David LaPlante

Oracle's Safra Catz, Senator Ensign and Nevada's Workforce Future

Quick event summary:

• The time, money and energy we --America-- waste on the IRS and our ridiculous tax-code evasion game if invested in R&D and education would ensure our global dominating class-barrier-breaking affluent economy. We piss our advantage away on lawyers and accountants playing a stupid cat-and-mouse game with the IRS. Stupid we collectively are.
  
• Most of the most common practices of successful, profitable and consistently performing businesses-- accountability, terminating weak performers, employee and management incentives, innovation culture, free markets, access to union-free labor -- is absent in our public schools.
  
• Our H1B Visa policy is insanely bass-ackwards. "Let's educate our global competitors here in the US and then kick them out so we can outsource our jobs back to them." Sweet.
  
• Sarbanes-Oxley ('Sox') has exported our best small and mid-sized public capital offerings to foreign countries. While well intentioned, the lawyers and accountants again are making all the money while small businesses that used to be able to raise public financing in the US are headed to Canada, Europe and anywhere they can but the US.
  
• Safra Catz for President in 2012. What kind of person can put up with Larry "the Largest Ego in the World" Ellison? Safra Catz. Cool. Level headed. Smart. Witty. Plays the game to win. Humble. Self-depreciating. All the skills to lead one of the largest and most relevant businesses in the world...Oracle. Safra, please come back!
  

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Like most businesses that depend on technology workers, we're constantly hurting for talent. Human capital is as important -- if not more -- than financial capital. Most sage entrepreneurs will tell you...and I'm one of them...human capital -- your workforce -- is what makes or breaks you. (By the way, we're looking for super cool talented kick-ass developers and creative's!)

First-off, what a great event. Awesome. I jotted down notes for about about 15 blog posts. It really got me thinking...

About the the only thing that sucked is that because it was organized by Senator Ensign & Crew a lot of "binary" people of the "D" flavor will immediately discount it and get crimped in their R v. D Kos-style black-and-white politics that dominates most dialog in an October predating an November election. If Reid had organized the event, the 98% of the same things would have been discussed.

So, kudos to Ensign & Crew! He did this event in Las Vegas yesterday as well. Yeah, he's trying to get re-elected. Duh. If you're not a fan of R's -- then at least respect the marketing. Splendid marketing. But at least my 'BS' detector didn't go off to many times today as I thought it would. The dialog was real and genuine. Education and workforce development is CRITICAL to Nevada. No matter what the attendees political flavor, everyone left with their thinking caps on.

The event stimulated great thought and dialog on education and workforce development to make help ensure that businesses (like mine) in Nevada can meet our human capital requirements. The silly thing right now is there's no shortage of "capital capital". We're consistently challenged (like most growing western cities) with attracting and/or retaining enough "human capital".

Again...kudos to Ensign. He's the MAN on the High Tech Task Force. That's a very good thing for Nevada.

While today's event was very science-math-education oriented, I think that there were a few facets of this problem that were not discussed and I'll pick those up in some future posts. Here's the teasers:

1. The Internet is not through trashing the paradigms of society and social institutions as we know it. Mainstream media is under the gun today. Education -- and our traditions built around education -- are about to be blown apart as well. Homeschooling and socialschooling(C) (I made that term up) is going to reshape how we educate.
   
2. I bet you can name 10 people most likely featured in any given issue of People magazine, can you name the top 10 scientists and mathematicians? Why Paris Hilton, Bono and Angelina Jolie will have more influence in solving our dilemma than the gray-haired PHD wielding education majors or the unions.
   
3. My experiences with public schools and parenting. New thoughts on what matters...can you say THESPIAN?
   
4. If access to knowledge, education and information is ubiquitous and a commodity, what separates a Stanford from a UNR? And why "who" you know still matters more than calculating the area of a dodecahedron...
   

tags: ensign, senator, senatorensign, Nevada, Reno, Las Vegas, education, workforce, schools, hightech, high-tech, oracle, Safra, Catz, TMCC, UNR

  Technorati : Catz, Las Vegas, Nevada, Reno, Safra, TMCC, UNR, education, ensign, high-tech, hightech, oracle, schools, senator, senatorensign, workforce
Del.icio.us : Catz, Las Vegas, Nevada, Reno, Safra, TMCC, UNR, education, ensign, high-tech, hightech, oracle, schools, senator, senatorensign, workforce

Logan's Self Portrait: Spyder & Rossignol Win the Kindergarten Brand War

Logan's Self Portrait
Originally uploaded by dave_laplante.

I love this...So I was flipping thru all of Logan's kindergarten writings and came accross this self-portrait he drew last year. Note the SPIDR jacket and the ROSinNL logos...Spyder and Rossignol should be proud of their brand marketing awareness amongst the 6-year old skier crowd! Not sure if he meant himself to be inverted or if he just drew on the paper upsidedown.

2000 Miles, 2 weeks, 2 Kids and an iPod

Logan & Cody Sharing iPod
Originally uploaded by dave_laplante.

We just returned from a family vacation back to my hometown of Crested Butte, Colorado. With that vacation came about two weeks of being on the road. Two thousand miles in the car with two kids and one iPod to be exact.

We took no DVDs nor any DVD player. My Tablet PC laptop doesn't have a CD/DVD drive. We didn't watch one DVD the whole trip. Furthermore, we didn't go see Superman or Pirates. When the kids wanted a "media fix" (which was when they were settling down for bed around 9p or 10p) they snacked on iPod videos.

TV appears to be all but is dead in our house now. We have no cable TV. All content is coming on a DVD or from a computer now. And -- for the moment -- our kids are more than OK with this. The proof is an incident free vacation with no DVD, no TV and a lot of outdoors.

Kudos to Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender animation. It's an entertaining story for kids...and adults. Somehow it's managed to have broken their love-affair for Power Rangers and is fun to watch for parents. I'm actually anticipating the next episode!

Technorati : children, gadgets, generations, ipod, kids, parenting, video
Del.icio.us : children, gadgets, generations, ipod, kids, parenting, video
Flickr : children, gadgets, generations, ipod, kids, parenting, video

My Kid Can Read!

Logan won a district Kindergarten reading contest. Kewl. 'Couple thoughts:

1. The Super Paul Dugan and Roy Gomm Kindergarten teacher Mrs. Daynes kick ass for taking a Saturday off to present the awards and are really involved. We're lucky to have them.
2. All that access to computers and gadgets don't seem to be affecting the learning ability of this kid here. Just like companies blame their poor earnings on "oil prices", blaming education issues on gadgets is just plain lazy.
3. Reading to your kid at night, whether on an old-fashioned book or off a computer screen is reading nonetheless.

Here's the link to the video on YouTube!

Technorati : education youth teaching technology schools kindergarten Nevada

It’s a Matter of Perspective: Why the iPod Video Screen Size is Perfect for Viewing

So I’m sitting here on a flight to Atlanta and the baby boomer seated next to me has just spent 5 minutes – five futile minutes – lambasting me for buying a video iPod. I’m not sure why he felt so compelled to try and convince me that the iPod video screen is too small to be enjoyable.

So I had him hold up the iPod and compare it to the in-flight movie screen he’d been so entranced with watching for a perspetive comparison. I held up my cell phone for a perspective comparison as well and it became pretty clear that a 12 inch screen 10 feet away is much smaller than a 1.5” screen 12 inches from my nose.

It seems to me that viewing pleasure is about 90% content and 10% screen size. I repeat: People will watch compelling content on ANYTHING given circumstances where this is no other alternative. I’m sure someone will give me the math to break it down. Screen size really is irrelevant as compared to the content and the TRL (Time, Relevance & Location).

Content is still king. Always will be. Distribution is no longer the name of the game. I actually had my camera handy on this flight so I snapped a couple photos of my iPod with an in-flight screen in front of me. See for yourself. Final note: I’d rather watch South Park over CNN any day. Content is king, remember!?

Happiness is...

...sharing a bag of M&M's on the chairlift with your kids while they associate the colors of the M&M's to the various names of PowerRangers. FYI, Red Ranger M&Ms make you ski faster.

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Cody Went to Work this Morning

While I was in the shower this morning, Cody (my two-year-old) decided to "go to work." He busted in to my home office, sat down in front of my computer and managed to send four e-mails and send a recurring meeting request out to seven people. Sheesh! That's almost a virus! He also got a hold of my PocketPC and managed to navigate to Jawbreaker and score 127 points.

Right as I was about to get mad, he turned and looked at me with those "baby blue eyes" and said, "Daddy, I went to work"! I busted up laughing and forgot all about being mad.

Fortunately, I haven't discovered any deleted files yet. Glad I back-up regularly. I'm enabling auto-lock on every device I own now.

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First Day on the Hill!

I know I rant about quality of life a lot. It's one thing to talk about it. Living it, however, is what it's all about.

What a great day. I got lucky and an all-afternoon meeting was canceled. Wife called - said she was taking the boys skiing at Mt. Rose for the day. I left the office at 1:30 pm, was on the chair lift with Logan by 2:05 pm, skied with Logan for 2 hours, back in car at 4:10 pm and back in the office at 4:38 pm. Three hours total out of the office, two of them up skiing with my kids. Perfect! Had I not walked back into the office in my ski pants, nobody would have even missed me. Can't do that in San Francisco.

Logan ripped it up for his first day back on skis. This is his third season. He turned 5 in September, so this is the year he will ski top-to-bottom with no help. After two hours with me, he was already ahead of where he left off last year. Cody's two now and amped like his brother. He turns 3 in February so these next couple months will make a big difference. Can I say it again? Quality of life.

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It's 10 pm: Do you know where your children are?

September 2007...

Why yes. One is at N 39° 31.729 W 119° 46.464, motionless for 97 minutes, which happens to be Theatre #8 at Century Riverside. The other is moving at a rate of 26 mph bearing NNW on Arlington Avenue. Estimated arrival home: 5 minutes past curfew.

Global Positioning Systems (GPS), RFIDs, and 3G wireless will converge upon us over the next three years. The business to consumer opportunities are limitless...

Updated 12/21/2004: Great post on new China service to ping location by SMS

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The Boys Can Surf

My wife has a desk set up in our bedroom where she keeps her laptop. As CEO, COO, CFO of the household, she needs her workspace to keep our affairs organized. Last night, I kicked back on the bed and watched Logan and Cody sit in the chair and play on the Web for two hours laughing at their banter.

Logan: Cody, this is the Power Ranger Web site. You have to be four, almost five, to click on it. So you sit there and watch me.
Cody: Pow'r Ainger! Let's Go. Ooh. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Logan: Daddy, where's the play button?
Me: Look for the letters "P" "L" "A" "Y"
Logan: I found it! (Power Ranger Ninja Storm theme music.)
Cody: Pow'r Ainger! Let's Go. Ooh. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Logan: Where's JettX?
Me: What?
Logan: Never mind.

I get up. Sure enough he's in something with JettX on it. Holy crap! He can read.

Cody: 'Ogan. Press pay! Press pay!

So this goes on for two hours. After getting them to their normalized bedtime of 30 seconds before I drop dead, I check the history log. They'd surfed at least 100 pages. I also see that somehow he managed to almost upgrade to the latest version of Shockwave. If there hadn't been a form to fill out with e-mail and name, he would have installed the update on his own without even knowing what he was doing! Oh well. It's not my computer. But I figure I'd better start looking in to content filters soon!

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