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Monday, September 14, 2009 |
Publisher Rex Hammock wrote a piece about what he still believes in and what he no longer believes in. I'm with him. Especially the bill of goods we've been sold about investing our 401(K)s. There's nothing else we can do, but we're not likely to make much money on them.
11:26:31 AM 
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I saw this article in The New York Times about colleges supposedly failing. I guess I've grown tired (actually probably 20 years ago) with that set of journalists who don't do anything or put their necks on the line, but love to sit back and criticize--especially institutions. I think the question is, who is failing. I've watched progressively over the past 25 years as parents (not all, thank God) decide that their little kiddies shouldn't be responsible for anything, but instead their failures should be overlooked and blamed on someone else.
Last week, I had two interesting conversations that illustrate my belief that people are responsible for their own direction and education. First was with Craig. He is developmentally challenged. He reads words well, can converse well, but his understanding isn't deep. But...what he's interested in drives fantastic knowledge--and that interest is country music. He asked if I had really been in Austin, Texas recently. I said yes. He said, there have been a lot of country music stars from Texas. He then proceeded to name 15-20. And he named some of their songs and/or the type of country music they represented. I said Wow, that's great knowledge. He said simply, "I like country music so I study it."
Then I talked with a woman down the street who is pushing 90. She not only watches the news, she thinks about what's going on. We are constantly sharing books to read with each other. She's interesting and well read.
I'm not really writing this to defend universities in general, just to point out that information is out there. If the goal is just getting a degree and not an education, well, good luck. (I meet lots of those people--a piece of paper with nothing to back it up.) But if you want to learn something, you can. If Craig with a lower IQ can remember all the stuff he does, kids with normal IQ surely can remember the things they need to learn.
I learned my lessons by reading the US founding fathers. They were all about personal responsibility. I say Amen to that.
7:27:23 AM
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Greg McMillan has another installment in the Largest Opportunities in Process Control series. Well worth a read.
7:13:08 AM
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Saw in Wired Science about new pictures coming from the Hubble telescope. Awesome.
7:09:47 AM
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I have some left over marketing thoughts, I guess due to the two days in Boston last week at the ISA Marketing and Sales Symposium. Jason Calacanis, Web entrepreneur and one of the founders of TechCrunch 50 that will be held this week in San Francisco, offers tips for demoing products here and here. These ideas work for demoing for editors, too. I've been on both sides of this aisle--I still remember the time I demoed my product circa 1989 for John C. Dvorak and Jim Seymour of PC Magazine. I learned ;-}
He also offers tips for trade show booths--timely given the beginning of the fall season. I'll be at the Invensys Operations Management user conference, Emerson Exchange, ISA Expo, Advantech User Conference and Rockwell's Automation Fair (and the Safety Automation Forum and perhaps PSUG), while Wes will be at Pack Expo and OpsManage 09 (formerly known as Wonderworld). So we'll be busy seeing demos. Hope you reinforce your knowledge of how to make a good one ;-)
7:05:08 AM
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© Copyright 2009 Gary Mintchell.
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