Graham Glass, etc.

San Diego

I'm off to San Diego tomorrow for my first real vacation in four years. It's one of the most beautiful and energizing locations on the planet, and also the site for the upcoming webMethods Integration World. I'm staying at the hotel Del Coronado, which has a beautiful and elegant profile. Unfortunately, I twisted my ankle yesterday during an evening run, so I'll be more likely to be relaxing by the pool than doing cool stuff like paragliding.

My Life

Many of you will have heard about Bill Clinton's book, "My Life". One of my old friends, who happens to be a graphics artist, found an old picture of me in a similar pose to the one on the book's cover. So she worked a little graphics magic and came up with a custom version of the cover. Pretty funny.

The CTO Lifestyle, Part 1

This series will describe the various things that I do as a Chief Technology Officer (CTO). I've been the CTO at three companies now; ObjectSpace, The Mind Electric, and webMethods. Although the sizes of the companies vary, the role has been very similar; essentially catalyzing innovation to catch the next technology wave. Some CTOs are primarily outward focused, and spend most of their time speaking to various groups such as investors, customers, prospects and analysts. Other CTOs are primarily inward focused, and spend most of their time actually designing and writing code. I'm somewhere inbetween, with about half my time spend on design, architecture, and prototyping, and the other half spend on outbound activities. At ObjectSpace and TME, I designed and implemented the first versions of our products, with a gradually declining contribution to subsequent versions. I must say that although I enjoy public speaking, it is hard to beat the pure pleasure of designing and implementing an excellent piece of software. In the next part, I'll describe the kind of travel that is involved with my current job.

Reading Habits

By pure coincidence, I happened to read an article about reading this weekend in the Washington Post that included an interesting statistic. According to one report, only one in 6 Americans reads 12 books or more per year, and half the US population doesn't look at any fiction, poetry, or plays, ever. That is pretty scary. I'm happy to say that I read about 100 books a year, across a broad range of topics, because I find it incredibly pleasurable. Reading is literally food for the brain.

Back to Basics

I think that a lot of America's problems would be greatly reduced if most people lived their lives according to a few basic rules. These rules have nothing whatsoever to do with religion, spirituality, or politics. Here is a sample of the rules, which i hope to expand over time:

- eat in moderation
- exercise at least three times a week for 30 minutes or more
- save a little every month towards retirement
- restrain from unnecessary buying habits that result in debt
- avoid using medication unless really necessary
- read a book at least once a month
- avoid watching the TV for more than 2 hours a day

These rules are sensible, rather mundane, and frankly fall under the category of "common sense". But how many people follow these rules? According to one study I read recently, less than 50% of the baby boomer population have any savings at all, and more then 60% of the US population is overweight, so obviously a large percentage of people don't follow these rules. Imagine how much better off we'd be if, say, 70% of people followed the rules!

I would love it if the president gave a one hour presentation every week that broadcast on every TV and radio channel, promoting these rules to the American population. I don't know if there's a historic precedent for this kind of broadcast, but I think it would help a lot to halt the general decline of physical and mental health.

Rather than waiting for a political party or religion to step up to the task of promoting these fundamental issues with the effort they deserve, I thought it would be fun if a separate movement was formed, called something like "Back to Basics", that promoted the rules via the web. If someone wanted to join "Back to Basics", they could wear a pin to identify themselves as a member of the movement. There would be no fees, no voting, no leader of this movement. Just a bunch of values that could be spread via word of mouth and using Internet technology such as blogs. Personally, I'd find such a group refreshing, free of the usual political overtones.

All comments welcome!

Ease of Use: Anecdote

I mentioned a few weeks ago that ease of use is often driven by company founders. Apple and Google are great examples of this. In an iPod article I came across today, there were a great example of this influence in action. Apparently, Steve Jobs became heavily involved in the design of the iPod, and was offended when he couldn't get to a particular song he liked in three button clicks or less. This kind of story warms my heart; it is inspiring to hear how well he continues to promote his core values throughout Apple.

Dealers of Lightning

I'm about halfway through a great book called Dealers of Lightning about the Xerox PARC research lab. It's amazing that such a small group of people could put together an office of the future; they essentially invented the following things - laser printer, mouse, personal computer, ethernet, object-oriented programming and bitmapped graphics. There's a lot to be learned from the way that they assembled the teams, how the people in the team interacted, and how they went about developing the systems. I've been lucky to have been in similar (but not quite as large) teams, and it definitely raised my expectations of how productive a talented group of individuals can be.

Education: Thinking out of the Box

One of my favorite topics is education. I'm not a big fan of how children are currently taught, and here's one example of how things could be improved. Right now, schools tend to teach subjects in a "stove pipe" manner; for example, math, physics, chemistry and biology are all taught relatively independently of each other. Wouldn't it be a lot more fun, and more real-world, to replace all these topics with a single one called something like "how things work"? The idea of this topic would be to encourage children to understand how things work, from the very simple (like a catapult or a bouncing ball) to the very complex (like a mouse or a computer). Children would be shown how to open things up, come up with experiments to examine aspects of a thing, and also how to build things of their own. The act of understanding or building any particular thing would typically involve a combination of math, physics, biology, and chemistry, combined with a heathly dose of internet research. Gosh, I would have *loved* to learn that way. Wouldn't you?

Body Worlds

A new exhibition called "Body Worlds" opened at the California science center that shows human bodies skinned, dissected, and otherwise displayed in all their glory. Apparently, there are some people who are repulsed by it, saying that it violates the sanctity of the human body. For sure, I can understand that a lot of people would rather not be aware of how their own body works, especially when they see all that under our veneer, our bodies are super-advanced machines. Personally, I find the inner workings of a body both beautiful and fascinating. I bet the guys behind the Sony AIBO dog will get a lot of inspiration from this kind of exhibit!