Podcasts are to real-unabridged-books as a raindrop is to a punch in the face. It takes a team of dozens of people to write a really awesome book. And I find them more satisfying and thought provoking than several short podcasts.

There is nothing so precious as your time. I am only more convinced of this every day.

In the last 3 weeks, I listened to:

• Confessions of an Economic Hitman - even though I don’t agree with his conclusions, it is an excellent memoir. It was personally thought provoking to listen to a man’s entire career life unfold in 5 days on my work commute. Takeaway: life can be very exciting, and some people are very powerful. Move faster, driving for results.
• Banker to the Poor - fantastic book. If you don’t know about microfinance, this is your introductory course. Imagine in your mind what the marriage of finance and social justice would look like. I read it with friends–which led to great conversation–and scheduled a tentative meeting with the great folks at Kiva.org for my friend with an NGO in India.
• Travels of a T-Shirt in a Global Economy - So far it’s entertaining. It is a story telling format asking “where did your T-Shirt come from?” And the government-subsidy-enabled-irony of the cotton planted in Texas, woven and sewn in China, and imported back to Florida.

To effective time.

UPDATE (10/26): Listening to more of the last book tonight. Around the 3h 30min mark, I learn the key driver our present industrial economy: the Spinning Jenny. This was a big deal. One person used to have one spinner to make the yarn. In 1764 they suddenly had eight spinners: a tremendous productivity boost in an under supplied marketplace. By 1800, spinning jenny’s had 80 spinners. And by the 1830’s the price was 1/20th of the 1700’s price.

This breakthrough –mechanized yarn production– propelled the world into the industrial age, and brought consumers into expecting constantly improving technology and quality of life. To me the parallels of present day high tech are remarkable, and the “so what” factor noteworthy.

Two “so what” takeaways:

1. The invention of the spinning jenny came because of great bottlenecks in yarn production. In the 1760’s mostly farmers produced cotton yarn, and this was a cottage industry. When harvest time came the families were far too busy harvesting, and weavers had a great difficulties buying yarn. Often they had to walk six miles each day to gather up enough material for that same day’s weaving. This bottleneck –as all bottlenecks– created a great pressure. A pressure that burst forth in invention, and technological revolution.
2. In the face of such bottlenecks, Britain sanctioned a contest of which the spinning jenny was an entrant. An example from the past of how using prizes compelled innovation. See the X Prize Foundation for present day contests in medicine, automotive, education, or (Google’s just announced) Lunar X Prize.

Yes, I am well.

1. I left the botique enterprise content management software consulting company, Technology Services Group. ^[1]
2. I joined FeedBurner, as an engineer in February.
3. I did some really cool ad serving optimization code. My IE degree let me do some fun multivariate linear regressions to prioritize ad serving into their feed ad network. The code base was great to work in. Plus the team was great and I’ll really miss them. This leads to #4.
4. Thanks to the Chicago PHP users’ group, as well as my Chicago tech event calendar site Techsocial, I was able to attend php|tek. The presentations are now available. ^[2]
5. Google acquired FeedBurner in July. I don’t have much to say here, other than I learned a ton living through the acquisition process.
6. Meanwhile, I incorporated a side business that I’ve been working on since 2003. It’s been profitable since the launch in September ‘06. The entity is Second Valley, Inc, but I”m operating under another name. ^[3]
7. I pretty much had the perfect opportunity to ramp up my business by working on it full time. I’ll spend a few months at marketing, product development, (more) SEO, statistical analysis enhancements, and rebuilding the PHP app in Ruby on Rails.

Notes:

Last week was pretty quite, except for the CPI numbers that came out.

• The CPI came out higher than expected for January (we’re on track for high 2% inflation in 2007, not the Fed’s expected 2 to 2.25%)
• Everything else was pretty quite. Oil pushed over 60, unemployment claims were trending steady, and a few signals peaked out for a slowing housing market.

Listen now, it’s mighty powerful and short: under 2:30. Although it is not my awesome editing mix-down skills that got it that short. I just switched to a mac this week, and I’m still getting used to everything. The first several I recorded didn’t work so this one is brief.

Reference: Briefing.com

I just watched this webcast from Information Week and CollabNet. They assembled an impressive panel of thought leaders from technology, media, and the press for the distinct purpose of discussing what it really means for the world to be flat. What has changed in the two years since the publishing of The World is Flat?

Friedman’s take on how the world is even flatter now

Friedman recently gave a talk to the US Naval Academy. Upon returning home he had an email waiting for him from his daughter. She knew where he was giving his talk, because she just responded to a midshipman’s facebook friend request. After Thomas’ talk - in which he mentioned his daughter was at school in New Haven, CT - one of the men looked her up on facebook and befriended her.

“When the world is flat, whatever can be done will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you” - Thomas Friedman

Thomas and his wife were on an eco-tour in Peru with Conservation International. The guide was sharing with Friedman a story of how a Peruvian merchant was selling his dish ware on the internet. Yet, that was not the startling part.

“The Peruvian dish maker recently discovered he could manufacture his Peruvian dish ware in China cheaper than in Peru. He now sells Peruvian dish ware on the internet, that is manufactured in China.”

He was recently in Budapest, Hungary at a conference. His cab driver was returning him to the airport and asked “Mr. Tom” to give him any referrals he may know that could use a cab driver in Hungary. The cab driver proceeded to share with Friedman that he had a website in Magyar, German and English - with music - and it features services for diplomats, tourists, and more.

Brian Behlendorf says Open Source is fundamental to the flattening

Brian is CTO and co-founder of CollabNet, a software company with products including the source code collaboration tool, Subversion. He has also been involved in the Apache web server project from the very beginning.

Open source is a natural continuation of the trend that started 20 years ago in open systems, open standards, and now open source… [It] is a reaction of dissatisfied customers rebelling against poor software in the 90’s… People are working with each other, building off each other’s code, and adding real value.

One of the very prolific contributors of Subversion, Peter Lundblad from Sweden, has worked on the open source project for half a decade, yet is blind.

Tim O’Reilly on web 2.0 flattening

Web 2.0 is enabling more and more flattening of the world.

Web 2.0 is building systems that harness network effects so the systems get better as more people use them.

Other non-web places where businesses can look for web 2.0 innovation are vast databases, ripe for harvesting:

• How could a company use what their customers type in a piece of software to help automatically fill that similar information in for subsequent users?
• For mobile phone companies, how could they use your call logs and turn that inside out to a network address book that would help retain customers?
• How could credit card companies share with you your purchase information (which they already monitor) back to you in a useful way?lan
• Intut’s QuickBooks is doing this via a partnership with Google AdWords. They look at your inventory and list them using Google’s marketing tools. In TurboTax when you donate items, they look up the tax write off value based on eBay prices.

“What are we monitoring?”

“How can we get collective value out of that?”

What we saw in the open source communities (people submitting bugs, fixing bugs, contributing code) is also happening in other marketplaces. O’Reilly Media just hired a contractor who was a prolific commenter on Tim’s blog. That communication relationship transformed into a monetary relationship. Only a few years ago this never would have happened.

Devin Wenig on flattening 2.0

Devin is COO of Reuters.

Flattener 1.0 was companies moving from the US and western Europe to industrializing nations for simple wage arbitrage advantages. It was a clear cost cutting play. The Flattener 2.0 is a radical shift in the traditional roles of producers and consumers. Traditionally someone goes and produces [software, news, products] and then throws it over the wall and hopes people consume it. Now we are getting real time on the fly communication with customers… The roles of publishers are now as moderators. Co-innovation is 2.0.

He continues with the second wave of flattening, which is more about revenue growth, collaboration, and tight feedback loops. Real time feedback from customers and prospects.

Only two years ago “the story” was what a journalist wrote in the paper or on the web. Now with user contributed content, interactivity, and collaboration, the story is a discussion from all across the world.

Three things Friedman thinks enabled the world to be flat

1. The PC. It allowed individuals to become the authors of their own content, in digital form.
2. The Internet, browsers in the Dot Com boom. The world was over-wired with fiber optic cables. Now such a large number of people could electronically connect.
3. Software and transmission protocols. People could collaborate with others in their content.

In a provocative statement, Friedman sees the flat world as “net worried.” When Infosys is competing in a flat marketplace, so is Al-Qaeda. He later recants this and declares everything a very exciting and promising future.

Tim O’Reilly asks Friedman if corporations will become more important than nations in a flat world

Clearly, we are still very early in this flattening, says Friedman. Yet he does not thing sovereignty of nations will diminish in the importance of people. In his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he writes how the Olive Tree instincts: religion, society, cultural norms are still very strong, and won’t be overthrown by the Lexus… not just quite yet.

He then continues sharing his stance on free trade:

I used to be a free trade advocate. I am not any more.

Now I am a radical free trader.

No surprise here, Mr. Friedman.

Every employee is a volunteer

Today people do not stay at the same company for a lifetime. Many do not even stay for five years. Peter Drucker has said this before, and the panel takes off and highlights how in a flatter world employers must recognize this. When employers know those they hire are really volunteering, they will more aggressively seek to captivate, challenge, and retain employees.

Truly profound productivity only occurs when people are passionate about what they do. If you are an employer, how can you help your volunteers stay passionate? (Discussed more in The Mythical Man Month.)

The world is flat and education

So how does education change when the world is flat?

What is the new middle class? And what jobs will people be doing in a flat-world middle class?

How will learning environments need to change for children?

These questions and more are asked and some answers are touched upon. The conversation was very interesting to listen to and ruminate upon.

If you enjoyed this post, consider:

The following video between Bill Gates and Tim O’Reilly at MIX 06 conference.

John Seely Brown is the Chief of Confusion at Xerox Parc and he has quite a few interesting papers and videos related to transforming Education in a flat, highly digital, world. Here’s one of his talks he gave at MIT on education in a long tail, flat world. Kathy Sierra also has a post about how awesome John Seely Brown is. Jim McGee covers one of Brown’s more interesting education papers.

FundRace.org - a mashup of political campaign spending and contributions with your locality. TheyWorkForYou is in the UK and it shows how every parliamentary member voted (and if they voted), so now more are needing to show up because people are monitoring their activity through this website.

And other ideas: how can you use government data and mash it up with say google maps and create a participatory democracy where voters can see and drill down through how their tax dollars are spent and how bills influence their communities.

How can India -in a flat world- export not natural resources, but intelligence and innovation?

What would a world look like where our best friends were in other countries?

Another book that may intrigue you is Democratizing Innovation by Eric Von Hippel.

What if a device existed in your phone that could scan products at a store and it would show where it has been. How would information of the manufacturing facilities, worker conditions, or carbon permits involved in this product change buying habits? That idea was explored are discussed in the How The World Works column on Salon (I didn’t find that exact post).

The flat world, Thomas Friedman says, will be a right brain world. Everything left brained will be done by a computer faster, or an Indian cheaper. (No offense intended for my Indian friends, I just share this from Friedman). Interested? You might like this book: A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

The latest economic week in review podcast. Six minutes and 15 seconds of listening pleasure.

The FOMC’s Chairman, Ben Bernanke suggested they are disinclined to raise interest rates. This buoyed market sentiment and the S&P 500 saw two days of double digit gains. Underlying economic data was not so rosy, though. Retails sales were flat in January, industrial production slowed, and housing continued to slow (starts in January were down 14.3% from December).

References:
Vanguard and Briefing.com

It was a relatively light week for economic news last week. Highlights include:

• Consumer credit increased less than expected in December.
• The ISM Non-Manufacturing index rose to 59 (from 56.7 in December). The services sector is showing greater strength than the Manufacturing index I spoke about last week.
• The earnings reports produced good numbers (Cisco, Disney, Prudential and others reported.)
• Nonfarm productivity bounced back in Q4 2006, growing at an annualized 3.0%. Overall for 2006 productivity growth was only 2.1%, the lowest since 1.6% in 1997.

Listen now, under 7 minutes

References: Vanguard, Briefing.com.

With a flurry of excitement and reasonably good economic news, I present to you the podcast:

Click the play button to listen live above (if you’re viewing this from JAWspeak). It’s 6 minutes long.

In brief, we saw rising numbers come out for Q4 GDP (3.5% annualized), the FOMC steady on interest rates, slowness in the housing market, and a dip in the ISM manufacturing index. But why read this when you can listen for yourself?

Reference: Vanguard.

January is almost over. We’re 7.1% through 2007 already. Time feels to be moving very quickly for me.

Two opposing reports came out for December’s housing market. Orders for durable goods increased and an index of leading economic indicators inched up. The S&P 500 touched a six-year high on Wednesday but decreased 0.4% for the week to 1,422. The yield of the 10-year U.S. Treasury note increased 11 basis points to 4.88%.

• December’s new-home sales were up 4.8% (but still down 17.3% from December 2005).
• December’s existing-home sales fell 0.8% from the previous month.
• Inventory levels (both for new and existing homes) tightened in December from November’s levels.
• December’s average new home price was $290,000; for an existing home it was $269,000.
• December’s orders for manufactured durable goods increased 3.1% and were up 7.0% from last year.
• The Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators increased 0.3% in December. 6 out of 10 indicators were positive.
• For six months through December, the index increased at an annualized rate of 0.3%.

Listen to the 7 min audio by clicking play below

Reference: Vanguard.com

Here’s the latest Economic Week in Review podcast. Inflation was not too bad in 2006. Thanks for listening.

• The PPI rose only 1.1% in 2006. Compare this to 5.4% for 2005 and 4.2% for 2004
• The CPI rose 2.5% in 2006, compare to 3.3% and 3.4% in ‘04 and ‘05
• Industrial production grew 0.4% in December, after 3 months of declines
• The Fed’s Beige Book indicated modest expansion, price gains, and a tightening labor market.
• December’s new-home residential grew for the second month in a row, 4.5% - more than expected. However, the growth is in multiunit residences, as the single-family homes actually declined for the month. Compared with December 2005, residential housing starts were down 18%.

Listen live now, click below to play the 7 minute podcast.

Reference: Vanguard

After an extended absence I have returned! What happened last week on the economics front? Oh, funny you should ask, I’ve got just the answer! We had mixed economic news:

• November saw a $12.3 billion increase in U.S. consumer credit (largest since Aug. 2006)
• December retail sales were unexpectedly strong, increasing 0.9%
• Manufacturers and wholesalers saw business inventories increase 0.4% overall
• The U.S. trade deficit shrank 1.0% in November to $58.2 billion

References: Vanguard

Listen to the whole podcast instantly by clicking below (only 5 minutes):