On Safari with Oldupai George

Apparently it’s forecast to be 102 F in Tunis tomorrow afternoon when I arrive. That’s hot… which is nice, since it’s been winter in Seattle since approximately 2004.

So apparently the folks at TSA have decided that there’s a better way to get everyone through the security lines - I’ve seen this now at SEA at the beginning of this trip and again coming through security after clearing customs in Atlanta. Basic idea is this: three lanes, one each for casual travelers, expert travelers, and families and others with special needs. The black diamond lane - the one for expert travelers - replacing the previously highly useful elite lanes for those of us with gold/platinum/premier/whatever status on the airlines. However, it appears that people who think they are experts can now self-select into these lanes.

I’m skeptical. I’ve counted for a long time on my ability to skip the long security lines, which given that I’m at Sea-Tac several times a month (and often more than once a week) has a tangible impact on my mental wellbeing. Maybe I’m being a snob, not sure, but when I saw the new getup at SEA last weekend I promptly bolted for the other security line where it hadn’t yet been implemented, hit the elite line, and was through in under 5 minutes.

TSA has a blog - which is just bizarre in it’s own right - and the signs for the new lanes direct you there to give feedback. I’m offline on a plane but I think the URL is http://www.tsa.gov/blog. I glanced at it at some point during this trip, and gained zero additional confidence in much of anything. Have a look… but it sounds like an idea that some twenty-something dipshit suggested to his bosses at TSA as a great way to make TSA more accessible or something. No one wants accessible - we want fast lanes, solid and confidence-inspiring security, and the ability to get on a plane without having to be cavity searched. That’s it.

Or maybe that’s just me.

So I’m in Amsterdam (start of a hectic travel week) and tonight Turkey played the Czech Republic in the third match of their group round in the Euro 2008 Cup. Turkey won 2-0 - exciting, yes, but I was thoroughly unprepared for the outpouring of apparently half of the population of Turkey living here in Holland. After the match my friend drove me back to my hotel, and we encountered honking cars with Turkish flags, traffic jams, overall insanity.

I loved the energy but was just amazed to see that energy in Amsterdam for a win by a national team that wasn’t the Netherlands. My friend informed my that something like 50% of all Amsterdam residents under the age of 25 speak Arabic. This astonishes me. Wild, interesting, kinda cool, and should make for an interesting handful of decades watching how the assimilation (or not) goes (see also Paris, London).

And this is why having friends in other cities and traveling is so damn cool. and important. and fun.

I had a big blog entry drafted - OK, well, outlined, by which I mean I had a bunch of nonsensical bullets written to remind me of some things to write about - that I thought would be really scintillating and insightful. Not a chance, but here’s a quick rundown of the things that travel has seemed to force this week.

• Rest: I collapsed on the bed multiple times on this trip intending to think, but brainfog prevented it. I probably could have avoided this impact in Amsterdam if I had stayed at a hotel in the center of town - could have gone out and walked around or gone to a museum - but alas, not this time
• Sometimes the brainfog of jetlag actually enables the most important things to rise to the surface… in this case, some random completely unfocused prodding at the laptop yielded an interesting James Dixon piece of writing on “commercial” and “organic” open source concepts, which happens to be really near and dear to my life right now.
• Focus - in a weird way, in that I never get as much done on trips as I think I will, but have gradually learned to do the most important things first. Actually, I take this back, as this blog posting is a counter-example.
• I had the sense at one point that the slightly manic, thoroughly exhausted jetlag feeling might have some opportunity to it, the ability to unleash some crazy highly creative thinking about really deep important stuff. It’s a kind of focus without focus (or pharmaceuticals) but it didn’t stick - likely needs to be a practice built to really tap into that.
• I always think, while traveling, “next time, I’ll be focuses; next time, I’ll have a plan for jetlag and day 1″. Never happens.
• I also always blog way more when I’m on the road…
• I had the thought that if Dopplr ever really got going (or I got more friends on there) that it would be really rad to randomly meet up with people you know (or sort of know) for dinner in random places would be cool. Also, I suspect that Dopplr would be a fun company to run, apart from the whole business model thing. Wanna bet their strategy is “get lots of users, and then get bought by Google”?

TTFN

So I’m holed up at home this weekend, trying to crank out (finally) a draft business plan for Mifos. It’s hard - harder than I thought it would be, but easier than it probably should be. If nothing else, it’s a great exercise for getting clarity into what we’ve got clarity on, and what we don’t. For example, we seem to need more work on a pricing strategy. Correction: we seem to need a pricing strategy.

It’s a gorgeous weekend in Seattle, and while it would be nice to be outside enjoying the near-summer conditions, this is one of the two really important things in my life at the moment (the other is our upcoming wedding, which is approaching faster than I could have imagined). And so, on I slog. Here’s hoping that my Memorial Day output yields the ROI I’m looking for…

Jimi once lived &/or jammed in the basement of our house. More importantly, it turns out that the “Jimi Hendrix Sex Tape” of VERY recent newsworthiness is now available on demand in the Sheraton Four Points Chelsea.

Foxy.

Looking at the draft financial model for a social mission-driven tech startup at 1:21 AM on a Friday night after a bunch of bourbon is not… I repeat, not… recommended.

Fun, and wrong, and not recommended. Here’s the tough bit - 70 million people is a really large number, but when we’re thinking about how to reach the nearly 2 billion people living on less than $2 a day around the world, it’s peanuts. There’s a biz model here somewhere, and we’ll find it, and we’ll get those billion+ access to the tools they need to get their lives (and their families’ lives) to a better place, and we’ll make money doing it… but it’s gonna be a bitch.

It’s May 2nd, which means that the wedding is three months from now. Note to self: never, ever try to launch a new business and hold a wedding in the same year again. Thankfully, that shouldn’t really be an issue.

Interesting factoid:

• MySQL was bought by Sun for $1 billion
• Burt’s Bees was bought by Clorox for $913 million

In other words, the two companies were purchased for more or less the same amounts. I’m not sure yet what that really means, if anything, other than that lip balm might be as good a business to get into as open source enterprise software.

I missed April 7 this year - too crazy trying to set the foundation for a business startup to change the world or something lame like that. I’m disappointed in myself for this.

April 7 is the anniversary of the start of the genocide in Rwanda. It’s been fourteen years now, which is basically nothing, and it’s insanely important with all the other shit going on in the world to remember what can and has happened when we don’t pay attention.

I recommend (re)reading “We Wish To Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with our Families” or watching sometimes in April. Or, if the opportunities presents itself, going to Rwanda.