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In the interest of helping people understand me more effectively, I’ve changed the name of this blog to “Cue the Future,” which more aptly communicates what guides most of my efforts.
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In my life, I’m focused on figuring out how innovation will improve our lives, and how we as a society can get there quickly and safely. I strive to be one of those innovators, as described by this O’Reilly quote:
\n\nSo often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn’t until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live in a world of their own. They see and act on premises not yet apparent to others.
This name change has come on the heels of a lot of thought, including input from several friends, Steve Jobs and Mark Suster. Read more about that process after the jump.
\nSteve Jobs is a masterful marketer. Recently, I discovered a video of Jobs introducing the Think Different Campaign from a friends blog, and was blown away with the way he boiled down complex realities into very simple concepts. I was particularly impressed with the following statement:
\n\n“To me, marketing is about values. It’s a very complicated world, a very noisy world. We’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us, no company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.”
That key insight is important, if you want to make it easy for people to “understand” you, you need to give them a very clear description of what you’re doing. You can expand upon this as you get into conversation, but you need to have a clear description to share with someone that is broad enough to encompass most of your actions, yet specific enough to retain clear meaning for the recipient.
\nMark Suster has a great post on the need to refine and nail your professional elevator pitch, where he wrote:
\n\n[Life] is filled with 20 second opportunities. Some get converted into 5 minute opportunities or into a lifetime. Most are squandered.
I’ve been thinking about this in the context of personal description for the past few months. As a young person with an interesting and stimulating career, a public life, a side project, and a growing cadre of personal interests, I’ve been having trouble describing myself in a way that honestly helps people understand me after 5 minutes spent researching me on my website — much less within 10 seconds of meeting me.
\nI seek to understand the future and how it will change the things that are important in my life. This driving force has led to a love affair with Technology (a driving force of change), a calling related to innovative marketing (which is at the front-lines of redefining the consumer experience and the mechanics of capitalism), and a philanthropic interest in long-term, systemic change. I’m not sure where else it will take me, but I am sure I’ll be along for the ride for awhile.
\nI don’t plan on changing the type of content posted here much, but I hope anchoring around my fascination with the future will help provide proper context to otherwise seemingly random thoughts.
\nIf you notice any oddities in this site, please let me know, but all pages and links should automatically redirect to the new site and all old posts should be up and functioning. Thanks to Ben Casnocha, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, and Wayne Willis for discussions on this subject.
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American education: It’s colleges, not college students, that are failing
Who is to blame for the U.S.'s dismal college graduation rate? "Radical" educator Dennis Littky has a hunch.
Percentage of college student dropouts by age at enrollment: 2-year and 4-year institutions
- COVID-19 has magnified the challenges that underserved communities face with regard to higher education, such as widening social inequality and sky-high tuition.
- At College Unbound, where I am president, we get to know students individually to understand what motivates them, so they can build a curriculum based on goals they want to achieve.
- My teaching mantra: Everything is permitted during COVID-19. Everything is permitted during COVID-19. Everything is permitted during COVID-19.
The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle may finally be solved
Meteorologists propose a stunning new explanation for the mysterious events in the Bermuda Triangle.
One of life's great mysteries, the Bermuda Triangle might have finally found an explanation. This strange region, that lies in the North Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, has been the presumed cause of dozens and dozens of mind-boggling disappearances of ships and planes.
LIVE AT 2 PM ET | Lead your team toward collaborative problem solving
What does it mean to "lead without authority"?
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Planet Nine will be discovered in the next decade. Here’s why.
The planet that we are searching for is a little bit smaller and closer than we originally thought.
- Years ago, California Institute of Technology professor Konstantin Batygin was inspired to embark on a journey of discovering what lurked beyond Neptune. What he and his collaborator discovered was a strange field of debris.
- This field of debris exhibited a clustering of orbits, and something was keeping these orbits confined. The only plausible source would be the gravitational pull of an extra planet—Planet Nine.
- While Planet Nine hasn't been found directly, the pieces of the puzzle are coming together. And Batygin is confident we'll return to a nine-planet solar system within the next decade.
Neanderthal bones: Signs of their sex lives
Inbreeding leads to a problematically small gene pool.
