Author Archives: Elia Freedman

Cotton Head

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My brain is blank this morning, a little hungover maybe. It feels like it is stuffed with cotton sometime during the night. Waking is hard work today.

Most of all, I am way off my routine, off my rhythm, after this crazy week of travel. I started in Oregon a week ago Friday, flew through Chicago on my way to Philadelphia. Spent a day in Phillie site-seeing before heading to southern New Jersey — Cherry Hill — for a wedding. On Monday I hopped a plain for Ohio — through Atlanta — and spent a couple of days with my dad, stepmom and Grandmother (she turned 94 last Tuesday).

On Wednesday it was back to Philadelphia where I spent Thursday at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference, checking out the show floor, listening in on a few sessions and getting a sense for the state of technology in math education after many years away.

On Friday I jumped on an Amtrak train to New York City. I had some very fruitful meetings and walked 6.5 miles around Manhattan. Saturday I flew home. I’d say I covered close to 10,000 miles this week. Glad I don’t do it often.

Yesterday my brain was stuffed up, too. I took a little nap mid-morning and then cleared things up with a 20 mile bike ride and a beautiful evening on the Columbia River with my wife and kids. I thought maybe I’d be ready to go today but here I sit with my brain still stuffed to the rafters, trying to get my rhythm back. One foot in front of the other, that is all I can do for now.

Innovation Lacking on Math Show Floor

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I spent yesterday on the show floor at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), a K-12 organization aimed at helping advance the teaching of mathematics. What was particularly stunning was the lack of innovation technologically happening there.

The show floor was much smaller than in years past. The floor used to be huge, taking at least three hours to walk the entire thing. This year I walked slowly and did it all in just over an hour. I heard attendance was way down, too. Back when I had a booth at the show, six or seven years ago, the attendance usually hovered around 15,000.

The other trend was that there were fewer 10×10 booths than I remember, the smallest size available. This might be because of consolidation in the industry or companies like Casio trying to make a bigger splash. TI’s booth and Key Curriculum Press, two of the bigger players in math education, was tiny in comparison to years’ past.

Back to technology. Most of it was “old world” stuff. Calculators were dominant as always. (And here I have to give TI credit as their new nSpire calculator is quite nice to look at and their desktop software, albeit complex, is a step forward.) There was the usual assortment of desktop software: Geometer’s Sketchpad, Calculus in Motion. And a couple of new companies on the scene, Desmos.com who offers a free online grapher product and got some press a year ago because of Techcrunch demo days, and another company, FluidMath, that integrated graphing and equations with a hand-writing recognition engine.

What I didn’t see was something that could upset the status quo. The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder if that thing would even show up to an NCTM. My guess is the thing that upsets the status quo is going to come from the outside of education, not happen from the establishment.

People Pivot, Too

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My dad is a piano technician in Northeast Ohio. This morning he was telling me a story about a guy he went to piano technicians school with who never actually went into the business of tuning pianos. Instead he went into the family business — home remodeling.

His family business was very specialized, focused primarily on repair of tub and counter tops, especially Formica and polyester substances. Apparently he is very good at it. Well, after all these years he decided he wanted to get back into the technician business. He went out with my dad and apparently he has no ear for tuning at all. Really bad.

So they got to talking and it turns out that his skill set is perfect for a very specialized piano technician skill in high demand: piano refinishing. The high gloss coating on a piano is made of polyesters and this guy’s background in mixing, blending, etc., is perfect for this.

This was very interesting to me. We always talk about businesses pivoting, where it focuses on a chunk of its expertise and builds that into a full-scale business. Here’s an example of a people pivot.

Missing A Day Feels Like Missing a Lifetime

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A nurse who works with dying patients wrote that her patient’s biggest regrets are as follows:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Paul Graham turned the list upside down:

1. Don’t ignore your dreams
2. Don’t work too much
3. Say what you think
4. Cultivate friendships
5. Be happy

I’m traveling this week and especially feel Paul’s list acutely. I miss my wife and girls too much. They are some of my closest friends. Every day I am away from my daughters feels like a day I will never get back. I find that they are a constant reminder of Paul’s list and can’t wait to see them again on Saturday.

Fight The Power or Go With the Flow?

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Almost a month ago, Marco Arment was writing about piracy of movies and music, but I thought he was really making a much broader point:

We often try to fight problems by yelling at them instead of accepting the reality of what people do, from controversial national legislation to passive-aggressive office signs. Such efforts usually fail, often with a lot of collateral damage, much like Prohibition and the ongoing “war” on “drugs”. And, more recently (and with much less human damage), media piracy.

It is a well-written piece and deserves a full read. His point applies to so many things in life.

Given that, there is a fine line between fighting the status quo and going with the flow. Some battles are worth fighting. For instance, I agree that the fight with Congress over the way campaigns are financed, which in essence leads to favor-politics that distort what needs to be done for the best of society, is worth it. Putting a garbage can by the door in the men’s room, as per Marco’s example? Not worth the fight. Just move the can.

Obviously Hollywood believes fighting piracy is worth the fight. Can they win? Probably not. It’s a gorilla war that Hollywood fights with bazookas and tanks. So the best approach is to change the way it sells products, which the media companies will do eventually when they realize they can’t win the old way.

Many of the issues that surround Hollywood have surrounded software, too. Apps used to cost $20-$50 for mobile platforms. Some of our powerOne products demanded over $100 per copy. Now an expensive app is $5. We could have fought this trend, still charging $10, $20, $40 for our apps. Or we could go with the flow and experiment with free versions, versions at different price points, in app purchase, subscriptions and the like. We chose the latter. It doesn’t make sense to fight this trend. It makes sense to figure out how to use it to my advantage, a lesson Hollywood would heed well.