Excerpt:

“My training has been in doing things that take a long time … I’m a long term kind of person. I have been trained to think in units of time that are measured in several years, because what I’ve chosen to do with my life. Even a small thing takes a few years. To do anything of magnitude takes at least five, more likely seven or eight. So, rightfully or wrongfully, that’s how I think.”

Paul Graham’s “Writing and Speaking” essay hits home my sentiments on writers versus speakers.

Favorite line:

“Being a really good speaker is not merely orthogonal to having good ideas, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction.”

“Shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.”

I’m even more OK with this after watching her TED talk (below), and it definitely sums up the people I consider true artists and innovators.

In an Internet celebrity culture and social emphasis on being out in front, it’s great to see validation in the importance of the introvert.

Excerpt:

Solitude has long been associated with creativity and transcendence. “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible,” Picasso said. A central narrative of many religions is the seeker — Moses, Jesus, Buddha — who goes off by himself and brings profound insights back to the community.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak:

“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

Favorite quotes:

“The strategy for the Facebook page ultimately was to mobilize public support for the cause. This wasn’t going to be too different from using the ‘sales tunnel’ approach that I had learned at school. The first phase was to convince people to join the page and read its posts. The second was to convince them to start interacting with the content by ‘liking’ and ‘commenting’ on it. The third was to get them to participate in the page’s online campaigns and to contribute to its content themselves. The fourth and final phase would occur when people decided to take the activism onto the street. This was my ultimate aspiration.”

“The rapid pace of events drove home one of the key strategies I learned from the revolution: to achieve your vision, you need friends and communication channels more than you need plans. The world moves too fast for even the best-laid plans to hold up.”

“I took part in a great cause and I must pay the price, I reassured myself. It does not matter if you die at thirty or forty or even seventy – what matters is what you did with your life.”

Ghonim’s TED Talk:

Received my copies of Bruce Schneier’s Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive for the creative concept work I did related to the book’s cover.

Story behind how it transpired here and on Bruce’s blog here.

Thanks to Lewis Shepherd (Director of Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments), Gunnar Hellekson (Red Hat Public Sector Chief Technology Strategist) and Hart Rossman (SAIC CTO Cyber Security) for introducing me to Schneier’s work.

Final cover:

Kingpin is a great primer on how criminals are using the Internet to collaborate in the electronic black market, especially credit card fraud, and how the Secret Service and FBI are fighting back. The story of hacker Max Ray Vision reads like a geek thriller but is fairly accessible to anyone interested in a great crime story.

Hope this becomes a movie.

Read the related Wired article or watch Poulsen discuss Kingpin at RSA Conference 2011:

In today’s world, we’re so focused on instant gratification and what’s up or down. After reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, what was so profound about his legacy was his ability to not get caught up in the daily hype. With both Apple and Pixar, he patiently let both grow in their own sustained ways. His style was simple and consistent.

It’s so easy to get distracted by the noise of the moment and get frustrated about the seemingly tedious work you’re doing today, building towards tomorrow’s great achievement. People may misunderstand you, think you’re contrarian or crazy, but, remember, “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

From the eulogy:

He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.

His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”

Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.

He was willing to be misunderstood.

“Today, we are the creators. We each have our own unique skills and talents to contribute to creating the kingdom of god. We serve god best when we do what we love for the greatest cause we can imagine. What the people in this room do is spiritual. It is profound. We are the leaders of this new religion. We have faith that people connected can create a new world. Each one of use is a creator, but together, we are the Creator.”

The documentary’s premise is based on a Nepali surgeon who is visiting to provide cataract surgery to 1,000 North Koreans. At the end, the praise each patient gives to Kim Jong-il after they realize they can now see is heartbreaking.