Tonight you can get a chance to see a congressmen who is probably  best known for his positive stance on cycling. Rep. Blumenauer of Oregon will join our favorite bike champion, Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania at the Academy of natural Science tonight for the Liveable Communites forum. I have been to a few of these forums and they are a great way to really get charged up about doing something about your community. It is free and open to the public, although they would like you to register so go here to do so.

On Wednesday, the annual Ride of Silence will happen world wide. Meet at the Art Museum around 6:30 or so for the ride that begins at 7. There will be a brief ceremony for the 6 people who have died on local roads in the last year. The 5th annual ride will start at 7. With police escort and rolling street closures, the ride will proceed down the Parkway, circle City Hall, continue to Independence Hall, and head over to West Philly via Spruce Street and the Walnut St. Bridge. The ride will return to the front of the Art Museum over the Market Street Bridge.

Philadelphia organizers are Ray Scheinfeld, erayben@bellatlantic.net , 215-327-8315; John Siemiarowski, tandemdad@comcast.net, 215-837-0101. Please contact them with any questions you may have.

On Thursday, you can check out the urban riding basics class at Wooden Shoe Bookstore so that you can get ready for Friday’s Bike to Work Day. There will be an army of folks out at different stations throughout the city helping to make sure that this day is bigger than ever. Our cycling Mayor will let you ride along with him….and a few body guards from the Art Museum.

If you need some support for bike to work day, there will be folks at these locations with a good blend of technical, nutritional, and motivational services.

21st and Chestnut 9am-6pm

1636 Walnut st. 8-12

Frankford and Master 7-9

Manyuk Brew Pub 7-9.

If you are a bit more dirt oriented, head out to the park to help the good folks at the Philadelphia Mountain Bike Association rescue some trails. The May trail matinence day is going to happen Saturday from 10-2 at “The Golf Course Climb”. You can ride into the location from many points in the park, or even just walk across the golf course if you choose to drive up there. They are going to do a bit of a reroute to try to make this climb a bit more sustainable. The GPS location of the climb is 40° 1′ 40.0044″ N, 75° 12′ 1.3896″ W. Contact Tom for more info.

Our trails are tough and I love them, but we have to admit that they are going to be hard to maintain for future generations if they are chutes for water to flow down. Step up and give back to your park.

As always if you have any more cycling stuff going on in Philadelphia or the surrounding area, let me know!

REI will be on hand helping with any technical issues you may have. They are also throwing some goodies into the awesome give away. Cannondale and Keswick Cycle are giving away a Cannondale mountain bike.  Bucks County Bicycle Co. and Fuji are teaming up to give away a free 29er as well! CRAZY!!!!

PrincteonTec is donating a sweet set of lights and the gravity park at Blue is giving away some passes. Those are not the only prizes, as other shops and organizations are stepping up big time to have great swag for the prize give away. Don’t walk away empty handed!

I have been training all winter to try to lose the hillclimb time trial. My training is peaking this week by maybe attempting it on a single speed. That alone is worth the price of admission!

Just so you know, this is the ONLY fundraiser that PMBA has for the entire year besides their memberships. Everything PMBA does is volunteer based and the cost of admission to the rally is how they pay for some of the improvements they do to the park and other projects they have in the works, so if you love riding mountain bikes at the Wiss, you should be at this event supporting PMBA and your trails!

If you need more info, just go to the PMBA site. Ill see you there!

There are tons of great things that the PMBA does through the year and we should support this stuff. Some of their work in the Wiss has been considered controversial because the difficulty of the trails may have been reduced. In my opinion I would rather ride sustainable trails that were less difficult than trails that would be closed, or worse, washed away through the type of use they attract year after year.

Come out, speak up, have a good time, and get charged up for the upcoming MTB season.

The next PMBA General Membership Meeting will be held Wednesday January 20 at 7:30 on the upper floor of the Manayunk Diner.  Come hear about PMBA’s plans for the 2010 season, including the Rally in the Valley, new and improved Skills Clinics, the Bike Patrol, projects with Neighborhood BIke Works and several trips that are in the works.

For Employees:

• In carrying out a project, don’t just wait for others to deliver the goods, but persistently go after them until the job is complete.  Most jobs move in direct proportion to the amount of follow-up and expediting that is applied to them.  Develop the habit of immediately looking for ways around obstacles so as not to lose momentum when they inevitably arise.
• Don’t be timid, but rather speak up, express yourself and promote your ideas.  Too many people assume it is their job to do what they’re told and nothing else.  When you have something to contribute, convey it with confidence.
• Strive to be clear and concise when communicating.  Learn to convey the maximum significant information in the minimum amount of time.
• Be extremely careful about the accuracy of your statements.  A wrong answer is worse than no answer, so if you don’t know, say so, but find the correct answer right away.
• Don’t be too anxious to follow the boss’s lead.  In most cases, the program laid down by a department head is tentative, rather than sacred, and is intended to act as a place holder until a better program is proposed and approved.

For Executives:

• It is the job of an executive to facilitate development (including initiative, resourcefulness and judgment) among his or her workers.  The best way to do that is to load them up with all of the responsibility they can handle without running the risk of embarrassment to the department.
• Cultivate the habit of boiling matters down to their simplest terms.  Always condense, summarize and simplify the facts, instead of expanding, complicating and confusing them.
• Don’t get over-excited during “emergencies”.  Oftentimes crises aren’t half as bad as they first appear, so it is best to try to minimize, rather than magnify a bad situation.
• Develop the skill of making quick, clear-cut decisions and sticking to them.
• Establish pools of specialized knowledge within your department instead of making everyone a generalist

Personal Considerations:

• Learn to get along with all kinds of people.  This requires being forgiving, selfless, considerate, fair, helpful, genuine, trusting, patient and appreciative in as many situations as possible.
• Don’t be too friendly.  There are occasions when it is appropriate to stand up for an issue, be competitive or even start an argument.
• Regard your personal integrity as one of your most important assets.
• Study yourself and your employees.  Everyone has a different set of strengths, which must be taken in to consideration before transferring, promoting or hiring anyone.

In his book, “Ready, Fire, Aim”, Michael Masterson, a serial entrepreneur, presents the 4 stages of business development, and how to get from one to the next.  During his years starting and building businesses, he began to develop a “unifying theory” of business growth encompassing the problems, challenges and opportunities that are common to each.

Stage One: Infancy – Zero to $1 million in revenue

Main Problem: You don’t really know what you are doing.
Main Challenge: Making the first profitable sale.
Main Opportunity: Achieving a minimum critical mass of customers.

Takeaways:

• In the first stage of any business, the focus should be centered on one thing, and one thing only, selling.  Don’t waste your time perfecting the product or coming up with the perfect logo; develop something that is “good enough” and start pushing it.  If it sells, make it better.
• Determine the Optimum Selling Strategy (OSS) for your business, or, the particular combination of media, pricing, and positioning that will bring you the most qualified customers.
• While selling and revenue are top priority, creating happy customers should be the primary focus of your company’s work.

Stage Two: Childhood – $1 million to $10 million in revenue

Main Problem: You are only breaking even or may even be losing money.
Main Challenge: Creating many additional, profitable products quickly.
Main Opportunity: Increasing cash flow and becoming profitable.

Takeaways:

• The key to moving from stage one to stage two is embracing innovation and speed, by developing as many new products as you can as quickly as you can.
• There is an important distinction between front-end and back-end marketing.  Front-end sales are those that come from people who have never bought anything from you before.  These sales are often less profitable and can even cost you money.  Back-end sales come from existing customers and often have a much greater profit margin (no customer acquisition costs).
• Front-end products need to be innovative to attract new customers.  Back-end products can be ordinary but profitable.  Develop innovative, tipping-point, products by spotting hot products in rising markets and make them new and different.
• Quality is important.  The easiest way to grow your company is to develop long-term relationships with your customers by producing excellent products them.  Long-term customers mean more profitable back-end sales.

Stage Three: Adolescence – $10 million to $50 million in revenue

Main Problem: Your systems are strained and customers are noticing.
Main Challenge: Turning the chaos into order.
Main Opportunity: Learning how to establish useful protocols and manage processes and procedures.

Takeaways:

• Moving from stage two to stage three means introducing more structure.  In many cases, this includes a more formal organizational chart, improved systems and operations, and documented processes.
• While moving towards a more “corporate” structure can be difficult for entrepreneurs, it is a necessary step to create and order and build a solid foundation for future growth.
• Be wary of emerging bottlenecks, bureaucracy and office politics.  It is important to do whatever it takes to remove these characteristics before they hobble your company.
• Create an environment of freedom and competition, and make sure everyone understands that creating value for the customer is their first priority.

Stage Four: Adulthood – $50 million to $100 million in revenue and beyond

Main Problem: Sales slow down and may even stall.
Main Challenge: Becoming entrepreneurial again.
Main Opportunity: Getting the business to run itself.

Takeaways:

• At this point in the game, it is up to the you (the CEO) to decide what role you will play in your business’s future.
• The options include: selling your business privately, bringing it public, or stepping back and becoming chairman of the board.
• Masterson recommends the latter (stepping back) because it gives you the freedom to do other things while still being involved in what you love (your business).  He has also found that by stepping back, and removing yourself as an obstacle to growth, you provide your company with the room it needs to expand even more.

The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki, is dubbed “the time-tested, battle-hardened guide for anyone starting anything”.  In the book, he covers a wide spectrum of startup activity including bootstrapping, hiring, positioning, pitching, branding and creating buzz.  However, before diving in to the details, Guy introduces “The Art of Starting” and what he feels are the best steps to a great start:

1. Make Meaning – Making meaning is the most powerful motivator there is and will help keep you, and others, going when the going gets tough.
2. Make Mantra – Instead of crafting a long, boring, irrelevant mission statement, develop a mantra – something that is short and evokes emotion (ex. Nike – authentic athletic performance).
3. Get Going – Forget business plans and financial projects – build the prototype, write the software or launch the website!  No one ever achieved success by planning for gold.
4. Define Your Business Model - Be specific (describe the customer), keep it simple (10 words or less) and copy someone successful.
5. Weave a MAT – Compiling Milestones, Assumptions and Tasks allows you to quickly understand the scope, test assumptions and fix large flaws in your thinking.

Many of the subsequent chapters provide valuable insights for a startup, much of them based on Guy’s work experience at Apple and as a venture capitalist, but one of my favorite sections was “The Art of Branding”.  Here are a few of the takeaways:

Branding is not something you “do”, but rather inherent to selling a great product or service.  However, there are a number of steps you can take to improve your chances of developing a strong brand:

• Create a Contagion – Make something that’s gold.  In other words, a product or service that is cool, effective, distinctive, disruptive, emotive, deep, indulgent or supported.
• Lower the Barriers to Adoption – A customer should be able to get basic functionality right out of the box.  Write a great manual (with pictures)!  This is usually the first “marketing opportunity” you have, and can shape your customer’s image of you.  Make it easy to switch to your product and just as easy to exit.
• Recruit Evangelists – Ask your best customers to help you out.  Treat them right and give them the tools to recruit others.  Foster a community.
• Achieve Humanness – Be a “warm” brand.  Target the young, have a sense of humor, feature your customers and help others in your community.

The final chapter in Guy’s book is entitled “The Art of Being a Mensch”.  A mensch is a Yiddish term for a person who is ethical, decent and admirable.  If you want to build a great and lasting organization, he says, you need to set the highest moral and ethical standards for yourself and your employees.  A mensch pays back for goodness already received, not in the expectation of a return.

Guy Kawasaki discusses “The Art of the Start”

A camisa era usada no dia a dia (ou o uniforme da Corporação). Vários países usam camisa polo.

Em operações policiais, os oficiais utilizavam o camuflado urbano ou preto/operacional.

Em solenidades, usavam a túnica de cada Corporação.

Abaixo, modelo utilizado.  

I really would like to post my thoughts on the five or so books from the PMBA that I’ve read (and the other Thomas Nelson book that I’m currently reading), but my schedule at this point doesn’t leave too much time for blogging.

Or, to say it more clearly — I haven’t made blogging a priority

Anyway, tomorrow I’ll be posting my first official book review blogger review on The Noticer by Andy Andrews.  It was a quick read, but a good book on the importance and power of perspective.

Yan ang sigaw na narinig namin mula sa katabing room isang araw habang kami ay nasa loob ng Commitment Room ng O&B (Orange & Bronze) Office sa Aguirre Street sa Makati. Feeling namin may acting workshop lang sa kabilang room kaya hindi namin pinansin kahit na paulit-ulit namin itong naririnig. Nang mga panahon na yun, kaming mga Dev (Software Development) trainees ay nagbabasa ng mga libro na binigay ni Sir Calen (CEO). Hindi pa kasi nagsisimula ang JBC (Java Boot Camp) kung saan lahat ng Dev Trainees ng O&B ay magkakaroon ng pagkakataon mahasa ang kanilang kaalaman sa Computer Science. Ang simlua kasi ng JBC ay sa ika-23 pa ng Abril kaya habang wala pa kaming ginagawa binigyan muna kami ni Sir Calen ng mga libro na mababasa. Ilan sa mga paksa ng libro na binigay ni Sir Calen ay tungkol sa Java, Servlets at JSP, Scrum, Agile Development, XP (Extreme Programming) at Design Patterns. Akala ko nung una, hindi siya masaya kasi magbabasa lang kami, pero sa totoo lang super dami kong natutunan sa mga libro na pinahiram nila sa amin.

Halimbawa na lang siguro sa Effective Java na libro ni Joshua Bloch, marami siyang magaganda ngunit simpleng payo na talaga nga namang nagpahanga sa akin. Paggamit ng static factory methods imbes na constructors, paggamit ng builder kapag sobrang daming constructor parameters na kailangang gamitin, mga kailangang alalahanin kapag nag-o-override ng “equals”, “hashCode”, “toString” at “clone” na methods,  at marami pang iba.

Nung araw din na narinig namin ang mala-acting workshop na sigaw ay nagpakain ang O&B sa lahat ng empleyado at trainees nila. Bukod sa sobrang daming pagkain at nakakabusog na sarap, nagkaroon kaming mga trainees ng pagkakataon na makipag-bonding sa mga empleyado ng O&B. Dito rin namin napagkwentuhan ang ilan sa mga nakakatawang istorya tungkol sa mga tao sa O&B. Hanggang sa napag-usapan nila Sir Martin sina Paul at Pepper na na-lock daw sa isang room sa 5th floor. Hindi ko napagtanto agad na yung pinagkukwentuhan pala nila ay nito lang nangyari kasi akala ko ay mga lumang kwento ang pinag-uusapan nila. Ilang saglit pa ay napag-alaman ko na yung sumisigaw pala ng “ayoko pang mamatay” sa katabing kwarto ay sina Paul at Pepper pala na humihingi ng saklolo dahil nga sila ay nakulong sa loob ng kwarto. Ibinahagi ko pa kina Sir Martin yung pag-akala naming acting workshop lang yung nagaganap sa katabing kwarto. Tawa lang kami ng tawa pagkatapos.

Ika-13 ng Abril, Lunes nang nagsimula ako sa O&B pumasok. Kasama ko bilang Dev trainee sina Jeune (UPD-CS) at Kiko (UPLB-CS). Kasabay din namin sina Nico (UPD-BA), Jocs (UPD-BA), Ryan (ADMU-MIS), Regine (ADMU-MIS) at Thea (ADMU-MIS) ngunit sila naman ay mga PMBA (Project Management & Business Ad) trainees. Si Tina (UPD-CS) ay kasabay din namin subalit siya ay hindi trainee gaya namin, empleyado na kasi siya, bagong pasok nga lang. Kaming Dev trainees at si Tina ay magkakasama sa Commitment Room kung saan para kaming mga taong apektado ng SARS virus dahil sa sobrang bukod ng kwartong iyon.

kung saan kami naka-quarantine

Ilan lang yan sa mga karanasan ko bilang trainee sa O&B nitong unang linggo ko sa kanila, ipagpatawad niyo at wala pa kong makuwentong teknikal dahil hindi pa nagsisimula ang JBC pero nakita niyo naman may ginagawa pa rin kami gaya ng pagbabasa ng sobrang daming libro.

Nais ko namang ibahagi itong larawan na aming kinuha mula sa Technical Excellence Room habang naglelecture sa mga PMBA trainees. Ang lakas ng trip ng mga empleyado ng O&B. Sila ang may gawa niyan.

ang kwartong mukhang aquarium mula sa labas

Para participar, é exigido dos candidatos nível médio; idade mínima de 18 e máxima de 30 anos; estatura mínima de 1,60m para homens e 1,55m para mulheres. Os aprovados receberão, durante o curso de formação, bolsa de estudo de R$ 415. Logo após o curso, a remuneração varia entre R$ 1.188,85 e R$ 1.549,78.

As provas estão previstas para o dia 8 de março, sendo aplicadas nas cidades de Salvador, Juazeiro, Feira de Santana, Ilhéus, Vitória da Conquista e Barreiras. Os inscritos farão provas objetiva de conhecimentos gerais e prova discursiva. 

Fonte:  IG Concursos

A couple of years ago I stumbled across The Personal MBA and found the concept to be right up my alley. Long story short, PMBA founder Josh Kaufman has created a platform of self-education on advanced business topics. His concept promotes the ability to gain the knowledge gleaned from participating in an MBA program without the expense and typical actions of a traditional university student.

Simply put, take his list of 77 (yes, that’s seventy-seven) books and start reading them. Obviously, getting all of the facts to stick is important and no, it isn’t exactly a line you can put on your resume under Education.

Or is it?

Josh’s point is that once you’ve spent the time, energy, and resources to gain an MBA, you end up remembering some stuff and the rest of it…well, at least you can say you have an MBA from an accredited/respected program.

Reading through his recommended program gives power to the people (I’m talking about people like myself that, in addition to a cart-load of other stuff, believe I could use and employ a wealth of knowledge gained from MBA studies). I’d love to say, “Yes, I completed the Personal MBA program in two years. Here’s a list of the books read, in order, by date.” And then I’d point them to the url where my PMBA wiki-notes reside on the web.

So, since saying outloud helps define ownership, let it be known that I know have a PMBA folder in my Projects workflow. Now I’m accountable to it, by golly. I’ve gone back into the corner and decided to start pressing forward. I feel like saying Better Late than Never. More appropriate is

Better Now than Not at All.

BTW, if you take a look at Quick Start: The Best Books to Read First, the very first thing Josh recommends is a book on how to read faster. I love solid advice and so far, I’m already a fan.

Since learning more about business during graduate school I’ve thought a bit about the possibility of pursuing an MBA — but the reality is, I’ve had all the school I can handle for awhile.  So a Personal MBA seems like a great option at this point.

A couple weeks ago I put my Amazon Prime trial to good use and ordered the four books below with some seed funding from my grandmother . I may order a few more before the end of the year.

• 10 Days to Faster Reading by Abby Marks-Beale
• StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
• The Art of Exceptional Living by Jim Rohn
• The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

So far I’m about halfway through The Ultimate Sales Machine, and I recently finished 10 Days to Faster Reading.

I was somewhat skeptical about a book on reading faster, but I can’t argue with the numbers: on Day 1 I was reading 400 words per minute with at least 90% comprehension, and on Day 10 I was at 600 words per minute and 90% comprehension.  Along the way I picked up some useful tips both on the mechanics and proper mindset of reading efficiently.

Of the set of books above, three of them are in the Quick Start category on the PMBA website.  After I finish those I’ll likely move on to a few books from the Productivity & Effectiveness section, plus one on communication:

• The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• The Unwritten Laws of Business by W. J. King
• Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson