walk

Tatiana Bilbao's beach house for Gabriel Orozco

click here for more pictures

the end of the office... and the future of work

Excerpt from an article in the Boston Globe:

"This shift has begun to trigger a more fundamental examination of what a job is and what we expect to get from it. Despite the vast diversity of the work people do, the traditional notion of a job has tended to be a standard bundle of responsibilities, roles, and benefits: We do our work for an employer to whom we owe our primary professional allegiance, and that employer pays us and provides us health insurance and a sense of professional identity. In the United States, many of the laws that shape health insurance, retirement, and tax policy are structured around this model.

But in a few realms, people have begun to unpack that bundle and reassemble it in new, surprising, and potentially very important ways. As it becomes easier for companies to plug in on the fly to the constantly shifting network of freelance labor, freelance workers have begun to think not in terms of having a job, but of having a collection of different jobs at any one time."

pictures of Haiti

Before and after satellite pictures from Google here.

15 years

2 universities.
1 together.
16 countries visited. 
9 together. 
lived in 5 cities.
montreal 5 months. 
fort collins 6 months. 
pune india 1 year. 
san francisco 2 years. 
denver otherwise.
6 apartments. 
1 condo. 
3 homes.
1 month without the money to pay rent.
127 arm punches.
3 children. 
beautiful children. 
each 5 years apart.
134 to 130 - our bowling scores yesterday.
2 games won at air hockey. just saying.
11 jobs. 
5 were her's.
number of times he slept on the couch: 1. 
number of times she did: 1. 
number of times it was his fault: 2.
10 cars.
4 fender benders. 
2 in our driveway.
unknown number of moving violations.
0 motorcycles.
4.5 years of dating.
2 times engaged.
15 years of marriage.
a lot of life. 
a lot of forgiveness. 
a lot of love.

refreshing perspective from Joel Salatin

“I have no desire to scale up or get bigger. My desire is to produce the best food in the world. And if in doing so, more people come to our corner and want stuff, then heaven help me figure out how to meet the need without compromising the integrity.

As soon as you grasp for that growth, you’re gonna view your customer differently, you’re gonna view your product differently, you’re gonna view your business differently. Everything that is the most important – you’re going to view that differently.”

Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms owner by way of 37Signals

compromise is for sissies

Sometimes.

Super hero Seth Godin posted this today. He argues that the lifetime value of a customer is worth a lot. Time and money is often better spent mind-blowing current customers than it is looking for the next customer.

I recently had this dilemma. We had a real shot at winning new work with a new customer. We knew what to do and our approach was a terrific option for them. They had a deadline for a proposal response that was not flexible.

Meanwhile, we had a customer that required significant attention to get a system live. They had invested a lot of money with us and we needed a final push that would consume significant time.

We couldn't attack both. If we chased the first, we would likely fall short on the second. The first deal was potentially worth over three times more in direct revenue than the second. We chose the second. Yes, because it was the right thing to do. Yes, because it was a wise investment.

Do it well
or don't do it
because if you can't
you won't for long.

Sometimes not compromising is really hard. Sometimes compromise is for sissies.