On the bus, we had a guide who explained one story which really spoke to me. He talked about the Valley Cong, a group of six friends that essentially reinvented the sport of rock climbing in the 60′s and 70′s in Yosemite. The thing which struck me about this was that out of this group of six, two of the members have gone on to found the companies Patagonia and The North Face. I love the idea that these six people, through their love of good craft and rock climbing, reinvented how their sport worked.

The founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, has been especially fantastic to listen to since I got back and loaded up a couple of YouTube videos. I liked this short video below, where he speaks about the patience and zen approach required for Fly Fishing.

“What I love about fly fishing is it’s the zen way of fishing. You don’t focus on the end target, which is catching a fish. In fly fishing, you have to look at a river and learn to read it like a rock climber assesses a rock face.”

“It’s not about catching a fish, it about adapting yourself to where you’re worthy of catching a fish. It’s not about you catching the fish. It’s about the fish catching you, really.”

It’s great to apply those lessons he speaks about to the world of business, which is what he himself tries to practice with Patagonia.

Today, I caught this video of his. It’s an interview he gave to an MBA class some time ago. In the first 5 minutes, he simply says that he wants to share something quickly and then answer the questions they have for him, because that’s always more useful to everyone. However, the ‘something’ that he shared in the first 5 minutes was quite profound and so it’s something I’d like to share today.

“Think for a moment if I granted you the right to buy 10% of any one of your classmates. If I gave you an hour to think about it, who would you choose to own 10% of?”

He poses the question above, which I think is an extremely interesting way to essentially think about how you rank various qualities in people. For Buffett, he goes on to speak about three things a friend of his looks for when hiring people. Integrity, intelligence and energy. However, he says, the second two are nothing without the first one. You don’t want people with no integrity who have lots of intelligence and energy!!! He is essentially making the point that based on a whole raft of factors, you’ll choose to take an ownership of the person in your class that portrays the most integrity to you. As he says:

“You’ve all got the ability to do very well. In determining whether your’ll succeed, there’s more to it than intellect and energy.”

And this is the main point he makes. Integrity is something you can learn. It’s something that is changeable. All the facets of people that you admire, you can replicate. Buffet talks about his mentor Benjamin Graham, who when very young made a list of the people he admired and then set out to replicate the things he liked in those people. As Buffett says:

“The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they’re too heavy to be broken.”

Enjoy.

Happy Australia Day!!!

Unfortunately, whilst the endeavors of the scientific fraternity are technologically progressive and experimental, the structures around that research and progression is not. Science is still, largely, carried out today the same ways it was carried out decades ago. A core part of this is the presence of university students who decide to do a PhD on a very specific topic of research, in the hope of discovering something and being published.

Our initial ideas of people who are doing a PhD is one of grandeur and prestige. This is true, in many respects, but also untrue in many others. One key problem facing many PhD students is that of funding. They are ‘paid’ a measly stipend of somewhere in the range of $20-30k a year to toil for much more than full time in a lab running their experiments. This doesn’t sound too bad, until you consider that fairly standard scientific PhD can take up to 4 years.

For most talented scientists, the opportunity cost suffered from turning down plum corporate jobs for 4 years of hard work on less than minimum wage is too hard to refuse. Only the truly dedicated take it on. And then, as if that wasn’t already hard enough, a student can work for 4 years and get close to achieving a break through before their funding is cut and they’re forced to move on from their work. I dare not think of all the great work that is left 90% completed in labs all over the country (indeed, the world) because a student couldn’t secure funding to fully complete their study.

That’s where the Young Centenary Foundation comes in. It’s been formed by a core group of young scientists, philanthropists and media professionals under the age of 35. They plan to raise money to contribute towards PhD students working at the Centenary Institue, so they can finish the work they started. They’re not planning on making them rich…just making the process of completing a PhD a little easier. From their Facebook page.

Most young scientists are unfortunately unable to continue the work they start at Centenary Institute during a PhD because government and university supported post-doctorate funding is hard to come by. For this reason, one of our mid-term goals is to fund a post-doctoral research position (approx. $80,000 per year) for a young scientist working with a disease that affects young people.

$80,000 a year is a lot of money, but a drop in the ocean that is scientific funding. I look forward to supporting the Young Centenary Foundation in the ways that I can this year and encourage you to take a look, too. Congratulations to the crew behind founding it, and to the Centenary Institue itself for driving such a positive change in the way science is conducted here in Australia.

One of the things that Brand mentions a lot in that book is the amount of fear that is generated by people that don’t actually know what they’re talking about. He specifically talks about how the environmental movement has scared people beyond the point where they can talk rationally about important issues, such as Nuclear Power and Genetically Modified Food. See the image below, which is a screenshot from my Kindle highlights.

However, when you ask the experts about these options they’re not the ones that are scared. Nuclear experts the world over have spent lifetimes understanding nuclear power and have a good weighting of the risks involved. They’re not the ones that are concerned about nuclear power. Biologists are the same with regards to GMO foods. The people that know that most, are often the least concerned. Yet we continue to disregard their advice, because more of us share the same fears. We are sheep.

On this one, it outlined how a human made sedimentation pond was designed to slow the pace of the water flowing through the wetland and allow waste to drift out of the flow of the river system. It’s a natural way to capture the stuff that otherwise would add to the poor health of the ecosystem.

Again, I couldn’t help but think about my own life and how this might offer some insight into the world we live in. I thought about but the flow of information. Especially, how information is currently moving towards a more stream based medium. Twitter, Facebook, Yammer and many other services have worked tirelessly to provide users a stream of content that they opt in for.

In the same way as the pond, we need to remain cognizant that not everything in your stream is always going to add to the health of your own ecosystem. What matters most is your attention, and how you direct that. Having a social stream in your life helps with directing and spreading your attention greatly. But every so often, it’s still important to stop every now and then and assess what’s in your pond and how you can make that better. Doing so will add to the health of the overall system you’re a part of, and encourage better flow of information and knowledge.

Anyway, I digress. This quarters essay is by Andrew Charlton, who was the Senior Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister from 2008 to 2010. His time in that role saw him take in the infamous Copenhagen Summit held in 2009. That sets the scene for the essay, as he discusses why the approach of many developed nations to that summit was wrong and how that lead to the relative disappointment that stemmed from the inaction seen from it.

The main contention of essay is that we’ve traditionally argued that we can either choose economic progress or preservation of the planet; but not both. Charlton walks through why this argument is basically flawed and also displays how many organisations; from right to left, continue to base their strategies and focus on winning this argument. Essentially, we will all lose if we continue thinking in this way.

One thing I’ve taken from the essay was the following graph. I had never really engaged with what the 5% carbon emission reduction target that Australia has, except to think that 5% is not much. However, reading through Charlton’s thoughts, it becomes pretty obvious that it’s a huge task, which actually represents a target of reducing our carbon emissions by about 31% in real terms. Our population and energy use will continue to rise in the next 10 years, and so to see a 5% net reduction come into effect, we’ll need to reduce our total reductions by about 31%. Interesting stuff.

If you’re interested in the whole environmental movement and what’s happening, I’d recommend reading the essay. It’s very well balanced and takes a pragmatic approach, which I really like. Stuart Brands Whole Earth Discipline is similar in it’s message. If you can’t get your hands on the essay itself, theres a video with Charlton on SlowTV where he discusses the essay.

I wanted to use this post to discuss the gaming industry a little bit and share some things that have become obvious as Kerry has continued to get better and better at playing. We’ve grown to understand the addiction that can come with playing ‘WoW’ and things like that, but the general punter probably hasn’t considered how much effort is required to push towards the top of the leaderboards in these games. Like anything, it takes discipline, effort and a lot of practice.

1. If he were a chess master…

Imagine the situation. Someone walks up to you in a bar and says “I’m a grand master chess player and I have just won a game that was watched by 150,000 people.”

You’d be pretty impressed. You’d also think immediately that this person you were chatting to was probably fairly intelligent and that they were a disciplined person.

Now consider the difference if someone said “I’m a master level Starcraft/WoW player and I just won a game that was watched by 150,000 people.”

You may not be so impressed. You may think “Phhff…Starcraft? What is that? A computer game? Lame!”

What I’m saying, is there’s not such a difference. Chess is well regarded, Starcraft and computer games in general, perhaps not so much. I believe we’re missing a very big opportunity here to celebrate people with very diverse, digital skill sets with this mindset.

2. More people watch Starcraft replays than many sports replays

Ok, I have no stats to back that up.

But following Kerry a little bit on his journey has opened my eyes to the various communities that exist on the internet to follow these sorts of games. Just last week, Kez had a game of his commentated and featured on this YouTube channel. The replay has so far had 145,327 viewers. That’s more than can sit in the MCG. Wow.

3. The gaming participants self organise themselves

I also used to work with Tom Stiller, a raid leader for a successful WoW guild. Tom was always happy to show me his world and walk me through how they selected and recruited guild members and how they trained and organised their missions. It was nothing short of a 20-30 hour per week job. The guild was about 15-20 people large, all contributing similar amounts of time.

Jane McGonigal spoke at TED about gaming being able to save the world. With people like Kerry and Tom participating all over the world, developing the skills they’re picking up in these digital realms, I have no doubt that she’s right.