Nick Palmby: The Blog

1st, 2nd, & 3rd Are Great, The Rest Irrelevant?

We all play to win. We want the gold medal, first place, the championship. And even if we come up short, we never quit, and always have our sights set on first place. However, in business second place is great. Even third place can be incredibly profitable. Cnet says "Google Rises at Yahoo's Expense" Bloggers declare this company is dead or that company is history. Hyperbole for catchy headlines.

Yahoo is an incredibly successful web media company. They are doing about $6.4 Billion in revenue and $1.5B in profit. Yahoo is not dead, dying, or irrelevant. Yahoo is growing, profitable, and highly relevant in their market space.

The press and bloggers like to compare Yahoo to Google and declare them dead. Google is a search advertising company while Yahoo is a web media company that also sells advertising. They are different businesses with the same revenue model. Yahoo is a distant second to Google in search traffic and advertising revenue, but it is still a great business. The stock market is adjusting to this reality.

Geoffrey Moore wrote Inside The Tornado, a fascinating book about technology marketing. Mr. Moore breaks down the competition into three classes; Gorillas, Chimps, and Monkeys...catchy names for first, second, and third. The key message of the book is that all markets shake out this way. A Gorilla always emerges...and they make the rules. A Chimp (2nd place) and Monkey (3rd place) can do really well too but must play by different rules.

Riding In The Wind

Quote of the day, inspired by my bike ride yesterday.

"Sometimes you get the leisure of riding with the wind (life) pushing you from behind, other times you have to square up, shift gears, and take the wind (life) head on."  -- NP

Keep Breathing

Quote for today:

"I know what I have to do now.  I have to keep breathing.  Who knows what the tide will bring in?”

-- Tom Hanks as Chuck Nolan in Castaway

Letter From Stuart Margel

Last week, while traveling to Chicago on business, I noticed a Marine sergeant traveling with a folded flag, but did not put two and two together.  After we boarded our flight, I turned to the sergeant, who'd been invited to sit in First Class (across from me), and inquired if he was heading home.

"No", he responded.

"Heading out I asked?"

"No.  I'm escorting a soldier home."

"Going to pick him up?"

"No.  He is with me right now.  He was killed in Iraq.  I'm taking him home to his family."

The realization of what he had been asked to do hit me like a punch to the gut.  It was an honor for him.  He told me that, although he didn't know the soldier, he had delivered the news of his passing to the soldier's family and felt as if he knew them after; many conversations in so few days.  I turned back to him, extended my hand, and said, "Thank you.  Thank you for doing what you do so my family and I can do what we do."

Upon landing in Chicago the pilot stopped short of the gate and made the following announcement over the intercom.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to note that we have had the honor of having Sergeant Steeley of the United States Marine Corps join us on this flight.  He is escorting a fallen comrade back home to his family.  I ask that you please remain in your seats when we open the forward door to allow Sergeant Steeley to deplane and receive his fellow soldier.  We will then turn off the seat belt sign."

Without a sound, all went as requested.  I noticed the Sergeant saluting the casket as it was brought off the plane, and it made me realize that I am proud to be an American.

So here's a public Thank You to our military Men and Women for what you do so we can live the way we do.

Vocation Vs Advocation

Vocation is who you are, occupation is what you do. We are all occupied in the pursuit of livelihood. We earn money to support our needs. Vocation however, is usually misunderstood as synonymous to occupation, but could not be more different.  My vocation is the inclination to the volume of my existence; as if a response to a summons.  'Entrepreneur" is my vocation it is the volume of my existence, I may never have earned the first dollar from my vocation but never the less I have been summoned to this position. 

Never let others shade the diversity in your occupation and vocation, be clear in whom you are by what you do. My avocation is revealed, do you see it?  Avocation differs from vocation in that it gives pleasure a hobby as it were.

We Are Lifelong Learners

As humans a goal should be to understand what it really means to be lifelong learners, and to give others the tools to accomplish this. This is not to say you need to take classes for the rest of your life, or spend twelve years in college; rather, it means that every day, through every single experience, something valuable can be gained. As a young adult I think it’s important to be able to discern between knowledge and wisdom.

Knowledge may be power, but it isn’t wisdom. To paraphrase author David McCullough, memorizing information isn’t wisdom either, and it can hardly be called knowledge. If simply recalling information were considered an education, we would be forced to memorize the encyclopedia. If you did do that, you wouldn’t be educated. You’d be weird. 

Make it a point every night before you go to sleep to rattle off at least one thing (good or bad) you learned that day – something you saw, heard, read, or experienced. Such lessons are the building blocks of wisdom.

Morning Routines

We all have our own morning routines.  For some it's a shower followed by breakfast, news, and a cup of coffee.  For others it's a hurry out the door after snoozing the alarm 6 times.  Here is an interesting way to start the day...I just haven't found anyone who ACTUALLY does this yet...If you do, drop me a line!

Doing The Right Thing

There is never a wrong time to do the right thing.  No matter how many times you have lied, cheated, hurt, taken the easy route, or looked the other way, you can un-do some of the damage.  Sometimes it takes a simple apology, sometimes you need to a beg-from-your-knees, and sometimes it takes action.  Maybe it’ll take just a few minutes to right the wrongs, but probably it requires extraordinary and prolonged effort to right the ship. 

Ant Colony Optimization

As a little midget I was always fascinated by animals.  I was basically your insect hunter searching for everything from butterflies, to frogs, to fireflies, to lady bugs, to bees and ants.  I would get out my net and my insect containers, and binoculars and start the hunt.  My parents never liked when I caught the bees...they typically did the catch and release on those!

Nonetheless I once got an ant farm.  It was green with the farm, and sand in it.  Ants came separate and we feed them into the farm through this straw-like contraption one day and they lived their lives in there.  We (my brother and I) would feed them muffins and other sorts on occasion.  Ant Farms these days are even cooler:

I was always fascinated with the way they built their tunnels and the way that everyone had their own thing going on and knew exactly what to do in this farm.  Was it luck?  Was it GOD?  Or are they simply smarter animals than I thought?  -- At the time I wasn't ever sure.

I decided to solve my childhood question with some research as it seemed like the collegiate thing to do.  So I searched online and learned that scientists have discovered how the humble wood ant navigates over proportionally huge distances, using just very poor eyesight and confusing and changing natural landmarks. The research could have significant benefits in the development of autonomous robots and in furthering our understanding of basic animal learning processes.

Scientists at the University of Sussex, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), have shown precisely how the ant's visual navigation strategy works. On a wood ant's first trip to a food site it follows a chemical trail left by earlier ants. This is a slow way of traveling as the ant needs to walk with its antennae to the ground. However, this initial route forms the basis of an efficient learning strategy. On the first trip ants store images of the route as they travel and on later trips to the food site will navigate using a combination of landmarks and memories of the whole landscape. The scientists found the ants even used different sets of landmark memories depending on whether they were on their way to food, or whether they were full and heading back to the nest. Ants store many memories and have mechanisms to activate the right ones.

Ants are simple animals with a unique ability to navigate and work with the queen ants on the tasks that need to be accomplished.  Just shows how this world needs women to run it too :)

 

Lance Armstrong To Ride In Trek 100

For the past 3 years now I've rode in the MACC FUND Trek 100.  I've been trying to figure out the feasibility this year with my new bike being down in Tennessee and my other road bike being in Minnesota and the race being in Wisconsin.  At any rate, LANCE ARMSTRONG will be riding this year!  I've ridden in the past with Greg Lamond, and a few other neat cyclists but this would be a treat!

A little information about the Trek 100:

The Trek 100 is a hundred mile bike ride founded by the Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer Foundation (MACC) to raise pledges for fighting cancer. It is the MACC Fund’s largest annual fundraiser and has also contributed over 5 million dollars to support cancer research; the MACC Fund has raised more than 24 million dollars for cancer research.

The main reason for putting on our biking gear and riding 100 miles is to support those we know who have either suffered or are suffering from cancer. I’m riding for my fourth year in the name of a few people, particularly Bob Palmby who passed of Pancreatic Cancer, Howard Pilsner who passed from Stomach Cancer and Rachel Kent who also passed from cancer.

Pledges are needed, if you can and would like to pledge to the foundation, I will be collecting pledges for the next few months.