flights

It’s one of those mornings. As I was getting dressed, I checked the Internetz to see when the next 9 or 19 buses were coming, and it went something like this: 3 min, 11 min, 54 min. Making the first one would be impossible, and the last one would get me to work way too late. So I had to try to make the middle one. Which meant skipping breakfast and running to the stop. Which meant I was hungry when I got to the office, so I stopped into the SoMa Coffee for a muffin. But I had no cash on me, so the dude behind the counter sent me down the street to the ATM at Ted’s Market… which turned out to be out of order.

Now, this part of town sucks for food options, much less banks and ATMs. So I wandered about 6 blocks north until I found a Bank of America branch.

Got my cash. Got my breakfast. Got to work.

Jeez.

I was doing a little housekeeping the other day, and I found a packet of cream-colored, cotton fiber resume paper that I must have bought a long time ago. I remember painstakingly laying out my resume in MS Word and printing it on this high-quality stock, then tucking it into a matching envelope with a cover letter and dropping it in the mail.

More recently, I’ve sent soft copies (pdf or Word) of my resume via email, where the body of the email is the cover letter.

As a side note, maddeningly, I’ve had more than one company make me fill out a standard in-house form with essentially the same information as a bureaucratic hurdle, once I’ve actually been hired.

Now that I’m entertaining freelance opportunities again, I’ve had a few recruiters ask me for my resume, and perhaps because business is good right now, I found myself refusing. I haven’t assembled a formal resume in a while, so I told the recruiters to use my LinkeIn profile instead. The profile includes pretty much everything I’d put in a resume, along with a link to this blog. Plus, it’s up-to-date, so I think it’s more than sufficient.

Seth Godin said a while back that “if you’re remarkable, or amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all.”

Instead, he suggests that some credible and compelling letters of recommendation, or an actual project that people can see or use, or a compelling and insightful blog – or a combination of these – is much better for evaluating a person’s strengths and aptitude for a job.

I won’t presume to call myself remarkable or amazing, much less spectacular, but I totally agree that if you want to position yourself as a good candidate for anything, then a resume is a pointless formality that needs to die.

After a mostly fun eighteen-month ride, I decided to leave Scout Labs. As part of the founding team, I played a big part in defining the initial vision for both the product and the company, and I got a profound education in startup life. I got to work with brilliant people, and I’m forever grateful for the experience.

I’m also a bit sad about leaving, because I still very much believe in the opportunity, but I know I made the right decision.

I left with no particular plans, not much of a cushion, and vague dreams of travel in foreign lands where the dollar still goes a long way. But I was out of work for all of about 30 minutes before a couple of big freelance projects fell into my lap.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past month, and I don’t plan on looking for anything permanent any time soon.

…and not just because my recent investment in oil futures depends on the price continuing to rise.

The sudden upsurge in the price of gas has been the top news story for the past few weeks, and there doesn’t seem to be any relief in sight. Oil is a finite resource, and as China, India and other developing nations have… well… developed, the worldwide demand for oil has shot up. As Americans turn to the government – and the three people campaigning to be the next president – for a solution, it seems amazing that no one saw this coming.

Of course the US leads the rest of the planet by a long shot when it comes to oil consumption, thanks to a combination of massive suburban sprawl, the popularity of gas-guzzling SUVs and a system of government subsidies that keeps our gasoline cheap compared to the rest of the world.

Progressives have lobbied the government for years to raise the mandatory average fuel-efficiency requirements of American cars, and the government’s response over the last eight of those years – especially from that bunch of oilmen in the executive branch – has been predictably dismissive.

The normal Republican philosophy regarding such things is to let the market take care of it. Keep the government out of it, they say. In an ideal world, I totally agree. The government is bloated and slow and bad at getting things done. In reality though, the problem with the Republican hands-off philosophy is that Republicans are totally disingenuous about it.

If the real price of gasoline was actually reflected at the pump, then people would stop using gasoline simply because they couldn’t afford it. People would stop buying gas-guzzling behemoths in favor of smaller cars. People who work in cities would stop moving into houses way out the suburbs, and people who already live in the suburbs would start carpooling or taking public transportation (if it’s even an option). That’s the market at work. We know the market would do its thing because it’s exactly what happened in the past when gas prices shot up for any length of time.

And it’s happening again. Even the modest rise we’ve seen over the past year or so – and it has been modest for Americans, no matter what it feels like – has sent a surge of riders to mass transit, according to this recent article in the New York Times. The difference this time is that given what’s happening with China, India and much of the rest of the developing world, oil prices aren’t likely to level off again… ever.

The bottom line here is that the Republican philosophy works. We just need the courage – yes, courage – to let the market actually do its thing.

Of course there’s another part of me – the part that loves to travel – that’s afraid to see what all this will do to air fares.

The big athletic footwear companies have built their marketing campaigns around aspirational themes and creating connections between regular sports hobbyists and elite athletes. If you work hard, if you show character and passion – the message goes – then you are like them.

I saw this clip from Nike today, and I think it does an especially good (and literal) job of putting the viewer in an athlete’s shoes…

Back in my agency life, clients were always asking us to create “viral” campaigns that would get the attention of the digital youth. Our inside joke was that there was a simple three part formula…

• Create a MySpace profile
• Enlist the Black Eyed Peas (they were especially hot at that time)
• Put some videos on YouTube

Then… POOF! it spreads like wildfire.

Now, reading the pitches from the current lot of would-be gurus, it seems things haven’t changed very much.

The basic pieces of a social marketing campaign today seem to be…

• Create a profile/group on MySpace/Facebook/Twitter/Jaiku
• Launch a blog advertising campaign
• Create a contest that has some viral hooks

This formula is attractive because none of these things necessarily requires much effort on the part of the company. It might get kudos from the Madison Avenue crowd and a few marketing pundits, impressed by your “revolutionary” foray into the frightening universe of social media, but the long term rewards from real people will be thin and fleeting unless you do a little more.

Give something good away.

I’m personally tired of the whole contest thing. Too many big companies think it’s good idea to create some kind of cheesy campaign where, for example, they entice people to make their own commercials for you or slog through a ridiculous scavenger hunt for the chance at a big prize. This doesn’t count as a giveaway because contests like this demand payment (manual labor and/or creativity) in exchange for nothing but a chance at a reward.

Instead, what I’m talking about is not all that different from the old concept of a loss-leader. You take a loss on something that will attract people to you, and then you try to deepen the relationship with those people and persuade them to (or simply hope they will) buy more stuff. What if Microsoft simply gave away the Xbox for free, knowing that such a move would push their console market share way past the PlayStation? Could the resulting increase in game sales make up for the cost of such a move?

I’m sure Microsoft has already run the numbers on this, so I won’t fantasize about getting a free Xbox, but there are plenty of giveaway ideas that cost almost nothing.

A lot of companies have quite a bit of capital in the form of information. Become the expert. Make your company’s blog the go-to source. Tell secrets. Teach people something cool or valuable. Enable. Entertain.

My small town library was one of my absolute favorite places when I was a kid. I regularly borrowed to the full limit of what I was allowed to take home. I still love the library, and the big one here in San Francisco is way cooler than anything I experienced as a kid.

So, on that note, here are 5 things I love about the library…

1. Free WiFi
   Considering the small town library of my childhood didn’t even have computers (which took up whole rooms back then), you gotta love free access to the Internet.
2. Peace and Quiet
   Sure, I can find free WiFi and lively gaggles of hipsters and hippies at (respectively) Ritual Coffee Roasters or Farley’s, but when I want to actually do some work, I prefer a little more peace. At the library, you’re surrounded by people who are seriously and silently getting shit done. As an extra bonus, you don’t have to feel guilty for taking up a seat long after you’ve finished your coffee.
3. “Stealing” Music and Borrowing DVDs
   One of my favorite things to do at the library is to hit their A/V room and borrow a bunch of CDs before heading to a table to work. Then, while I work, I rip all the CDs into my iTunes. Right now, for example, I’m ripping Wilco’s “Sky Blue Sky.” Before I leave, I’ll borrow the second season of Lost, which I’ve been watching with my girlfriend.
4. Ridiculously Small Fines
   If you put embarrassment aside, the punishment for lateness at the library is almost silly. You can borrow as many as 50(!) books for three weeks, then renew them online for another three weeks, but if you forget to return them for a couple more weeks, you’ll owe the library like twelve cents. And then they don’t even make you pay what you owe. You can still borrow books. OK, I’m exaggerating the lowness of the fees a little – but just a little.
5. Self-Service
   On my library’s website, I can search for anything in their system. If they don’t have it, they let me search Link+ (a network of 51 libraries in California and Nevada) where I’m almost certain to find what I’m looking for. Once I find something, I can request them to hold it at the branch of my choosing. Then they email me to let me know when my request is ready to pick up. They email me again with a friendly reminder if I haven’t picked up my stuff after a few days, and again when it’s time to renew anything I’ve checked out