Write? Right! Write!

Thinking about writing today in May 2021.  I've been writing for a very long time, since I was ... maybe 5?  I was good at writing the alphabet, especially with a red crayon.  

I had an unusual name for a kid in kindergarten -- Halley.  I could write the big "H" and all the other letters quickly and cleanly. But nobody could pronounce my name!  

So I got in the habit of saying "Halley rhymes with Sally" and many years later, "Halley like Silicon Valley" when I worked there.  

Finally Halle Berry came to my aid, as her name and mine were pronounced in the same way. People were finally guessing the right pronunciation, the first time, without me coaching them. 

When I first learned to write my letters, I was not impressed with the alphabet.  I found an alphabet that put a letter with one hump -- "n" after the letter with two humps -- the letter "m" -- just made no sense.  If I were building the alphabet, I would have put "n" first and then "m" obviously.

They did the right thing when they put "v" and "w" in the right order. You start with one "v" and then 2x of that letter  "v v " equals "w" so it should come next, just as "w" does. No complaints there. 

I understood writing early on. It was a courageous army of 26 soldiers, ready to do battle for you any way you desire!  They could change the world for you, if you configured them just right.  They were at your command, if you knew how to best inspire and rally their strength and courage. 

The hardest working soldiers were the famous a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y.  You needed those helpful vowels at every battle, especially "O!"  They did the dirty work in every campaign. They saved the day!

Since age 5, my writing has included stories, poems, essays, theses, marketing copy, PR, social media, white papers, love letters, case studies, shopping lists, editorials, letters to the editor, podcast scripts, novels and many blog posts. My army continues to deliver on all fields of battle in wartime and peacetime. 

 

Gotham Gal: Recapping A Round But No Naming Names

Joanne Wilson // photo credit: CNN

Joanne Wilson wrote a blistering post last week about a conversation she had with another VC on recapping a round. Don't miss it.

Brad Feld and I had a quick email over the weekend about recapping a round.  He had heard that I agreed to do it with a company and he was surprised that I said yes.  I told him that I am beyond pissed, annoyed and angry over the entire thing but once I took a deep breath I did it because I wanted to do right by the entrepreneur.  I was pretty much the first dollar into the company at a very low valuation.  I have been there ever since from more capital to many conversations.  Probably not enough questions from their end because maybe this would not have played out as it did.

Here's the link to follow the story.  I thought their decision to not name the offending party was wise. Life is long.  What goes around comes around.  And as they mentioned, most people know who operates like this and if you're an entrepreneur, you should be smart enough to smell a rat, or at least, know a bad deal from a good one.

30 bullets: Need a job? How about thirty jobs rolled into one?

A friend and I have a fun game we play about job postings. Every morning we get our coffee (or tea in my case), jump online and swap laughable jobs links, trying to beat the other for most ridiculous job posting.  Some are howlers. Playing "Beat the Bullets" is easy.  Just share the most ridiculous job posting you can find; one that requires people to be good about at 3000 different skills, listing each one after a bulletpoint.

Photo Credit: WordPress

I found a great one today -- 30 bullets -- including being good at iOS and Android programming and QA and writing and graphics and answering the phone and doing social media across 10 platforms and "other responsibility as needed."  We laughed long and hard over this one. Needless to say, this job probably pays minimum wage.

The economy has started to come back slowly and so many people I know have been out of work.  People need jobs.  Wait, let me clarify that.  They need A JOB -- not thirty jobs all rolled into one!

We know these jobs are an obvious conglomeration of the jobs of 4 or 5 people who have been let go.   Are the hiring managers so clueless as to assume we don't know this?

Who wants a job that is the work of five different people with completely different skills and then also gives you the chance to earn LESS than any one of those five people earned originally?

A bulletpoint that really makes us laugh out loud is the "must be a team player" bullet. Team player?  What are they talking about? There's no team left to play with!

So when we speak of "finding a job" it would be nice to find a job that was once the job of ONE HUMAN BEING, not several. These jobs are jobs for robots who never get tired, get hungry, go to the bathroom, or call in sick, since there is no time for any of those activities with this kind of job.

What you find is a GLOB of JOBS with ridiculous expectations. You know going in that it's going to be essentially impossible to do all these jobs at the same time. You know from the start that the pay is embarrassing and untenable.  You know that the same job five years ago would have had fairly reasonable benefits, but likely now has none. Who wants "a job" like that?  Who wants to bother working like that?

The only people who think that these "glob jobs" are okay are people who have never had real jobs to compare them to -- aka, young people.  And the most insidious part of this exploitive situation is how many of these young people have massive college debt and would take ANY job at ANY rate. They know some perky intern will do the job for free if they don't take it first.  This is making the job market essentially cutthroat. This is turning these kids into slaves.

It's time to push back and say "no thanks" to these glob jobs.  And if you are hiring, take a look in the mirror and be honest, would YOU ever take a job like the one you are posting?  I have colleagues in other companies who have posted such glob jobs and they should be ashamed.  I just want to say to them, "Don't you get it? The people you are interviewing may personally know the three people you fired, those poor jerks who used to have those three jobs!"  Those new candidates likely talked to them before interviewing with you.

We know how exploitive this HR strategy has become. Working to create a "master/slave" work environment is keeping the economy from growing.  It's unfair to the people you are trying to hire and bad for your business and others. People with good jobs buy things -- like the things you are selling.

So try this for a new HR innovation: do the right thing and go to your management and explain that you need the budget to hire three people to do the work of three people. Even writing that sounds ridiculous -- but someone needs to say it.  All that cash companies happen to be sitting on?  Try using it to hire some "team players" -- after actually building a team and paying them a fair wage for a reasonable day's work.

Happy Patriot's Day

Happy Patriot's Day

I wrote this a while back, but here goes.  This year we're celebrating the big day on April 21. Notice I used the words "cell phone" when I would use "smartphone" today.  

Patriots Day in Lexington, April 15, 2002

I saw a Minuteman,
Get in a minivan,
Down by Battle Green.
I saw a Redcoat,
Chatting on a cell phone,
Press one for land, two for sea.

The Regulars are coming!
The Regulars are coming!
To our town on a regular basis,
On a regular day in April
They bloom in colors bright
Poppies red,
Crocuses blue,
Snowdrops white,

They've come complete, with fife and drum
Just to remind us
That behind us, at Buckman's Tavern
They'd had enough of April Tax Time.
And from that day, as shots rang out,
Tea would pour free
And brave they could be
To make a new place for you and me.

Three Floors of Content by Aquent

Aquent's 3 floors of content 

Content is a word that means too many things. It takes so many forms.  It requires so many hands on to make it bright, shiny and correct. This cool graphic from Aquent will show you all the folks creating content in an organization.

I like the way it shows how much content is percolating through three floors of a small company and then imagine a much bigger organization and all the content they have to deal with.

I've written nearly every kind of content they mention and run a most important content department -- Proofreading -- at Communispace where we were generating gorgeous and fascinating content every day.

Do you like this graphic?  I think it's great. BTW, I don't know the folks at Aquent but I think I'll have to wander over there and learn more about them.

Halley Tucker -- Describe Yourself!

Halley Suitt Tucker

Someone asked me to describe myself the other day.  There are a lot of biographical details floating around the web about me, but I decided I should give you a five-word bio. Here goes.

1. Evangelist
2. Funster
3. Writer
4. Reader
5. Enterprenerd

Evangelist -- I like to throw my enthusiasm around. If I like a product or a person or a place, I love to just go crazy about it and tell anyone who will listen why it's just so grrrrrrrreat!

Funster -- The secret's out, I love to have fun.  I have a crazy sense of humor and would rather be laughing than doing just about anything else. I find the world pretty darn funny.  Also I love to dance.

Writer -- Love to scribble. I've been blogging since 2002. I just wrote a book. I even love to write letters -- you know, paper ones, with stamps.

Reader -- Like some folks binge eat, I binge read. I never go anywhere without a book. I never end one book without knowing what my next book will be. I have 3 Kindles, that should tell you something. I love very long books.

Entreprenerd -- I love tech and I'm an entrepreneur, TechStars alum and Boston nerd and I just can't help falling in love with programmers (like my husband.)

Paul Graham is MOSTLY correct about #FemaleFounders

Adora Cheung with her co-founder brother. (SJ Merc News)

Paul Graham has addressed the issue of why more women founders aren't given a chance to thrive -- and particularly why his YCombinator accelerator program doesn't have more women graduates.  What he writes is worth reading and well thought out, except for one thing. Women can run businesses without being geeks and many startups are run by non-geeks.

But let's read what he wrote. He pulls the problem apart carefully and brings up the girl geek problem -- they're definitely are not enough women geeks.

I realize though that with female founders, efforts at our stage are not enough. We could in principle have fixed the problem for young founders by ourselves. If we funded enough young founders who went on to succeed, both investors and other would-be founders would learn from their example. But it would be naive to assume we could get the percentage of female startup founders to 50% so long as the percentage of female programmers is so much lower than 50%. Though this is less the case than it used to be, many startups still have a big technical component, and if you want to start that sort of startup your chances of succeeding are higher if you're a programmer. Adora Cheung is a programmer, for example. Software eating the world is still software.

So how would you cause there to be more female programmers? 

That's an important question which he continues to address and I say, good, yes, there need to be more female programmers. But seriously, are all start-ups run by technical CEO's? Seems to me, no one is faster than the VC's to remove a geek CEO and replace them with a person who's background is in Sales or Marketing or Finance. It's the classic story, how the poor little geeky founder gets pushed aside and the company is run by a BUSINESS PERSON.

So that said, are there really not enough women business people to run start-ups? Are there not enough female business majors at colleges or MBA programs to run 50% of all the startups founded? Obviously most VC's have already cast their ballots about having business people in CEO, CMO and CFO slots in startup companies. They make sure their business buddies are put in those places. That's what women business people are having trouble with. We see what goes on.  We know how it works.

To say we need to go back to age 12 and become better girl geeks is pointless. Yes we should all support young girls in getting tech skills now.  But women in their 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's and beyond need opportunities to use their excellent business skills to run companies. We need to be given a chance to be Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at fancy VC firms (jobs I've seen given to men with very thin experience) now.  We need to be that buddy who's put into place to run a startup when the geek founder is floundering, now. We need to be the CEO or CMO or CFO now when we might have 20 years better experience than some 25-year-old kid who was given the gig over dinner because he is the VC's son or nephew.  We need to be on actuals boards and advisory boards of startups now to get inside these positions of power where we can help decide if other qualified women are considered for jobs.

Let's get real. These jobs are very lucrative. The experience is very valuable. As they say about the lottery, you've got to be in it to win it.  And women are outside and not invited in.  And there are many ways they can participate in the tech community with the skills they have today if they were considered for VC, CEO, CMO, CFO, board seats, advisory positions, EIR gigs, just to name a few places where the ratio of men to women is laughable.

So let's have an honest debate. Getting into the tech community in a position of power and wealth, is like having a big bunch of candy and some men don't want to share the candy. But it's time to share the candy.

Been Thinking About: Eat, Pray, Love

Bali (photo credit: www.BambooBaliBonaire.com)

I've been thinking about the movie, Eat, Pray, Love and how it changed the way people feel about two important activities -- travel and divorce.  The movie makes travel look very attractive. The amazing landscapes, streets, hotels, colors and people of Italy, Indonesia and India are hard to forget.  But I would guess most women viewers took away the notion that going on a distant adventure was something they could do and should do and it would make them a new person. We want travel to change us, perhaps makes us wiser.

Having been divorced, I think the movie made that legal adventure look much more fun and a lot more simple that it is. But I want to focus on the travel aspect here.

I'm just back from a six-week book tour through Europe where I was staying in small hotels, big hotels and with friends, a mix of each in a wide range of countries -- Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France and the UK, in the order I visited them.  There was something I expected in every visit that was delivered to different degrees.  I expected a clean, safe place to stay, but also a unique place that gave me access to the country and the people of that country.

No one takes better care of you than your friends abroad when they welcome you into their own home. My friends went out of their way to welcome me and show me their country. The best way to learn about the culture of the country is living the daily life of your friends in that country. That said, I believe the best way to keep friends who are generous enough to put you up, is to make your stay short and be a very helpful, tidy, cooperative guest.

In small hotels, there were many unique local features and welcoming innkeepers not too different from my friends who invited me into their homes. In large hotels, there was top notch cleanliness, easy access to the town centers and excellent amenities, together with anonymity which you need some days.

Travel is the business of having adventures and making memories.  The literal meaning of "souvenir" is "memory" and not a little pencil or mug or t-shirt made in China that says "Roma" on it. When we travel we hope to carry home unique "souvenirs" of a time and place, where we lived and learned and became a wiser person, maybe even fell in love once or twice.

Much write. Soon stories. Wow.

Oh yeah, my doge here to encourage me.  So many letters. Much words. New stories. Wow!  Go dog go!

And another thing -- lorem ipsum taste so good.  Big bowl full of little lorems and lots of ipsum sprinkled on top to make it so so good tasty. I know you love. Yes me too.  Because nothing says loving like something from lorem ipsum dolor kitchen, so enjoy and eat it up.  Yeah, okay. Said that and there it is.  Sometimes I think, hmmm … sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labor et dolor magna aliqua, don't you agree?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

All the Reasons Any Woman Needs To Hate CES

• Women quickly notice they can attend CES dressed like 1. A show girl with next to nothing on (booth babe bimbo mode) or the other end of the sexy scale wearing  2. tacky khakis and an ugly polo shirt.  Great.  You can look like a whore or a male nerd.  
• The idiots on your “team” actually expect you to go to clubs and enjoy watching naked women dance.  They think you will find this fun or worse, funny.  They think you will giggle like they do.
• There are so many men from other countries and so few women from those same countries – what gives with that?   Just ride some of the buses from hotel to convention center and look at the crowds.  Where are the other women?
• Las Vegas – people can say it’s the next big thing, but come on, seriously?!  Until it solves it’s Sexism City problem – there’s no there there.  
• The stupid “boys will be boys” atmosphere is about as high tech as the PDP-11.  (And you don’t even know what that is, right?)
• The drinking.  Every woman has a drinking problem in Vegas – some guy drinking too much and slobbering all over them.
• Female keynote speakers … are there any besides Marissa Mayer?

Holidays Without The Snowman? Impossible!

Must watch this year -- and every year!

 

What Hugo Barra Said About China at #LeWeb

If you missed what Hugo Barra said about China at #LeWeb, you missed an important presentation.  He made it clear the sheer numbers of users around any start-up or social media company that takes off in China are gigantic and need to be noticed.

I thought his presentation was simple and to the point, but the point is still hard to wrap your head around. What's happening in China economically, politically and culturally is an amazing story. Don't miss it.

Look Who Just Walked In

Welcome to our global party at LeWeb. It’s always strange to realize it’s easier to see someone who happens to live 20 minutes across town from you back home, by going to a conference in Paris.  Go figure! I guess at home you get so caught up in stuff, booking time for coffee even with a best friend is a challenge.  It’s one of those things about conferences I really love.

In August, we had an amazing party in Half Moon Bay, CA thanks to Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki, to celebrate the launch of my novel about entrepreneurs, Founders Less Than Three.  Some of the earliest bloggers and other new friends attended and rocked the place. Now we’re together again in Paris in December.  I’ve been traveling through Europe since Nov. 9th talking about and reading from my book in Italy, Austria, Germany, France and next week I go to the UK.  

On my trip, I’ve met an amazing army of startup warriors in the EU, women and men at accelerator programs, co-working spaces and all over.  They’re not too different than their comrades in the US in their go-for-it attitude. But, I thought Guy’s advice yesterday when he was interviewed by Loic at @LeWeb was spot on –- don’t copy any US startups, be unique and be yourself!

I’ve met so many of my friends in tech through blogging and conferences. I live in Boston.  I’ve never lived in the San Francisco Bay Area but when we come to a conference like @LeWeb we see friends from there all over the world, as if we’d created a country all our own. Welcome to our new union of #makers and shakers. Don’t be shy, if there’s someone you want to meet, go for it. Take time to say hello with two more conference days left.

Our Daily Bread // Notre Pain Quotidien

I’m looking forward to James Courrier’s panel on Bitcoin Tuesday at @LeWeb, but I have to warn him he’s got his work cut out for him when he talks about value and growth. It’s a tough subject on every level.

Bobby Manhattan's site will tell you lots about baguettes.

A few days ago I was chatting with a young French woman in Grenoble who’s never been out of France about the euro versus the dollar and gave her some examples of what shoes cost, or a car or gasoline in the US versus France, just to explain the difference. 

But really, it only made things more complicated as I explained that we pay a lot less for shoes, especially for brands like Converse. Our hightop sneakers might be $50 and theirs are100 euros. And cars … how do you explain that many more cars in the US are Japanese brands and we don’t have many of the major French brand cars?  Or that despite the major US auto brands on the brink of bankruptcy (or in it) most Americans didn’t feel any loyalty about buying American cars a few years back when OUR companies were cratering.

Then even try to explain gasoline prices – forget it.  Europeans have a price for a liter that looks like the price we pay for a gallon I told her, giving rise to a more and more confused French face in front of me.

I could see her reaching for something more basic. Finally she said, “Quelque chose simple.  Une baguette, combine ça coute aux Etats Unis?”

"How much does a baguette cost in the US?"  This blew my mind and I started to laugh.  A baguette. I suppose you could translate it into “a loaf of bread” but ours and theirs hardly compare.   Their loaf of bread is so deeply entrenched and so essential to the French way of life, it is something completely alien to our notion of a loaf of bread. So now we were in deep muddy cultural waters, despite her trying to give me an easy point of comparison.

So how do I explain to her, we don’t even HAVE baguettes as a basic item. A baguette is some fancy French thing you pay $3.50 for in high-end stores and is often as not practically stale.  While the French pay less than a euro in many towns for incredibly delicious, fresh bread and it’s available in bakeries on every street corner in every town in the whole country. 

And the French base so many moments in their lives around their iconic bread.  From the moment they are welcomed at the table, as little kids,  drinking bowls of hot cocoa and jamming their mouths with buttered "tartines" and "confiture", their marmalade (which is not marmalade really), or nor is it our idea of jam.

And the freshness of a new warm baguette.  How do I explain that we don’t actually get much fresh food in the US compared to Europeans.  We get a lot of food, but it’s not that fresh because it’s trucked around endlessly. If you’ve eaten anything in Italy, you know what I’m talking about.  The food is so fresh and simple it feels like they just picked it out of the garden and it’s still growing, because they probably just did go out the door and pick it five minutes ago.

And we don’t have bakeries every three feet and people carrying fresh bread under their arms heading home after work ready for an amazing French dinner.

And we don’t have bakers regulated and subsidized by the government.  The French government has to do this I suppose, since not having French bread in France would be like not having gravity on Earth. Inconceivable.

And we don’t have very many schools where kids learn to be bakers or apprenticeships where they perfect the art of baking amazing bread and incredible pastry. We don’t have the tradition.  Nor do we pay bakers a living wage. She would cry if she ate what we consider “a loaf of bread.”

I was flummoxed. This conversation was just not going the right way.  “Attends,” I said. I picked up my phone and searched Google for the exchange rate.  1.00E is about $1.31 now.

“Voilà,” I said, ending the conversation but not answering the big question at all.  Can you compare two cultures and what they value and come up with a real understanding of what the words expensive or inexpensive mean?  No.

And in a market or the older version – an actual marketplace – can you predict how another buyer might feel about a price that you, as the seller, feel is fair?  No.  There is no price or cost or value without a context.  It gets back to supply and demand and the oldest underlying principles of what people value. 

Now that I’m in Paris for @LeWeb I see this same issue.  When people talk about the value of Twitter or Pinterest or Dropbox, does it make sense that they are worth billions?  And don’t get me started on that new rollercoaster of high tech value, Bitcoin, I’ll leave that to Courrier and his colleagues to figure out.

It’s just like the French open air markets we’ll pass along on the bus, heading up to LeWeb, no better place to learn that value is subjective. As for technology, sometimes, it's about living your life and what makes it easier to live and ultimately what you care about. So perhaps it is about earning and eating our daily bread.   

Photo Credit: Bobby Manhattan

John Lennon: One Person Can Change the World

If you ever wonder if one person can change the world, remember John Lennon today.  As I get ready to take the TGV up to Paris to join the amazing crew at @LeWeb, I think of someone ending John Lennon's life so early and it really is a loss.

Never doubt how much you can change the world.  As we gather at @LeWeb every single person brings their energy and inspiration to share with others to make the next ten years a time of startling innovation.  Share that desire to make a difference.



Looking forward to hearing the inspirational speakers including pals Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk as well as our amazing hosts Geraldine LeMeur and Loic LeMeur.

Hashtag: #BEST2014 Ever!

#BEST2014 ever! 

Ready for the best 2014 ever?  You are closer than you think to making it a truly transformative year.  What if you started demanding the best ever for yourself?  And what if you took action towards that today?  What's the one thing you want to change?

Talking with friends as we approach the new year, when they share their concerns or problems, I can't help thinking of the very few things they can change in their lives that could really make a difference. They are not big things.  They are little things.  So small, so easy to do and so powerful. Even one thing can change the quality of your life in a big way.  What's your one thing?  Start by asking, what's #MYONETHING?  You might want to share it.

1. Get an hour more exercise every single day and see what a great new year you have to show for it.  Add an hour walk to every day.

2. Take your significant other a gift every day. It doesn't have to be big.  It can be a small thing -- a cookie, flowers, a back rub, a special phone call, a new ball of yarn, a new pair of running shorts, an hour of parenting so your "other" gets a break.  You decided they were the most important person in your life.  Remind them how significant they are. And show them by your actions.

3. If you stop and think "I deserve the best" you will quickly know what areas of your life need a little fixing -- a little jiggering -- a very small change to make a very big change in the quality of your life. If you drink wine with dinner and one glass feels healthy, but two glasses makes you waste the rest of your evening, time for one glass.

4. Go with the urge to purge. I have friends who did a big purge of all sorts of clothes and household items, donating them to help others and replacing them with the BEST versions of certain core items. They tossed a lot of not-so-great bedding for instance and replaced it with a few wonderful 100% wool blankets from Austria for winter and some great Egyptian cotton sheets for every other day of the year. They have a few beautiful things, instead of a bunch of mediocre stuff they don't like.

5. Don't talk bucket list with me if you're not crossing some of your dreams and desires off the list on a regular basis.  If you've always wanted to go to surfing school in San Diego -- show me your plane ticket to San Diego. Just go.

6. You will never go wrong spending one hour more a day helping others.  Give back, you know you can.  People need your help. So many people. You could be teaching someone to read, giving lessons in how to start a company or passing out hot bowls of soup at a shelter an hour from now if you committed yourself.

7. Are your bills or your budget out of control?  Sit down and work on them for an hour … now.  Be clear with people about what you can afford.  Even if you're in a really bad financial position, work with one of the people you owe money to today, to get that one debt off your list.

And if you think these small changes won't really make a difference, think about their opposite. Turn two glasses of wine into three and imagine a year with a DUI arrest, or worse.  What about more junk in your house that never comforts you? Not a pretty picture.

Big problems are good at getting bigger when ignored, but strangely addressable if you just do something small. Can't get to San Diego for a week in the ocean?  How about one day on the water in a closer location and make that day soon.  Show me your ticket.

What's your #BEST2014 look like.  Start with #MYONETHING.

Guess who I saw in Paris … @LeWeb

You know why people come to Paris.  You don't really have to ask.  People come to Paris to fall in love.

A warm cafe on a cold December day.  The coffee, the wine, the amazing food.  Chocolat chaud ou bien, cafe creme. Sitting with someone you haven't seen in a long time.  Sharing your passion. It's hard to resist. And there's no better place.

I'm there Monday at LeWeb and I expect many of you will be in Paris to fall in love with the next ten years of amazing technology heading our way, or just simply falling in love.  It's so easy.

BlogHer PRO

BlogHer Pro LINK

I'll be speaking at BlogHer PRO next week on Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct 22-23. You can still join and attend.

Just click here to register and you'll be in full-on "California Here I Come" mode. Would love to see you there.

I'll be speaking about self-publishing, how I used Kickstarter to fund my book, Founders Less Than Three and signing copies of my book as well. Here's my book on Amazon, check it out!

The Age of Context: Why it's headed for a bestselling future.

The Age of Context

It's fun to look at the New York Times Bestseller List like an anthropologist. Browse the titles and ask yourself, "what does this strange tribe of humans really want?"  Two things jump out at you immediately.  They are the basic questions all humans ask about their lives.  Is there life after death?  What's the future going to be like?  These have always been questions no one could really answer with authority, but that's about to change. 

You want to know about life after death? Now the bestseller, Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander can answer that first question for you. You'll see it's No. 6 on the bestselling nonfiction list this week.  Heaven and nonfiction don't seem to go together to my mind, but obviously many people want to know about life after death.

And how about the other question -- what's the future going to be like?  There's a new book out called The Age of Context that's headed for a bestselling future, since we all want to know about what comes next and how to prepare for it. 

The book caught my attention from the very beginning when it described a future full of amazing things:  "Cars without drivers. Calendars that send messages on your behalf. Front doors that unlock and open when they see you approach."

And what does it mean for business and for you on a personal level?  In their intellectually thrilling and thoughtful book, The Age of Context, geek authors Robert Scoble and Shel Israel help you grapple with those big questions about the future -- especially the concerns with privacy and context. They answer, "what's the future going to mean to me?"   

But relax, you don't have to be a mega-nerd to understand where we're headed and how to prepare for it. They break it down for you and help you understand what context means in specific areas and then they point out the financial upside.  "All five of these forces--mobile, social media, data, sensors and location—are enjoying an economic sweet spot."

How can we participate fully in this exciting economic future?  How can we avoid the privacy pitfalls?  As you read their book, you'll suddenly realize that Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are already living in the future and they can't wait to welcome you to it. The Age of Context is the ultimate travel guide to a future you're going to navigate with ease and love living in, just as much as the authors love describing it. With Robert and Shel's insights into an amazing future,  you really will be ready to live long and prosper. 


Halley Suitt Tucker is the author of  Founders Less Than Three, a novel about startups and the fun of founding a new company that might just change the world. 

Sept 15: Half empty or half full glass?

We're half way through the month and how's it working out for you?  September is a tricky month. It feels full of much loss and much gain to me.  Summer is over, or trying to be. In Boston we've had 95 degrees and 45 degrees all in the same week recently.

But that hot weather didn't last more than a day or two. And we probably won't see much more of it.  So it's bye-bye beach and hello ... WINTER as many of us New Englanders can't help thinking. But wait, wait, it's not winter yet!

In fact, it's the best time of year EVAH!  It's autumn! And get ready to love everything that goes with autumn. The football, the pumpkins, the cool breezes, the soccer, the cider, the amazing leaves, even going back to school.  And how about the clothes, fleece jackets and wool sweaters and corduroy pants!

And for all you friends who are really sad to see summer go, why not do the right thing and book a winter vacation in a warm place today. Now. Just do it.  If you haven't been to New Orleans, get a few crazy friends and decide today to get down there in late November or even that dead time in January when nobody is going anywhere. You'll love it and be so glad you planned ahead.