aboyeji

I think the pricing right now is mostly to encourage behavioural change. A more sustainable model would be subscriptions (e.g pay $10-$15 a month like a P.O Box and get your mail on your way from work instead of delivered to your house without notifications on arrivals etc) and I think once they see enough repeat behaviour they would go there right away.

Still wonder why they don't just encourage that behaviour right away by giving people free for a number of months then encouraging them to pay once trial period is over. Will probably hasten behavioural change process (people like to make maximum use of free whilst building dependency unintentionally).

Anyway, I'm just a lowly idiot. Def don't know as much about their biz as they sure do.

I think its silly to expect he can't keep his own political views on issues without having them muddied up with his work. Javascript is great technology. I couldn't care less what he did in his free time.

There is something to be said for the double standard here.

Pro Prop8 isn't necessary homophobic. The question is about marriage and there are a whole bunch of legitimate reason someone who likes gays might not wish them permission to marry (not that it should be their choice in the first place).

This will really suck for these countries. As someone who lives in an oil producing country, OPEC is a horrible model to follow. Almost all the countries in OPEC are corrupt, inefficient and have dictatorial govts who oppress the majority poor in their countries.

That said, I wonder what impact this will have in other conflict regions that provide lithium or substitutes to lithium like Congo and Afghanistan.

and necessary...

Education is the worlds biggest problems and opportunities right behind healthcare. People risking everything to make the world a better place shouldn't be denigrated like this. Their failure means there is more for someone to learn from.

breaks a few rules... that will happen :)

so cool!

I think the biggest undisputable difference between the Finnish and American systems from the article is their high quality teachers and small engaged classes but I wonder if that is simply a direct result of their having a small population (less than 6mm). I can't see some of these methods (having a master's teach in schools, paying very competitive salaries) scaling well in the American system (more than 60-70mm+). There just aren't those kind of funds available anywhere.

Another thought that comes to mind is if we already know finish teachers are the best, then why don't we use the internet to scale their teaching. It might not be as good as in class teaching but I reckon it would be better than what we have now.

Pretty good. I haven't read anything that deep in years. I do think though that a lot of management issues are simply avoided by having a good team. But given situation where that is not possible, this might work well.

I actually considered this possibility after I resigned. It might sound pretentious but no I wasn't. I was just stuck with a bad board.

Why? First it had a track record for organizational incompetence. I should have known better but few of my predecessors especially the more competent ones had had a good experience in that position. They had all warned me when I began but in my naivete and exuberance I still took the position and assumed I could change everything. Second, after I left, one by one the board turned over and it became very obvious that I had simply been shouldering too much personal responsibility with making sure our organization ran smoothly. I ended up still having to advice the organization from the outside after resigning.

Most importantly, till this day, I still have a good relationship with many of the more competent people in the organization (many of whom were recruited by me). The organization remains moribund however, bound together only by the strings of infrastructure (and personnel) I left behind.

Nonetheless, I think the more useful point I have to admit you make is that when you are joining an existing committee or group of people, there is a bit of compromise that goes on. To that, I say, make sure you check the background of the people you are working with before taking up any position. If they are people with a track record for incompetence or failure (in my case the fact that many of the people I was working with had been staff with this organization for several years should have been a warning signal),don't accept the position. Your peace of mind is way more important than any opportunity to marktime in the name of making a difference.

No disrespect to Mr Jefferson but this management method does not work.

It always results in a pyrrhic victory and resentment from the other people on the table from being made to look incompetent (although the truth is that indeed, they are for not coming to meetings prepared).

Let me explain

My last job was President of a College Newspaper. It was a pretty cool job. I had lots of power and I felt like I was "the one" who would usher this paper into a web 2.0 era. I came up with this grand plan and all. Unfortunately, much of the rest of my board was largely incompetent (or this was what I thought). Also, running the college newspaper wasn't as much of a passion for them as it was for me. They all had better things to do.

Ofcourse the natural resulted. Lots of meeting where we would not make quorom. Discussions without reading the background material however earlier on we had sent out a padded agenda etc. Naturally also, I was the most prepared for most of the meetings. I knew our Byelaws and PnP in and out and ofcourse, I knew the operations and management procedure for the newspaper, start to finish at the back of my hand. I got my way at meetings a lot of the time because no one at the table knew better and the people who knew better knew I was (mostly) right.

Soon enough however, resentment had begun to build. I was "arrogant" and an "asshole". We were always moving "too fast" even when it was clearly the right management decision (often taken 2 weeks after it should have). My VP was beginning to overrule management decisions we had discussed at meetings she had failed to attend for one reason or the other. In short, it was chaos.

I started work in May. By October, I was insane, overworked, single and had not spoken to my family in months. I resigned.

Long story short: If you are banking on the ignorance of your team to succeed in a project by pushing through your agenda. You have already lost. Surround yourself with people smarter than yourself, who will come to meetings as prepared as you are. Watch your project, team, committee soar. Surround yourself with morons who are too slow to keep up with you and you'll always be lagging behind.

You can trust I took this lesson to heart when I started building my own startup.

Wow. Thanks for posting this. There are some amazing quotes from that:

"Money will always flow toward opportunity, and there is an abundance of that in America."

"Commentators today often talk of “great uncertainty.” But think back, for example, to December 6, 1941, October 18, 1987 and September 10, 2001. No matter how serene today may be, tomorrow is always uncertain.Don’t let that reality spook you. Throughout my lifetime, politicians and pundits have constantly moaned about terrifying problems facing America. Yet our citizens now live an astonishing six times better than when I was born. The prophets of doom have overlooked the all-important factor that is certain: Human potential is far from exhausted, and the American system for unleashing that potential – a system that has worked wonders for over two centuries despite frequent interruptions for recessions and even a Civil War – remains alive and effective."

Is it any wonder I want to move to America ASAP?

-Jaded kid languishing in a publicly funded Canadian chill out(University) forced to educate himself because the kids in his crew don't get it.

Not to be negative but he might be doing it to avoid income taxes. So many silicon valley CEO's do that. The real questions are what is compensation + stock options. The article does not provide that information.

Nonetheless, its a good idea to appreciate people's value with good pay.

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. - Francisco D'Acconia