I have started a new blog dedicated to gardening and food-related topics: Growing Thoughts . I’m not quite sure yet what I’ll use it for, but between my home gardening, explorations of local agriculture, and general interest in food policy, I’m sure I’ll come up with something. Check it out and let me know what you think — all ideas and suggestions welcome.
Turns out layoff are bad for workers, the company and the economy. Consider this: SouthWest Airlines has never had an involuntary layoff in their 40 year history — and they are now the largest domestic US airline. Layoffs kill worker morale, erode loyalty, often lead to the best workers leaving with a loss of corporate memory. These negative effects linger long after the layoff event, even into periods of economic recovery. Conventional wisdom that they save the company money are also normally misplaced once all expenses, from payouts to departing workers to losses in productivity, are calculated. All this is not to say that companies don’t need to restructure periodically — it is just that management should be looking far enough ahead and watching current trends closely enough to know when conditions change. Reactive business strategy– like layoffs or across the board percentage cuts – is always too little, too late. Bad times reveals weakness.
When we were in Paris last summer I was intrigued to see the fleets of Velib bikes. These are available for public use across the city on a pay-as-you-go model. You use a credit card at a central kiosk to check a bike out and then return it to the closest kiosk when you are finished with it. With my frequent daily walks around New Haven CT and the Yale campus it looked like a sure hit to me. I’d love to have this type of service available. But it turns out, similar to Amsterdam’s white bike experiment, the Velib program is having problems with theft and damage. Another problem with these types of systems is often one of distribution — problems arise with too many bikes at the wrong place, and too few at a hot spot. These patterns shift through the day. Maybe there are some lessons from ZipCar, and its successful strategies. They encourage community feedback, keep it simple, invest in technology, and brand with personality. To this I wonder if the bottom-up ideas of people like Mark Gorton might help point in the right direction. Here is my quick brain-dump/brainstorm of thoughts on the subject of a community bike sharing service: Read the rest of this entry »
Learning something new is good for the brain and the hands. L. Francis Herreshoff, the designer of some of the most beautiful man-made objects ever, wrote “there were among men a few, a very few, who used both their hands and their heads, and they achieved a happiness that nigh passeth the understanding.” (He was also a bit of a character). So in learning something it is not simply enough to just read about it, you also should also strive to create something. In A Place of My Own, Michael Pollan states an appreciation for “forms of knowledge that seem to yield most readily to the hands.” He goes on to say “Different kinds of work, performed with different sets of tools, can disclose different faces of the world…”
Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
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