This is a great idea - but I would have been more impressed if it was one of Brad's team writing this piece - and not him. 

Three years ago my partners and I at Foundry Group decided to experiment with a month off the grid. Each of us goes away for a month and the other three (now four) cover for him. It’s been remarkably successful for us, both individually and as a partnership.

Why? Because 'at the top' things like this are very easy to do. If you are a coder in an engineering company in one of Brad's investments - I wonder what the reaction would be if they asked for similar benefits. 

It is not clear from this article whether this is the only 'vacation' that Brad takes - but I am pretty sure it isn't - based on other posts in his blog. 

Not enough to title the piece "How to Own the Consideration Phase" - this little gem is popped in half way down ... (my bold).

You're doing enough to fill the top of the funnel: It's time to focus on the consideration stage (20:48): "A lot of companies are spending too much money and focusing too much effort at the top of the customer journey for awareness and too much effort and money at the bottom trying to get people to buy again. The reality is that people are caught in this paradox of choice, and they can't actually make a decision. The biggest threat out there really isn't competitors, it's consumers' inability to make a decision.

I am more than capable of making a decision - WHEN I want to - it is not that I am incapable. Oh - and NO corporation OWNS the 'consideration phase'. 

I Am My Own System of Record.

And this from a professor of marketing. No wonder we are F****D.

Where it all starts .... is of course the tributary ... but before you even get there, if you don’t know what you are doing .... you need help. This is a BIG doff of hat to (in 'first name' alphabetical order) ..

Andy Sylvester for getting me going and talking me off the cliff - a few times actually.

Dave Winer for providing the software that makes all this happen.

Frank McPherson for providing the deep insights into what I was doing.

Scott Hansen for checking, clarifying, explaining and spotting that I was an idiot and pointing it out nicely.

Current rivers powering my estuary include

Podcasts that have piqued my interest that I am currently tracking.

Music - as I find good new feeds an what is going on in that world 0 I will add it into this tributary

Reading - which are the top feeds that I read each morning to keep up with the world.

I will update them all from time to time as I discover new sources. 

And soon I hope to add one for VRM aswell.

Here is my Estuary.

I am back. There has been a little bit of a break as I have been moving both DNS and service providers around - and during the course of it all - breaking things - a lot !

Today is Monday October 3rd - and though my styling isn't right ... yet - I can once more write and publish on my own server at my own address.

I have launched three sites.

Tributary is one you can't really see - but it is where I write all this content.

... and of course where else does a tributary lead but a River - which if you are on the site and not reading this through RSS - that is where you are now.

Finally - all rivers flow into an Estuary before they find their way into the sea - and of course, in that Estuary you will find some collected rivers. That for now is a WIP - and is likely to continue to change as we go forward.

“You should resign”, Senator Elizabeth Warren told Stumpf, who had injured his right hand while playing with his grandchildren. “You should give back the money you took while this scam was going on and you should be criminally investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

But of course he won’t. He just ‘didn’t know’. (He being the CEO of Wells Fargo, who have just admitted fraud against millions of customers.)

I wonder why acts like Sarbanes-Oxley can’t be used in cases like these …. after all S-O was introduced so that criminal penalties for certain misconduct could be applied to the board of directors of a public corporation.

Oh wait - of course …. ‘certain misconduct’ - it probably doesn’t refer to fraud against millions of customers - but instead focuses on a few multi-millionaire shareholders that need this kind of protection.

Nobody will even go to jail - because there probably won’t be an investigation. (New Yorker)

Read Even More About It. (Bloomberg)

And finally - The Daily Show’s Take … pretty much mine - with humour .. or humor - whichever floats your boat!

I don't intend this site to become home to movie commentaries - so this will likely be the last on this topic. But, I wanted to publish something about Oliver Stone's new 'biopic' as a 'compare and contrast' to Eastwood's Sully. Unlike Sully - I have seen 'Snowden'. Excellent. 

 Here's a review of the movie from the Intercept - Glen Greenwald's site. I haven't done a fact check on the movie, but I suspect that if it deviated too much from the truth (rubik cube and other film points aside), I think Glen and his team would be all over it.

Meanwhile - it is apparent that the Washington Post has no shame .... publishing this article this weekend. They believe that he should be prosecuted to the full. 

They miss two key points ... (well probably more - but lets go with two)

1) They were one of the newspapers who originally published his story - even accepting a Pulitzer for their story. If they feel they way that they suggest in their editorial - why did they do the story to begin with?

2) They want him to come home and face the music ...

Ideally, Mr. Snowden would come home and hash out all of this before a jury of his peers. That would certainly be in the best tradition of civil disobedience, whose practitioners have always been willing to go to jail for their beliefs. He says this is unacceptable because U.S. secrecy-protection statutes specifically prohibit him from claiming his higher purpose and positive impact as a defense — which is true, though it’s not clear how the law could allow that without creating a huge loophole for leakers. (Mr. Snowden hurt his own credibility as an avatar of freedom by accepting asylum from Russia’s Vladi­mir Putin, who’s not known for pardoning those who blow the whistle on him.)

For the record - so does he - but in an open court with  jury - which The American Government has not agreed to. They want it behind closed doors - probably those same un-checked closed doors where it all started.

Oh - and the asylum in Russia thing ... he was on his way to somewhere else - when he landed in Russia - the state department revoked his passport. So the only way he now can travel is back to the US direct to the US authorities. (see above).

Apart from the PR bennies - I suspect that Russia didn't want to turn one of their airports into a real life case of this other Hank's movie.

This will become a major article on the Beyond Bridges site. Shameful.

Bottom line - donate your lifetime work to the Smithsonian - for people to use with no charge.

How did Carol found out? When Getty sent her a bill for using her own picture.

Read All About It.

I haven't seen Sully. I don’t' intend to. I like Eastwood Movies ... generally .. but I tend not to like Hanks movies. Normally Eastwood would win me over but when I saw the clips, it looked boring. And there was something else. The film was emphasizing things that happened post crash. Things where the authorities were questioning decisions that Sully took. 

As the article says:

With Sully, the film-makers were faced with a problem: how to make a feature-length movie about a six-minute flight?

Answer - focus on the actions after the crash.

“Until I read the script, I didn’t know the investigative board was trying to paint the picture that he had done the wrong thing. They were kind of railroading him,” says Eastwood in one promotional trailer. 

That's it - neither did I. I was surprised that I hadn’t .. very surprised.

It's not surprising Eastwood (and me .. 'ed') was ignorant of any railroading by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), since it’s a narrative absent from Highest Duty, or anything actually said or written by the NTSB.

And that's the problem. In the future like so many of these fictional accounts of history - they will over take real history and facts will be forgotten. It’s the substance of future conspiracy theory.

Around the world, the NTSB’s investigations are regarded as setting the gold standard for impartiality, perceptiveness and making recommendations with important safety benefits. The NTSB has saved countless lives. Yet the NTSB has no regulatory ability: to turn its recommendations into practice, the board relies solely on a moral authority founded on its reputation for diligence. The stakes are high – the board currently has a list of 10 critical safety improvements that it’s trying to get implemented, including, for example, positive train control, something that would have spared 243 people last year from a deadly Amtrak derailment.

Sully has smeared this reputation for the sake of a hero who needed no defending. It will create a headwind in the minds of the public and policymakers that the NTSB will be struggling against for years to come.

Read All About It.

This is so sad ....

When the African-American history museum opens on September 24th, there will be no major artifacts from the civil rights icon on display.

A sad dysfunctional family. 

Well that is something I never knew ..... and it has been doing it for 60 years.

Read All About It At Futility Closet.

BTW - before you click through - any idea what I'm talking about? The clue is in the title. It really is the crazy little stuff that you never knew - but then again - why would you?

I miss Keith Olbermann. I guess I need to spend more time seeking him out. Still - this video received via David Freer is just great. Olbermann is great with this kind of schtick.

Watch It Here.

Ordered ...

Blackfield V sees the duo of Steven Wilson and Aviv Geffen return to full collaborative mode. Written and recorded over a period of 18 months, the album contains 13 linked songs that form a flowing 45 minute ocean themed song cycle. 

The duo handle vocals, guitars, and keyboards, alongside guests Tomer Z, Eran Mitelman, and string performances by the London Session Orchestra. 

Producer / engineer Alan Parsons works on three of the album's key tracks. 

HELL YES!

Read All About It.

And here is another way of looking at it .....

... during an inspection by the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month, regulators concluded that Theranos had collected some data supporting the accuracy of the Zika test without implementing a patient-safety protocol approved by an institutional review board, according to the people familiar with the matter. 

Really, I know nothing about this world - but I do keep up with the news. A company that is run by a CEO who has been banned for two years from operating labs just weeks later is found out again. Cue - "Where Have All The Flowers Gone".

Maybe she should have stuck with Stanford.

Read All About It.

Via Kottke

and I agree - great chase.

But Steve's was nearly 50 years ago.