Month: January 2014

“The sun has fallen, and the temperature is dropping so quickly…to tell you all a secret, I don’t feel that sad. I was just in my own adventure story – and like every hero, I encountered a small problem.“ "Goodnight, Earth,” concluded the rover. “Goodnight, humanity.”

One of my favorite lines from an entrepreneur came from Rob Kalin. I am sure I’ve shared it here a few times. He said “I am an artist. Making websites is my medium right now” That’s a helpful way for entrepreneurs to think about their work. They are the painter. Some paintings will hang in the MOMA and others will sit gathering dust in a storage room. Not every thing you create will be brilliant. But you can be brilliant while still making work that isn’t, particularly if you understand why the work that wasn’t great wasn’t great.

In the beginning, most people viewed MetroCard as a technology project. While the technology was the key component, the project involved so much more,” explained Wayne Lydon, Chief Officer, MetroCard Sales Operations, who was involved with its introduction. “It brought together all of the major departments to establish new customer service policies, retrain thousands of employees and alter the long established routines of millions of New Yorkers.

The lesson for technologists? Distributed power, harnessed with tech savvy, can insert itself into deals once cut in backrooms. Reformers have tried for years to deregulate a taxi industry they see as protecting entrenched interests. But those fights have been local, and draining. Kalanick has the power to take them national. To some, what that says about how rules are written — rather than the outcome of the fights themselves — is what’s important.

Salazar grasped the social implications from the beginning. Salazar knew technology, but he knew little about the hired-ride market, so he went out to talk to drivers. He found that they didn’t like the way things were, either. They were beholden to dispatchers and fleet owners who had favorites — a non-Puerto Rican driver at a Puerto Rican-owned firm, Salazar says, “complained that the best trips were assigned to Puerto Ricans.” Cars on the road looked like a public resource to which everyone should have access, yet for both drivers and riders, “access to black cars wasn’t democratic at all.”

I have Visa No. 0085 for Afghanistan. I did learn quite quickly that your best defense when you’re traveling on your own is just having a smile and a good sense of humor and taking it all in your stride. If it takes a day for someone to stamp your passport, it takes a day for someone to stamp your passport.