Having been in the technology industry for the last 25 years, I’ve felt the need to be constantly learning just to stay current. When I was a developer, it was programming languages: FORTRAN, Pascal, C, Smalltalk, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby – I could never quite keep up. Over the last few years, I’ve experienced…
Archive | predictions
Do underdogs boost March Madness ratings?
Do you have Florida winning the NCAA tournament? Here in the U.S. we are in the middle of March Madness. Even if you’re not a college basketball fan, you can’t avoid the phenomena: stories of Cinderellas, upsets, and comebacks dominate the media. The NCAA basketball tournament has entered the national consciousness to such a degree…
The Hot Hand Fallacy
In sports and in gambling there is a mistaken belief that a player who is performing better than normal will continue to play well, even if the odds suggest otherwise. This belief is especially strong in basketball. Players who have made several shots in a row are considered to have a “hot hand” and encouraged…
Home Field Advantage
Most sports fans know home teams have an advantage over visiting teams even though they have never seen any hard facts which prove it. While fans believe in the home field advantage, they hotly debate the reason for its existence. Over the years, I’ve heard a variety of explanations from not having to travel, to…
Timing a Ticket
When is the best time to buy an airplane ticket? As a frequent traveler, experience has taught me that the best time to buy a US domestic ticket is mid-week. Flights always seem to be more expensive when purchased on the weekend. I tend to book flights on Tuesdays. A Wall Street Journal article seemingly supports my intuition….
Churchill Club’s Top 10 Tech Trends, 2011 edition
Even though I’m not normally a fan of prognostication, last week I attended the Churchill Club’s 13th annual Top 10 Tech Trends event due to its unusual format. Curt Carlson, President and CEO of SRI International, offered ten predictions that will most impact technology over the next three years. The validity of the trends were…
Grading My 2010 Resolutions
How did I do with my tongue-in-cheek 2010 New Year’s resolutions? Here’s a report card: 10. Less BlackBerry reading; more blackberry eating Fail. I read more BlackBerry emails than I ate blackberries. 9. Avoid 2010 meaning that I traveled to 20 cities on 10 airlines Partial credit. 16 cities on 6 airlines. 8. Leverage twitter…
Speedlinking, Jan 2010
Speedlinking on management styles and 2010 predictions: New research from The Work Foundation suggests that outstanding performance comes from people-centric leadership rather than target-driven, micro-management. The authors observe that “outstanding leaders are focused on performance but they see people as the means of achieving great performance and themselves as enablers. They don’t seek out the limelight for…
2010 New Year’s Resolutions
I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s resolutions as the once-per-year goal settings usually come with unrealistic targets. Without reasonable goals, resolutions take a back seat to day-to-day realities. In fact, a recent Marist poll shows half of Americans make resolutions but only about 1/3 of those who do keep them for longer…
Halloween Metrics
Halloween statistics can be scary. According to a survey of 8,526 people conducted by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation (NRF), consumers spent an average of $56.31 on Halloween in 2009, down 15% from $66.54 last year. The survey blames the economy, citing that nearly a third of consumers said the economy negatively impacted their…