November 27th, 2011
In the past 18 days, I have been in Switzerland, China (Shanghai and Sichuan), Singapore, Japan (Tokyo and Osaka), Charlotte, Augusta, Georgia and NY. My return date from Japan was on the anniversary of my move back from Asia one year ago which sparked a bit of reflection while I was on the Singapore Airlines A380 from Tokyo to LA.
Traveling to so many diverse places in less than 3 weeks was a mini version of what I have experienced on a larger scale since early 2000. I transitioned from the "slightly stiff" Zurich to the wide open people of western China without a blink. Shanghai is an ever changing third home - everything changes but everything has the same feel. On the plane to Singapore I encountered a person experiencing the wonder of his first tour of Asia. He had so many comments and concerns that seemed childlike but were my own when I made my first tour of Asia in 1995. Singapore in some ways is the Asian Switzerland - everything is in order and runs on time but things like the street food hawkers prevent it from having the clinical feel of Zurich. Tokyo and Osaka are continually feuding cousins but I enjoy and appreciate both especially the little things like the fact that they use opposite sides of the escalators to stand and walk. I was back at home in the US for a day before going to Augusta, Georgia to play Augusta National Golf course. I stayed in a cabin on the property, ate among the "green jacket wearers" in the clubhouse, visited the wine cellar, prepared to play in the locker room and met several members who represent the "Who's Who" of American business. You have to be invited to play this most exclusive of American courses. How did I get to this once in a lifetime opportunity??? From a Japanese customer with connections to an American member. Small world indeed.
The home stretch of the 18 days was spent in New York. My wife and I met our younger daughter who is at college in Los Angeles in NY to stay with our elder daughter who moved there after graduating from college in May. Her apartment is in a formerly gritty section of Queens that has become neighborhood that could be a poster for diversity. I detected six different languages on the street as we walked 400 meters to the subway.
We had a great time over the holidays - touring, shopping, eating, etc. The last night we attended a Broadway show called "Chinglish" aka Chinese/English which appealed to the entire family since we had lived through many of the circumstances in the play. Then we flew home......
Home is Charlotte, NC. A very nice mid sized city. We have a house on a golf course (my dream) and I have an easy commute to work - when I am here. Cost of living is very reasonable and the weather is nice. I still spend a good deal of time in Asia - I leave again in two days for ten days in Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Yet something is still missing. My wife and I talk about it from time to time. Part of it is the normal ex-pat dilemma. I ran a growing business in Asia with little "help" from HQ that saw the company profits in Asia increase almost 10 fold in a decade. I was the only American there. The team was closeknit with a family atmosphere.
My environment has definitely changed. The challenge of learning cultures, language, customs and working with a young team anxious to learn, achieve and grow has been replaced by office politics, reductions in force, the growing American feeling of entitlement and casting blame on others such as exhibited by the current "occupy" movement, political correctness, etc. Many places in America no longer allow public Christian symbols or traditional religious Christmas songs to be played in public places. Yet in Shanghai you can hear "What Child is This?" from speakers on Nanjing Lu. Who is "free"?
When I set up this blog a year ago I mentioned deciding what to do "next" in the title. The transition to living in the US is complete, what to do "next" is the challenge for year 2.
PS: My current Global Lithium role was the answer to that challenge mentioned five years ago.
Lake
Near Yellow Mountain
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
An Apple a Day
A week ago I attended a football game with 92,999 other people. Stanford vs USC - a three overtime thriller. As exciting as the game was, I left the stadium more impressed by something else - the pervasive use of Apple products. In this case mostly the IPhone being used as a camera and a way to keep up with other college games but there were also IPads and Ipods being used around me.
Being the happy owner of an Air Mac, an IPpad, an IPhone and an IPod as well as Apple stock - it was certainly not a revelation to me that a lot of people are similarly equipped. However sitting in a stadium and observing those around me as well as those at a distance via my wife's binoculars, it was a revelation at how widespread and constant the use of mobile technology has become even at a sporting event. Of course, there were also Android phones and even the occasional "dumbphone" with a camera but Apple products were certainly in the vast majority. If this game had been a one sided "yawner" - it would have been understandable for the crowd to seek diversion in their personal electronics but this was a close game that kept the vast majority of the crowd on the edge of their seats (when they weren't standing and screaming).
Apple products have enabled a change in the way people interact (Facebook, Facetime, etc). Yes, I realize you can get on Facebook on a Windows PC or other non Apple device but if that was your reaction you are missing the point. How many people that never carried a camera before now take pictures almost daily because a reasonable quality camera is now in their phone? How easy has "around me" made it to find a restaurant or gas station no matter where you are in the world? I recently had a hankering for a Subway "veggie delight" when I was in Tokyo. Around Me made it easy to follow the little dot on my IPhone screen to the closest subway.
Since the death of Steve Jobs much has been made of his accomplishments. I have almost finished reading the book recently released on this life. What is striking to me is that what seems to have made Steve Jobs a success was his refusal to accept the status quo and the easy path. His creative thinking along with stubbornness mixed with arrogance seemed to have fueled his success and later caused him to be fired from his own company only to rise again when the "corporate" version of Apple failed and he was called back after his success at Pixar among other things. The appreciation his "uneducated" adoptive father gave him for doing things right and clean, simple design is diametrically opposed to mentality of most big companies today.
A couple of months ago, a senior executive where I work gave me and several other directors in our division a book on the "secret" to Steve Jobs innovation "process". I found this totally ironic. Someone like Steve Jobs would have been fired within a few months if he worked for our company or most of the Fortune 500. As a non PC young man with poor personal hygiene, Steve Jobs would probably never have been hired by most companies that are now trying to discern what his secret was.
Hopefully there are more young people out there that will follow their dreams and create great products. Innovation is likely to continue to come from people that don't follow the conventional path and are willing to risk security to pursue their dream. I have yet to open the book that effectively fulfills the promise of communicating Steve Job's innovation "secrets".
Upon reflection the lesson from Steve Jobs seems pretty simple - one person totally committed to a goal still can change the world.
Being the happy owner of an Air Mac, an IPpad, an IPhone and an IPod as well as Apple stock - it was certainly not a revelation to me that a lot of people are similarly equipped. However sitting in a stadium and observing those around me as well as those at a distance via my wife's binoculars, it was a revelation at how widespread and constant the use of mobile technology has become even at a sporting event. Of course, there were also Android phones and even the occasional "dumbphone" with a camera but Apple products were certainly in the vast majority. If this game had been a one sided "yawner" - it would have been understandable for the crowd to seek diversion in their personal electronics but this was a close game that kept the vast majority of the crowd on the edge of their seats (when they weren't standing and screaming).
Apple products have enabled a change in the way people interact (Facebook, Facetime, etc). Yes, I realize you can get on Facebook on a Windows PC or other non Apple device but if that was your reaction you are missing the point. How many people that never carried a camera before now take pictures almost daily because a reasonable quality camera is now in their phone? How easy has "around me" made it to find a restaurant or gas station no matter where you are in the world? I recently had a hankering for a Subway "veggie delight" when I was in Tokyo. Around Me made it easy to follow the little dot on my IPhone screen to the closest subway.
Since the death of Steve Jobs much has been made of his accomplishments. I have almost finished reading the book recently released on this life. What is striking to me is that what seems to have made Steve Jobs a success was his refusal to accept the status quo and the easy path. His creative thinking along with stubbornness mixed with arrogance seemed to have fueled his success and later caused him to be fired from his own company only to rise again when the "corporate" version of Apple failed and he was called back after his success at Pixar among other things. The appreciation his "uneducated" adoptive father gave him for doing things right and clean, simple design is diametrically opposed to mentality of most big companies today.
A couple of months ago, a senior executive where I work gave me and several other directors in our division a book on the "secret" to Steve Jobs innovation "process". I found this totally ironic. Someone like Steve Jobs would have been fired within a few months if he worked for our company or most of the Fortune 500. As a non PC young man with poor personal hygiene, Steve Jobs would probably never have been hired by most companies that are now trying to discern what his secret was.
Hopefully there are more young people out there that will follow their dreams and create great products. Innovation is likely to continue to come from people that don't follow the conventional path and are willing to risk security to pursue their dream. I have yet to open the book that effectively fulfills the promise of communicating Steve Job's innovation "secrets".
Upon reflection the lesson from Steve Jobs seems pretty simple - one person totally committed to a goal still can change the world.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Thoughts on Facebook
I was a reluctant joiner of the Facebook generation. I signed up primarily to post pictures so my family could see them without a lot of fuss. FB is great for that and I do enjoy the comments. Even the "likes" which I initially thought was kind of vapid have grown on me. I click "like" these days surprisingly often.
Shortly after I signed up, my wife asked several people to "friend" me so I would not be embarrassed if I compared myself to her massive number of friends. Just getting my siblings and a few in-laws to give me a "mercy friending" got me to a few dozen which moved my number off the "embarrassing low" friend level. In the year plus I have been on FB, I think I have only friended 3 or 4 people myself - perhaps an innate fear or rejection or a desire to avoid "farmville" and other nuisance requests. I have only "de-friended" one person - a high school teacher of mine that began to irritate me with all this political posts.
Having college age kids brought complications - both our kids drew the hard line with us initially - "YOU CANNOT BE MY FACEBOOK FRIEND". Apparently both feared that one of us might turn out to be a Facebook stalker and embarrass them by putting parental advice on their wall or worse - like friending THEIR friends. I took the rejection in stride. A few months later, I was shocked to get a friend invitation from my younger daughter. I actually think she made an inadvertent click that sent me the invite but she didn't want to hurt my feelings and allowed me to stay on her friend list. Of course then she felt obligated to friend her Mom too. I suspect she used FB settings to limit our access but aside from me sending a "fatherly" message to one of her male college friends I have met I seemed to have stayed within the complex unwritten rules of intergenerational Facebook behavior. At least I get to see her pictures. My elder daughter, despite being out of college, still draws the hard line on being FB friends with her parents. Strangely both my kids are friends with many other relatives. Many of my nieces and nephews that are college age or slightly above have friended me. Yes FB protocols are odd especially since both of our kids talk to us on the phone very often and reveal details that I would never have shared with my mother or father but this largesse of communication does not extend to free access to Facebook.
Having lived overseas, I really enjoy the convenience of staying touch with friends all over the world. International connections can be a bit more complicated. The sheer volume of similar names on Facebook and names written in Chinese characters can present problems. On two occasions I have been at dinner with friends in Tokyo and had them ask me to be their friends. Even sitting next to each other with Facebook up on our IPhones, it took a long time to help them "find" me so I could be "friended". Japanese friends that enter their names on FB in kanji rather than the romanized versions have friended me. With my limited reading ability in Japanese - I normally have to get my Japanese / English dictionary out to confirm who I am accepting since some people don't use a profile picture or one that doesn't provide positive ID. My profile picture is usually a shot of my better side (the back of my head), some people use pets or other pictures.
Now that Facebook is both a noun and a verb, the question of longevity arises. Will it be as pervasive in five, ten or twenty years? I have no idea but it is another phenomena of the digital age that has changed how we communicate.
Shortly after I signed up, my wife asked several people to "friend" me so I would not be embarrassed if I compared myself to her massive number of friends. Just getting my siblings and a few in-laws to give me a "mercy friending" got me to a few dozen which moved my number off the "embarrassing low" friend level. In the year plus I have been on FB, I think I have only friended 3 or 4 people myself - perhaps an innate fear or rejection or a desire to avoid "farmville" and other nuisance requests. I have only "de-friended" one person - a high school teacher of mine that began to irritate me with all this political posts.
Having college age kids brought complications - both our kids drew the hard line with us initially - "YOU CANNOT BE MY FACEBOOK FRIEND". Apparently both feared that one of us might turn out to be a Facebook stalker and embarrass them by putting parental advice on their wall or worse - like friending THEIR friends. I took the rejection in stride. A few months later, I was shocked to get a friend invitation from my younger daughter. I actually think she made an inadvertent click that sent me the invite but she didn't want to hurt my feelings and allowed me to stay on her friend list. Of course then she felt obligated to friend her Mom too. I suspect she used FB settings to limit our access but aside from me sending a "fatherly" message to one of her male college friends I have met I seemed to have stayed within the complex unwritten rules of intergenerational Facebook behavior. At least I get to see her pictures. My elder daughter, despite being out of college, still draws the hard line on being FB friends with her parents. Strangely both my kids are friends with many other relatives. Many of my nieces and nephews that are college age or slightly above have friended me. Yes FB protocols are odd especially since both of our kids talk to us on the phone very often and reveal details that I would never have shared with my mother or father but this largesse of communication does not extend to free access to Facebook.
Having lived overseas, I really enjoy the convenience of staying touch with friends all over the world. International connections can be a bit more complicated. The sheer volume of similar names on Facebook and names written in Chinese characters can present problems. On two occasions I have been at dinner with friends in Tokyo and had them ask me to be their friends. Even sitting next to each other with Facebook up on our IPhones, it took a long time to help them "find" me so I could be "friended". Japanese friends that enter their names on FB in kanji rather than the romanized versions have friended me. With my limited reading ability in Japanese - I normally have to get my Japanese / English dictionary out to confirm who I am accepting since some people don't use a profile picture or one that doesn't provide positive ID. My profile picture is usually a shot of my better side (the back of my head), some people use pets or other pictures.
Now that Facebook is both a noun and a verb, the question of longevity arises. Will it be as pervasive in five, ten or twenty years? I have no idea but it is another phenomena of the digital age that has changed how we communicate.
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