I just started reading a new book: “Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a reluctant Businessman” by Yvon Chouinard, The founder of Patagonia.

The book is great. The concentration of the books content is the philosophy that Yvon holds and used for the development of his company. I could talk about the book and the specifics but you should just read the book. What’s most interesting to me is the idea of the philosophy and how he has put it into action.

There are a million seminars and books out there that give you the top 8 rules and the 5 most effective techniques to achieve “X”. The sad thing is most people take the seminar or read the book and then use what they learned once or twice, if at all, and then move on to the next popular thing. (I’m all for education and continuous learning, but this seems like waste of resources.) They never take the time to think about develop the foundation that they need (the beliefs, values, and ideals) so they can espouse the ideas through actions. Yvon’s admitted overwhelming management technique is “management by absence”. What I interpret from this is that day in and day out while he was out actually using and testing the equipment Patagonia creates he spent plenty of time thinking about and his ideas and building the foundation he needed to live and apply his philosophy in action.

The next time you read a current business or management book or attend a seminar, I challenge you to ask yourself afterward, “What foundation do I need to build to be able to apply this in action day in and day out?” Spend some time thinking about it over a few weeks before you dive into something else. Pick the three most important things that struck you as you read the book and let that be a filter that you use to view your world through. I find that this helps me build a foundation for which to apply and integrate new things into my daily behavior and actions.

Additional information:
You can purchase the book from Amazon or you can read an excerpt of the book at Outside Magazine’s website

Across the world on Thursday, people learned how to “make life easy.” Yes, there is an entire day devoted to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use. While this year’s theme was healthcare, we are going to focus specifically on the Internet, or as some of us like to call it, the Global InterWeb.

The University of Minnesota Office of Information Technology and Digital Technology Center celebrated the day by organizing a free event in the Walter Library on campus with the help of the UMN Usability Services Laboratory. Yesterday’s event included guided tours of the state-of-the-art usability lab, a presentation discussing practical usability practices and a professional panel discussing an overview of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

So what does all of this mean and why is it important?

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Spock is a new search engine with a primary focus on people. It claims to be the leader in personal search - Imagine the “Google” of people search. Users can search Spock via three types of information - name, email or tags. Experts say that nearly 30% of Google searches are people searches. If this is true I’m surprised no one has created a good “personal search” engine until now. Spock utilizes tags which make it extremely simple to organize and find information. Our society might just be ego-centric enough to make this a success - how many of us have Googled ourselves? Oh and by the way, Spock allows users to add tags, name variations and a photo.

Go to Spock and “claim” your profile before someone else does. Spock uses a technology that automatically generates tags for an individual. This differentiates Spock from the other People Search web sites such as LinkedIn and Wink. Think of Spock’s potential uses - get the dirt on a new love interest, impromptu employer background check, or find out “where they are now”. It seems like Spock has the potential to be yet another Internet time sucker.

By the way, Spock is thrilled with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). They are utilizing S3 for storing their photos. They write, “We’re pretty psyched with Amazon Web Services, and we’re looking forward to leveraging other neat services they roll out in the future.” It’s reassuring to know that other companies are having success with this technology just as we are with Wonderfile.

A pretty interesting view of of our culture and environmental issues through art. Artist Chris Jordan is working on a series called “Running the Numbers : An American self portrait” - where statistics are converted to images in the form of large format art works. As the description states, I can imagine they are even more impressive when seen in person but these works are pretty astonishing (and startling) at any scale.

I just read an article that literally (and metaphorically) blew me away.

Scientists have uncovered a source of clean power that could generate enough energy to provide over 100 times the current global demand. The jet stream. Duh - rather obvious if you think about it - a massive swath of 310 mile per hour winds blowing day and night…

There are currently several start-ups looking to tap into the jet streams power - there is some hope!