Power broker

The NYT just wrote an article about people who are fighting over power outlets in airports and cafes. Although the incremental price of power for any one user is negligible would it make sense to build some hardware/software that airports/cafes can buy that will
1. expand the number of outlets
2. allow them to monitor how much each user is using
3. charge them for use
4. provide the finance management to enable a rebate to the property site operator

Would the money involved to do this be worth it?

Next Generation mobile personal radio

What if you attached a gizmo to your ipod that lets you broadcast the music you are listening to onto any available wifi network. then anyone else on either a laptop or an ipod can tap into your personal radio station to listen to the music. If they like what they are hearing, they can dowload it onto their device and (maybe) pay for the music. That way you have a constant stream of personal music ready for your dabbling and experiencing. It takes the p2p concept and makes it mobile. It also takes music and moves it out of "places", like the home, a club and really makes it everpresent. Obviously some challenges with having it be on a wifi network, since the coverage is limited but maybe that is ok. How could you extend this concept thinking of the ipod as a mobile information collection device. Maybe one business model in lieu of paying for the music is that you have listeners hear and ad - for each ad they hear, they get 1 song, or something like that. An alternate business model.

Poverty Reduction through micro-entrepreneurship

I am generally really interested in micro-business/entrepreneurial approaches to poverty reduction and wealth creating among the poor.

Interesting players here are
www.gdrc.org
www.lighthousewoods.com/micro_lending.html
www.rdiland.org
Heifer International

I think there is a market opportunity to team with entrepreneurial minded, honest, hardworking people around the world to take their ideas, products and services to market. To begin with you could start with a venture fund model, where you diversify risks, but instead of taking 1-2million dollar bites, you take 20-50,000dollar bites, but invest in countries where those sums take you a long way.

Tin Hats?

As everyone is busy putting more and more cellular and local area network transmitters all over the world, as we use our cellphones and wireless laptops more and more, is anyone concerned about the health risk. Would you, for example, wear a cool looking hat if it blocked all radiation from entering your brain. I bet enough people would that you could create a nice little business.

Individual WWAN access through WLAN?

How about if each person with a wireless internet connection can dowload software that will allow them to allow anyone within range to use their wireless network for a small fee. If enough people in large metropolitan areas were to do this could you create enough of a newtork at much lower cost, basically allowing people to connect to the internet on a pay-per-use basis as they are mobile. Extending the thought, could you build a new class of cellular phones that work across this constellation of individual WLANs if they exist, only utilizing the cellular bandwidth if no such connection exists. What would that do to the cost of cellular calls? Could you build a partnership with the telecoms/cable providers so that they get a kick back in such arrangements. Would they then not try to build out such networks on their own?

Consequences of the outsourcing model

As offshoring takes over, the question to ponder is what does this mean for the future. Obviously, as companies get distributed across the world, a new kind of skill set needs to be developed in companies. To sum up, these skills need to be
- Global outlook and open-mindedness. Easier said than done. What this really means is we need more listeners who actively solicit other peoples' opinions no matter where they may be. Also related to this are people comfortable and experienced in working in different business environments. Adaptibility to different working models becomes important too.
- Stong ability to educate best practices. After you break through the culture barrier the next step is to work with your partners to lead them through the ramp up of your business, working method etc. This needs exceptionally good communicators, that can really get others to change the way they work and think.
- Integration. Once you get others doing what you need them to do, you have to integrate them into your company. The integration challenge is to change the way you work because of your interaction working with third parties. Sometimes, to realize the cost/quality benefits of working with third parties, it is better in the long term to standardize or change the way you work instead of insisting your providers create custom programs for you. This was learnt the hard way in the software world, where a profusion of custom processes lead to massive duplication of IT resources across companies as each tried to re-invent a wheel instead of collaborate on the best development of a wheel.

But what about ways to make commerical interest of the outsourcing trend that is separate from the trend itself. Here are some thoughts there
- Helping develop the skills to allow third world countries to compete in the outsourcing wave. This could involve working with private enterprise, government, telecommunications companies, universities and sources of capital to build a successful environment. Look at what NASSCOMM achieved in India.
- Build a market for individual outsourcing. Just like large multinationals are outsourcing en masse, is there a market for individual employees to outsource their jobs. The model here is that the employee is in charge of recruiting, qualifying and ramping up the resource or resources to get the job done. The individual employee makes a margin but passes on some of the cost to the employer. The employee carries on doing some tasks themselves that require them to be in the originator country. Issues could involve discovery of the provider, trust, security, getting employer buy-in, etc.
- Figure out how to use technology to mitigate time-zone problems. How? No idea
- Build an auditing expertise that can qualify and guarantee your process guidelines are being followed among your providers

Birthday approaches

My birthday on the 23rd is causing the usual stress of feeling like something big needs to happen to celebrate the auspicious event. Of course, the usual indecisiveness has gotten us flip flopping between a napa-valley rental where we can invite our friends and a quiet weekend spent together. As we dilly dally the pressure has been growing to book something soon before all the good stuff is gone.

Should we get all our friends together - could be a lot of fun but then you must consider the coordination challenges of getting 8 busy couples to commit to anything on the same weekend, figuring out the logistics, cost... wow. No the hassle may not be worth it. Why can't I just have a secretary to deal with all that?

Or we could do a quiet evening at a nice restaurant or something like that. Although, if it is just us, then why the fancy restaurant. We could just as easily cook a nice meal. But if we do something THAT mellow, then will I wake up on the 24th thinking we never did anything on my birthday???

Who knows how this will all end. The day draws close.