Thursday, October 15, 2009
Too crass to pass up - the new Pepsi iPhone app
This one is almost unbelievable - surely it much be a joke! An iPhone app for men that gives them tips on how to "score" with different types of women and then brag about it on Twitter. Ugh.
Here's a great commentary at Jezebel.com
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Three days in Milan for U2 - who were on Fire
I capped off my vacation with 3 days in Milan to catch the U2 concert - and it was well worth extending my stay.
Monday, July 6, 2009
How to spend a perfect week in Rome
I took the July 4th week off and went to Rome with a close friend. I wanted a break, my kids are teenagers and have their own travel plans this summer and my husband is training for the World Kiteboarding championship – perfect set up for a week away and Rome is my favorite city in the world.
If you have never been, find time before you die to explore the eternal city. Its 3000 years of history piled up and intermingled, its extraordinary art and architecture, its role in the creation of today’s world and our modern culture and language, its narrow streets, beautiful rooftops and delicious food. And people who kindly correct halting attempts at Italian.
Rome is perfect – dirty, hot, dusty, fragrant, glorious, inspiring, tiring, sweet and salty, did I say hot?, moving, educating, goosebump making and fills my soul.
Here’s our close to perfect itinerary – and only 20% of what you should see when you go:
Sunday night
Sat on the Spanish steps. Absorbed and relaxed before bed
Monday
St Peter’s Basilica – waited for the service to end (Monday was an important Saint’s day) – got blessed by the Pope from the papal balcony (prayed my suitcase would eventually show up) – remembered to cover shoulders and knees this time so we could get in – teared up in front of Michaelangelo’s Pieta – wandered slowly and in awe throughout the Basilica. (Read Basilica if you’re interested in the history and building.) St Peter’s was the start of my horror of and fascination with the wealth and power of the Papacy.
Colosseum – walked every pathway – marveled at the design
Walked home through Circus Maximus
(Found pharmacy – bought toothbrush etc. – no ETA for suitcase at this point)
Tuesday
Gallery Borghese – started Penny’s guided tour of Rome’s Carrevagios for her friend. Fell in love with Bernini all over again. Started our close examination of ceiling frescos from the 16th century. Visited my favorite Titian – so glad the Italian government didn’t allow the painting to be sold when the family needed money. Saddened by how prevalent rape is in Roman mythology.
Trajan’s Markets – Augustus’ forum – we were shopkeepers for an hour.
Trevi Fountain (kept hand on backpack at all times)
Walked to Palazzo Barberini but the gallery’s closed – walked up and down glorious staircases imagining we are ladies of the court in long gowns leaving an all night ball.
Looked for the carved Barberini bees around the neighbourhood.
(Shop for a dress and underwear – needed a change of clothes – suitcase finally arrives late at night – robbed of all valuables)
Wednesday
Vatican Museum – learn about the connection between ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and the inspiration of Michaelangelo and Bernini. Particularly taken with Roman floor mosaics. Cried in the Sistine Chapel. (Was also infuriated that I had to use my sunglasses b/c thieves took my glasses – learned to put them on to see detail and take them off to see color – weird)
Walked miles to find an Italian iPhone cable.
Pantheon to study the engineering of the roof (so we can better understand the basilica ruins when we see them)
Palazzao Barberini – lay on our backs for a long time in each room studying the ceiling frescoes – almost fell asleep. Found the Caravaggio – another one of my favorites.
Thursday
Morning trip to Tivoli
Hadrian’s Villa – learned the sad story of his lover who committed suicide – yet another example of where money doesn’t buy happiness.
Villa D’Este – how many different fountains can make you draw your breath? Many for me that day.
San Clemente to see the 2500 year old Mithraen temple… buried a floor below a 4th century church… buried a floor below a 12th century church. Damp, dark and fascinating.
Friday
Museum of the Wall on the Appian way. Made friends with the docent Bruno – he speaks no English – my Italian is sparse but we managed a wonderful conversation at the top of the tower about what we were looking at – I longed to run away from life and hike the Appian way to Brindisi
Walked up the Appian way into Rome – my imagination was on fire at this point.
Baths of Caracalla – so very, very big even in ruin
St Maria in Trastevere – admired the mosaics in the apse – we could see the direct connection to the art of the Roman mosaics – listened to the choir for a while
Palazzio Corsini – hunted for the Caravaggio but it was disappointing – found the whole gallery underwhelming – and Villa Farnesina (which was why we had come over here) was closed.
Capitoline Museum – another one of my favorites – particularly loved Marcus Aurelius on his horse and bronze Hercules. Ran into Bruno – turned out he also works in Capitoline. He led us to the air conditioned room to cool off – very sweet. Found our last Caravaggios – one early and one late in his career.
Saturday
Roman Forum and Palantine – started early because it was going to be a scorcher and it was! Took half the day because we left no stone unturned. I got goosebumps standing in the Roman senate – I swear Julius Caesar is still there. Loved the palace ruins on the Palantine.
Museum of Rome to see the room frescoes from the Roman palaces right after seeing the palaces themselves – stunningly beautiful but I was again enraptured and fascinated by the floor mosaics. (Watch the HBO series Rome to see a realistic view of what the palaces were like 2000 years ago).
We ate breakfast early to get a jump on the day because of the heat – retreated for lunch during the worst heat of the day – and ate dinner late.
We rented the audio tours wherever we could – soaking up the information – synchronized our starts so we were in sync together and could compare notes on our impressions
Gelato time late afternoon – needed the cool down and the pickmeup
2 hours of work before dinner - important to stay connected.
And ate marvelous food for every single meal – walk, eat, walk, eat – hopefully it balances out.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Prayer for my Enemy
I saw a fantastic play in New York this weekend which I thoroughly recommend - it's the type of play that keeps you thinking days afterwards.
Prayer for my Enemy is a new play by Craig Lewis. It is the story of a family, controlled by a recovering alcoholic father, whose destiny changes when the son signs up to go to Iraq and a childhood friend re-enters his life. It's a story of a gay young man who can't live his life publicly because he does not want to upset his father, of a drifting childhood friend in love with the young man and in a relationship with his friends sister, and of a mother who walks on egg shells all the time. As the official blurb says:
“Between wars, what is there to do but recall the last and plan for the next?” As the Red Sox fight the Yankees for the AL title, and an enigmatic outsider unspools a tale of filial responsibility, an American family confronts its demons – a son returning from Iraq, a father battling the bottle, and a triangle of unresolved romantic tension. Craig Lucas’s new play is a keenly-layered drama about the preciousness of life and the grace to share common ground – even with those we love the least.
But describing it this way gives you only a frisson of the complexity of the play and the way it unfolds. Delivered in one intense sitting, with no interval, at times the characters play out two scenes talking over one another as the subplots weave in and out. The play stars 6 excellent actors - but Victoria Clark and Jonathan Groff were both stunningly good.
Prayer for my Enemy is playing at the Playwrights Horizon Theatre in New York until December 21.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
From a line of unusual women
Talking with my mother the other day prompts me to write about one of the extraordinary aspects of my family that, if I am not careful, I take for granted. Walk back through the generations with me:
I went up to Cambridge in 1979 to read mathematics. To me it never seemed odd. Maths was the subject that came most easily to me, I didn’t have to study, I really enjoyed it and I was definitely influenced by my father who had read Maths at University College London
I was a rebel even then and wanted to go to a college that was politically active so I chose Kings College (although looking back I think I chose it as much for the music as for the culture). But what I had not understood until I walked into my first lectures was how very few women there were studying Maths – it was less than 5% women in my year and I was the only one in Kings. It certainly felt odd, having come from an all girls boarding school.
But in reality I was just walking in my mother’s and grandmother’s footsteps. My mother went up to Oxford in 1952 to read engineering. She went to Lady Margaret Hall, having been to the same boarding school she subsequently sent us to – Wycombe Abbey. Today, too few women read engineering but in those days no women read engineering. None. It just was not done. My mother was the only one at Oxford and only the second one ever in the history of the university! What was it, I wonder, that prompted her to step out so far from convention? She wasn’t an unconventional person – she’d been raised as a daughter of the empire after all. Her explanation is just that she was good at it and it interested her. My mother is not a pushy person, she doesn’t blow her own horn, and I look back in awe at the nerve it must have taken for her to do that.
And yet…. Her own mother broke rules too. My grandmother studied botany at Cambridge in 1924! She went to Newnham in the days when women were not able to be granted degrees – although they did all the course work and the same exams. But they were women, so they did not merit the degree itself. She followed her botany non-degree with working on blackcurrants at the Lister Institute and subsequently doing original work in Vitamin C before following convention, getting married and going to India with my grandfather.
Cambridge did eventually recognize the women who had been through the degree programs. In 1997 - 70 years after their non-graduation - my grandmother’s great friend and roommate from Newnham, “Aunt” Lucy, went up to Cambridge to finally be granted her degree, as the last living of the four girls who had studied and roomed together.
Role models can shape a child’s perception of what’s possible in a powerful, subconscious way. It didn’t ever occur to me that I couldn’t read Maths at Cambridge or that I couldn’t be a CEO in highly technical industry that had never had a woman CEO. Why would it given the stories I grew up with?
Drunken tongues tell no lies
I was 13 when I learned that alcohol could be a dark and dangerous thing.
To give some context, I grew up around wine and sherry. My parents had a normal 1960s social life of dinner parties and back yard bar-be-ques. Drinks were just a part of their life and we were treated with sherry for Sunday dinner from a very early age. I’ve never thought of alcohol as a forbidden fruit and to this day I love great red wine and definitely enjoy letting my hair down with my friends and family over cards and great conversation.
But there is one drink I cannot tolerate the smell of and that is gin.
My memory of that day is as clear as a bell. My mother and I went to visit my grandmother for lunch – this was a year after my grandfather had died. My grandmother was a brilliant woman, Cambridge educated but frustrated by the roles she had had to play in life as the daughter of a Yorkshire vicar of a good family and a wife of the Raj. Today she would have had a career of her own but in her generation she had not broken out and the years of frustration had built up.
She was lonely, angry and bitter and she had been drinking. Neat gin. Lunch started out seemingly fine but as the meal went on she went on the attack. Vicious, cruel attacks at my mother and her abilities, attacks about my father, his background, and his motivations in marrying my mother. My mother would have been 40 – younger than I am now – facing this diatribe in front of her 13 year old daughter. And not surprisingly she broke down.
I grew up in that moment. I remember standing up, thanking my grandmother for lunch and telling my mother we were leaving. She was scared and crying but I grabbed her hand and she followed me. I walked her to the car and to this day I remember the lunch hitting me on the back of my head as she threw it after me. I was shaking but determined as I told my mother we were leaving. Now. And lamb chops have never had much appeal since.
Of course my grandmother sobered up. She called the house and begged my forgiveness and as a child of course I forgave her but our relationship was never the same again. Trust was broken. And my relationship with my mother was never the same again either. I saw her in a different light and became protective because what I learned in talking with her over the years afterwards was that the verbal abuse was not new. Her mother had been viciously critical her whole life, sober or not and that day was just one in a long line, although it was fueled better than most. My mother’s ability to rise above it and carve a very different life for herself took great courage supported by my father’s strong personality.
To my parents credit they continued to be marvelous with my grandmother. As she aged and became increasingly sad and needy they cared for her, my father made friends with her and she relied on him – a thing that would have been unthinkable 20 years earlier and which I admire him for. And when my grandmother died my mother cried, and some of her tears were tears of relief.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
On the passing of Proposition 8
Guest author: my business partner YY Goka-Lee and her wife, Kate
An Open Letter to Our Friends and Family about Marriage and Prop 8 -- from YY and Kate
We want to send our heartfelt thanks to everyone who voted NO on Proposition 8 in California, who worked on that campaign, who made donations, who talked with your friends and family, who sent emails and reached out to your networks, and who hoped and prayed for a compassionate and just outcome to this incredibly hateful and unfair campaign.
Proposition 8, which aims to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage, has passed in California.
We are jubilant about the election of Barack Obama, and the renewed hope that gives us for the health of our country, our citizens, our economy, and our role in the global community. But at the same time, we have found ourselves unable to really celebrate after the outcome of yesterday's election.
This election season with Proposition 8 has felt so personal for us. During these months, we heard public "debates" which put the existence of our marriage and family on the same spectrum as illegal and abusive activities such as incest. We confronted the cold fact that our fellow citizens across this country have given tens of millions of dollars to deny recognition and legal protections for our family, for no reason that we can fathom. We have read how people believe that our happy family somehow harms them and their family. We saw fear and lies perpetuated in the name of God and religion, in order to justify writing discrimination specifically targeted against us into our state's constitution.
We have been somewhat quiet about this issue throughout the campaign, because we knew we would be preaching to the choir with our friends. But also because it was hard to face the fact that these hateful ideas were being given the real weight of consideration, and even needed to be rebutted... that now they have actually been affirmed by half of the voters in California... and that it may be actually written not only into law -- but into our constitution. Here are some of the things we wish to say to the people behind this vicious campaign:
- Our marriage has no effect whatsoever on anyone's religion. We would challenge you to find one Orthodox Rabbi who was forced to perform an interfaith marriage, or one Catholic Priest who was forced to marry a previously divorced person -- these non-religious marriages are perfectly legal, and no sane person would support banning all marriages that are outside these types of narrow religious definitions. So why target one group of people to ban from marriage, because they fall outside of some subset of religious definitions?
- What you have done is to single-out a group of people to have a basic right ripped from them, by a vote of their fellow citizens. This ugly and un-American proposition flies in the face of our own U.S. Constitution which says that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
- The Prop 8 organizers have lied shamefully to score their hollow victory. They are willing to do this in the name of religion and children, with their God watching them. Shame on you. If the existence of our family somehow threatens your marriage... We wonder about the strength and sincerity of your marriage, not ours.
Fifty years ago, if states had been allowed to hold a popular vote to institutionalize racial segregation or Jim Crow laws, these horrible ideas would also have easily been adopted in many many states. It is unthinkable that that would have be justified in any way. But in fact, that is exactly what has happened here with Proposition 8.
This entire campaign, and now it's winning vote, has made it a socially-acceptable matter of personal opinion whether to hold gays and lesbians and our families as second-class citizens. It says "You and your family are inferior to mine. You do not deserve the same rights, dignity and protection as mine does." And after this ugly campaign, that attitude is now credentialed as the winning side of a reasonable public debate. Giving credibility to these types of views makes it more likely that workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians will be tolerated as "just a difference of personal opinion", that our children will be harassed because some parents "have the right" to teach their kids that our family is inferior to theirs (after all... it's in the constitution), and frighteningly leads to real increases in anti-gay violence.
Because we feared that this proposition would pass, we did get re-married in San Francisco City Hall last Tuesday (one week before the election). It was a joyful occasion to be able to share this ceremony with our 3 beautiful and beloved children. But it was honestly also tinged with mixed feelings... because we are ALREADY married, and have been for over four years. It was fun. But none of our straight friends have had get married multiple times under legal duress, simply to be a married couple.
We are at this moment legally married in California. But one of the first things that we heard at the end of election night, was a Prop 8 campaign organizer announcing that they were now moving onto their "next big priority, which is to annul all the same-sex marriages that took place between June and November". It is depressing to be targeted by anonymous hatred over something as important and personal as our marriage.
If our marriage is not recognized, it has real practical effects on our ability to protect our family and our children's future. We will need put in place many expensive, separate legal documents which give us only a fraction of the rights and protections that every family has. But that is not the main reason we got married. We got married because we believe deeply in the institution of marriage. We will join in the fight to ensure our marriage remains legally valid. We know that significant progress is being made against bigotry and discrimination. We know that equal civil rights will be eventually be extended to gay and lesbian Americans and our families, just like it is to every other American. We ask you to understand and advocate the importance of this issue, not just in terms of marriage, but for what it really is about -- discrimination, civil rights and true equality for ALL Americans, including us and our children. We cannot put this behind us simply as a lost proposition battle about the unpopular idea of gay marriage.
What happened in this broader election across the country will ultimately lift us to a fairer future. With President-elect Obama, it is more clear than ever that Americans are capable of transcending mistakes and bigotry of our past. We ask you to join us to actively work to overturn Prop 8 -- but more importantly, the basic mindset of discrimination in which it is rooted.
With deep appreciation of your love and friendship,
-YY and Kate Goka-Lee
Sunday, October 19, 2008
A love letter to my sister
I went to my sister's 50th birthday party in London last weekend and she asked me to give a short speech about her. This was prompted by her best friend (my sister is too humble for this to be her idea) who was sharing the party and had asked her husband to speak on her behalf.
Unknown to me several very accomplished and famous BBC reporters were in the room - the best friend is a BBC producer - and had I known I would have been much more intimidated. But I didn't and so I gave a good speech - funny, just the right mix of humor and seriousness, and Sue loved it.
I love and admire her so much I decided to share it here:
When Sue asked me to say a few words for her tonight I was a bit at a loss. It took me a while to come up with anything because the problem is, you see, in my memory growing up Susan was always perfect.
She was neat and clean. She was always good. She was smart. She read books. She played nicely. She didn't get into trouble and the parents never had to spank her, unlike me...
You can see from these early photos of her that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth - and in the picture of the two of us going off to church, when I was about 3, I am looking up at her adoringly. It was the admiration a little sister (who was always in trouble) had for her perfect big sister.
But I am relieved to say that when we were teenagers the perfection showed a few cracks. When looking at pictures I did find one of her with a perfectly horrible 1970s haircut - I took pity on her and didn't ask Daddy to print that one out for you. She wasn't good at sports, and I remember camping with her and her getting cross with me that I didn't wake her when a bear came to our tent in the middle of the night and I was too scared to move - so she did get irritated with me sometimes.
But these were minor imperfections and as she exited her teens she was doing well at the whole perfect thing again. Perfect grades, a scholarship to Cambridge, erudite brilliant friends.
And then thankfully she began to rebel and I began to have hope. At 21 Sue went to Turkey to work on a commune much to the parents horror. Luckily they weren't there when she came home to London. I opened the door for her and she threw herself into my arms she was so glad to be home. And she was no longer neat and clean - she stank and was filthy. It was a marvellous thing to see.
But Sue flirted with perfection again in her 20s She lived in London so she was close to home (unlike me who went to California), she had great jobs, spoke several languages, travelled all over the world and the parents were very proud of her when she got the Coopers job. I call this phase the "Our daughter the management consultant" phase.
But I am pleased to say that in her 30s she fell off the wagon bigtime and followed her heart. She fell in love with a man from a distant country, different culture and different faith. Excellent move! I of course rallied to her side. Here was a chance to celebrate with her in her imperfection - and for her to need me!
And I can tell you at her wedding to Paran, Sue never looked more beautiful. As you can see from this picture she was deliriously happy. Everything was marvellous and she was in love - and a few of you here tonight were there with us for her wedding in Malaysia.
But, darn it, she was always the smart one. She planned a strategy to rope the parents back in by having both her children at home in England so the parents were hooked. And then a couple of years ago she sealed the deal by moving her family back to the UK so she can raise perfect, proper English schoolchildren. And they are quite perfect. Unlike my two Americans.
So I give up. Here she is, 50 years old, half way through her life, accomplished, happy and from the point of view of this little sister, still perfect. And I couldn't be more proud of her. Happy Birthday Sue.
Interestingly, several people came up to me afterwards who loved the speech because they were themselves second children and could completely relate to the experience of growing up with an elder sibling who was perfect!
A dangerous spaghetti law being proposed
We're headed into a contentious election in California this time with several propositions on the ballot that would remove rights people have today. Specifically prop 8 which would ban gay marriage and prop 4 which would effectively remove a teens right to an abortion without parental approval.
In the case of prop 4 the proposition is not only something I strongly disagree with, but it is badly written, the ramifications are incredibly complex and our teens who are afraid to tell their parents will be incredibly at risk - and desperate teens do desperate things.
There's a great post This is how bad it would be if Prop 4 passes that diagrams out what the proposition would mean if it was passed into law. Very scary stuff.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Another risky family choice
An excerpt from a talk I gave at the Women's Venture Fund in 2007
"My tolerance and acceptance of risk also shows up in the interface between my personal and professional lives.
I have two children – now 13 and 15 and both taller than me. When my youngest was 4 weeks old I was VP marketing at Synopsys and my boss – who was and is CEO of Synopsys– called me up and asked me to come in and help with a total reorganization of the company. I had not weaned my son by then, but my boss communicated that it was important, although he understood I was on maternity leave.
This was a moment of truth for me. Just how ambitious was I? Well, the answer was very and I took what – at that time – felt like a very risky and non-obvious path. I packed the diaper bag, picked up my son and went to work. Now, remember I said he was not weaned. So, when he got hungry in the middle of an executive staff planning meeting (all men but me of course) I did the most natural thing in the world – I breast fed him. You could have heard a pin drop at the shock in the room. I did this for a week and we got the company reorganized, including me leading a discussion with a hundred of my employees while feeding my son. I definitely broke some kind of glass that day!
If you are pushing your self to the limit to contribute you will face risks every day. It’s part of the fun - and the challenge is how to channel the fear."
A family choice
I've written before that I think balance is a myth - it's impossible to achieve if you are a CEO and a mother - and there are days when you just have to choose.
One day when my son Sebastian was 8 years old - it was the last day of the quarter at Simplex. We had the kind of business where revenue recognition was a major task on the last day of the quarter to make sure we were accounting for our orders correctly and shipping the right ones to make the number, as well as negotiating with customers to get business closed. Typically I would spend the day with my CFO and VP sales intently closing the quarter.
On the day in question, at about noon, I got a phone call from the nurse at Bas's school - and she told me that Bas had fallen off the parallel bars and broken his arm. She'd called the nanny, and then my husband, but neither had answered and so I had to go and get him.
I remember standing with the phone in my hand trying to decide what to do. Should I stay or should I go? I walked into my CFOs office and said "OK you guys have to do this without me. I'll be back as soon as I can".
When I walked into the nurses office Bas was sitting with his arm wrapped with ice and hadn't cried until then. He broke down when he saw me -"Mom, I can't believe you came," he said. "It's the last day of the quarter!"
He'd tell you that story if you asked him. My kids learned early on about quarters and revenue - and they've been great supporting me, so I'm glad I made the decision I did when Bas broke his arm.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin
A must read on why Sarah Palin does not represent most thinking women!
Drill, Drill, Drill
I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.
I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.
But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.
I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.
Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."
Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.
Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.
Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.
Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.
Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Why not meat
Big health news for me today. A year ago I went for a checkup and had high cholesterol, high bloodpressure and was pre-diabetic! Since I am already on coumadin my doctor didn't want to put me on anything else but she was concerned that all metrics were in the wrong direction and gave me a talking to.
Being me I didn't really listen and went on my merry way focusing on work and family, not on me.
But... last November I read a book on the US abatoir practises and as a result stopped eating meat. I ate no meat at all (only fish) for 6 months and will now occasionally eat chicken just to help out my husband who cooks for us.
And then in April this year, motivated by a friend and by wanting to do teambuilding at FirstRain, I started training for the Aquabike. I wanted to get into shape but was not thinking about my metrics.
Imagine my delight and surprise today - cholesterol and glucose are excellent, and blood pressure is a hair under the medication level so I have another 4 months to keep working on bringing it down. I'm thrilled. I know one day I'll be like my mother and line up my pills every morning but not yet!
And the turnaround started when I decided not to eat meat because the way we raise and kill animals here appals me.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Setting the FirstRain strategy
When I was introduced to FirstRain I had only a vague intention of going back to work, and the company was a very different company than it is today. The founding team had struggled through the nuclear winter following the dot com bubble bursting and 9/11 and had not yet been able to get revenue traction.
They had developed a number of products and interesting technologies designed to provide search, smart clipping and BAM to IT departments, but the customer traction was in a service offering to provide competitive intelligence (CI) to marketing teams. There were 12 customers, each with their own customized implementation of a search system combined with hand editing to provide them custom-branded intelligence reports and access to an intelligence portal.
One of the original investors and a board member, Steve Walske (former CEO of Parametric Technology) introduced me to the CEO, Gaurav Rewari, in May 2004 and we spent an exciting day going through all the products that FirstRain had developed to date. At the same time, the company was not sufficiently financed and Gaurav and the board were considering looking for a CEO and new financing.
Well, I was intrigued and, while I knew nothing about Search as a technology yet, they worked the hook into the corner of my mouth successfully during the summer so that by the end of 2004 I came in to run the company even though it was in New York and I lived in California!
However, before I signed up as CEO I called all the customers and systematically asked them what were they using and why – what value did they experience? I had a long list of questions about usage model, pricing, timing, competitors (to FirstRain) etc. But among all the competitive intelligence customers there was one portfolio manager, Valerie Malter at JP Morgan. As I listened to her description of the value she was getting I remember becoming very still – everything she said struck a chord with me. I can still feel the phone on my ear, feel the pen in my hand and hear her voice describing the seed of the strategy to me.
It resonated so clearly because I had spent the better part of the prior 5 years frequently talking with the buy-side, writing earnings scripts and endlessly answering questions, and it was clear that if FirstRain could develop the technology to deliver what Valerie was experiencing to thousands of users then we had a monster opportunity on our hands.
The hard work started once I stepped in as CEO. Fundamentally we needed to end-of-life the non-productive products and decide on the strategy –and it had to be simple and compelling. I believe strongly that for a startup to succeed it needs to be very focused on one large market until you have a world-class, polished product that can then be scaled into adjacent markets.
I added experienced management into the company (more on my strategy here later), moved it to California and within 9 months we were aligned. We knew what parts of the software system had to be written, which analytics IP had to be built to model companies and their investment topics, and we had determined that we were going to transform the company with laser focus on the needs of institutional investors. We also knew we were going to maintain and care for the existing competitive intelligence customers because the future expansion strategy would be back into the Fortune 1000.
But it’s never that simple. While the strategy and execution plan was clear enough, it took persuasion to bring some of the investors along. To my surprise some wanted to ride two horses – to continue to develop the CI market at the same time as developing the new products and strategy. But this would be a mistake. It would defocus us – the kiss of death for a startup. In the end a company has to have clarity - so we set out to only respond to the corporate market and to focus our sales, marketing and R&D all into the buy-side product, while working to bring our VCs along.
The final leg of the new strategy was to raise the capital necessary to build the company we could see was possible. End of 2005 I set out to raise $20M from a top tier VC in Silicon Valley so we’d have the capital and long term support that FirstRain needed – and that is another story.
Resetting my life
For someone who likes to be in control, October 2003 was a slap up the side of the head. I was a GM at Cadence (who had acquired my company Simplex in June 2002) and was working very hard to execute our new front end strategy which was important to maintain control of the place and route market in the long run. Cadence already had an excellent verification product line and so the challenge was to acquire and grow market share in synthesis and test against Synopsys who had a formidable monopoly.
Lots of work, lots of challenge, lots of travel and I was working with a truly terrific management team in my division (including YY who is now with me at FirstRain).
But at the same time I was plagued with headaches. I had had a bad experience in 2000 with what was (at the time) diagnosed as a concussion, but which had damaged my speech for a while and left me with shooting bolts of pain on one side of my head. But I was dead set on fulfilling my obligations to Cadence, putting their synthesis strategy on the map, and (as always drove me), proving I could do it. I lived on Advil.
Until the day I was having a neck adjustment and the world spun. I had vertigo worse than any drunk and lost use of my eye muscles so my eyes were moving wildly in my head. I was so convinced of my toughness that I refused to let the chiropractor call 911 and instead called a friend and asked her to drive me to emergency. Once there, after the usual hour or so wait, I met a doctor who I now truly believe saved my life. Dr Hansen took one look at me and told me I was having a stroke. She admitted me, argued with me that I had to cancel my trip to India in 3 days time (did I say I was dumb?), and set out over the next week to run exhaustive diagnostics and to get me to deal with what was happening.
It turned out this was my third stroke and there were patches of my cerebellum that had been successfully killed off. And while I am very lucky to have recovered 99% of my health, I now know that I have a genetic clotting condition that isn’t going to go away and requires meds, although given my lifestyle at the time it would not have surprised me to be told I had caused the strokes myself!
A week later I went back to work at Cadence (yes, I said I was dumb) but nothing was the same. I had no patience, no tolerance, and I was exhausted. It didn’t take much for me to get the message that it was time I left and paid attention to all the blessings in my life. I retired with no intention to work again and set out to recover my health and enjoy my home and family.
That lasted 9 months – and then it was clear to me I had to find something new to do.
Jersey Boys on Broadway
What a surprise Jersey Boys was! I had read that it was good but I had low expectations because I assumed the music would be corny. Man was I wrong.
I was just 2 when the Four Seasons first big hit came out, and the songs areat least 5 generations of music behind when my 16 year old was born, but this was a show that pulled us in and had us enraptured within 5 minutes.
It has an energy about it that charms and excites at the same time. The story is real, the hard parts are not glossed over, and the music kicks you. We knew all the songs – well – which is a testament to how enduring they are (and probably that I heard them on the radio driving around with my parents as a little girl in the 60s). And Michael Longoria has a dream voice for the part of Frankie Valli.
Definitely recommend it!
Friday, April 4, 2008
Needing to get a job
I graduated from Cambridge with a degree in Maths in 1982. I’d worked hard, partied hard, specialized in quantum field theory and relativity (so I was unemployable) and gotten married. And I needed a job. My husband had another year to go on his PhD and we needed income.
So I went over to career counseling hoping for an answer. I’d given up on being a pilot, didn’t want to be an aeronautical engineer (I hated being dirty during my internship) and so I was looking for ideas.
Remember this was 1982, England and I was a girl.
The advice I got was that I could be a bank teller or a teacher – that not much else would be open to me. Many of my friends with liberal arts degrees were going into the finance industry in the City of London so that didn’t sound like somewhere I should take my math ability and I knew I didn’t have the patience to be a teacher.
Back to the drawing board and asking family for advice. And what came out of that was the idea that maybe I could learn how to be a software engineer – it couldn’t be that hard although I had no computer science during my degree. I was definitely on the cerebral, impractical side of maths in those days.
Then Cambridge didn’t have the thicket of high tech companies is has today and so my choices were limited. I applied for jobs at Philips and Texas Instruments, both about an hour away, and got through to interview at TI. My clearest memory was being interviewed by my potential boss, Graham Heatherington, and confessing that I had never written any code in my life. His response was refreshing “I think if you can solve partial differential equations you can learn how to program – and we’ll teach you”.
Well they did – but they had to teach me how to type first!
I stayed at TI for 18 happy months. But when my husband completed his dissertation I wanted to go where the action was and where it would not matter as much that I was female as it did in England then. We both had US passports (for different reasons), Bret applied for and got a job in Silicon Valley (I was the second fiddle professionally in those days so he went and got a job in advance), we put the cat in a box, packed up our belongings and got on a plane to California.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The need for GM experience
I was 30 when I began to attract headhunters. And pregnant when I got the best piece of advice.
Bill Unger, then a partner at Mayfield, came from a recruiting background and was always scouting new talent. A friend had told him about me and, when invited, I responded to an invitation to breakfast at Hobees (a popular Silicon Valley watering hole).
It started badly. Nervous, and 5 months pregnant, I had chosen heels to try to look more professional than my extended belly was allowing. Dumb decision. I fell as we walked to the table as a slick heel slipped out from under me on the wood floor. Great way to start.
Through the course of breakfast I shared my ambition to be a CEO. At the time, there was no way I was ready but Bill didn’t laugh. Instead he went into a quiz and then analysis of my experience to date. And then gave me his opinion on my missing link.
His belief was that it would be hard for someone like me – not an engineer any longer, not an inventor, just a marketing director – to be recruited as a CEO without P&L experience. I didn’t know how to read a P&L or a balance sheet and I had never managed anything with revenue responsibility. I was naïve, green, clueless when it came to true business management.
I took his advice seriously – and am grateful that my armadillo friend, who was known for being blunt, was blunt with me on my glaring lack of experience. And I set out to fix it at the first opportunity I got 2 years later.
Flight
I read endlessly about the RAF flyers of the Second World War. As a teenager my heroes were Douglas Bader, Guy Gibson and Leonard Cheshire and I’d build models of WWII aircraft to stare at and dream of excitement and challenge.
Not surprising then that I wanted to learn to fly and I persuaded my parents to send me on a summer course to learn how to glide. In the middle of nowhere at the Midland Gliding Club in Shropshire, 16 years old, I found myself (as was to become the pattern of my life until recently) one of the only women, and the youngest, in a group of adults.
This was the beginning of true freedom for me. Being allowed to go alone (a trust I pass on to my 16 year old daughter) and the joy and nothing short of spiritual freedom of flying solo.
The Long Mynd is a high ridge running North to South along the border of England and Wales. It’s barren terrain, with wandering sheep, heather and the essential ingredient – plenty of wind. The wind blows, endlessly, from the West up and over the ridge. Gliders were launched in one of two ways: with a winch which was winched in a cable at high speeds over a drum – literally dragging the glider into the air to about 1000 ft, or alternatively bungee launching off the ridge when there was high wind. This meant perching the glider on the edge of the ridge attached to a Y shaped bungee chord. A couple of people would take each end of the Y and run down the ridge fast and hard, until there was enough tension that the pilot (me with sweating palms) would release the brakes, plunge down the side of the ridge gaining speed and lift - and then swoop off the side of the ridge and start climbing along its face.
Both were exhilarating. Both required you to find a way to climb fast because you were too low. No room for mistakes. And then once in the air, the challenge was to stay up, find ridge lift or thermals, stay focused on technique and not get mesmerized by the experience of flying.
I kept gliding until college. I persuaded my school to allow me to skip chapel on Sundays and bike to Booker gliding club – teachers from that time still remember the shocking decision to let me do it. I’d take off alone, spend all day at the airfield with people I hardly knew, determined to fly as much as possible. And I had my scrapes. Landing in fields, brushing trees and hedges without enough height to land. And importantly for the future, learning to conquer the shakes of adrenalin.
I stopped when I went to Cambridge. Time, dating, money; then ambition and family - all got in the way. But the hook for risk and independence was set.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Online evidence of media bias?
Sent to me by one of my sales team - interesting evidence of the reporting bias between the two candidates:
If you do a Google search of various online news organizations in conjunction with "obama" and "hillary" this is what you get in terms of results:
msnbc.com: Obama - 1,030,000 ; Hillary - 599,000.
cnn.com : Obama - 395,000; Hillary- 385,000
foxnews.com: Obama - 362,000; Hillary - 312,000
abcnews.com: Obama - 220,000; Hillary - 113,000
Why is MSNBC's coverage of Obama twice that of Hillary's? If you listen to the talking heads on that channel, Chris Matthews, Keith Oberman, etc, the answer is clear, they have a very clear preference for Obama.
Clearly individuals have a right to their own choice. But as journalists, these stats show a lacking of journalistic integrity. As my sales exec Miguel says:
Remember all the hub-bub about NewsCorp and how they manipulate their coverage to project specific messages to the public, and how this had a measurable effect on the public? Watch to documentary "Out Foxed" and pay particular attention to the survey results where they compare watchers of media outlets and asked them questions like "Was Iraq and Saddam Hussein involved in the WTC Attacks?" and the overwhelming number of foxnews watchers answered yes vs. their counterparts.
Will MSNBC become the foxnews of the democratic era? Bias has no place in media, however profitable that may be to the business. If the coverage of the primary is an indication of things to come, we could soon have a scary situation where the pigs look like men, and the men, pigs (ref Animal Farm).
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Maureen Dowd on Hillary
Food for thought on this op ed from the New York Times. I admire Hillary, but I also admire Barack, and I don't like the direction for her campaign. I want her to win - but by keeping on the high ground. We need that in our leaders. And so far Barack has run a superb campaign so he can clearly manage.
On “Nightline” last week, Hillary once more wallowed in gender inequities, asserting that it’s harder for her to run than her opponent — a black man with an exotic name that most Americans hadn’t even heard a year ago. “Every so often I just wish that it were a little more of an even playing field,” she said, “but, you know, I play on whatever field is out there.”
Is that how she would deal with dictators, by playing the refs and going before the U.N. to demand: “How come you’re not asking Ahmadinejad these questions first?” Tangled in her own victimhood, she snipped to Cynthia McFadden that Obama had written in his book that “he’s a blank screen and people of widely different views project what they want to believe onto him.” She said voters were projecting their hopes onto that blank screen even though “he just hasn’t been around long enough.”
In the next breath, asked about the women who feel sorry for her, she said: “I think a lot of women project their own feelings and their lives on to me, and they see how hard this is. It’s hard. It’s hard being a woman out there.” So projection is bad with Obama but good with her?
and
Hillary keeps trying to dismiss Obama’s appeal as emotional, something that can be overcome with enough mental discipline. But behind that ethereal presence he’s a wonky lawyer, just like Hillary. He reads The Times and Philip Roth and talks about the fine points of Medicare Part B in a way W. never could have when he first ran for president. (Or now.)
Hillary’s visceral attacks will not work. And the Republicans’ visceral attacks on the Obamas’ patriotism, and their usual attempt to make the Democrat seem foreign (Hussein, Hussein, Hussein!), may not have the same traction.
The president took the country to war on his gut, exploited our fears and played the patriotism card to advance his political agenda.
This time, Americans may prefer cerebral arguments to visceral ones. What a refreshing change reality would be.
Friday, February 22, 2008
The Hillary I admire
I've never been involved in an election before - I've always been too busy. But this time the stakes are so high and our country so desperately needs strong, smart, democratic leadership that I have spent the time to meet and follow both Hillary and Barack. They are both terrific and I will support whichever one gets the nomination and do what I can to ensure they get a mandate from the voting public.
But this clip of Hillary shows the Hillary I admire and respect - and it will move you.
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/tonight
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Is the web for girls more than boys?
As the mother of two (fairly nerdy) teenagers - one boy and one girl - I watch first hand the differences in the way they use computing. Were I to net it out I'd say my daughter uses it for art and communication, my son uses it to game.
Today's New York Times has an insightful article Sorry Boys, This is Our Domain on what's going on underneath as we see girls using the web disproportionately more than boys. The statistics are:
a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).
Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.
And so to the reasons. It's clearly not because girls are more likely to be interested in computing. I sit on the board of the non-profit Anita Borg Institute and we are commited to changing the trend the NYT article quotes that
In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.
Scholars who study computer science say there are several reasons for the dearth of women: introductory courses are often uninspiring; it is difficult to shake existing stereotypes about men excelling in the sciences; and there are few female role models.
But the speculation that follows in the article that
“Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
From a young age they learn that they are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves. Historically, girls and women have been expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts.
makes some sense to me, but seems simplistic. Girls are very social creatures who thrive on communication with their friends. The internet (and text messaging) make it easy to be connected to friends 24 hours a day - and that is the source of the prolific interaction with the web. It enables creative discussion and expression at a level that has simply not been available before - and without teachers giving preference to the boys in the room - so that girls can be unlimited.
Now we have to find a way to change our education systems and our technology companies to make them more attractive to these girls coming up through high school or they won't make it into the workplace as computer scientists - and we need them.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
It's always Spring Awakening
I am forced to stay alone in New York this weekend. Forced by a flu that won't quit (it's been 6 weeks now) and doctor's orders not to fly. So apart from a little harmless clothes shopping I decided my indulgence would be to go and see Spring Awakening again.
I like Spring Awakening in the way I liked the original Rocky Horror Picture Show - rule breaking with fantastic music - and that was a long time ago. I saw Rocky Horror seven times on the King's Road in London back in 1976-7. This was long before it was famous, long before the movie was made. The production was in the King's Road Theatre which was scheduled for demolition and the cast spent as much time on scaffolding on the sides of the theatre as they did on stage. Their groundbreaking performance rocked convention, broke rules and led to the movie legend.
I see the same potential in Spring Awakening. As the New York Times says "It is also exhilarating. When was the last time you felt a frisson of surprise and excitement at something that happened in a new musical? For that matter, when was the last time something new happened in a new musical?"
Or as New York magazine says "The new indie-rock treatment of Frank Wedekind’s play about hormonal adolescents has just about everything going for it. The score is exciting, the performers gifted and attractive, and there’s every reason to hope the show will be around long enough that casting directors will need replacements when early middle age claims this bunch. "
Like Rocky Horror, Spring Awakening deals with the subject matter about sexual awakening - this time in teens - and is again breaking rules both in staging, music and it's treatment of the many faces of the emergence of teen sexuality. It combines the story from the frequently banned 1891 play with vibrant, haunting rock music, sung with total conviction and passion by the cast. In contrast to Rocky Horror, this time I see the subject matter through adult eyes, but the first time I saw the new musical I had two 15 year olds with me so I got both impressions - adult and teenager at the same time which was fascinating.
If you like to be moved, transported back to your youth and rocked at the same time this is the musical to see.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Othello at the Donmar
note to my readers - copied across when I decided to bring up a personal blog...
Sitting at my mother's kitchen table on a stormy English night...
I had the privilege of going to two very small theatres in the the last week. First was to see Othello at the Donmar Warehouse - starring Ewan McGregor as Iago and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Othello - and then a few days later to see Honk at the Watermill. Both theatres seat about 200 people and in each case we were seated within 4 feet of the stage. When watching a production in such a small venue you see the inner workings of all aspects of the production.
You are close enough to see every bead of sweat, every small facial expression. Close enough to see the machinery behind the stage changes (even if it is only a character picking up a glove while running off the stage). It is quite unlike the large London or Broadway productions where you are struck by the machinery of the production - where hundreds of people are organizing in the background instead of a few players and musicians plying their craft at arms reach.
Othello was stunningly good. Ewan McGregor was brilliant and chilling as Iago and his evil manipulation would fit in well at the more political large companies. Chiwetel Ejiofor was heartbreaking. It's the first time I've had tears pouring down my face watching the death scene.
Fashion - should it affect the CEO?
Excellent write up in the WSJ today - Women in Power: Finding Balance In the Wardrobe - it discusses the challenge a female politician or executive faces in picking a wardrobe. "According to unwritten rules, their appearance at work should be attractive but not alluring, feminine but not girly, strong but not severe. In both politics and the executive suite, they face hazier, harder-to-meet style standards than men. "
We've certainly seen this in the silly coverage of what Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton wear, and this is a conversation I have with myself almost every weekday morning. I check my calendar first, see if I have any outside meetings, or any chance of one being scheduled, and then I decide what to wear based on practicality and tone.
If I'm travelling it's St John knits because the clothes don't crush (well, maybe it's St John almost every day if I think about it). But, if there are no outside commitments I'll be in jeans. I just have to to hope there are no judgemental reporters around (joke).
Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll is fantastic
I had the privilege of going to see Tom Stoppard's new play Rock 'n' Roll on Broadway last week and it was fantastic. I have been a Tom Stoppard fan since I saw Jumpers (in London with the original cast in 1972) and then studied Rosencrantz & Guidenstern Are Dead, so when his plays come anywhere nearby (even if it's London) I always try to go.
Well Rock 'n' Roll is up there as one of his best. As the official web site says:
This extraordinary theatrical event, from four-time Tony Award® winner Tom Stoppard (The Coast of Utopia), is now on Broadway following a record-breaking run in London's West End. It's August 1968, and Russian tanks are rolling in to Prague... Jan, the Czech student, lives for rock music, Max, the English professor, lives for Communism, and Esme, the flower child, is high. By 1990, the tanks are rolling out, the Stones are rolling in and idealism has hit the wall. Stoppard's sweeping and passionate play spans two countries, three generations and 22 turbulent years, at the end of which, love remains — and so does rock 'n' roll.
The professor, played by the powerful Brian Cox, is one of the last English communists and sticks with his dogma long after communism's day in the UK has past. His student, played brilliantly by Rufus Sewell, goes back to Prague to try to help his country and is persecuted. The play is, being Stoppard, clever, heartbreaking, hopeful and very funny, all at the same time.
But what I found delightful was the way he uses rock and roll to punctuate the story, and uses Jan's records as an allegory for what Jan is going through in his life. Jan's experience is thought provoking, very sad and painful, and yet ultimately so hopeful.
To cap my evening off, Bruce Springsteen was seated in front of us (I went with a friend), with his wife. Cool. And yes, I was.
