followed by a roll in the snow. Repeat. Dream Champs founder Jill Felska and all-around badass Cindy Gallop served as our supportive cheering squad. Eventually, marine biologist Ayana Johnson and Founders Fund co-founder Ken Howery joined us.

Ice cold water

Rolling in the snow

Great Polar Plunge of 2012 crew

Snow nap

The weather in Squaw was surprisingly beautiful, and it felt like we could play out there all day, but I went back to Rachel's room to dry off and talk #changetheratio before hustling to a panel on marriage equality. Former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and Lady Gaga's manager Troy Carter were supposed to lead it, but they were not able to attend. Audrey Buchanan kicked off the session by watching the "It's Time" video from Get Up!, and she very kindly credited my blog as the source who brought the video to her attention. As usual, the video made me cry.

Doug Hattaway stepped in to lead the roundtable discussion, which started with statistics that shocked most people in the room, and then somehow devolved into a fight for airtime in a heated debate between different factions of a splintered constituency. On the up side, I was really pleased to see Emmanuelle Chiriqui in the small audience, and she gladly lent her voice to the discussion, sharing her outrage at the inequality statistics. The takeaway for me was that when we think about education on this issue, we need to lead with love, a recommendation from Anthony Adams (who also shared the custom Credit Cover on his credit card).

Anthony Adams's credit cover

On my way upstairs, I passed supernatural mentalist Lior Suchard in the hallway. With coins on his eyes and black duct tape all over his face, he was "reading" random cards foisted into his hands by onlookers. I saw him guess Shervin Pishevar's birthday -- totally crazy.

Lior Suchard entertains in the hallway

I sat with Samasource founder Leila Janah and Kristofer Logren for the closing plenary session, but we used the time before to sing the praises of our mutual friend (and fellow Summiter) Darren Bechtel. The session started with an acoustic performance by Metric ("Help I'm Alive" and "Gimme Sympathy") and continued with a two-man rallying speech from Green Dot Public Schools (Marco Petruzzi and Doug Weston). My lunchmate Michael Uslan took the stage next to tell the inspiring story of how he went from being a comic-book obsessed kid in New Jersey to the award-winning executive producer of the Batman movies. His talk was particularly inspiring because, he was humble in sharing the true story of his evolution. The session closed with a performance from 2002 National Poetry Slam Champion Sekou Andrews that encouraged us all to "maintain a level of awesome-nity" in everything we do. Money quote from Sekou: "I am not perfect, but I'm perfect like I am."

I rode back to the Village with Schematic Labs founder Steve Jang and StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp, washed the chlorine out of my hair and then hitched a ride back to the Resort with a car of teenage lift operators. I explained to them how venture capital worked, and they told me their favorite websites were Facebook and Pandora.

Back at the Resort, I headed down to the pop-up Bolt Barbershop where, in partnership with Movember, they were giving haircuts and shaves. Apparently, Joe Mahon (a Summit team member) had complimented Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh during registration and claimed to admire his trademark buzz cut. Tony challenged Joe to shave his head, and Joe said he'd only do it if Tony donated $10,000 to charity. Tony agreed to match if Joe raised his own $10,000 from other attendees, and it was on like Donkey Kong.

Tony loves pretzels

When I walked in, they were just finishing shaving his head, and motivational speaker Sean Stephenson was queued up for his own charitable head shave. I ran into Sean later in the night, and apparently he had a small Summit Series logo shaved into his head. Now that's loyalty.

Sean Stephenson gets his head shaved for charity

Summit Series logo

Sean Stephenson and me

Speaking of loyalty, venture investor Shervin Pishevar took the head shave to a whole new level, having the logos of investments (Fab, Uber, Warby Parker) carved into his hair.

Photo credit: Chester Ng

I ate dinner with, among others, Art.sy founder Carter Cleveland and "the woman with the hardcore back tattoo" Amy Lehman.

Amy Lehman shows off her back tattoo at the dinner table

Next, I headed to the Dome of Discovery and sat with Soundcloud founder Alex Ljung for a fireside chat with Burning Man founders Larry Harvey and Marian Goodell, moderated by Gobbler founder Chris Kantrowitz. They talked about the 10 Principles of Burning Man, dismissed concerns about scalpers reselling tickets, and suggested we "do to the world what we've done to the playa." Things got really interesting when Pete Dutro, a founding member of Occupy Wall Street shared that Burning Man was, in some ways, an inspiration for the movement.

Burning Man founders in the Dome of Discovery

In search of a bathroom, I wandered into a nearby resort restaurant and came upon my friends F*ck Cancer founder Yael Cohen and Imaginary Feet founder Tom McLeod, and I made some new friends including Clearspring founder Hooman Radfar. With Mike Del Ponte, I eventually made my way upstairs to the Summit Speakeasy cocktails and a talk on Prohibition with Simon Ford and the Bon Vivants.

After Prohibition, we headed over to the bar to catch Metric's live set, where I ran into a great crew of old friends and new polar ice plunge pals:

Rachel Sklar, Ben Bator, Pelle Sjoenell, me, Cisco Adler, Mike Del Ponte

We went downstairs to a dimly lit room full of incense and floor mats where we sprawled out to discuss the concept of utopia. The conversation was moderated by Michael Hebb of OnePot.

Afterwards it was time to hit the dancefloor where The Glitch Mob and Castro & Guevara were spinning throughout the night.

I scooted over to the other bar and caught the last 15 minutes of ELEW's set and took a breather to have some one-on-one chats.

Walking through the lobby, I was conscripted into one of Nicole Patrice Johnson's infamous games of Werewolves and Villagers, but was the first player killed (probably because my voice was almost entirely gone again). Relieved of my villager duties, I returned to the dance floor:

::Monday::
While grabbing coffee for the road, I ran into my friend Nik Tarascio, a pilot who's planing an adventure to fly back across the country to NYC. The Subaru crew (Cameron, Dawn, Andy, and I) checked out and said our goodbyes. We stopped by one of my favorite Truckee restaurants, Jax at the Tracks, where over omelets and milk shakes we had the inevitable "how did he do that" discussion about Lior Suchard. As we descended the mountain, I gave Andy Isaacson a social media crash course before taking the wheel in Auburn and bringing us safely home to the Bay.

As I reflect on my time at Summit Basecamp, I'm amazed by the abundance of learning, experience, sharing, connecting, hugging, and life we crammed into three short days. As I literally come down from my Summit high, I continue to be exceedingly grateful to be a part of this collaborative and loving community.

Free e-book on cyberbullying

2012-01-27T00:30:00.000-08:00

This summer, I read an early copy of lol...OMG!, which is now Amazon's top selling cyberbullying book. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in online reputation management. The author is my friend Matt Ivester, someone whose experience makes him uniquely qualified to write a book highlighting the importance of digital citizenship for young people.

In honor of Data Privacy Day, the e-book is available for free (regularly $9.99) all weekend, January 27 to 30. You can download it at www.lolOMGfree.com.

About the book
lol…OMG! provides a cautionary look at the many ways that today’s students are experiencing the unanticipated negative consequences of their digital decisions – from lost job opportunities and denied college and graduate school admissions to full-blown national scandals. It also examines how technology is allowing students to bully one another in new and disturbing ways, and why students are often crueler online than in-person. By using real-life case studies and offering actionable strategies and best practices, this book empowers students to clean up and maintain a positive online presence, and to become responsible digital citizens.

ricecake prom: asian impossible

2012-01-24T20:51:00.000-08:00

last year's racecake prom video took the internet by storm. this year, they're back. and it's not one of those cheap sequels where they can't afford to bring back the original stars. shout out to ted lim, who shot and edited this video.

asian impossible: rice protocol

(what is ricecake prom?)

melted crayon art

2012-01-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

my new years resolution (ok, one of them) was to be more creative. inspired by pinterest yesterday afternoon, i ditched a networking event to head to michael's craft store to score some artistic ingredients which i combined with stuff i already had:

two 64-packs of crayola crayons
one 16"x20" canvas
hot glue gun
hair dryer
plastic sheet for easy clean-up (my roommate probably wouldn't appreciate crayon splatter on the walls)

want more #colorporn? check my my other blog: givemeallthecolors.com

love actually map

2011-12-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

my family has an annual tradition of watching love actually at christmas (mom also loves the "schweddy balls" SNL skit). while we watched it yesterday, my sister and i mapped out all the character connections:

what i do all day

2011-12-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

a little over a year ago, i wrote a post ("is business school hard?") that captured what it's like to be a first-year student at the stanford graduate school of business. this year, in a project for the admissions office, i catalogued a "day in the life" of a second-year student. you can see the whole series here, along with snapshots from several of my classmates (including my frequent partner in crime, maria lambert).

this neo-diary is from a week in october 2011. it includes boring stuff like grocery shopping and laundry, iconic GSB stuff like the "talk" speaker series and touchy-feely class, and stuff that's more unusual like a fundraising meeting with a VC and late-night cookie baking.

a surprise to me: my busiest day was my "day off" (GSB students don't have class on wednesdays).

[click here to see full week]

a summit series mom

2011-12-22T15:18:00.000-08:00

ever since i started going to summit series in 2010, my mom has been a big fan of all the inspiring stories i bring home. from being a regular evangelist for kiva to hanging a holstee manifesto in her bathroom, my mom is a big supporter of all the great energy coming out of generation Y and the summit series community:

last christmas, she only asked for one thing: a whistle from falling whistles. after reading about the organization and hearing me talk about the great work the founder -- my friend sean carrasso -- is doing, mom was set on becoming a whistleblower for peace.

mom on christmas morning, 2010

this year, for her birthday, mom asked for a pair of warby parker glasses. i've been talking them up since i met co-founder neil at DC10, and mom's been waiting for the right time to get a pair. my sister and i got her a gift card for her birthday, and mom finally settled on a pair of begleys with whiskey tortoise frames. she's a bit of a desginerd, so she's into the aesthetics, but also likes that for every pair purchased, warby parker gives away a pair to someone in need.

mom in her birthday warbys, 2011

mom loves one-for-one business models, so when she came to visit me for thanksgiving, we went on a shopping expedition in search of some TOMS shoes. she was wearing them around the house when my nieces and nephews were visiting. "are those TOMS?" they asked. "wow, you're so cool!"

mom buying her first pair of TOMS shoes

she's also down for a little dubstep and house music. after i came back from summit at sea raving about swedish house mafia and axwell's mind-blowing set the final night, mom rushed out and bought his album. days later, i got this email:

i share this not just because my mom is tremendously cool (she obviously is), but because it underscores the power of modern communications. mom lives in rural british columbia, an hour from the nearest grocery store, but all she needs is an internet connection to tap into the innovation and inspiration of summit series. can't wait to see what we dream up at basecamp. neither can mom.

street art utopia

2011-12-21T15:03:00.000-08:00

i am loving this great photo blog street art utopia. many of my old favorites and lots of new stuff. check out some of their best photos of 2011:

yarn bombing and guerilla crochet:

tiny people with legos:

spider-sized spiderman:

colored pencil fence:

pac man in a crosswalk:

Beyond Silicon Valley: New Start-up Scenes

2011-12-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

Even though I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, I know we don't have a monopoly on innovation. In my column for The Daily Muse (also published in Forbes), I highlight some of the other pockets of entrepreneurship popping up across the nation.

It all started with a computer chip.

Coined 40 years ago, the term “Silicon Valley” originally referred to the silicon chip manufacturers that helped build the high-tech movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. The region has been a technology hot spot since, but today, it’s evolved from hardware giants into social technology and consumer internet, thanks to companies like Google and Facebook. “Silicon” is no longer literal, but a metonym for the entrepreneurial spirit that’s fueled the region’s growth for decades.

But the Bay Area isn’t this country’s only pocket of innovation, and “Silicon (fill-in-the-blank)” is an increasingly popular shorthand for regions with brewing start-up scenes. With predictions that start-ups will bring the United States out of its recession, entrepreneurs across America are stepping up to the plate.

Read the article for full review. Here are the highlights...

Silicon Alley: New York City (e-commerce and badass women entrepreneurs)

Silicon Beach: Los Angeles (entertainment, celebrities, and legal)

Silicon Strip: Las Vegas (building a community from scratch, Sin City to Sim City)

Silicon Mitten: Michigan (manufacturing, energy, and renaissance)

Silicon Loop: Chicago (midwest collaboration and the "Groupon Mafia")

Silicon Beltway: Washington DC (consumer internet and social entrepreneurship)

Silicon Prairie: Omaha, Des Moines, and Kansas City (strong start-up community in the heartland)

I was short on space and would have loved to write more about each of these regions. Keep your eyes peeled for a future piece on other hotspots like Silicon Needle (Seattle), Silicon Bayou (New Orleans), Silicon Rockies (Colorado), Silicon Triangle? (Durham, NC), and Silicon Strait? (Vancouver, BC).

type vs. hype: the internet landscape

2011-12-17T18:22:00.000-08:00

i started working on this project over a year ago, and finally made the time to finish it today. i've always loved infographics and 2-by-2s, and i wanted to make one that captured my transient thoughts on the internet landscape. this particular design was inspired, in part, by a brilliant 2-by-2 of hipster celebrities by bill wasik.

i created the image below, and it reflects my own opinions as of this afternoon. don't agree with me? that's cool. it's a subjective and imperfect analysis, one that i'll probably edit and adjust frequently as my opinions about the landscape change.

each entity is assessed on two metrics i'm calling type (what kind of business or product is it) and hype (how much of a media darling is it).

i'd love to turn this concept into an open-source project that uses the wisdom of crowds to track changes in the internet landscape. might even be fun to incorporate a hans rosling-style time lapse to watch companies pivot and change their type and wax and wane through different levels of hype. could be pretty cool. holler if you know someone who might want to work with me on it.

it's time

2011-11-27T21:23:00.001-08:00

one of most touching videos for the cause (from getup! in australia). cue goosebumps in 3...2...

why everyone wants to know what you think

2011-11-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

This article was originally posted on November 18, 2011 in my column in the Daily Muse, and also in Forbes.

Like this brand on Facebook. Leave a tip on Foursquare. Rate your transaction on Amazon. Review us on Yelp. Seems like everyone from the corner store to Microsoft wants your opinion these days. Since when did you get so important?

Well, since now. Brands want your endorsement because recommendations from real people have become extremely valuable—traditional ads just aren’t enough anymore. Facebook’s Gokul Rajaram told Forbes that Facebook’s social ads make people about four times more likely to buy a product than other ads on the site. And I’ve seen similar results working at the tech start-up Bre.ad—the personalized billboards our users share via social media get up to 100 times more engagement than typical banner advertisements do.

Taking a friend’s advice is nothing new. But social media has taken what used to be off-hand recommendations to friends and family and amplified them around the world, to a point where people you’ve never met can weigh your opinion in their next decision. I call this trend the rise of the endorsement culture—a culture where everyone is a promoter.

Don’t think that’s you? Think again. Your voice is now stronger than you realize.

The Democratization of Endorsements
Today, we’re asked for our recommendations so often that it’s hard to remember how this whole endorsement culture started. Yelp launched in 2004 and built a recommendation engine based on reviews from real people. Shortly thereafter, e-commerce sites started to give credit to users who referred their friends—a strategy that drove early user acquisition for many of the flash-sale websites like Rue La La and Gilt.

But it quickly become about more than just endorsing brands and businesses. eBay’s peer-to-peer market pioneered the need to give feedback on individuals. Amazon followed suit, with its seller reviews paving the way for the web-sharing economy (Airbnb and Getaround, among others), which relies heavily on our willingness to vouch for and endorse each other.

“I don’t buy anything without looking at reviews,” explains Kellee Van Horne, 27, who worked in online sales for a large Internet business. “It seems like no one trusts companies anymore, so recommendations from real people are more important.”

Same goes for offline purchases. No longer do I have to trust a box which proclaims its contents to be the “best-tasting cereal in America”—I can instantly verify that opinion with real people on my mobile device.

Quantifying Your Influence
No matter what we’re purchasing or consuming, endorsement culture is changing the way we make decisions. This, of course, has major implications for businesses. They want me to like their products—but how do they find out how who influences me, and whose recommendations I’ll take?

Click here to read the rest of the article...

change starts with your underwear

2011-11-15T13:12:00.000-08:00

ever since i met founder jason kibbey at summit series in 2010, i've been in love with his company, PACT. jason and his co-founder jeff denby started PACT after they graduated from haas because they saw a need for well-designed sustainably-produced underwear. they've since expanded to socks, t-shirts, and tanks. their supply chain is badass, and their products are awesome.

last month, my friend aja and i drove up to san francisco for a photo shoot on a SOMA rooftop. we stripped down to our PACT undies to support post-tsunami rebuilding in japan -- important work by my friend cameron sinclair's phenomenal organization, architecture for humanity. for today's kick-off of the new line, aja and i are featured on the campaign's website as PACTivists of the day.

architecture for humanity was one of the first organizations that my non-profit, philanthro productions, supported back in 2008. it was a pleasure to come full-circle in this community of social good to help a cause i believe in.

if you want to help make a difference with your underwear (or socks or shirts), check out PACT's website: www.wearpact.com

stop the pity

2011-11-09T15:02:00.000-08:00

i absolutely adore this clever new video from mama hope (headed by my pal, the inspiring nyla rodgers). they get my full endorsement for their "stop the pity -- unlock the potential" campaign to bring real change to africa. the little boy at 0:54 is definitely my highlight.

thrilled to see so many familiar summit faces: cameron sinclair, darren bechtel, glynn washington, tom mcleod, nicole patrice johnson, tobias rose-stockwell, and many more!

Top 50 Women to Watch in Tech

2011-11-03T16:58:00.000-07:00

I am very proud to have been named one of the Top 50 Women to Watch in Tech by Femme-o-nomics. I'm especially stoked to be honored alongside my friends Amber Reyngoudt (extraordinary engineer) and Kathryn Minshew (visionary publisher). Huge thank you to the panel of judges and to Femme-o-nomics for this honor.

sitting is the new planking

2011-10-11T01:51:00.000-07:00

i despise the typical vacation photo: background = blurry, poorly lit snapshot of a monument that real photographers have already captured on post cards, foreground = you looking like a sweaty dweeb in your tourist gear. as such, i'm in very few of my vacation and travel photos.

however, on my recent trip to europe, my friend maria and i developed some great memes that renewed my love for vacation photos. it all started at the louvre when i sat down on the ground to take a photo of maria. as it turns out, i have quite the knack for sitting quietly in awkward places. you can check out the whole album of "jong sits" photos, but here are some of the highlights (photo credits to brilliant photographer maria lambert):

sitting at the louvre

sitting at the arc de triomphe

sitting with the eiffel tower

sitting at pompidou

sitting at notre dame

sitting at musee d'orsay

sitting in the hofgarten in munich

sitting in a museum in vienna

sitting in the haus der musik

sitting at lake spitzingsee

maria's go-to position is something we fondly call "glambert presents." definitely check out the full album of maria "presenting" various monuments throughout western europe. it's hilarious.

remembering steve jobs

2011-10-10T01:45:00.000-07:00

steve jobs died on wednesday.

i already had an article ready to run on friday for my column in the daily muse, but as i lay in bed on wednesday night flipping through my instagram and twitter feeds, i noticed an interesting pattern and knew i had to publish a different article for friday. i stayed up late and wrote, "the man who became a logo: how we memorialize steve jobs." you can read it in the daily muse or on forbes.

on friday night, i stopped by the apple store in downtown palo alto. sometimes called "steve's store," because of its proximity to his home, the university avenue location was home to an impromptu memorial. colored sticky notes scrawled with personal messages of thanks and sadness covered the store window, and a vigil of flowers, candles, and gifts crowded the sidewalk.

i only had two classes after steve passed, but in both of them, my professors talked about steve at length and either quoted from or played the video of his 2005 commencement speech at stanford.

why i (used to) hate pink collar start-ups

2011-09-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

my latest column for the daily muse -- also picked up by forbes -- was inspired by a tweet.

on august 2, i watched this trailer:

struck by the limited female presence in the video, i tweeted this:

the response to that tweet led me down a path of reflection to explore why it is that women start pink collar businesses, and why that trend seemed to bother me. i sent the first draft of the article to my editors on september 11.

especially since the brouhaha over jolie o'dell's september 13 tweet, there seems to be a conflict between the women-in-tech crowd and the pink collar crowd. is that a fair fight? check out my column to get my take.

never say this again

2011-09-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

continuing with my tradition of outrage related to corporate jargon, i wrote an article for the daily muse highlighting the 6 business buzzwords you should banish from your vocabulary forever. it got republished by huffington post women, and you can find it on the front page today.

the egregious offenders:

rock star/ninja
reach out
around
impactful
open the kimono
out of pocket

full disclosure: i have, at some point in my life (likely circa 2005), used each of these abhorrent phrases -- with the exception of "open the kimono" which is just weird. i hang my head in shame and try to help the next generation avoid my mistakes.

best part of this article? the fact that i got huffpo to publish "OG" as an acceptable adjective. win!

[update]: this article was also republished by forbes.

roadtrip through europe

2011-09-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

"i thought you'd never ask," said my friend maria when i asked if she'd like to do some international travel with me before starting our second year at stanford's graduate school of business.

not least among the reasons i like maria is that she and i share a former career: management consultant. years of slavish devotion to american airlines and starwood hotels has blessed us with enough airline miles and hotel points to execute a 10-day travel extravaganza on pitiful student budgets. we settled on western europe (specifically france, luxembourg, germany, and austria) for mostly practical reasons: maria speaks french and german, and we both like pretzels. we booked some flights, reserved a rental car, and prepared for adventure.

a week before we left, i was in new york for work and found myself hunkered down for hurricane irene with maria by my side. "what do you want to do on our trip?" she asked.

"eat my face off and take a million photos," i replied. she nodded quietly, her mouthful of cheese, as she intently changed a roll of film on her lomographic holga camera.

i knew this was going to be good.

day 1 - san francisco to paris
i took the RER from charles de gaulle and met maria at the apartment of 3 of our classmates who were working in paris. we were almost immediately won over by constance, a cafe around the corner whose delicious salads, sandwiches and desserts were all homemade (according to the franglish-speaking owner). we took our food to go and made our way over to the jardin des tuileries. this lunch was one of the best meals we had on the trip -- a must-not-miss in paris. our perfectly pressed panini housed cheese, ham, pesto, tomato, and arugula; our flavorful salad: a blend of arugula, broccoli, quinoa, and beets; and, most gloriously, our fresh fruit crumble was nothing short of heavenly.

we'd both seen the louvre in college, so we skipped the inside tour in favor of some external pictures in the lovely afternoon light.

louvre

our camera antics led to a recreation photo of a pose lovingly coined by our friend andrew as "glambert presents." in this pose, maria stands before a monument in an aggressive lunge, her arms outstretched like a maniacal circus promoter greeting you at the entrance to the elephant tent, her face simultaneously solemn and proud. in search of a dramatic camera angle, i eventually lowered myself all the way onto the ground of the louvre's courtyard, my little legs extended in front of me like a forgotten teddy bear.

"this is too good not to photograph," exclaimed maria, and a meme was born. throughout the rest of the trip, as we periodically stumbled upon the various sites of western europe, lambert would present, and jong would sit. the forthcoming flickr albums will be surprisingly hilarious.

we continued through the jardin des tuileries, past the luxor obelisk, and down to the arc de triomphe.

facepalm

flowers at the tuileries

boat vendor at the tuileries

arc de triomphe (with the eiffel tower peeking through)

parisian coffee

on our return home, we walked along the seine river as rain clouds rolled in.

bridge over the seine

glambert

parisian skyline

the night finished with a late dinner with our hostesses. bon.

day 2 - paris
we again took to the streets, ready for some serious walking. en route to notre dame, we passed pompidou and some banksy-esque street art.

notre dame

place igor stavinsky

glambert in place igor stavinsky

we eventually went in search of "the crepe district" -- a mythical street lined with creperies on the south side of the seine. we eventually found something good enough and grubbed on savory and sweet crepes before booking it over to the musee d'orsay in time for discounted end-of-day tickets.

graffiti outside musee d'orsay

maria studied art history in college and gave me a caffeinated tour of the museum's permanent collection including monet, manet, and van gough.we ate dinner at a surprisingly delicious italian bistro called la bocca where we ordered arugula salad, a rustic bruschetta, and gnocchi gorgonzola. plates were cleaned.

day 3 - paris to luxembourg city
we picked up our rental car and hit the french countryside. other than the ubiquitous road tolls, the drive was quite lovely -- pleasant landscapes of rolling hills, beautifully lit in the afternoon sun. the french oldies radio station ("nostalgi") played none of the hits but kept us entertained.

we stopped in reims for a quick tour at france's preeminent champagne pommery. our tour took us through cold, dark underground caves lined with dusty champagne bottles waiting to mature. each passageway and grotto is named for a foreign city; the aged signs contribute to the suspicion that you're visiting the set of an indiana jones movie. we learned that champagne pommery was so close to enemy lines in WWI that some of its caves were temporarily repurposed to store artilleries.

aging champagne bottles

caves at champagne pommery

brut royal

certainly the strangest artifact in the champagne pommery was a taxidermied elephant balancing on his trunk, pretentiously guarded by velvet rope in a glorified cubicle in the lobby. only his hind legs could be seen over the top of the awkwardly constructed walls that surrounded him, but i immediately identified an unmissable photographic opportunity. "there's an elephant doing a handstand behind that wall," i told maria. "we should take a picture."

elephant in the doorway

the champagne pommery lobby elephant

we pressed on to luxembourg city where we stayed at a hostel (my first), a pleasant dorm-like building tucked under one of the city's valley-crossing bridges. after watching some fireworks from beneath the bridge's arches, we hit the hay.

fireworks in luxembourg city

day 4 - luxembourg city to nuremberg
by the time we made it down to the lobby at 9:30AM, we'd already missed breakfast at the hostel, so we headed into the city center where we began to yearn for the american tradition of food-at-all-hours. in our fruitless search for food in luxembourg city at 10AM on a weekday, we were interviewed for luxembourgian radio about our opinions on the forthcoming 10-year anniversary of 9/11.

next stop: germany. our first gas station break introduced me to all manner of german oddities including pornographic videos in the mini-mart and impossibly high mirrors in the bathrooms. germany, as it turns out, was not designed for short people.

our destination was nuremberg, a last-minute itinerary addition, primarily because it had a starwood hotel we could stay at for free. we looked it up in our lonely planet guidebook and decided to visit its world-renowned nazi museum.

driving to the museum, we passed the grounds of the WWII nazi party rallies (now a park), and we began to see signs for the volksfest -- the people's festival. we pulled into the parking lot, and in front of the world's biggest nazi museum, we saw a towering ferris wheel. no joke. we vowed to investigate after our tour.

the museum was very interesting. although it certainly covered topics related to the holocaust, the main focus of the exhibits was to document and describe hitler's rise to power and the fascinating story behind the nazi party's cultural takeover of the country. one of the most memorable exhibits described the labor camps in which prisoners mined stone under barbaric conditions. the stone, we learned, was largely used to erect the grandiose facilities surrounding the museum, facilities that served as the backdrop for nazi propaganda and frenzied party rallies.

creepy hitler paraphernalia at the nuremberg nazi museum

when we emerged, we decided to investigate what business a ferris wheel had being outside a nazi museum. to our delight, we discovered that the volksfest is akin to an american county fair, replete with carnival rides, indulgent fried foods, and top-notch people watching. the frosting on our already delightful cake of german culture: it was ladies night. seriously. we enjoyed a discounted ride on the aforementioned ferris wheel and then dined on volksfest cuisines like a massive pretzel, a frosty beer, and a pickle stuffed with sauerkraut. it was a highlight of the trip, and thus, much photographed.

glambert is ready for ladies night

foreground: volksfest, background: nazi museum

glambert joy on the ferris wheel

game booth at volksfest

fish sandwich at volksfest

gerkins at volksfest

tiny haribo at volksfest

tiffany: a schmuck boutique (at volksfest)

coconut crunchies at volksfest

glambert's first german beer (at a volksfest biergarten)

sausage at volksfest

volksfest at night

volksfest rollercoaster

we called it a night at the le meridian in nuremberg which was, as expected, lovely.

day 5 - nuremberg to munich
we ate a delicious breakfast at cafe am trödelmarkt, right on the water in downtown nuremberg, before heading over to the toy museum.

best breakfast of the trip: crushed

the toy museum housed four floors of playful exhibits from 19th century doll houses to malibu barbie.

OG scrabble at the nuremberg toy museum

noahs ark at the toy museum

hedgehog friend at the toy museum

19th century toys at the toy museum

proto yahtzee in a century-old doll house

peering into the depths of a pocket-sized diorama of a parisian street scene

although i enjoyed the museum very much, it did confirm my immense aversion to dolls.

this is what nightmares are made of

continuing to explore the theme of "juxtapositions in nuremberg" (remember the ferris wheel at the nazi museum?), we stumbled upon the red bull district ride, a bike stunt event, gearing up in front of st. sebaidus church and the frauenkirche in the town square.

we drove beneath the impossibly large-looking sky down to munich, where we met up with our airbnb hosts, a lovely young professional couple with an enchanting doberman named spike. rather than barking and jumping on us, spike periodically fell asleep sitting up as we drank coffee and chatted with our hosts in the living room.

spike, trying not to fall asleep

one of our hosts was interested in applying to business school in the states (particularly stanford), so we gladly offered our advice.

we took the s-bahn train into downtown munich and walked around the sunset-lit city.

feldherrnhalle

sunset in munch

dusk in marienplatz

tantalized by the cover art of a children's book, i was drawn into a book store where i bought the book without even cracking the cover. when we finally got around to reading der kragenbär, a short biography of a (suspiciously gay?) bear who wears an elizabethan collar, it was determined to be one of the greatest purchases of our entire trip. great addition to my children's book collection.

after scarfing some surprisingly inexpensive raspberries and strawberries from a street vendor, we made our way to weisses brauhaus, a beer hall where we ate jagerschnitzel and spaetzel.

munich street food

we followed that up with ice cream, more beer, and a crepe, and returned to our airbnb apartment feeling almost ill...in a good way.

day 6 - munich to dachau to vienna
we went into town again in the morning and caught the end of the glockenspiel "show" at marienplatz. nothing to write home about. much more satisfying was our 14-floor climb to the top of a nearby church for 360 views of munich under a clear blue sky.

marienplatz from 14 stories up

at the viktualienmarkt, we washed down our bavarian pretzels and white sausages with fresh fruit juice and then headed back to the apartment to pack it up.

german pretzel and white sausage

fresh juice at the viktualienmarkt

hedgehog friends at the viktualienmarkt

since we had some extra time, we decided to stop in dachau at the former site of the WWII concentration camp. (quick aside: for those wondering, you can check in to the site on foursquare, and yes, there is a mayor: jessica from milwaukee). the eerie contrast between the warm, sunny day and the somber memorial museum made for an unsettling afternoon. the most disturbing exhibits included prisoner accounts of the brutality they experienced in the camps, including chilling descriptions of the very rooms we stood in.

gate at dachau concentration camp

...

we made great time to vienna, as we admired the gorgeous countryside bathed in warm light from the sunset. we arrived as our second airbnb booking of the trip -- a cute little private apartment at the south end of vienna. the apartment building had the smallest elevator i've ever been in, barely big enough for one person and a suitcase.

me in the impossibly small elevator

we went into the city to see the rathaus and burgtheater at night, and were pleasantly surprised to find a circus camped out in the plaza between then.

vienna rathaus, flanked by the roncalli circus trailers

pedestrian in white hat in front of the burgtheater in vienna

dinner included beef goulash and wiener schnitzel, and we returned to our apartment on vienna's lovable subway system.

day 7 - vienna
we had breakfast at kleines cafe, and then walked to the museumsquartier by way of the burggarten and maria-theresien-platz.

breakfast at kleines cafe in vienna

kunsthistorisches museum in vienna

mumok museum in museumsquartier in vienna

our first museum of the day: the leopold museum which featured a captivating exhibit of works by egon schiele, an early 20th century painter who died at just 26. his tim burton-esque nudes were stunning (NSFW).

splitting up for one of the only times on the trip, maria hit up the modern art museum (mumok) and i went in search of what our viennese classmate called "the best ice cream ever" at tuchlauben.

the velvetiest ice cream i've ever had (mango)

we reconvened for coffee and a snack in the plaza of the museumsquartier before hoofing it over to the vienna opera to pick up cheap, last-minute standing room tickets.

fritz-kola: we are definitely in austria

afternoon treat in museumsquartier

upon arrival at the wiener staastoper opera house, we were told our skirts were too short to be allowed in the theater, so we padded off in search of other diversions. we took some photos at the karlskirche before winding up at vienna's famed music museum, the haus du musik (open late!).

karlskirche in vienna

reflection of karlskirche

musikverein at sunset

vienna street art. caption not pictured: "hilfe! kann nicht schwimmen!"

glambert at haus der musik

bumping the classical jams at the haus der musik

interactive exhibit: roll dice to make a waltz together

we powered through the floors dedicated to the vienna symphony and the great composers, favoring a leisurely examination of the 2nd floor sonosphere whose interactive exhibits explored the science of sound. very cool.

with few options late at night, we grabbed dinner across the street from the museum at an italian place whose arugula salad, mushroom pizza, and gnocchi gorgonzola treated us well.

yum

day 8 - vienna to salzberg to spitzingsee
leaving our car parked at museumsquartier (supposedly the cheapest parking in the city), we walked over to the naschmarkt, stopping at cafe sperl along the way for coffee. the cafe is lonely planet's pick, but it was nothing special.

the naschmarkt was home to a repetitive pattern of stalls hawking spices, produce, doner kebabs, and cheese. we stumbled upon an asian market, where we picked up some sesame seed dumplings stuffed with coconut. crazy delicious.

coconut-filled jin doi from an asian market in vienna

en route to our next destination, we passed through salzburg and decided to check it out. the salzach river was undoubtedly beautiful, and the little castles on the hills were charming, but we weren't terribly impressed. notable about the city were its streets full of american tourists there to take the kitschy "sound of music" tour.

salzburg, austria

as we went through salzburg and beyond, we drove through stunningly beautiful mountains. when we finally pulled off the main highway to drive through pastoral german countryside, we couldn't fathom how much more beautiful the scenery would get.

stauden, germany

josefsthal, germany

40 minutes off the highway, we finally arrived at lake spitzingsee at what may be the most randomly located starwood hotel in europe. we were extremely lucky to be upgraded to a room with a lake view, and we spent the rest of the afternoon admiring our surroundings and counting our blessings.

view from our balcony at lake spitzingsee

on the lake!

glambert on a dock at lake spitzingsee

it appeared that commerce in this sleepy ski village grinds to a halt between tourist seasons, but, in the basement of a local inn, we finally found a little tavern-style restaurant that would serve dinner. as if jagerschnitzel, pork knuckles, spaetzel, and a knödel dumpling weren't enough, we also ordered two desserts: an apple and custard strudel. ready to soak our full tummies, we visited the pool at our hotel and were delighted to find a steam room and 4 types of saunas.

sheraton spitzingsee's pool in the afternoon

we were particularly enchanted by the heated beds -- tile-covered recliners warmed to body temperature, placed strategically beneath a mood light that rotated through the colors of the rainbow.

back in the room, we ventured onto our balcony and admired the stars.

day 9 - spitzingsee to paris
we rose early -- a long day of driving ahead of us. we ducked into the cafe next door for fresh pretzels and coffee, then hopped in the car, headed west.

pretzel mascot, later consumed

the drive back out to the highway was just as stunning as our drive to spitzingsee, and we were constantly torn between stopping to capture images of the breathtaking scenery and plowing ahead to paris.

german hillside

my favorite stop along the way was a rest station where the bathrooms were operated by a company whose "philosophy" graced a plaque outside. the toilets had self-cleaning seats that automatically rotated 360 degrees after flushing. fascinating.

with the help of several episodes of my favorite podcasts (this american life, radiolab, and the moth), we made it through munich, karlsruhe, and strassbourg, and into the french countryside just as the sun was setting.

sunset in the french countryside outside of paris

we arrived in paris late, but returned our car and joined our friends for dinner.

day 10 - paris
a bit tired at the end of our trip, we took it easy, returning to constance for a repeat of the excellent lunch we had on day 2. we leisurely walked to pompidou, picking up coffee and crepes along the way. before entering the museum, we sat in the courtyard for nearly an hour, soaking up the sun and chatting.

from the top floor of pompidou, there are lovely views of paris, including the eiffel tower, norte dame, and sacré-cœur.

eiffel tower from pompidou

sacré-cœur from pompidou

the top floor of pompidou featured an exhibit called paris-delhi-bombay which explored the intersection between french and indian culture. it was a substantial exhibit (we spent nearly 2.5 hours there) with thought-provoking film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. we particularly liked the pieces that dealt with the role of gays and transgendered people in indian culture.

pompidou's permanent collection is also pretty robust and notable to me for its impressive array of what i call color porn. i already posted many photos from the collection to my new color blog, give me all the colors.

color porn at pompidou

we walked back to the apartment, grabbed drinks and appetizers (meats, cheeses, and frites) with classmates, and then returned to la bocca for a yummy last meal in europe.

day 11 - paris to san francisco
we rose pre-dawn to catch a train to charles de gaulle where we were thankful our frequent flier status gave us access to the american airlines admiral's club. while attempting to catch up on email, i put away at least 8 mini-croissants. "diet starts tomorrow," i thought. "i'd better enjoy europe while i still can."

travel day

as my plane took off, i looked down at the checkered french farmland outside my window and yearned to pull out my camera -- well, my iphone, which proved to be a reliable camera replacement on this trip. but i'd already taken 1400 photos (maria, many thousands more on her SLR), and i thought about all the beauty i'd already captured. feeling my tummy full of croissants, i was pleased to know i'd achieved my objectives for this trip, and i smiled.

the download

2011-09-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

today, i am excited to announce the launch of my new biweekly tech column in the daily muse, an online magazine featuring smart content for professional women. a quick description of "the download":

With a dearth of female role models in technology and entrepreneurship, Gen Y faces a challenging question: what does it mean to be a woman in the digital age? In “The Download,” Anneke Jong explores the new ways that young women engage with technology to pursue their passions, curate their personal brands, and develop a new paradigm for the female identity. Read more every other Friday.

you can read my first column, you are not your resume, on the front page of the daily muse, and you can follow "the download" on twitter at @thedwnld.

my predictions for the future

2011-08-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

on monday, i was invited to be a guest on the live-streamed TWiT web show "fourcast." here's the summary:

You'll get short term, long term, and crazy predictions from some of the smartest people on the planet. From robot overlords, to growing your own meat in a dish, you never know what predictions our guest will make and where the conversation may end up. Join us for a peak at the future.

it's definitely a bit nerve-wracking to be live on the internet for an hour, but i had an absolute blast doing the show with tom merritt, scott johnson, and brian hough.

for the record, i do know a thing or two about nanorobotics, but my attempt at irreverence was spoiled by my inability to remember that cookie robots were featured in despicable me. shame on me. that was a great movie.

graphing my reaction to "watch the throne"

2011-08-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

how i feel about the new jay-z and kanye album, watch the throne:

starting a company on third base

2011-08-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

there's an interesting blog post kicking around the internets this week titled "why i quit my job to start a tech company." it follows the path to start-up success taken by a former wall streeter who, at age 25, decided to change his career after seeing the power mark zuckerberg wielded in a room full of media executives.

the blog post has been particularly popular with stanford MBAs, many of whom hope to follow a similar path. i agree that we need more capable people actually building companies that solve problems, but i'm troubled by what appears to be an obvious omission from the story.

although i appreciate the post's sentiment, let's not overlook how much easier it is to embrace this type of advice ("be bold! take risks! follow your passions!") when you have savings from your private equity job to fall back on. the luxury of start-up capital is a very real factor in one's ability to pursue a dream.

there's a saying that it's easy to hit a home run when you're born on third base. similarly, many of the struggles that crush budding entrepreneurs (like overwhelming debt and limited access to talent and partnerships) are greatly ameliorated by access to capital.

i don't mean to diminish the writer's accomplishments -- i admire his drive and tenacity, and it sounds like he created a lot of his success through hard work. but in the viral frenzy to share this feel-good story, i don't want the nuances of reality to get lost: starting a company is hard work, but it's even harder if you truly start from nothing.

what photo sharing app should you use?

2011-06-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

as a loyal instagram and path user, i'm loving this little gem from sean percival (via techcrunch)

guerilla infographics

2011-06-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

these clever pie chart stencils from golan levin allow any nerd to take to the streets and customize her own data-driven message. check out infoviz graffiti. love it.

dear world: be nice.

2011-05-20T22:10:00.000-07:00

the dear world team was at TEDxSiliconValley last weekend, and i was thrilled to be included in this gorgeous and moving photo exhibit. it's an ongoing social collection of inspired portraits capturing the messages we want to share -- allowing us to write our future. huge thank you to the talented photographer, robert x. fogarty.

nerd graffiti

2011-05-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

loving this nerdy little bit of graffiti from the this american life mailing list.

Interview with Ben Bator - Summit at Sea

2011-04-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

Interview with Ben Bator, co-founder of Texts From Last Night
Monday, April 11, 2011
Summit at Sea afterparty, Mondrian Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida
Conducted by Anneke Jong for the interview series "7 Leaders on the Rise"

Accepted to law school and comfortably unemployed, Benjamin Bator changed his career path in 2009 when he co-founded Texts From Last Night, one of the most popular sites on the internet. TFLN’s curated collection of humorous text messages receives 3-5 million page views and 5,000-7,000 submissions daily. With a published book and TV show rumors abound, Bator is now at the forefront of archiving the experiences of his generation. He returns to Summit Series after being a featured attendee in 2010 under the Summit Series banner of business.

Jong: Why do you like Summit and why do you keep coming back?

Bator: It’s a different experience each time. It’s not a conference where you’re getting the same thing every year. You can go in with a different mindset and totally make it what you need. You don’t necessarily go in and say, “I’m going to put in A and take away B.” It’s a totally personal experience, and I think they [the Summit Series team] do a really good job allowing people to make Summit what they want it to be.

Jong: What has your personal Summit experience meant for you? What have you taken away from the Summit community?

Bator: It’s hard to say in a sentence what I’ve gotten from Summit. My first Summit was DC10, and to be back here a year later has been a totally different experience. That’s a testament to the amount of personal growth I’ve been able to accelerate over the last year, mostly because of the people I’ve met at Summit and the relationships I’ve continued to put work into. The Summit community is a base of smart and really connected people that can facilitate your dreams. If you go in with a project, you can build out the entire project in no time because of the people here.

Jong: What have you given to the community?

Bator: Hopefully, a little bit of fun (not that they need help). More seriously, I’ve lent an ear to listen and help people out when they’re stuck — to look at a problem or a theory a different way.

Jong: What was your Summit highlight this year?

Bator: Wrapping up a discussion on identity and culture in a post-internet world, then running over to catch the last of The Roots’ set, and then going to a DJ session with ?uestlove [from The Roots] until four in the morning. I’m pretty sure that’s never happened before in my life. Or anyone else’s. It’s a completely unique and novel experience.

Jong: What’s next for you and Texts from Last Night?

Bator: I’m going to continue to make Texts from Last Night a really humorous, and somewhat archival, collection of interaction for our generation. And have a lot of fun while doing it. We have some growth plans in the works to make the content community even more fun and exciting.

Jong: What’s your favorite reaction from a Summit attendee who learned you started TFLN?

Bator: What’s really crazy is when I meet people and I’m kind of in awe because they have a product or company that blows me away, and then they tell me that what they do to relax is read TFLN. Nothing is more nerd boner producing than that.

You can catch up on last night's debauchery at TFLN or follow Ben on Twitter at @benbator.

Interview with ELEW - Summit at Sea

2011-04-22T23:08:00.000-07:00

Interview with ELEW (Eric Lewis), rockjazz pianist
Monday, April 11, 2011
Summit at Sea afterparty, Mondrian Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida
Conducted by Anneke Jong for the interview series "7 Leaders on the Rise"

With a thunderous roar, Eric Lewis (ELEW) has pioneered a new genre of rockjazz piano. His upbeat renditions of popular songs from bands like Coldplay, Nirvana, and The Killers have earned him top billing at events like the TED conference and the TechCrunch awards. After wowing the Summit Series community with an underground afterparty performance at DC10, the Summit Series 2010 event, ELEW was invited as a presenting attendee at Summit at Sea under the Summit Series banner of revelry. He opened the conference’s first plenary session, setting the stage for presentations from TOMS Shoes founder Black Mycoskie and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson.

Jong: How did you get tapped into the Summit Series community?

Lewis: I was at my cousin’s graduation from the University of Maryland, and Dave Koretz, whom I knew from the TED conference, was attending Summit Series in Washington DC. I had no idea was Summit was, but he was in DC when I was in Maryland and he put it on his Facebook page. He says, “Hey buddy, I’m around. Come to DC.” So I come to DC, and we created our own little motley crew after party. A bunch of people came to it, and that’s when [Summit Series co-founder Elliott] Bisnow and these guys first met me. They started checking me out around the country when I would play in LA, and then they invited me over.

Jong: What was your experience like at Summit at Sea, getting to perform and being an attendee as well?

Lewis: I actually met an angel investor who’s going to provide the principal opening funding for my next project, which is pretty huge. Besides that, I rocked out, I partied hard, I played some good piano, I practiced a lot, and I met a lot of cool people. I was surprised that it was a business atmosphere, because it was so sexy and cool, and at the same time very business. It was odd.

Jong: You’ve been to several high-profile conferences in the past year. How is the Summit community different?

Lewis: It was strikingly different from the TED conference concept — these guys are like my peers or younger than me, and they’re rocking out. But they’re also entrepreneurs in the fullest and most complete sense of the word, so it’s a very startling thing. I’m looking at beautiful women, and I can’t believe it because at the same time they’re working bikinis, they’re also totally awesome business women. This whole meshing of gender and youth with hardcore dreams and business and providing the life force of the American economy makes for strange bedfellows. It was strange for me to experience that merging and to see it: beautiful men, beautiful women, all getting along together, partying, but at the same time, conducting business and being geniuses. It struck me as alien and beautiful. I’ve played a lot of places: I’ve played the TechCrunch awards, the TED conference, X-Prize events, and Summit Series was very unique in that regard.

Jong: You’re blowing up right now and having a great year. What’s next for you and what are you most excited about?

Lewis: Everyone’s so fit and active here, so I’m going to start losing weight and working out so I can impress everyone out by the pool next year [laughs]. Besides that, Josh Groban just called me to open for him in his arena tour, I got the funding for my new record, I’ve got some stuff in the works with America’s Got Talent, I’m doing a ballet for Complexions Contemporary Ballet in New York, I’m doing an Australian tour in the fall, I’m doing some hits in Japan this summer…but the main thing that I’m working on it getting my deltoids and abs properly conditioned.

You can check out ELEW's tour dates on his website or follow him on Twitter at @ELEWROCKJAZZ.

Interview with Jason Russell - Summit at Sea

2011-04-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

Interview with Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Celebrity Theater, Celebrity Century cruise liner, Summit at Sea, somewhere in the Bahamas
Conducted by Anneke Jong for the interview series "7 Leaders on the Rise"

In 2003, Jason Russell traveled to Africa with two of his friends in search of a story. They found the tragedies of the war in northern Uganda and their groundbreaking documentary, Invisible Children: The Rough Cut, was born. Eight years later, Invisible Children is one of the world’s leading non-profit voices using the power of media to inspire young people to help end the longest running war in Africa.

Jong: Why do you keep coming back to Summit?

Russell: I don't like conferences. I don't believe in them. I have attended very few where I felt like I got something out of it or met people that I would be friends with for a long time. Summit Series completely changed the game for me because it was so casual and so authentic in the sense of intentional fun while talking about incredible issues, causes, meaningful conversations. For me, there are people here — at least three dozen people — who I know I'll be friends with for life. It really is the power of what these young men, and women now, [the Summit Series team] have seen in the world and gathered together, and there really is a force and a power that I don't think happens anywhere else. It's so different from the TED community, so different from the Clinton Global Initiative, and that difference is really what sets them apart and keeps me coming back because I can’t wait to add to the friend group that I already have.

Jong: Just moments ago, Summit Series co-founder Elliott Bisnow said, “In the blackjack game of life, when you get a jack or a queen instead of a two or a three, there’s a great responsibility.” With that, he announced Summit Series’ new initiative to support global impact trips that enable the Summit Series community to get involved with global issues in a hands-on way. Particularly since last year’s Invisible Children treks to Uganda were the inspiration for this program, can you talk about what you have given to this community?

Russell: It’s really incredible when someone of affluence and influence asks, “How can I help?” and we’re able to say, “Come see what we’re doing in Uganda.” For them to take a week out of their busy lives, running their companies, to come and see the work on the forefronts of warzones in development, education, microfinance, is really exciting because we gain so much from the Summit community because they are at the cutting edge of business. They add so much to our brand, and they help us become sharper. But also, we know their lives become much richer, their paradigms shift, and their lives become more purpose-filled; so it’s a win-win. That’s what we love, and we’re glad that Summit Series has agreed to launch these altruistic adventures into Uganda, Rwanda, and now there’s a lot of people who want to go to the Congo with us, so we’re really excited.

Jong: Tell us about your trips last year to Uganda.

Russell: We took two extraordinary trips. We started at the beginning of the story in 2003, and we walked the group through the lineage and chronology of Invisible Children from rebuilding schools to providing mentors for former abducted child soldiers. We talk to them about the programs, and they get to see it firsthand. Then we took them to Rwanda and we showed them the genocide memorials — the bones and remains of when the world stood by and didn’t act in 1994 when a million people were killed in one hundred days. That is happening right now in the Congo, and the world is not doing anything about it, so we really empowered them and said, “We need you. We need your time and your resources and your advocacy to make sure people are aware of what’s going on in the Congo.”

Jong: Invisible Children has seen such growth with expansion into new countries and new issues, bringing new solutions to people beyond what started as a documentary. What’s most exciting for you on the horizon?

Russell: We’re most excited about launching The Fourth Estate this summer, which was inspired by a history lesson from the French Revolution. France was divided into three states: the monarchy was the first state, then the aristocracy, and the third estate was the people. The third estate said, “We want representation because we’re always getting out-voted by the other two estates.” This led to the French Revolution, which completely transformed democracy and the way humans govern themselves and the way governments are built. Our launch of The Fourth Estate is an ideology and a philosophy in which people agree that they aren’t going to fight for their own rights but for the rights of others. It’s the fourth dimension of justice and democracy. We’re excited about that because Invisible Children will go beyond this story, this specific cause and issue and war and we’ll say, “Whenever there is a warlord, or whenever there are massive crimes against humanity, we, the Fourth Estate — not we, Americans, not we, United Nations — we, the people of the world, will come to the rescue when children or women are being slaughtered.” That’s what we’re most excited about and that’s what’s next. We hope it doesn’t take fifty years to get there. We believe that we can do it in a rather short amount of time if we all work together and do it smart.

You can learn more at the Invisible Children website or follow Jason on Twitter at @jradruss.

Interview with Charles Best - Summit at Sea

2011-04-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

Interview with Charles Best, founder of DonorsChoose.org

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Pool deck of the Celebrity Century cruise liner, Summit at Sea, somewhere in the Bahamas

Conducted by Anneke Jong for the interview series "7 Leaders on the Rise"

After five years as a social studies teacher in the Bronx, Charles Best founded DonorsChoose.org, an online platform for crowd-sourced classroom funding. Public school teachers across the country post classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org, which donors can fund directly for a little as $1. Since inception, DonorsChoose.org has raised over $81 million to support local school teachers. After participating at DC10, Summit Series’ 2010 conference in Washington DC, Best is returning for Summit at Sea as a featured attendee under the Summit Series banner of altruism.

Jong: DonorsChoose.org was recently featured in a secret video embedded in a QR code within the viral video of Stephen Colbert singing Rebecca Black’s “Friday” on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. How did that come to be?

Best: This will actually be fresh news for you to break: an unwritten, untold story. Colbert had this portrait of himself which hung in the national portrait gallery, first in the men’s bathroom, then in the gallery. When Steve Martin came on his show to do this interview about this book on art appreciation, Colbert asked him if this portrait wasn’t art, and Steve Martin said it wasn’t really a work of art in his view. Then, onto the set came these famous artists like Shepard Fairey and all kinds of amazing artists who embellished the photo. That turned this painting into a really valuable work of art, which Colbert auctioned off with the proceeds going to classroom art projects on our site. The portrait goes for $26,000 — all for art projects on our site.

At the end of the segment, Colbert tells his viewers that his “best friend forever for six months” Jimmy Fallon (as of March 3 they’re best friends forever for a trial period) Jimmy Fallon would be matching all those proceeds with a personal donation of $26,000. As you can imagine, we were thrilled when we saw the show. The internet and Twittersphere started buzzing about what an amazing guy Jimmy Fallon must be. So generous, so dedicated to arts education. We’re high-fiving each other around the office.

But then Stephen called me two days later, to break the bad news: Jimmy Fallon had maybe never even heard of Donor’s Choose before, and he certainly had no idea about any $26,000 donation. Stephen Colbert was philanthropically “punking” Jimmy Fallon. Luckily, he [Stephen Colbert] had some ideas for how to make this work out, and he personally committed to, in his words, “cover the spread” if Jimmy Fallon couldn’t make good on the debt he never knew he’d incurred. In the end, they decided to ask Jimmy Fallon’s viewers to help make an honest man out of him and donate to art projects in his name, which they did to the tune of $65,000. As a condition of Jimmy Fallon’s viewers doing that, Stephen Colbert sang Rebecca Black’s “Friday” with The Roots [the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon house band] who are all psyched about DonorsChoose.org because of being introduced to it by Jimmy and Stephen.

Jong: Coincidentally, The Roots are here at Summit at Sea. Have you spent any time with The Roots on the boat?

Best: I did get to speak with ?uestlove [the drummer for The Roots] for a little bit. He’s already been on our site because of Colbert singing on Fallon’s show.

Jong: You’ve obviously had a big year: at DC10 [Summit Series’ 2010 event], you interviewed Russell Simmons in the first plenary session, and every attendee received a $100 Donors Choose gift card in their gift bag. Now you’re back for another year, and I saw the gift card in the gift bag again. Can you talk about that program and how Summit Series has affected you and DonorsChoose.org?

Best: Summit represents this amazing opportunity to talk to influencers and entrepreneurs and awesome people. Getting influencers and entrepreneurs and awesome people on our site is worth enough that we’re psyched to underwrite these philanthropic gift cards to get people hooked on supporting classrooms.

Jong: Do you have a specific example of someone who got “hooked”?

Best: At DC10, I met the founder of Dapper — they do dynamically created banner ads. Now Dapper is helping us pro-bono by running and creating display ads which use our API to show classroom project requests that are geo-targeted and topically-targeted to the content on the webpage. This is giving us all kinds of learnings. Notably, these ads have taught us that for someone to feel like a giving opportunity is hyper-local, it needs to be in a 50 mile radius. We know that from testing these banner ads. That’s an important takeaway that we got from a partnership, and we only got it thanks to Summit Series.

Jong: What do you see as the future for your industry of crowd-sourced giving? Obviously you guys have helped pioneer this space. What’s next and where do you see the space going?

Best: I’m humbled by our brethren like Kiva and Kickstarter. I feel like each of them disproves an assumption. Kiva disproved the assumption that everyone needs a tax deduction to give money altruistically. Kickstarter disproved the assumption that people don’t want to give more than the specific request is asking for. I feel like half the projects on Kickstarter are over-funded and that blows my mind. People are willing to donate another $20 to a $1,000 request that has already gotten $2,000. We’re doing exponential growth, but Kickstarter is explosive growth.

Jong: What are the challenges for your growth?

Best: We’ve had a lot of growth, but there’s still a lot of work to do. To put it in perspective and show how much further we have to go: I was talking to a business school professor recently, and we were discussing the classroom total project funding that DonorsChoose.org is going to do this year: $31 million. He explained that if just one major development officer at a big university did only $31 million in a year, they’d be fired for terrible performance. That’s one development officer at one university serving a tiny sliver of the population — in contrast to our goal of every public school in America. What a big university raises in 3 months is more than DonorsChoose, Kiva, and Kickstarter combined, so we still have a long ways to go.

You can learn more at DonorsChoose.org or follow Charles on Twitter at @CharlesBest

7 Leaders on the Rise

2011-04-21T17:58:00.000-07:00

About a week before Summit at Sea, I was asked by media empress Shira Lazar to be a special correspondent on the boat for her new CBS News online hub and interactive show "What's Trending." I had the enviable job of selecting some brilliant young leaders who I think are doing interesting things and, in some cases, quite literally changing the world. Six interviews later, it was impossible to not feel inspired both by the innovation and vision of these young leaders, but also by the energy they've harnessed within the Summit Series community to create connections, ignite partnerships, and take real action to make the world a better place. These individuals are changing their industries with grace and having fun while doing it. They're inspiring role models for our generation — people whom I'm proud to call my peers, mentors, and friends. Without further ado, I present to you: 7 Leaders on the Rise.

Jessica (left) and Dana (right)

1 & 2. Jessica Jackley and Dana Mauriello, co-founders of Profounder
[click here for interview]
After founding Kiva.org, an innovative microlending website that empowered individuals to invest in entrepreneurs in developing countries, Jessica Jackley turned her sights to supporting for-profit entrepreneurs back at home. With her Stanford Graduate School of Business classmate, Dana Mauriello, she founded Profounder, an online crowdfunding platform that provides tools for entrepreneurs to raise their investment capital from their communities. Jackley was a returning featured attendee under the Summit Series banner of entrepreneurship. At DC10, Summit Series’ 2010 event, Jackley and Mauriello introduced Profounder and won the live venture capital simulated stock exchange, the earnings from which they “paid forward” with a live pitch event at Summit at Sea.

photo credit: Jahub

3. Sean Carasso, founder of Falling Whistles
[click here for interview]
When Sean Carasso traveled to the Congo in 2009, he learned that children too small to carry a gun were sent to the frontlines of war armed with only a whistle. This experience gave birth to Falling Whistles, a campaign to make their weapon their voice. A three-time Summit Series attendee, Sean is an important part of the Summit Series community of altruism and global action. His indelible mark on the community is evident in the quiet jingle of whistles hanging on the necks of the many “whistleblowers for peace” at Summit at Sea. Falling Whistles' current project is to bring awareness to the second democratic elections in Congo, which will happen later this year. They recently unveiled a petition to the US senate to tell President Barack Obama to send a convoy to the African country to aid with the democratic process of their elections. The first petition, which appealed to local congressmen, was signed by over 10,000 people, and 35 congressmen and women wrote to the President on the Congolese people's behalf.

photo credit: Bridget Best

4. Charles Best, founder of DonorsChoose.org
[click here for interview]
After five years as a social studies teacher in the Bronx, Charles Best founded DonorsChoose.org, an online platform for crowd-sourced classroom funding. Public school teachers across the country post classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org, which donors can fund directly for a little as $1. Since inception, DonorsChoose.org has raised over $81 million to support local school teachers. After participating at DC10 as an interviewer for Russell Simmons in the opening plenary session, Best returned for Summit at Sea as a featured attendee under the Summit Series banner of altruism. In the interview, he shared the inside scoop on the viral video of Stephen Colbert performing Rebecca Black's "Friday" on Jimmy Fallon's show, and how a "secret video" helped support DonorsChoose.org.

photo credit: BIGB Photography

5. Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children
[click here for interview]
In 2003, Jason Russell traveled to Africa with two of his friends in search of a story. They found the tragedies of the war in northern Uganda and their groundbreaking documentary, Invisible Children: The Rough Cut, was born. Eight years later, Invisible Children is one of the world’s leading non-profit voices using the power of media to inspire young people to help end the longest running war in Africa. At Summit at Sea, the organizing team announced Summit Series’ new initiative to support global impact trips that enable the Summit Series community to get involved with global issues in a hands-on way. Invisible Children's treks to Uganda on 2010 were the inspiration for this program, and Jason talks in the interview about what that means to him and the organization.

photo credit: Nancy Hirsch

6. ELEW, rockjazz pianist
[click for interview]
With a thunderous roar, Eric Lewis (ELEW) has pioneered a new genre of rockjazz piano. His upbeat renditions of popular songs from bands like Coldplay, Nirvana, and The Killers have earned him top billing at events like the TED conference and the TechCrunch awards. After wowing the Summit Series community with an underground afterparty performance at DC10, the Summit Series 2010 event, ELEW was invited as a presenting attendee at Summit at Sea under the Summit Series banner of revelry. He opened the conference’s first plenary session, setting the stage for presentations from TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson.

photo credit: Ben Bator

7. Ben Bator, co-founder of Texts From Last Night
[click here for interview]
Accepted to law school and comfortably unemployed, Benjamin Bator changed his career path in 2009 when he co-founded Texts From Last Night, one of the most popular sites on the internet. TFLN’s curated collection of humorous text messages receives 3-5 million page views and 5,000-7,000 submissions daily. With a published book and TV show rumors abound, Bator is now at the forefront of archiving the experiences of his generation. He returns to Summit Series after being a featured attendee in 2010 under the Summit Series banner of business.

Summit at Sea

2011-04-18T03:01:00.001-07:00

Monday, April 11, 2011. 9:00AM. I’m standing in a cab line at the Port of Miami, never so happy to be a shell of a human being. I’ve just disembarked from Summit at Sea, the latest event from the Summit Series team, and the experience demands every last drop of energy you can muster. We're all hoarse from impassioned conversations, sore from ocean obstacle courses, and exhausted from three nights of you-can-sleep-when-you're-dead. Surreal is the only word to describe Summit at Sea: a cruise ship full of the 1,000 most influential young entrepreneurs, global leaders, and changemakers in their industries. Fast Company called it "part TED, part extreme sports," while Forbes coined the description "Davos for the Y generation." One attendee called it, “capitalistic Burning Man where everyone wants to change the world.” Summit Series is powered by the energy of its attendees, and the experience pulsates with potential, excitement, solutions, partnerships, house music, bikinis, sharks, hugs, and whistles. Against the backdrop of the massive, M.C. Escher-inspired Celebrity Century cruise ship and a private island in the Caribbean, Summit at Sea — like the Summit Series events before it — is a uniquely awesome accelerator and incubator for friendships. Not just contacts or business partners, but real friends whom I talk to every day.

::FRIDAY::
From the moment we entered the boarding terminal at the port on Friday, we could feel the energy in the air. The check-in line snaked through the glass-roofed atrium, dance music bumping through a sea of reunion hugs and peanut butter cookies. We picked up our Poken devices (the latest iteration in the still-awkward-and-cumbersome world of contact information exchange). I dropped my bag in my impossibly small triple and scoped out the gift bag. Great stuff with some welcome repeats from last year's DC10 (John Varvatos discount, DonorsChoose.org gift card, and the undeniable deliciousness of Sweet Riot chocolate) with some new additions (Yes To Carrots sunscreen, Invisible Children t-shirt, and custom boat sneakers from Creative Recreation).

The first session opened with my buddy ELEW who played an underground after party last year and returned this year to play on the main stage. First up was Sir Richard Branson who donned his trademark wavy white hair and a velvet blazer. When interviewer Chris Sacca — clad in a plaid shirt and a scruffy beard — joked that Branson had launched 14 new businesses that week, Branson pointed to Sacca’s flip flops and retorted, “I'm setting up a sock company for you.”

Sir Richard Branson interviewed by Chris Sacca

Branson's talk had similar content to Russell Simmons’ opening talk at DC10: when asked for examples of failure he said, “If you have not failed, you're not a true entrepreneur,” and cited Virgin Cola and his pass on Trivial Pursuit as examples. When asked how he allocated his day, Branson explained, “I've learned the art of delegation. Many people cling and micromanage to long, but you need to find someone who's better than you and put yourself out of business.” Branson went on to talk about two of his social initiatives: Carbon War Room and The Elders, an elite group of world leaders attempting to create positive change. Desmond Tutu is one of Branson's conspirators, and he ribbed his pal with an impersonation of the Archbishop: “People always say I namedrop. In fact, just last week I was at Buckingham palace and the queen says, ‘Arch, you name drop too much.’” Directly related to Branson's work with The Elders, Israeli model Noa Tishby asked Branson during the Q&A, “What do you say to a tyrant with $100 billion to get him to leave?” Branson laughed and replied, “Offer him $101 billion.”

Branson was followed by a short performance by Eclectic Method who spun a house music medley accompanied by, no pun intended, an eclectic video clip mashup featuring Summit attendees like Russell Simmons, Jacqueline Novogratz, and Ray Kurzweil, alongside the likes of Mother Theresa and Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

Next up was TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie who broke from last year's white oxford shirt and madras slacks to don a denim shirt and artisan-batik parachute pants topped with his trademark moppy haircut.

Blake Mycoskie interviewed by Elliott Bisnow

Blake told the genesis story of TOMS Shoes, citing a proliferation of interns as one of his company's keys to success. “We used Craigslist like you wouldn't believe,” he giggled. Behind him on stage was a TOMS branded “mystery box” which he explained contained the next iteration of TOMS's innovative 1-for-1 model. “We're not just doing shoes anymore,” he announced. The mystery boxes will be opened in June, and Summit Series attendees will get first dibs mailed to their homes. Woot.

Sean Stephenson, the 3-foot giant, closed the session with one of the more inspiring talks of the weekend. Sean paced the stage in his wheelchair, exuding an attitude and charisma that immediately captivated the audience. He set the jovial mood right off the bat: “I have some bad news,” he said, “several people have already been taken off the boat...but they were the only ugly ones.” He talked about his life purpose: to rid the world of insecurity. Lamenting the fact that we often “put our glow on low,” he encouraged the audience to embrace self-confidence. “Why am I sexy?" he asked the audience, gesturing to his body: “This good 55-lbs of love — this was built. I wasn't born with some confidence gene. But I want to show you what it's like to see me in a club,” he said before breaking into dance. Sean closed by encouraging everyone to embrace the spirit of Summit and take advantage of this unique opportunity to learn from others. Money quote: “There's lots of alcohol, you're young, and you're here to save the planet...there's going to be some hookups.”

Sean Stephenson (photo credit: Summit Series)

After dinner, I attended the women's mixer which was inspiring and exciting. Summit still has a long way to go (note the complete absence of women in the opening session), but women made up 35% of the event this year, which is definitely a move in the right direction. I wrote about Summit Series’ struggle to incorporate more women into the community after last year's event, and over the course of the year, I worked with Natalie Spilger, one of the team's new hires and Director of Community Building, on initiatives to get more young women on the boat. Although the programming we created brought 6 awesome ladies to Summit, I think we missed some opportunities to create partnerships that could really up the ante. Here's how I see it: There are plenty of organizations that purport to support the advancement of young women, but hardly any of them do it well. If I'm a foundation grant-maker or an individual philanthropist, I have very few high-impact opportunities to grow and invest in the next generation of female leaders. That's why Summit is so important. When it comes to creating an environment that truly facilitates leadership and professional development, they're pretty much the only game in town. I really look forward to working with the Summit team over the course of the next year to continue to create these opportunities and build the community.

The night closed with open bars, live music from DJ Cassidy, and enthusiastic usage of the pool deck's four bubbling hot tubs. Crowds died down around 5:00AM, when my buddy Ben Bator admitted that he had a double and no roommate. I immediately moved out of my triple and into his room with a balcony, greatly improving my quality of life. Best roommate ever.

::SATURDAY::
Having quietly left Miami sometime after dinner, we woke up somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean.

A thousand drowsy partygoers were awoken by what the schedule billed as “the world's best team building exercise ever.” Turns out it was an emergency drill, notable mostly because many people were still in their clothes from the night before. My stateroom's emergency meeting point was in the ship's casino where I waited patiently with TED curator Chris Anderson and his wife, Acumen founder and fellow GSB grad Jacqueline Novogratz, until we got the all clear.

I missed the talk by my TED buddy Tony Hsieh (I heard it was his standard content) and spent part of the morning trying to track down some internet access, which turned out to be both elusive and expensive. Upside: everyone was a lot more present than they would have been with access to Twitter and email. Downside: it was difficult to find people for meetings and meet-ups.

At noon, I joined a panel session called “How to drive profits through creative design,” which was one of the highlights of the weekend. Not only were the speakers inspiring (I was especially keen on Kristofor Lofgren, supply chain master and founder of the first sustainable sushi restaurant, Portland’s Bamboo Sushi), but the discussion afterwards epitomized the positive energy we can harness at Summit. Attendees and organizers frequently marvel at the power and accomplishments of Summit attendees, but you don’t always get to actually see this group of thinkers and doers actively thinking and doing in such a collaborative way. After the speakers finished, panel moderator Bobby Chang suggested we leverage the brains in the room to engage in a real discussion about creating sustainable businesses. Although the session was scheduled to end at 1:00PM, everyone stayed almost an hour later to participate in an exciting brainstorming session that left me feeling energized and hopeful.

After lunch, I had a nice coffee chat with Paul Bricault of Greycroft Partners about the future of digital media, and then “Silicon Beach” angel Paige Craig (my pal from TEDx) and I talked about how the internet facilitates everyone's “15MB of fame,” particularly among so-called “lifecasters.” We continued our discussion until the Profounder live pitch event in the afternoon. The Profounder team (my fellow GSB alums and inspiring friends Dana Mauriello and Kiva co-founder Jessica Jackley) won the live pitch event last year and used some of the winnings to pay it forward and showcase young entrepreneurs on the boat. Unsurprisingly, the winner was my friend Alan Chan for his latest venture, Bre.ad.

Alan Chan pitching Bre.ad at the live pitch competition

You'll hear a lot more from me about Bre.ad in the coming months, but suffice it to say it's a disruptive new take on cutting the noise in online advertising. I really liked some of the other pitches, too, including Gobbler (a data storage tool that facilitates cataloguing, versioning, and collaboration), Hendricks Park (a virtual personal shopping service for men), and Hindsight Con (a conference for entrepreneurs focused on sharing and exploring failures).

After the Profounder pitch event, I spent some time at the pool with some of the most inspiring people I know, people who are changing the world whom I'm proud to call my friends. Typical Summit moment with Kiva co-founder Jessica Jackley, Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell, DonorsChoose.org founder Charles Best, and FEED Projects co-founder Ellen Gustafson:

Before Summit, I was asked by the lovely Shira Lazar to be a special correspondent on the boat for CBS’s new online hub and interactive show “What's Trending.” For my content, I interviewed 7 amazing Summit attendees who I believe are changing their industries and the world around them. I hope to see all the interviews published sometime in the next week, and I may republish them here on my blog as well. The highlight of the interviews was definitely Charles Best, who — in addition to having the surprise six-pack of the century (see above) — regaled me with an exclusive on the genesis of Stephen Colbert's performance of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” on Jimmy Fallon's show. During the performance, a dancer held up a QR code that linked to a secret video about DonorsChoose.org. Since the video had just gone viral the work before, it was pretty fun to get the back story.

After a dining room dinner with two of my favorite Mikes — Fast Society's Michael Constantiner and Misson Motors’ Mike Rosenzweig — I broke away for a shark tagging info session with the lucky few (~3% of Summit attendees) who would head out into open waters the next day to wrangle sharks for science. The Summit team selected the group based on submissions to their open sourced project Shark Tag You're It, which was picked up by National Geographic in the weeks preceding Summit at Sea. The shark tagging group included “regular” people like my TED homie and oncologist Krupali Tejura and winemaker Loren Trefethen, and some fancier folk like Imogen Heap and Kristen Bell. While clutching an actual shark tag in his hand, Neil Hammerschlag from the University of Miami shared some shocking statistics (“270,000 sharks are killed every day”) and then explained the process of shark tagging.

Neil Hammerschlag holding a shark tag

The short version: we catch a shark, pull it onto the boat, put an oversized hose in its mouth to flood its gills with sea water to keep it from “drowning,” take measurements, take cartilage and blood samples (to test for toxicity), attach the “tag” (a little beacon that transmits the shark’s location to the scientists studying migration, reproductive, and extinction patterns), and then return the shark to the water. The whole process takes about 10 minutes. At the info session, I finally ran into my “Four Hour Body” pal Tim Ferriss who was a plate deep into a “cheat day” meal that looked suspiciously like a healthy day for someone like me.

Energized with shark anticipation we returned to the main deck where The Roots had just taken the stage.

After some drinks and socializing, I headed back to the room around 1:00AM to go to bed early before shark tagging at 6:45AM the next day. Before calling it a night, I stepped onto the balcony to take in the ocean air, when I heard Russell Simmons’ distinctive voice. I looked up and found him one floor up, peering over his balcony. We chatted briefly about shark tagging and he invited me up to hang out. What followed was a typical Summit experience in that it was totally extraordinary and surreal. I arrived at Russell's room just in time for his nightly meditation. When I told him I'd never meditated before, he offered to teach me, and I proceeded to have a 30-minute private meditation lesson from Russell Simmons followed by a discussion of veganism, yoga, and how he's overcome his past life of gangs and drugs. After that, I certainly couldn't go back to sleep, and I knew my roommate — one of Russell’s biggest fans — would love to hear this story, so I returned to the pool deck to play with my Summit family. Favorite interaction of the wee hours was when Sophia Bush found out my roomie Ben was responsible for Texts From Last Night and began quoting her all-time favorites. I noshed on pizza, stopped by the afterparty in The Roots’ suite, and had a hallway heart-to-heart with my friend Sean, and left myself just 45 minutes of shut eye before reporting for shark tagging duty on Sunday.

::SUNDAY::
Checking in for shark tagging was a blur of sunscreen and tater tots, procured from the breakfast buffet, along with 4 hardboiled eggs I snagged for Tim Ferriss who made a personal request for some protein (per his “30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up” rule).

We set sail away from the boat as the sun was coming up, and it was a beautiful sight to take in this magnificent cruise ship in the warm, orange dawn.

I staked out a lovely spot on the aft of the ship with nightlife and talent management mastermind Carl Choi where we had front row seats to the 4 sharks we caught that morning (an 8-ft tiger shark, a Caribbean sand shark, and two small black-nosed sharks).

We each had a job on the boat, and after the tissue sample was taken, my job was to administer some shark first aid and smear Neosporin into the wound.

Ready to administer some shark first aid

After the morning on the water, we docked at Imagine Nation Island, a private island somewhere in the Bahamas, populated with beach chairs and a lot of beautiful white sand.

Imagine Nation Island

Inflatable aquatic playground, Imagine Nation Island

Activities included an inflatable ocean obstacle course, jet ski tours, 80s-inspired beach volleyball, a 3-story waterslide and a dance party in the tradition of Spring Break. My beautifully-coiffed LA pal Jake Strom (we used to share the same hairdresser) learned to hula hoop:

Jake Strom, hula hoop king

After a few hours on the island, it was a short boat ride back to the ship. Another fascinating Summit connection: I shared the journey with Steve Cohen, the "millionaire's magician" who's had a running show at the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC for years. When I returned to the room, I peeked over the balcony into the absurdly clear Caribbean waters where I saw a HUGE shark just below my balcony. It had to be at least 12-15 feet, as I was many stories up and it still looked massive. Wish I had a picture. I did some balcony bonding with Qwiki COO Navin Thukkaram, who turned out to be my neighbor.

The final session of Summit at Sea was “Curating Life 3.0,” the sequel to last year’s session in which the now 19-person Summit Series team shared their philosophy on life, their vision for the Summit community, and some of their new initiatives.

Summit Series team - Curating Life 3.0

They started by sharing their lifestyle: there's no division of work and life when they all live together in a massive-but-still-not-massive-enough house in Miami (the latest team member lives in a tent in the carport). They harness their greatest resource — their “collective intelligence” — to create nonstop dynamic shared experiences. They have a private chef that serves family dinners every night. Members of the Summit family come to visit and they host speakers throughout the week. “It’s like mini business school,” they explained. Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Jeremy Schwartz talked about The Collective, the Summit community’s new platform that aims to be the “smallest, most curated social network in the world.” Attendee Bo Fishback was invited on stage to share the story of founding Zaarly, and how he couldn't have done it without the experiences he'd had at Summit. On the topic of altruism, a pervasive theme at Summit Series, co-founder Elliott Bisnow said, “In the blackjack game of life, if you get a queen or a jack instead of a 2 or a 3, there's a great responsibility.” His teammate Jordan Brown then introduced Summit Series Impact trips, a new initiative to create opportunities for Summit community members to travel with non-profits to developing countries to get involved on the ground. Inspired by last year's trips to Uganda hosted by Invisible Children, the initiative kicked off with a video. The team went on to talk about their work style, reiterating that they have a no-follow-up policy. “We do business based on trust. Everyone is the CEO of something. Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle.” Summit's COO Justin Cohen, theself-proclaimed youngest person ever to charter an ocean liner, closed with the advice, “Some people say you should never go into business with your friends. I say you should only go into business with your friends." Summit co-founder Jeff Rosenthal chimed in: "If it's not fun, it doesn't count.” A thirty-second dance party rounded out the session.

I snuck in interviews with two men changing course of history in Africa (Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell and Falling Whistles founder Sean Carasso) before dinner with a rag-tag group of awesome including fellow GSB alum Darren Bechtel, serial entrepreneur (currently working on a line of luxury sex toys) Michael Topolovac, author and ray-of-sunshine Mei Mei Fox, and Google VP of Business Operations Matt Stepka. We drank some wine, ate some food, and did the wave before sneaking away to catch the last part of Imogen Heap's intimate performance on the boat. She, as expected, was moving and graceful and lovely.

The next part of the night embodied nothing short of a small miracle, as a small group of secret squirrels successfully executed a delightful exhibition of revelry. In the months leading up to Summit at Sea, 40 people from across the world were selected to participate in a flash mob on the boat (I know, I know, it seems passé, but trust me, it was awesome). Gaby Poler-Buzali , executive director of the Limon Dance Company in NYC, choreographed an aggressively complicated 2:30 dance to be performed live with The Roots, and we rehearsed in earnest before getting on the boat.

Pre-Summit at Sea flash mob rehearsal

The aforementioned lack of internet and cell service on the boat made it almost impossible to coordinate, and it seemed as though our months of practice may be for naught. But in the clutch, a critical mass assembled in a quiet corner of the ship and set a time to execute: we conspired with The Roots and they agreed to play “The Seed (2.0)” as their final encore. 11:20PM on the dance floor, we'd form a circle, clear some space, and break into a coordinated dance.

I broke away to my stateroom to pull out my secret weapon: glow bracelets. Our biggest concern had been whether people would see us dancing amidst all the hubbub of the concert, and I figured this was a surefire way to attract attention. At 11:15PM, I slipped through the crowd and met my fellow secret squirrels on the dance floor. I started quietly strapping glow bracelets onto their wrists, and we began to create our circle. We heard the first few notes of the song begin, and as I tossed the remaining glow sticks into the air with a final attention-grabbing flourish, Gaby began the dance. Within moments, a coordinated symphony of glowing arms moved in synchrony across the middle of the dance floor and the surrounding Summiters went nuts.

I can't describe the energy on the dance floor as we created this moment of pure bliss where everyone rejoiced at being part of this collaborative display of fun — truly the “dynamic shared experience” the Summit team spoke of earlier in the night. After one cycle through the dance, we pulled onlookers into the fray and closed out The Roots’ set with a glee-filled dance party of epic proportions.

I recovered on a couch with The Roots's producer Richard Nichols, introduced to me by my beloved friend-cum-mentor Nicole Johnson. Despite the lasers and glow sticks and pounding house music, I had one of the most personal and reflective conversations of the weekend. Truly delightful.

The final main stage performance was DJ Axwell, one third of Swedish House Mafia, which may replace Girl Talk's 2009 show at Treasure Island as one of my favorite dance parties of all time.

DJ Axwell at Summit at Sea

Tim Dybvig embodies Summit energy

After hopping through a gyrating crowd of people I love, I was eventually pulled up on stage with DJ Axwell where I danced my face off until he shut the pool deck down.

DJ Axwell at Summit at Sea

My foresight on the glowsticks for the flashmob was quickly proliferated as hundreds were tossed into the crowd until it seemed everyone was glowing inside and out. Between the lasers, the beat, and the overwhelming energy of Summit, it felt like we might just dance forever. Money quote from DJ Axwell: “Should you fail to become geniuses, should you fail to become CEOs, you can always become dancers.”

The party continued in the ship's nightclub where ?uestlove spun until 4:00AM, a reasonable time to go to bed, but not for a family trying to squeeze every last drop of energy out of the weekend. When I eventually went to bed, the sun was just coming up on the Port of Miami, where we'd come full circle after a truly magical adventure at sea.

::MONDAY::
Wake up time came too early for a ship full of sleepy entrepreneurs, most of whom did not get the memo about our 8:30AM departure time. Loud speakers into the rooms corrected any misconception that we'd have a leisurely disembarkation, and the voice-less, energy-drained masses tumbled off the ship into the interminable cab line. Except for Peter Thiel. He had a driver waiting for him:

Before hitting the airport, we made a quick stopover at the Mondrian Hotel in Miami Beach for stolen brunch and naps by the pool.

Tammy Camp, ping ponging in Miami Beach

In a display of mass exhaustion, we draped across lounge chairs and cabana benches, mentally invigorated but physically drained. The once rambunctious crew of revelers, eager to explore the power of being at sea with 1,000 new best friends, was noticeably quieter, having given every last ounce of energy to the surreal experience that was Summit at Sea.

My view from the pool chair at the Mondrian hotel

palette for your palate

2011-04-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

as a lover of bright colors and delicious foods, i must say i'm a huge fan of tattfoo tan's nature matching system. using photoshop's eyedropper tool, he turned 88 fruits and vegetables into a palette for your palate.

thanks to GOOD for sharing this gem.

the midas list: where are the women?

2011-04-06T15:28:00.000-07:00

forbes' 2011 midas list is out, and although i was stoked to see my TED pal jim breyer at the top of the list, i was overwhelmed by one question as i scrolled through the names of the 100 top tech investors:

where are the women?

in a list of 100 (mostly white, middle-aged) faces, you have to scroll down to #77 -- starvest's debroah harrington -- before you find a woman. she's joined only by stanford MBA theresia gouw ranzetta at #93. that's it.

particularly here in california, where we proudly espouse professional equality of the sexes, the midas list is a sobering reminder that two of our home-grown industries (venture capital and high tech) are ripe for sex disruption. a possible explanation for this gross imbalance is that fewer women choose these fields because of the nature of the job. but the growing movement of women in tech and venture-stage investing is hard to ignore, and i think we're seeing the last vestiges of a silicon valley boys club on the brink of serious change. to paraphrase sheryl sandberg's TEDWomen talk last december, these guys had better figure out where the women's restroom is, because it's going to become a necessary part of doing business.

i'm proud to be a member of the generation that's going to lead this shift, and as a student at stanford's graduate school of business here in the heart of tech country, i can assure you this has been a hot topic on the women in management mailing list today.

watch out silicon valley, you've been warned. there's a generation of brilliant young women champing at the bit to disrupt the tech industry and change the gender balance on the midas list.

accidental hipster

2011-04-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

never have i read a description so spot-on. liberal arts? skinny jeans? florence + the machine? you got me pegged, ryan o'connell.

i'm an accidental hipster:

check out the whole article to learn more about the other types of hipsters, including the hipster heartbreaker, the DIY hipster, the hippie hipster, the gay hipster, the fashion hipster, and the bourgie hipster.

pHix the ocean

2011-03-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

[this project is a finalist for a national geographic contest.
PLEASE VOTE HERE if you like it]

the boat for summit at sea boards in 9 days, and i could not be more excited to return for another year of nonstop fun and learning. past years have included activities like skydiving, paintballing, and kayaking, but this year, the team pulled out all the stops. in partnership with the university of miami, they're bringing us the adventure of a lifetime: shark tagging for science.

space is limited, so summit series is collecting submissions in an open-sourced project called shark tag you're it, wherein attendees answer the question, "what is the most serious issue facing the oceans today, and what can you do about it?" submissions are rolling in and popping up on twitter, and i spent a good part of yesterday working on mine (including a fruit photo shoot in my bedroom).

i submitted a campaign called pHix the ocean that aims to address the issue of ocean acidification.

"Ocean acidification is the most serious issue facing our oceans today. Fossil fuels and carbon emissions are a grave concern for our earth, but the impact on the ocean is often overlooked. As the debate over climate change wages on, even skeptics must acknowledge the undeniable truth that pH levels in the ocean are dropping at an alarming rate. Atmospheric carbon dioxide’s effect on ocean life is fundamentally concerning because it strips organisms of their most basic needs: a home, a structure, a life cycle."

looks like the summit team was pretty stoked, and we may yet see some traction with #pHixtheocean:

hat tip to this great TED talk by oceanographer and stanford professor rob dunbar who elegantly reminded me about the serious repercussions of ocean acidification and inspired the "pHix the ocean" project.

update: got a little shout out from national geographic today on their website.

Best organization for Japan relief

2011-03-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

Looking for a way to help with Japan earthquake relief? Feeling unqualified to select a charity? Here's a recommendation I trust from the hard-working team at Philanthro:

From: Philanthro CEO Matthew Lew
Date: Monday, March 14, 2011

When a major disaster strikes, hundreds of organizations run to your inbox or browser to ask for money. However, not all of them are as efficient and effective as you’d hope. Philanthro strives to provide some clarity in these situations where chaos, confusion, and unaligned agendas often lead to ineffecient allocation of resources. That is exactly what we’ve done with the recent earthquakes in Japan. We are proud to stand behind Direct Relief International, as an experienced, proven, and most importanly, extremely efficient provider of health services for those affected. Not only does Direct Relief’s website outline its relief response efforts, it also provides very clear and concise up-to-the-date information related to: Incident, Damage, and Human Cost.

Here's why we stand with DRI:

Efficiency: 98.8% of funding went to program expenses with 1% dedicated to admin and fund-raising. In the past 10 years, each dollar spent has provided up to $30 (wholesale) of medical material aid specifically requested by in-country health professionals to care for patients
Transparency: One of the most impressive features of Direct Relief International is its interactive maps: for Haiti and for the United States, Direct Relief provides a map detailing where it delivers its supplies and how much it spends on particular kinds.
Proven track record: Direct experience with large-scale emergencies in Asia, including the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of 2004. This will help guide them to best plan and execute a recovery strategy.
Based in California: fast access to Pacific Rim countries.
Endorsement from others: Through assessment of the NPO's performance in response to Haiti, Givewell endorsed DRI for Japan Relief Fund
Charity Navigator (the recognized standard for charity ratings): DRI is a 4-Star Charity, which is labeled as "Exceptional: Exceeds industry standards and outperforms most charities in its cause."

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO DRI

lessons in entrepreneurship: underdogs are built to party

2011-03-08T11:52:00.000-08:00

it's all upside for fast society, the self-proclaimed scrappy underdog of the group texting market. my buddies matthew, mike, and andy are passionate about their start-up, and they "hustle their faces off" (to quote matthew) to make a product they're proud of. their "built to party" app is a connecting tool, helping friends to have fun with each other. version 2.0 drops this week: get excited.

but beneath all the energy and excitement, there's a lot to learn from fast society's start-up strategy. they don't have big-name employees or gobs of VC money, but they've got something their much-hyped competitors don't: unlimited upside. by pitching themselves as a the loveable underdog executing a make-it-or-break-it campaign at SXSWi this year, fast society set itself up for a no-fail outcome.

if this homegrown experience-sharing app doesn't become the next twitter or foursquare (successful forebears on the "we launched at SXSW" scene), they can point to the insurmountable hurdles they faced as the bootstrapped kids fighting "the man" and his $12M of venture funding. and they can rest their laurels on an amazing product they built with their own bare hands. if they succeed, as i eagerly hope they will, they are rudy -- hoisted onto the shoulders of skeptics for their victory lap in the stadium.

it's actually a brilliant strategy. everyone roots for david, and no one blames him if goliath wins. you can count me squarely in david's corner, enthusiastically awaiting the results of this spectacular showdown.

ricecake prom: asianception

2011-02-28T23:56:00.000-08:00

every year, the stanford graduate school of business has a white party gala at which students auction off items and experiences to raise money for charity. every year, there's a "beefcake prom"/"promtastic" auction item wherein a group of (usually white) guys organize a prom-like event for a bidding group of girls -- or gay guys, as the was the case in 2010. several years ago, a group of asian students got together to create a competing auction item: the ricecake prom.

in the lead up to the white party, students sometimes create little videos to promote their auction items and generate buzz. last year's ricecake prom video was pretty good.

but this year's inception trailer spoof is...wow. just wow. bravo, guys.

hip to be square

2011-02-09T21:39:00.000-08:00

jack dorsey, founder and chairman of twitter and founder and CEO of square, spoke at stanford today and told us to "expect the unexpected and, whenever possible, be the unexpected."

jack demos the square hardware

he started his talk with a story about his dad opening up a pizza restaurant, meeting his mom (the restaurant's first hire), and then having to quit because he promised he'd never get involved with any of the employees. jack was born 10 months later. as a kid, he was obsessed with maps and the urban environment. his first coding experiments involved mapping vehicle paths from his parents' CB radio and police scanners. he talked about plotting out each dot and watching it move across the map -- as a fellow lover of maps and an infographic nut, i really connected with his passion for visualizing a city living and breathing.

he got his first job by hacking into apache's email systems and then emailing the CEO and chairman to inform them of their system's vulnerability to hackers. his first blackberry inspired the early twinkles of twitter in his eye, and the first proto-tweet was about him standing with the bison in golden gate park. he waited with much anticipation for his friends' and family's response. "turns out, no one cared what i was doing," he joked. "so i stored that idea away for later."

after years of working in dispatch, he sought consumer-facing technology experience and went to join evan williams and biz stone at podcasting service odeo. "none of us really cared about podcasts," he explained, so they thought about other ideas. he talked about how exciting SMS was -- its usefulness across devices and service providers, its elegant limit to 160 characters -- "it was rough around the edges, and i love that." they developed twitter with SMS as an inspiration, and the rest is history.

jack encouraged the audience to be the pulse of what's happening right now. "there's no better time for a new idea than in a depression," he explained, as he told the founding story for his latest venture, the mobile payment platform square. a former colleague who worked as a glass blowing artist called jack to tell him he'd lost a sale because the buyer only had a credit card and he didn't have a reader. it only took them a month to develop the software and hardware, a white square that plugs into the audio jack of a smart phone. "i made my first $600 by demoing the product. i'd swipe their cards to transfer $5 -- or $50 if it was a VC."

what's innovative about his vision for square is that payment is this ubiquitous exchange of information, but no one has ever really designed it. he talked about the receipt as a wasted opportunity to be a publishing medium rather than a burden. his vision is to build a POS system that's "gorgeous, easy, and gives google analytics-quality data to real world merchants." although the square hardware is beautiful and potentially game-changing (we all got a free one after the talk), it sounds to me like it's just an entry point -- a starting place for jack's vision of a world where a pain-in-the-ass, antiquated system is redesigned to bring valuable information to all parties. frankly, the real value in square isn't the square itself, but the POS software, the data analytics, and the platform whose API could totally disrupt the way we make payments. he even admitted that it's not their only goal to make credit card payments easier, but that with the advent of near field communication, the whole experience of communicating identity is up for redesign.

when asked about square's plans for growth, he talked about how he enjoys building utilities that go from individual users to larger users. "twitter's a great example," he said, explaining the individual usage. "i like to tweet about what i'm eating. that's not meaningful to 99.9999% of users. but it's very meaningful to my mom." he cited the apple store as the gold standard in the retail space, bringing point-of-purchase to the point-of-decision.

in his tips for success, he emphasized the importance of storytelling, empathy, and developing user narratives. "when i realized i was writing out these user experience stories like a play, i actually started to read plays." he also described his job as CEO of square as an editorial role. "there are a thousand things we could be doing each day, and it's my job to identify the 1 or 2 that are most important." his last piece of advice was about how to be a successful employee, particularly at a place like square. money quote: "you have to make every detail perfect. and then you have to limit the number of details."

exercising his storytelling skills, he closed by telling us that the new owners of his dad's pizza place recently sent him a tweet to tell him they're using square for all their transactions. happy ending.

wanna watch it for yourself? here's the link.

hipster celebrities

2011-01-28T18:38:00.000-08:00

my classmates started planning for a flashmob this week, and it reminded me of my favorite article ever written for harper's magazine. in "my crowd," bill wasik, the self-proclaimed inventor of the flashmob, describes the rise and decline of flashmobs as a cultural meme. in the essay, he reviews other cultural trends, and includes this beautiful 2-by-2 of hipster celebrities:

professional network map

2011-01-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

i'm a huge data visualization buff, so linkedin's new mapping tool is making me giddy. it literally maps your social graph, creating a personalized infographic of your professional connections. in the tool, you can zoom in and see who each individual dot is, but i actually like looking at the macro view and trying to identify purely based on patterns. my buddy austin is pretty easy to spot. i also have no idea why stanford (orange) is so far away from everything else.

make it till you fake it

2011-01-25T21:17:00.000-08:00

if you are what you eat, apparently, i'm a crunchlet.

last week, i read an interesting piece on NPR about the blueberries found in many cereal, breads, and other packaged snacks. they turn out to be not so blue...nor berries, actually. in fact, these sometimes creatively named "blueberry-flavored crunchlets" boast ingredients like oils, starches, sugars, and artificial coloring. here's a melodramatic video to hammer it home.

reminded me a lot of the impostors we faced when i worked at POM in los angeles. POM defied the fruit juice category by making its juices only with 100% pomegranate juice, unlike competitors who undercut on price by diluting their product with cheap grape juice and other fillers.

an even more disturbing, but perhaps less surprising, story surfaced on jezebel today condemning taco bell's ground beef filling. turns out actual meat makes up only 36% of my beloved hose meat -- so called because its appearance suggests dispensation via hose. the disturbing ingredient list included oat product, cocoa powder, and anti-caking agent. yum. (pun intended.)

i worked in food for many years, yet i'm still surprised by the lengths food manufacturers will go to drive down ingredient expenses. with increased cost pressure, they have every financial incentive to convert real food products into cheap fillers. it's a dangerous trend.

when i was in shanghai last month, a representative from LVMH railed on china as the "land of fakes," pointing out, among other things, the prevalence of fake food products. america has traditionally turned up its nose at the quality of chinese products vs. the supposedly high-standards of the US, but if our food industry doesn't shape up soon, we won't be able to rest on those laurels for much longer.

what i tell you three times is true

2011-01-23T11:49:00.000-08:00

in summarizing the key messages from "the four hour work week," tim ferriss often talks about the importance of identifying common problems brought to your desk and delegating their solutions. similarly, i've heard russell simmons say that the key to success is making yourself obsolete by delegating to "someone smarter than you." this same advice popped up again this week in a great post by my friend derek sivers. derek's post "delegate or die" is well-written, straightforward, and lays out some concrete steps for entrepreneurs and business owners. derek, tim, and russell are very different in person, with pretty divergent entrepreneurial experiences, but the fact that all of them are giving out this advice makes it worth paying attention to. derek's money quote:

To be a true business owner, make sure you could leave for a year, and when you came back, your business would be doing better than when you left.

social technology serendipity

2011-01-14T10:46:00.000-08:00

naysayers like to bag on social technology, claiming that it doesn't actually create real world connections. i have a true story that begs to differ...

i've been (sort of) using path, a relatively new social network i've written about before. like my early days as a twitter user, i'm mostly a casual observer until i get a better sense for the platform. for those of you who haven't seen it, it's a twitter-like stream of real-time photos that people choose to share with up to 50 of their friends.

the other day, i was scrolling through my path stream and i saw that my friend shervin pishevar went to coffee with alexander ljung, founder of soundcloud. i don't know alexander, but i remember the photo standing out to me because he was wearing these cool looking glasses.

i noted the hip eyewear and went about my day.

fast forward several hours. i'm hustling to catch a caltrain to the city for one of nicole johnson's famous goodbrains dinners with many friends from summit series (incidentally, where i met shervin). my schedule encountered some complications related to a backpack and a robot (long story), so i had to take a later train than i was intending. as i was boarding the train and looking for a seat, i noticed a young guy sitting across the aisle from me wearing some cool glasses. he looked sort of like the guy from shervin's path photo. in fact, he looked so much like him that i whipped out my iphone, pulled open the path app, and looked at the photo again. jacket was the same. it was totally the same guy.

i slipped into the empty seat next to him and delivered the warning: "this is going to be the weirdest conversation you have today." i asked if he used path, and he said he was familiar with it. i flipped my phone around to show shervin's photo. "is this you?" i asked. he laughed. "yes! that's crazy!"

we chatted briefly and ended up connecting on facebook and twitter. despite the fact that we met somewhere between menlo park and redwood city, he actually lives in berlin. total serendipity. glad to have made a new connection with someone who seems like a neat dude -- he's got cool glasses at least.

update:

two days later, i was on the caltrain again with a friend telling him this serendipity story. the guy sitting behind us happened to overhear, and it turns out, he knows alexander! and not even from the bay area -- they're old friends from the europe scene. too crazy.

latin dreamboat

2011-01-11T17:22:00.000-08:00

so proud of my buddy gustavo galindo, who just announced today the release of "barco de papel," the second single off his much anticipated album "entre la ciudad y el mar." goose (as i call him) has performed everywhere from hollywood lounges to mexico's bicentenial, sharing the stage with stars like enrique iglesias. latina magazine, arguable authority on the topic, said gustavo galindo is the next juanes. he's talented, he's dreamy, and he's a damn good guy. check out the music video for his first single, "te perdi."

7 Things You Need to Know About China

2010-12-27T01:37:00.000-08:00

The Stanford Graduate School of Business 2010 Global Study Trip to China included two weeks on the ground in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing. After meetings with scores of executives from 19 different organizations across a variety of industries and in-depth dinner conversations with alums and friends, I felt like I’d learned a lot about this incredibly complex and changing country. A few days of reflection and a re-read of 28 pages of notes in impossibly small script, I’ve synthesized 7 themes from this eye-opening trip:

1. Despite lofty goals, Chinese companies aren’t going to take over the world just yet.
Early in the trip, I noticed something interesting about the behemoth companies we visited: like most large, successful businesses in China, they had risen to power by keenly tailoring their products to the Chinese consumer, and they were quick to criticize American companies who had failed to do the same. In particular, they pointed out the hubris of companies like eBay which seemed to insist that successful products in their home country would translate seamlessly into the Chinese market. Although hyperbolic, a statement from an Innovation Works executive summed up the trend: “Zero foreign companies have been successful in China.” After learning about the uniqueness of the Chinese consumer, I understand this criticism. Many of the companies we met with achieved noteworthy financial scale by creating customized products that the massive Chinese population loves, and they have aggressive growth goals that include expansion abroad. Automaker BYD, Internet powerhouse Tencent, gaming leader SNDA, supply chain expert Li & Fung, and steel manufacturer Baosteel all shared goals of international expansion in their presentations. But when pressed about their strategies for growth, they seemed to exhibit the same hubris they criticized in American companies. “Our products are successful in China,” one executive said, “so we will bring the exact same technology to other markets.” This seemingly inconsistent message smacks of the unsophistication one Chinese national and GSB grad told me about at dinner. She suggested that Chinese companies aren’t yet ready to expand aggressively beyond their borders. They certainly deserve respect for their success in China, but they’re somewhat blind to the fact that they’ve operated in an anomalous market with a very unique government and approach to IP. I started to think that “good in China” doesn’t necessarily mean “good everywhere.” A media executive put it best when he said, “Chinese companies are world-sized, but they’re not yet world class.” He suggested that unless a company has a truly innovative technology or hard products, it will struggle outside of China. When asked if Chinese companies will be successful abroad, another executive at Innovation Works said “probably not anytime soon.” He advised that they look first to similar markets with young populations (Brazil, Russia) and other developing countries (in Southeast Asia) before an aggressive push into western, developed markets. My takeaway from the trip was that Chinese companies are definitely big and successful, but – at least in the short to medium term – I’m going to heavily discount the western media’s fearful handwringing about Chinese companies taking over the world.

2. “Real China” isn’t in the big cities.
Time and time again, we were told that second-, third-, and fourth-tier cities are where it’s at in China. Representatives from the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and executives at Innovation Works both warned the aspiring entrepreneurs in the room that “almost every business idea you could have has already been done in the big cities.” They suggested looking at interior China for the real growth opportunities. When asked about cost competition challenging China’s long-time position as the world’s top manufacturer, a representative from Li & Fung said, “Who can replace China? China!” and went on to praise businesses in the interior cities who are driving down prices and “getting better.” An executive from LVMH talked about the raging success of luxury stores in these cities and what it tells us about China’s diversity: “Different languages, different cultures, different food…it all means different tastes and a need to adapt when you move inland.” A CCTV executive talked about “50km Beyond,” his suggestion to westerners that they travel 50 km beyond the borders of the “wealthy and beautiful” metros of Shanghai and Beijing to find the real China.

3. The nouveau riche are driving China’s economy.
“New money” consumers and China’s growing middle class are the engine behind much of China’s recent economic strength, and they will serve as an attractive market for new companies looking to supply to China rather than just source from China. Executives from both HSBC and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority jokingly referred to the Hong Kong stereotype that mainlanders are “country bumpkins,” but quickly acknowledged that the impression is changing as dollars increasingly flood out of Chinese tourists’ wallets and into Hong Kong’s retail economy. What are they buying? Both speakers pointed out the window toward Hong Kong’s Central district where streets are lined with designer retail shops. We heard more direct from the source – an executive at LVMH’s China’s branch: “China is a country full of nouveau riche.” Thirty years ago, he told us, the lifetime maximum currency conversion from Chinese RMB to US Dollars was $30.00. Now it’s $50,000 per year. In just a few decades, China has gone from a country where no one has personal cars, to the largest auto market in the world. The demand for luxury goods, even just aspirations for them, has driven immense growth for LVMH’s 60 premium brands. At Innovation Works, an executive told us about the “newly rich social phenomenon” in which women, in particular, are buying cosmetics, fashion, and lingerie – he suggested that businesses catering to this demographic may do very well entering China.

4. The western media sometimes gets it wrong.
Although it’s difficult to parse out everyone’s biases, particularly when some speakers are employed by state-owned enterprises, we heard from several different sources that media coverage in the developed world frequently misrepresents China and its culture. An HSBC executive closed her remarks with a warning: “Don’t believe everything you see on CNN.” Although she was educated in the US, she was highly critical of our media's representation of Chinese news stories, in particular the Chinese railway from Beijing to Tibet and China’s role in African development. A leader at a state-owned media company waived an issue of The Economist in front of the group saying that western media focuses too much on prosperous China and forms incorrect opinions. “The government’s control is exacerbated and overemphasized in the western media. The so-called free press in the west is questionable – they’re biased and inaccurate.” He illustrated his perspective when asked about China's coverage of Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. “We did report on this criminal receiving the award, but it is clear that the Nobel Prize has been politicized. Mr. Liu’s contribution to China has been virtually zero – he’s a big self-promoter.” If you think state-owned media representatives may be biased, I have another example from someone with a finger on the pulse of Chinese dissonance with government censorship -- even he shared similar perspectives on this topic. A blogger at ChinaSMACK, who also moonlights for NPR, lamented US and European media’s tendency to mold Chinese stories into a western perspective. As an example of those biases, he cited an article in the UK’s Telegraph that misinterpreted a Chinese internet post, overlooking its intended satire. According to the blogger, Chinese netizens cope with censorship by hiding a lot in their satire and humor. Especially coming from a society that greatly values what it considers to be the freest press in the world, it can be easy for us to dismiss the Chinese perspective that our media is biased. However, seeing the country for myself and hearing from folks on the ground has inspired me to question more critically and realize that everyone has a bias.

5. The vibrant secondary market for virtual goods is a metaphor for the Chinese economy.
In an environment where consumer credit cards are uncommon and IP protection is limited, profitable online business models require innovative product design. Chinese internet companies have thrived by pioneering the market for virtual goods and micropayments. Tencent brought in revenues of $1.8B in 2009, driven overwhelmingly (93%) by micropayments for “differentiated privileges” in their popular instant messaging and social networking platforms. The market for these virtual products (as simple as customizing the color of your user name) feels a lot like a market for “real” goods and services. Similarly, SNDA’s come-stay-pay model for monetizing online games has spurred competitive second markets for their products, so lucrative that it attracts users who only play to resell their virtual achievements. But even though these markets for virtual goods and services feel like a real economy, it’s a false sense of a free market. Ultimately, the availability (and hence, the value) of these products is completely controlled by product architects at companies like Tencent and SNDA. What on the surface looks and feels like a free market is actually a planned economy whose adherence to capitalistic principles is entirely dependent on the whims of its omnipotent governing body. Sound familiar? Especially given all the hubbub about virtual markets in China, it really struck me a demonstrative meta-economy within an economy.

6. Despite its differences from the west, the one-party system seems to work for China.
An executive at HSBC admitted that corruption is a problem, especially at the local levels, but she can’t see a multi-party system working in China at this stage. "Despite its shortcomings, the Chinese government has lifted millions out of poverty in the last two decades – no small feat. If change comes, it will be slow,” she explained. “Students will push for evolution, not revolution.” In her opinion, there’s still too much complexity to manage, and they don’t have time for bi-partisan politicking and trying to appeal to the masses. I brought up this idea with our trip leader’s husband, a Chinese national with a seriously respectable background in finance and government. He, too, was honest about the government’s weaknesses, but when I asked him about the upside benefits he shared some interesting insight. I suggested that because a one-party system doesn’t need to worry about catering to the public’s short-term whims, it may be better suited to making the hard, long-term decisions for the country. He agreed, citing the government’s mandated energy usage reductions for municipalities – a forward-looking policy that appears to be designed with the public’s best interest in mind, a task that seems almost impossible for American politicians who kowtow to interest groups. Also on the topic of the public good, representatives from the Chinese media had similar thoughts on the government’s role in preserving public good. Although one man claimed to “never experience pressure" to change his reporting, the government's desire for “harmonious” content was evident in his opinions on the role of journalists in society. “Journalists need to report the facts,” one executive explained, “but they also need to make the world better. Stories that divide people and upset them are not suitable for the public…I almost wish the government would regulate more. Some of the content in the citizen press is downright crazy.” Although this notion smacks of censorship to an American sensibility, it’s worth considering how this approach may have helped maintain stability in the country. I’m not saying I agree with this perspective, but some very smart people seemed to think there were some tangible benefits to a controlling, one-party political system.

7. Pollution is one of the biggest challenges facing China.
In the west we frequently point to censorship, human rights violations, and poverty as China’s biggest hurdles in the coming decade, but environmental degradation came up many times in our meetings with Chinese leaders. Executives at HSBC, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and in the government all named pollution as one of China’s greatest weaknesses. BYD and State Grid shared their concern for China’s consumption of fossil fuels and its effect on the environment. I read a lot about China’s pollution problem in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, so I was interested to see it for myself. I have to say, it was worse than I expected. I lived in Southern California for the last decade, so I’m no stranger to smog and pollution, but China brought a whole new level of gross to my breathing experience. Views from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Shanghai World Financial Center observation tower were limited due to the thick layer of brown sludge in the air. But nothing could have prepared me for Beijing. When we stepped off the plane at the airport, it was like huffing an ashtray. The air was thick with smoke and our delicate California lungs ached. Between burnt orange sunrises and sunsets, there were times we couldn’t see more than a couple blocks down the street. It’s just one of many hurdles the country needs to overcome, but pollution in light of China’s burgeoning population – particularly in the big cities – is definitely near the top of the list.

other china trip posts

hong kong (dec 12 - dec 14)

shenzhen (dec 14)

shanghai (dec 14 - dec 18)

beijing (dec 18 - dec 23)

stanford trip: beijing

2010-12-27T00:54:00.000-08:00

the weather forecast for beijing literally called for smoke, and i have to agree that stepping off the plane was like huffing an ashtray. luckily, the weather cleared up a bit, and on sunday morning, we visited tienanman square and the forbidden city.

one of our trip tour guides was a high school student not far from tienanmen square during the massacre, so it was really interesting to hear his perspective on living through the event as a chinese citizen. while we listened to him on the bus, we snacked on some local potato chip flavors: blueberry and numb & spicy hot pot flavor. intense and stimulating.

in the afternoon, 40+ pandas descended upon the great wall of china, which, incidentally, is tremendously steep. i was not adequately prepared for the serious workout that would ensue. the photos i've seen before all make the topography seem like wide, gentle rolling hills, but we fully hiked to the top of a mountain -- ancient stairmaster style.

the wall is covered in graffiti, and since the chinese character for jong (same as for chang) is the most common surname in the world, i saw my name everywhere.

highlights of the great wall trek included: my mid-climb breakdown in which i overheated and had to strip down to my skivvies in front of a horde of tourists, and our iconic “pandas on the great wall” photo snapped by our talented trip photographer mia mabanta.

photo by mia mabanta

after some naps and showers, we headed out to partyworld for a night of absurd karaoke.

monday morning, we returned to the meeting circuit, stopping first at CCTV to meet with some very high level folks who, despite being a state-owned enterprise, talked about the station’s mission to be objective and independent with “no favor or fear.” one executive suggested that although a journalist’s goal is to report the facts, he also has a responsibility to report stories that promote the greater good, uniting people rather than dividing them.

we did a studio tour and saw, among other things, our trip leader’s husband on TV (he joined us for dinner back in shanghai) and the elaborate stage preparations for CCTV’s chinese new year special – the most watched TV show in china. on the way out of the studio, we saw many people from the provinces that camp out in front of CCTV hoping to get their stories covered.

our lunch included a chinese ground pepper that makes your tongue numb, and we finished the afternoon with a meeting at state grid of china – the world's largest electric power company. mia and i snuck into the vip lounge for a little photo shoot:

photo by mia mabanta

that evening, maria and i checked out a local grocery store where we picked up some crab and seaweed pringles, followed by dinner at the street market when i snacked on sea urchin, scorpions, and dumplings. others ate sea horses, starfish, pupa, and snakes. yum.

one of the most interesting meetings of the trip was on tuesday morning with an NPR reporter and blogger from chinaSMACK, an english-language news source that translates the hottest stories from the chinese web. the blogger had great insight into chinese internet culture, including some of the politically-charged satirical memes used to evade government censoring (rivercrab, eluding the cat, doing pushups, “my dad is li gang”).

next we visited start-up incubator-cum-early-stage-fund innovation works where they’re trying to recreate the silicon valley environment that allows start-ups to thrive including embracing failure, encouraging adaptability, and providing mentorship from successful entrepreneurs. after the meeting, we took a walk through the offices where chinese entrepreneurs were hard at work building, overwhelmingly, products and tools for android.

we finished the evening at a coffee chat with a representative from china investment corporation who shared this money quote: “in china, you have to work hard, otherwise you’ll starve. we’ve depleted our resources, not like in africa where you can just go pick an avocado off a tree.”

local alumni and new students joined us for dinner, and then we took in some nightlife at susie wong’s (where it was salsa night, apparently). later at vic’s nightclub, i saw some of the strangest christmas decorations yet:

for our final day of meetings, we started at china mobile, china’s leading mobile services provider. their experience center tour was especially cool, as they had exhibits for several of their “internet of things” initiative that uses innovative mobile technology to solve real world challenges related to farming, livestock tracking, and energy usage. they also had a grocery store demo of their RFID-tagged products that can be scanned and invoiced without being taken out of the shopping cart. very cool.

we had a delicious final meeting at beijing’s exclusive LAN club, operated by south beauty, china’s leading luxury restaurant empire. designed by philippe starck, the LAN club’s décor was a kick:

having made a career switch after an unfulfilling stint in management consulting, the south beauty executive we met with joked about her perspective on picking a job: “if you really love money, investment banking, PE, and VC will give you much joy.” she closed her remarks with some discussion of how industrialization, centralized procurement, and localized KPIs help south beauty to manage their growing portfolio of premium dining establishments.

the LAN club is right across the street from beijing’s famous silk market where you can get everything from a fake LV bag to a pair of knee-high boots. after perusing 5 floors of goodies, we geared up for a dinner of peking duck with a side of chinese acrobatics. already nostalgic for our 10-day china-a-thon, we award superlatives to everyone in the group.

photo by mia mabanta

after loading up at breakfast on thursday morning, i headed to the beijing airport to begin my 50+ hour trek to canada for christmas that included, among other things, a 22 hour layover in the tokyo airport. such is the nature of flying on miles, and, despite the brutal travel schedule, i’m super grateful to have stockpiled miles from my consulting days to make this trip possible.

in conclusion...china: eye-opening. fascinating. delicious.

other china trip posts
hong kong (dec 12 - dec 14)
shenzhen (dec 14)
shanghai (dec 14 - dec 18)
beijing (dec 18 - dec 23)
7 things you need to know about china