It looks like I am going to get to participate in some pretty neat events in Nashville over the next month.

Technology Nashville - Thursday May 21st
I am going to be participating on a panel discussion on "Dashboards, Widgets and Other Components to Track Performance". The discussion will be moderated by Bayard Saunders and will also Michael Summar, Garrett Harper, and Major Wang.

Mobile Communications Roundtable - June 4th
I don’t know all of the details yet, but I think it is going to be a panel discussion of mobile platforms including Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and iPhone. I am sure we will include a little about Android too. I really like how the NTC has been evolving over the past year and am grateful for the opportunity to get to participate.

Nashville LAMP User Group presentation on AppEngine - June 16th
It looks like the LAMP User Group is going to be great. This month Jon Wage is presenting on Symfony (PHP) and in July Cory Watson is going to be presenting on Catalyst (Perl). AppEngine isn’t quite the LAMP stack (no L and no P and A isn’t Apache), then again alternate databases and webservers are getting more popular. I would love to see future presentations on MySQL, document databases like CouchDB and Tokyo Cabinet, and an overview of webservers including Apache and nginex (hint, hint).

So if you are interested in learning about any of these topics or just want to keep me from talking above my pay grade, come out and support some local tech events in Nashville and say hi.

I just read Fred Wilson’s recap of the Hacking Education meeting. I am really looking forward to seeing the full transcript. While we wait for that I thought I might share how a single magazine article about self-education changed my life.

First, a little background. For whatever reason, I didn’t do well in school. I got really high test scores throughout, but failed more classes than I could count. Well, technically the reason I didn’t do well in school is because I didn’t go to many classes. It strikes me as odd that I could not go to class, not do my homework, and yet, still get > 90 percentile on “the tests”.

Long story short, I dropped out of high school in my 3rd year (1994). Since I do well on tests it was easy for me to get my GED, take the ACT, and go on to college. I failed out of college (1996). After getting my head on straight I went back to school at a local liberal arts college (1997). A year or two later I read “How I Got My D.I.Y. Degree” in Utne Reader (best link I can find). It was written by William Upski Wimsatt. He wrote the following description of self-education:

So I quit college and enrolled as a student at the University of Planet
Earth, the world’s oldest and largest educational institution. It has
billions of professors, tens of millions of books, and unlimited course
offerings. Tuition is free, and everybody designs his or her own major.

1. Recognize that you’re self-motivated.
2. Enjoy yourself.
3. Team up with others.
4. Scare away your shyness.
5. Save all your ideas
6. Act on what you learn.
7. Attend conferences.
8. Feed and water your mentors.
9. Don’t quit school if you like it.
10. Recognize that friendship is learning.
11. Be prepared to be scared.
12. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

I would like to say that I read that article, gained a sense of purpose, and set out on a journey of self-education. Of course, that is not what happened. However, that article gave me permission to think about education as a series of experiences and outcomes instead of a process to follow and be graded on. That was a key shift in thinking that heavily influenced my decision making a few months later.

In 1999 an opportunity presented itself for me to quit college and take a job organizing a national conference on community service and activism. I thought I would go back to school, but instead I continued on in a series of quick careers that taught me more than I ever learned in formalized schooling. I organized that conference, created databases for non-profit organizations, worked with political campaigns, taught high school in the inner-city of DC, helped professors use the web in their classes, worked for some startups, opened a family business, almost went bankrupt, got fired, helped Fortune 1000 companies figure out how much money they were making and how to make that data available to decision makers, became a father (again, and again, and again), and now I essentially have my dream job (trying to build a business from scratch). More importantly than the work I did was the people I had the opportunity to work with/for and learn from. I was on my second or third salaried profession before many of my peers graduated from college.

During my bouts with school, critical thinking was neither taught nor valued. It seems to only to have gotten worse with the increased weight placed on standardized testing. “Teaching to the test” is the exact opposite of what our kids need.

I am not saying that the way I did things is any better or worse than the traditional education system, but it has taught me one thing:

The most important thing I can teach my kids is how to learn; how to figure things out.

Interesting note: I selected Upski as a speaker for that conference I organized. I didn’t realize it was the same person who wrote that article until later.

Remember the good old days when you had something to say and you wrote a blog post? If it was a topic you were really hot on it might end up being a few posts. The very act of writing the post would help you form opinions and thoughts. If you were lucky it would spur a thought in someone else and they would write about it and link to you.

I know it makes me an old fuddy duddy, but I miss that. Twitter is great, but the instant gratification conversation has acted like a pressure valve that keeps thoughts from becoming big enough to blog about.

The flip side to that argument is that the short snarky crap has moved off my blog. If you can’t make a quick joke in 140 characters then it isn’t funny enough to share. So in theory the quality of my blog posts should have gone up.

UPDATE: On a related note, I haven’t opened my feed reader in a couple of weeks either. GpsAssassins has been taking up too much of my time.

Nice theory, but I think I swung the pendulum too far. It is time to get in the swing of posting more frequently again. And what better way to start blogging more again than to write a blog post about my own blog and my process of blogging.

I was diving down the interstate in my truck with my wife and kids. All of the sudden I look to the left and there is an overturned car in the median. It looks like the car has been there a while, but I can see the legs of two passengers who are still in the car. The car appears void of color, almost like it is washed out or was burned in really hot heat. It wasn’t a fire though because the people in the car are not moving; they appear to be dead.

As I looked away from the overturned car I saw that there were several tractor trailers strewn about on the median and the other side of the interstate. Apparently there had been a very bad wreck. There were no flashing lights yet so it must have just happened. As I drove slowly around the turn I started to see more and more cars and trucks that had gotten tangled up in this massive pileup. The magnitude of the destruction that had taken place was astounding.

Everything was silent.

Just as I started to feel extremely grateful, I noticed that I was coming up on cars in my lane that had gotten tangled up in this mess. I could see people slowly moving inside mangled cars. There was a car just in front of me that was facing the wrong way; I wasn’t sure if it had gotten spun around or if it had crossed the median. There was a woman inside. She was trapped in the passenger seat. Crying. Banging on the dashboard in anguish.

I started to get really scared. The pileup was closing in around me and there was no place to go. If I stopped the people coming around the turn behind me would hit me. I was worried that if I continued the pileup would envelope me. Maybe it was clear ahead, but it seemed to be getting worse. There was an exit just ahead, maybe I could make it there. I needed to get my family out of there before I called 911 or got out to help. I needed to ensure my family was safe. It was my job to steer clear of the wreckage.

Then I woke up.

It was a haunting dream. I can still see the anguish of the woman in the car.

I remember studying dream analysis for a few days in a college course once. We were taught that dreams are a way for our subconscious to bubble up concerns and deep seated emotions. The meaning of this dream seems crystal clear.

It is the economy.

It is my job to get my family though this. I do not have an employer whose job it is to make sure I get paid. That means I do not have to worry about getting laid off as so many others have. It also means the entire responsibility is on my shoulders. I see the destruction and turmoil around me and I see it closing in. I cannot see around the bend to know if it is going to get better or worse. The pain and suffering around me is real; it is closing in. There is no way out to stop or get off the highway. We have to go forward and it appears to get worse up ahead.

It was a terrifying dream. It is a very stressful reality.

One of the goals that I have is to help nurture the entrepreneurial spirit in my community. Specifically we have a growing technology community that has some thriving startups (as well as some not-yet-thriving startups). I want to help them work together and promote the city / state as a whole.

That is why I have decided to participate in the SpringStage Startup Blog Network. I have signed on as the catalyst for Tennessee Startups.

Check it out, subscribe to the RSS feed, etc. I will be posting about Tennessee-based startups as well as events and topics that are of interest to the startup community.

I have converted. I never thought it would happen. There are some things that I expected would never change. This was one of them. It shocks me that I am about about to write what I am about to write. The thing is, it is a paradigm shift so major that I can’t keep it a secret.

Ok, are you ready for this?

I am actually kind of hesitant to admit this.

Here goes.

“Owning” music is completely absurd except in the rarest of circumstances.

I am now a believer in subscription based music. Over 80% of my music listening is now done via Pandora. Sometime I will listen to the “recommended music” on the Last.FM channel. Other times I will listen to the Drum & Bass Arena Podcast. On a very rare circumstance I will listen to music that I have purchased or downloaded over the years. Usually if I am listening to music files that I have stored on my computer or ipod it is because I want to listen to music on the home stereo while making phone calls. If I could run Pandora on my Apple TV then I might never listen to music I “own”.

This conversion has not been quick. I used to think Pandora was neat, but I didn’t want to count on an internet connection for music. Two things have changed since then:

1. I am not traveling nearly as much. Until there is internet on airplanes (which is coming) travel would be a deal breaker for Pandora.
2. I bought an iPhone and downloaded Last.FM and Pandora apps.

Those two changes set the stage for…

3. Christmas. I dig Christmas music, but most of it sucks. Also, owning Christmas can screw up your iPod 11 months out of the year.

So I decided to create a Pandora station for good Christmas music. I started adding in the good stuff I already owned and then expanded to stuff I wished I had. I temporarily screwed up the channel when I added this really great song with Christina Aguilera and Dr John; the station was filled with shitty pop for about 45 minutes. Then I rated the crap down and it started getting really good. It started playing tracks that I couldn’t find anywhere else (like a McCoy Tyner Christmas song off some out of print compilation). Being able to share the station was an added bonus too.

Then, after Christmas we drove down to Disney World for a (really quick) family vacation. On the way back Sabrina wanted to listen to some Classic Rock. I am not sure if you have ever noticed, but Classic Rock stations on the radio are fucking horrible. I apologize for the profanity, but I can think of no other way to describe these stations. They play the same crap over and over again. The amazing thing isn’t really the crap that they play, but rather the amazing music they don’t play.

So, while Sabrina was in Starbucks grabbing a cup of joe I was able to fire up the Pandora iPhone app. I created a station with The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and The Stones. We were then able to listen to some Rock that didn’t suck while driving 70 mph down the Interstate. (Ok, I will be honest. “95 miles an hour girl, it’s the speed I drive”). We down voted a few songs, but it was tons better than the crap on the radio. The added bonus was that there was no ads and that we never drove out of range of the radio tower (and luckily the Interstate system is painted prety solid with 3G from Atlanta to Nashville).

When I got home I promptly became a paying Pandora customer. It doesn’t really make the service more valuable, but I figure paying for it is the way to try and keep it around. Which gets to the interesting part.

When I was a young lad I used to spend upwards of $100/month on recorded music (most of it at Tower Records on West End). I was able to go in and browse a pretty eclectic selection of music. Then around 2001 I jumped on the Napster Bandwagon and the amount I spent on music plummeted. There were years where I may not have bought any music. Now I might spend $300/year.

It is not that I am cheap; it is that the perceived value has changed (and let’s be honest, the real cost has dropped as much if not more). I would pay for a satellite radio subscription in a heartbeat if I thought it was worth it. I have had XM in quite a few rental cars and it is almost identical to cable TV - plenty of channels playing marginally interesting material. Hardly worth the price. (We also canceled all cable and satellite TV recently).

Pandora on the other hand is a different story. If I had to, and it I knew it would be available everywhere (especially on my Apple TV), I would pay $40/month. The difference in Pandora and Satellite is that I can be in control. I know what I like. I don’t need a DJ to pick out tunes. Sure, a great DJ is great, but most DJs more of a hinderance than a help. (Note: some girl on Vanderbilt 91.1 was ON FIRE the other day. It was Tuesday or Wednesday midday.)

I used to know this really cool opera major who attended Blair School of Music. She had an incredibly well developed set of musical preferences. I will never forget her telling me about some non-music major telling her that she had horrible taste in music. Her response was (rightfully) “who the hell are you?!?”. The great part of the encounter was that her take-away was not that others should not question her taste in music but that no one’s taste in music should be questioned. Taste in music should be celebrated, not criticized.

“Owning” music limits musical taste. You become shackled to your music files. You feel guilty for not listening to them. You feel like there are some you “should” listen to. You have some that you totally regret purchasing. You worry that something might happen to them. You can only copy them to 5 devices. None of that is enjoyable.

Tonight I started with Michael Franti which took me to Bob Marley via Ben Harper and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. I am completely enjoying it. I will keep this station and refine it. I will add it to my collection of kick ass music whose taste I own while I am unencumbered by the files.

Speaking of files. I bought a new laptop a couple of weeks ago. I started writing this post because I was just about to copy over my music files from my old computer and decided that I didn’t want them cluttering up my hard drive (which is a cavernous 320GB). How much are they really worth?

Thank you Pandora. I have seen the light.

Note: After writing this I thought I would check and see if Bob Lefsetz had written anything about this. Turns out he was on a similar page 3 days ago. He even had this beautiful gem of a quote that sums it all up: “The stations come in perfectly. The sound is great. Only the content is bad.”

And then Upside Down by Jack Johnson came through the headphones.

A friend from school (I think all the way back to elementary school) has tagged me in a 25 things about me post on Facebok. Since I try and keep everything consolidated and then propagated, I am writing this on my blog, but will “tag” people on Facebook. I have written one of these “# things about me” posts before, but I don’t think I did a particularly good job. Hopefully this one will be better. Though some of the stuff most people already know, people who I went to school with on Facebook may not know it.

Note: It may be dangerous to do this during a time of reflection and clarity.

1. I am fiercely competitive. This shows itself in odd behaviors that may not appear to be driven by competition.
2. I have been blogging at jaxn.org since 2001 (shortly after 9/11, but I didn’t mention 9/11 when I started, even though I lived in DC).
3. I first started using a laptop in 1998. I have had a laptop ever since. It has changed my life; it gave me a career.
4. I am a partner in an LLC that owns two Plato’s Closet franchises (Cool Springs and Murfreesboro).
5. My first car was a 1986 Prelude that I got when I was 20. I had always wanted a Prelude. It cost $2,000 and had paint chipping off.
6. I am currently driving a 2007 Ford F-150. I am not sure I can go back to driving something smaller. Having a truck is also very handy.
7. I also have a 1969 Volvo p1800 that my Aunt bought used in 1970. It is slowly rusting away before I have the time / money to fix it.
8. I had the opportunity to do a 16 day Outward Bound expedition. I maneuvered a canoe through class 4 rapids, climbed a cliff, hiked for days with a 50lb pack, and more. Afterward, during a one on one debrief with a counselor, she told me “you have a very low tolerance for bull shit”. I will never forget that.
9. I don’t really give a shit if my kids use foul language.
10. I think believing in God makes doing the right thing less noble.
11. I have been arrested. As a juvenile I was arrested for things like graffiti and truancy; as an adult I have been arrested for drag racing and from an unpaid ticket.
12. Nobody can cook fried chicken as well as my mother. Seriously. World’s Best.
13. I changed “good” to “well” in that last sentence b/c I heard my mother correcting me in my head.
14. I correct my kids on grammar all the time. They will hear me in their heads when they take tests.
15. I love sailing and do not do it nearly enough. Hopefully my family will start to enjoy it more.
16. In 1998 or 1999 I created a partnership between Belmont University, Vanderbilt University, and the YWCA to hold Nashville’s first Take Back the Night. The partners did a phenomenal job organizing the event and as far as I know the partnership has lasted ever since.
17. Professor Bill Fletcher at Belmont University then nominated me for a “Do Good Stuff” award for my work on Take Back the Night and a Race Relations Group I ran. I was presented with the Regional Award at the 1999 C.O.O.L. National Conference in Salt Lake City, UT
18. In 1999 I read an article in Utne Reader about how we should drop out of college and start a path of “self education”.
19. I quit college and moved to New Hampshire when I was 22 to organize the 2000 C.O.O.L. National Conference. It was my first salaried job. There was strife over my keynote speaker: Billy “Upski” Wimsat who wrote Bomb the Suburbs and No More Prisons. It turns out Upski also wrote that article in Utne Reader (I didn’t know that until after the conference).
20. I met my wife while I was living in New Hampshire. She was living in Florida. We met in New Orleans.
21. I have more debt than I should.
22. I miss playing music.
23. I failed out of Jazz school at Loyola in New Orleans b/c I was too self-conscious. Looking back, I think I had the chops and talent.
24. Sometimes I feel like I have left a trail of destruction throughout my life.
25. Sometimes I leave things unfinished. (when I wrote this in HTML I thought it was #24. Maybe I finish more than I know.)

I haven’t really been keeping up with news and such for the past week (and it feel great). I have picked up bits and pieces of the stimulus debate.

Here is what it looks like to me:

Obama wants to act big to regain confidence.

House Dems used it as an opportunity to sneak in things they have been wanting to fund. (Reminds me of the Patriot Act and makes me sick).

Republicans are trotting out old ideas (that don’t work) as if they are new ideas. We are not going to fix the economy by giving tax cuts to people who already have excess They are trying to find a new word for “trickle down” but it just doesn’t work.

Also, people talk about this really dumb statistic about how fast the money will get into the economy. This is not a short term problem. There is not a shirt term solution.

We have financial habits in this country that are detrimental to our long term viability. We need to dump a shit ton of money into education and infrastructure to play catch up. We need to get more money available for innovation instead of consolidation.

From what it looks like to me, I am once again proud to cal Jim Cooper my Congressman.

When I bought my new laptop I decided to start from scratch instead of using the Migration Assistant. Some of the basics (email, settings, bookmarks, calendar) were handled by MobileMe (formerly .mac). I have been downloading the applications I use as I need them (I leu of a post about which apps I use, check out my slightly outdated iusethis.com profile).

One of the most interesting parts of the switchover has been noticing that there are some podcasts that I am missing. I have never been a big podcast listener. However, there are apparently some that I miss…

Drum and Bass Arena
Every few weeks the crew at breakbeat.co.uk post an hour long mix from a Drum&Bass DJ. This is great stuff to code to. I used to listen to Bassdrive.com a lot, but with these podcasts I have 20+ hours of mixes in various styles that I have rated. This is by far my favorite podcast. I have a couple of year’s worth of archives on my old laptop that I will move over.

The American Life
I used to listen to this podcast on the plane every week. Now that I am rarely on a plane I have found that this podcast is a great way to wind down at the end of the day. I don’t listen to it every week, but that means that I listen to 2-3 episodes some weeks.

Rachel Maddow Show
We no longer have cable or satellite TV. Instead we have Apple TV and over the air HD. I really like Rachel during the election so now her podcast is my goto political news fix.

So those three are the ones I really wanted back. I can’t remember the 10-15 others I was subscribed to on my old laptop (another reason “subscriber” stats are total bullshit).

I have also subscribed to a few new ones that I am not yet ready to endorse:

• President Obama’s Weekly Address
• Railscasts - A podcast about Ruby on Rails
• Grand Unified Weekly - a science podcast iTunes recommended (and I believe a grand unified theory probably exists)

I know there have to be others that I would really enjoy. I am not really interested in podcasts about people’s opinions (I have enough sources for opinions). What podcasts do you suggest?