Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
One of my favorite movies when I was growing up was the 1984 classic, “Revenge of the Nerds.” If you haven’t watched it yet, take two hours to do so–yes, it’s available on Netflix: The movie really spoke to me–a guy so nerdy that the kids at my private school for gifted children nicknamed me … Continue reading The rise of the bros, and the fall of the geeks
I recently read an Atlantic Monthly piece on how healthy, affordable fast food could be a boon to women by freeing them from the drudgery of cooking. The author’s point is that if you could buy a healthy dinner for a family of four for less than $24 ($6/person), fast food would actually represent a … Continue reading Is Fast Food Any Faster Than Cooking At Home?
Like most of you, I was shocked by the news of the Boston Marathon bombing. I was glued to Twitter and Google News, checking every five minutes, waiting for each additional bit of news. Now that nearly 24 hours has passed, I have some thoughts I’d like to share. Unlike most of my writing, this … Continue reading Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Bombing
I’ve long been fascinated by religion. The research is clear that religion can have a major impact on happiness and community–one of the reasons that Ben Casnocha and I have always talked about the need for a secular church that can fill that role for secular humanists. Yet in some ways, belief and atheism aren’t … Continue reading Faith = Acceptance
“While nonviolence only sometimes works in the immediate moment, it always works.” (Michael Nagler) One of the reasons I wrote my essay on PyCon is because of a young hacker I’ve worked with. He’s a smart, funny, thoughtful person, and he was quite worked up about the PyCon incident. He was convinced that Adria Richards … Continue reading Why I Write Essays On Controversial Topics
One of the people who commented on my recent post on sexism in high tech made a very good point. Beth noted, “What’s our take away. What do we want, exactly? It’d be easier to speak to both sides if we had a clear objective.” I’m far from an expert on effecting social change. In … Continue reading 2 Concrete Steps To Combat Sexism At Tech Conferences
The big topic of discussion today is the fallout from the PyCon conference. At the conference, former Adria Richards, who, at the time, worked in developer relations for SendGrid, heard two conference attendees behind her making jokes about “forking” and “dongles” in the sort of juvenile way that often happens in the tech industry. Richards … Continue reading Sexism in tech is like an onion–it has many layers and makes people cry
One of the interesting aftereffects of my meeting with centenarian Bob Teichner only happened as I lay in bed, waiting to fall asleep. I was suddenly overwhelmed with an intense, almost unbearable fear of death. On a daily basis, I happily ignore my mortality, assuming that it’s far off in the future. But if I’m … Continue reading Mortaliphobia
Today I had the great fortune and privilege to meet Bob Teichner, age 100. Bob took an “early” retirement package from HP in 2000, when he was 87. I happened to meet his daughter, Andrea, while we were walking our dogs, and struck up a conversation. When I found out about her dad’s history, I … Continue reading Life lessons in entrepreneurship from a 100-year-old man
The Business of Software Conference sounds like a phenomenal event. I haven’t attended it, but I did recently run across one of the sessions from their 2012 conference, a talk by Gail Goodman, the CEO of Constant Contact: For those who don’t know, Constant Contact is a publicly traded online marketing company with over 500,000 … Continue reading The one number (45) that explains Constant Contact’s success