Category: Boston

Adam: Brown/Medros Annual Report. Happy anniversary, kids! I think Adam’s been at B-school too long:

Monday marked the first anniversary of the Brown-Medros merger. Although we’ve cut revenues, scaled back expenses, and moved corporate headquarters, we are actively repositioning for growth and expansion and plan to increase headcount by 50% this year.

Adam: “Yesterday was pretty amazing to have Warren Buffett speaking to a packed Burden Auditorium for a very enjoyable 2 hours.” Some excellent quotes from Buffet, including one that proves he’s the Zen master of investing:

On the Economy– “I don’t know what’s going to happen, so I deal with what is knowable and important. Don’t get distracted by the unknowable and the unimportant.”

Words to live by.

George is back from his California sojourn and already up to some eBaying: a set of Cleveland golf clubs. Alas, he says that it’s been raining too much in the Boston area to try them out. Heh.

Intrepid reporters at the Boston Globe reported from the marathon in what they’re calling a “webcast” format but which is almost certainly really a blog, complete with reverse chronology. The reading is pretty boring as blogs go, with just listings of runners’s progress with no color commentary. But it’s a start. Thanks to Doc Searls for the link.

Thanks in no small part to Dave, Philip Greenspun, everyone’s favorite ex-ars Digita CEO, has a blog. And a modest proposal for education reform.

Our sympathies go to George and Becky on the untimely passing of Becky’s dad.

Dave points out that the northbound lane of the I-93 tunnel and the Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge have opened in downtown Boston. Wow: the prospect of half the noise near the north end being moved underground is just incredible. (I’d normally get this sort of update from George, but he’s still in California. Oops. I almost said “out in California,” as though it were so far away from me now.)

George says that spring has hit big-time in Boston: “It’s nice to be able to open all the windows in the apartment and to walk around in shorts and a t-shirt. Even with the warm weather, there were still sheets of ice floating around the Charles River in Cambridge.”

Both George and Dave seem to be taking credit for bringing warm weather to the East Coast: George from Delaware, Dave from California.

Like many a b-schooler, Adam and Jenny are expecting… maybe two. Congrats to the happy couple.

George notes that he’s been blogging a lot less since his consulting job ended—and then promptly turns around and blogs for the next two days in a row, once with a review of Band of Brothers, once with a discussion of Vinny’s in Somerville. If this is a blogging slump, George, I’d hate to see a blogging boom…

Dave discusses last night’s blogging discussion at Harvard. Donna Wentworth of Copyfight blogged the session. Interesting thoughts about the intersection of blogging and academia:

Derek: A classic is the response paper: one student writes a paper, others respond. It seems to me that the blog is a natural expansion of this tradition. And I think it will enhance a sense of communal learning in the classroom.

Dave Winer: Sounds hokey. [Big laugh.]

Here’s the thing. I blogged many of my business school experiences and thoughts—particularly in the area of technology strategy. I think I was too early and doing stuff that was less than directly relevant, because few of my friends had the slightest idea what I was doing or even that I had a weblog. I think Adam’s generation of b-school students (Adam is the HBS student in Donna’s notes) will be better able to use the tools to inform their discussion because they’ve been exposed to the tools.

The ombudsman of the Boston Globe wrote an interesting column today following up the “astroturf” (or should that be “chemlawn”?) about Bush’s genuine demonstrated leadership that I wrote about a week or so ago. Some interesting words:

Editors at dozens of papers have not been pleased to discover that they ran GOP form letters. Most papers, the Globe among them, want their letters page to reflect authentic local sentiment, homegrown views, not reworked press releases….[Globe Editorial Page Editor Renee Loth:] “Readers have a right to assume that what they read on the letters page is not canned public relations material,” she says. Thus, she has instituted a new policy to confirm original authorship on any letter that could be part of an organized campaign.

The Internet may be part of the problem, but it can also be part of the solution; I’d suggest adding regular online searches of key phrases in any suspect letter, to quickly identify already-published duplicates.

If the number of hits I’m getting from Google on “demonstrating genuine leadership” is any indication, editors are starting to do just that. Of course, Greg pointed out to me in a chat that “over the weekend … the AJC ran the ‘demonstrating genuine leadership’ letter again without realizing.” To be precise, it was Friday, and it was published signed by Robert Rahm of Snellville. Eternal vigilance is the price of an astroturf-free editorial page, I guess.

George: Flat Stanley Travels to Boston. Apparently there’s a whole project for the travels of Flat Stanley. George took their Flat Stanley to some important Boston historical sites. Hey George: how about taking Flat Stanley to the new I-90 extension?

At long last, Boston’s Cardinal Law resigned as Archbishop of Boston, bringing a small amount of closure to the pedophilia scandal that his diocese kicked off. It’s pretty clear that this is too little, too late.

Everyone’s favorite Harvard blogger, Adam, has turned 30. It’s not that bad, Adam, except for… well, I forget what the bad part is. But everything else is really cool.