Contemplating A Blogging Break
Nov 4 2009

I’m seriously considering a very long blogging break while I figure out what I want to be when I grow up.  Or shall I say what I want this blog to be as it grows up.  The posts have been kind of random lately…a bit out of focus like I feel these days.

I was having lunch with one of my advisers today who always pumps me up.   He’s almost 70 years old and calls himself a recycled dad because he has grand kids older than his youngest kids.  I like him a lot because he’s used to working with strong, smart, professional women.  In the company he founded some 30 years ago when it wasn’t cool to hire women in senior positions, he had the most on his team.  He always jokes that he knows that women are the ones who get things done.  I think he grew up with 4 sisters.  He told me no matter what happens that I should be confident in 3 things about myself.  I told him I’ll put those 3 things on a note on the mirror or at least repeat them to myself.  It’s nice to have people believe in you!  He also said something like don’t worry about how things didn’t work out, just change your perspective and move forward.

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m interested in the bioscience/health care field, and I’m figuring out how I can use my current job to find opportunities to learn more about those industries.  I’m also enjoying my time singing and learning more about singing.  I wonder if I can combine some sort of music with biotech and create an interesting business…

So while I make some decisions, I’ll leave you with a post by Seth Godin and some song lyrics by Bob Dylan that my friend Robb Lanum has been sending out the last several weeks on our email club.  I know Robb via his cousin Jay, who is married to Sandy (link to her photo site).   Oh the things that get written on that email club…I hope never see the light of day.  At least I’m never planning to run for political office!  I never listened to Bob Dylan growing up and don’t really know much about him but Robb has been randomly sending out these lyrics and they have been strangely poignant.

I hope you all will still be here when I get back.

Make a decision – by Seth Godin

It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.

In fact, make several. Make more decisions could be your three word mantra.

No decision is a decision as well, the decision not to decide. Not deciding is usually the wrong decision. If you are the go-to person, the one who can decide, you’ll make more of a difference. It doesn’t matter so much that you’re right, it matters that you decided.

Of course it’s risky and painful. That’s why it’s a rare and valuable skill.

Summer Days – Bob Dylan 2001

Summer days, summer nights are gone
Summer days and the summer nights are gone
I know a place where there’s still somethin’ going on

I got a house on a hill, I got hogs all out in the mud
I got a house on a hill, I got hogs out lying in the mud
Got a long haired woman, she got royal Indian blood

Everybody get ready – lift up your glasses and sing
Everybody get ready to lift up your glasses and sing
Well, I’m standin’ on the table, I’m proposing a toast to the King

Well I’m drivin’ in the flats in a Cadillac car
The girls all say, “You’re a worn out star”
My pockets are loaded and I’m spending every dime
How can you say you love someone else when you notice me all the time?

Well, the fog’s so thick you can’t spy the land
The fog is so thick that you can’t even spy the land
What good are you anyway, if you can’t stand up to some old businessman?

Wedding bells ringin’, the choir is beginning to sing
Yes, the wedding bells are ringing and the choir is beginning to sing
What looks good in the day, at night is another thing

She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holding my hand
She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holding my hand
She says, “You can’t repeat the past.” I say, “You can’t? What do you mean you can’t? Of course you can.”

Where do you come from? Where do you go?
Sorry that is nothin’ you would need to know
Well, my back has been to the wall for so long, it seems like it’s stuck
Why don’t you break my heart one more time just for good luck

I got eight carburetors, boys I’m using ’em all
Well, I got eight carburetors and boys, I’m using ’em all
I’m short on gas, my motor’s starting to stall

My dogs are barking, there must be someone around
My dogs are barking, there must be someone around
I got my hammer ringin’, pretty baby, but the nails ain’t goin’ down

You got something to say, speak or hold your peace
Well, you got something to say, speak now or hold your peace
If it’s information you want you can go get it from the police

Politician got on his jogging shoes
He must be running for office, got no time to lose
He been suckin’ the blood out of the genius of generosity
You been rolling your eyes – you been teasing me

Standing by God’s river, my soul is beginnin’ to shake
Standing by God’s river, my soul is beginnin’ to shake
I’m countin’ on you love, to give me a break

Well, I’m leaving in the morning as soon as the dark clouds lift
Yes, I’m leaving in the morning just as soon as the dark clouds lift
Gonna break the roof in – set fire to the place as a parting gift

Summer days, summer nights are gone
Summer days, summer nights are gone
I know a place where there’s still somethin’ going on

Spirit on the Water – Bob Dylan 2006

Spirit on the water
Darkness on the face of the deep
I keep thinking about you babe
And I can’t hardly sleep

I’m traveling by land
Traveling through the dawn of day
You’re always on my mind
I can’t stay away

I’d forgotten about you
Then you turned up again
I always knew
We were meant to be more than friends

When you are near
It’s just as plain as it can be
I’m wild about you, gal
You ought to be a fool about me

Can’t explain
The sources of this hidden pain
You burned your way into my heart
And you got the key to my brain

I’ve been trampling through mud
Praying to the powers above
I’m sweating blood
You got a face that begs for love

Life without you
Doesn’t mean a thing to me
If I can’t have you,
I’ll throw my love into the deep blue sea

Sometimes I wonder
Why you can’t treat me right
You do good all day
Then you do wrong all night

When you’re with me
I’m a thousand times happier than I could ever say
What does it matter
What price I pay?

They brag about your sugar
Brag about it all over town
Put some sugar in my bowl
I feel like laying down

I’m pale as a ghost
Holding a blossom on a stem
You ever seen a ghost? No
But you have heard of them

I see you there
I’m blinded by the colors I see
I take good care
Of what belongs to me

I hear your name
Ringing up and down the line
I’m saying it plain
These ties are strong enough to bind

Your sweet voice
Calls out from some old familiar shrine
I got no choice
Can’t believe these things would ever fade from your mind

I could live forever
With you perfectly
You don’t ever
Have to make a fuss over me

From East to West
Ever since the world began
I’m only in it for the best
I want to be with you any way I can

I been in a brawl
Now I’m feeling the wall
I’m going away baby
I won’t be back ‘til fall

High on the hill
You can carry all my thoughts with you
You’ve numbed my will
This love could tear me in two

I wanna be with you in paradise
And it seems so unfair
I can’t go to paradise no more
I killed a man back there

You think I’m over the hill
You think I’m past my prime
Let me see what you got
We can have a whoppin’ good time

Happy Halloween
Oct 31 2009

I remember Halloween being one of my favorite holiday’s of the year as a kid and even as I got older.  This year my son dressed up as a scary skeleton, my daughter dressed up as a princess, and I dressed up in an Egyptian princess (Queen Nefertiti) costume I’ve had laying around for probably 8 years from a Halloween party we had at the house.  I think I surprised a few people who came to the door. 🙂

In the last few years, I haven’t been that motivated to put on the costume while their dad took them out around the neighborhood.  So I usually greeted people in my blue jeans and sweatshirt.  This year I went around the neighborhood with my daughter after my son had gotten his fill and decided he’d rather stay at home with his dad watching the UT Longhorn football game.

In the ghoulish, scary days of Halloween and other such stuff that can cause some nervousness, here’s a quote from Jeffrey Fry’s email list.

“We were not created to be eaten by anxiety, but to walk erect, free, unafraid in a world where there is work to do, truth to seek, love to give and win.”

— Joseph Ford Newton

Now we have to figure out what to do with all this Halloween candy!  We still have some left over from last year as we dole it out slowly throughout the year.  I told the kids that we’ll have to throw out the old stuff to make room for the new.  🙂

Happy Halloween!!

About Laughter
Oct 28 2009

This post called About Laughter came to me while I was in the shower the other day.  I guess I was thinking about About Sleep, About Writing and About Car Paint when the word “laughter” popped into my head and then a blog post started forming.

Laughter is the best medicine is an age old saying and according to: Laughter is the ‘best medicine for your heart on the University of Maryland Medical Center, Laughter is the Best Medicine on HelpGuide.org, and Laughter is the Best Medicine on Science Daily, laughter can help prevent heart attacks, help the terminally ill, create great working environments, make your employees think you are more effective, relieve stress & anxiety, etc.  A good laugh probably activates some feel good stuff (e.g., endorphins) in your body.

I have some funny people in my family.  My late grandfather had this mix of British and Sri Lankan humor that had a high occurrence of bathroom (or lack thereof) references.  Us kids thought it was gross and funny at the same time.  Even after he had a sextuple bypass at the Cleveland Clinic as well as on his death bed a decade or so later, he was still being funny and irreverent about life and religion.  I never could figure out if he was agnostic or not because he would quote the Bible, know hymns by heart, and later in the day make some funny derogatory remark about God, religion and some of his hyper religious relatives.  My mother has a similar sense of humor.   She also makes up words and describes people in caricature-ally true and funny ways.  She even has animal nicknames for all of us kids.  Sri Lanka was a British colony for quite some time and had a strong British influence for decades afterward and if you’ve ever watched Monty Python or Blackadder you know what I mean.

I also work with some funny people and a day doesn’t usually go by without a laugh or two or three.  Our office manager and I have a similar sense of humor, so she and I send some pretty funny emails around that others can’t keep up with sometimes.  We find many of the same things funny and find ourselves laughing at the dumbest of things.  We also sometimes cross some lines but fortunately we work in a laid back environment.  I have to say that I have met at least one of my 2009 non-resolutions which is to laugh more.  I feel like I have laughed a lot more this year than in past years.

When I interned in college, I worked with a great bunch of interns and we were all in stitches often.  That’s where I met my friend who I went to the beach with back in June.  He, I, and others in our group would come up with practical jokes, say the weirdest things and email about roller coasters and bowling and how they related to life and certain parts of life that most people aren’t comfortable talking about.  I remember laughing so much that summer.

Laughter is so important and can help through even the toughest of times.  We just can’t take things too seriously in life, start-ups, and margarita’s.   Maybe one day I’ll feel comfortable enough to show more of my humor on this blog, but I’m just not sure people will get it and then I’ll feel more stupid than I sometimes do!

An entrepreneurial endeavor without fun, social time, and laughter is not a place I want to be.  To me any good company culture has to include smiles, jokes, and many LOL’s.  😀

Now go make someone laugh and if you find yourself laughing until your belly hurts, you can tell people you exercised and did some sit-ups/crunches too!

Sandi Aitken – Success To Me
Oct 24 2009

I interviewed Sandi Aitken (pdf) for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, for an article that was published in the Sep/Oct 2006 issue.  My writing partner, Pam Losefksy, and I pulled these articles together a while back and you can see them on the Success Profiles page of this blog.  You can see the full article on Sandi by clicking HERE (pdf).  I haven’t connected with Sandi since the interview so I’m not even sure if she’s still at Freescale, but here’s an overview:

Sandi was/is a benefits manager for Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. in Austin.  Previously she was Director of Wellness and work/life programs for Motorola and health and fitness coordinator for Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp.  She was also health and fitness program coordinator, director of nursing, critical care instructor, and director of the cardiac rehab and pulmonary education center for St. David’s Community Hospital.  She was awarded Texas Nurse of the Year and held a Chair position for the Seton Cove board of directors.  She received her MS from UT Austin in Nursing.

She shares:

Success has a lot to do with being true to your life’s purpose, vision, and goals. Often, that means running counter to what our culture’s definition of success is, because so often in our society, success is defined by your material worth or the initials behind your name. Making money is  important on a certain level, but what’s really important is to know your heart, to find your passion. Shakespeare wrote, “To thine own self be true.” Like so many things in life, it seems so simple, but there’s probably nothing harder to do.

She goes on to say:

Finding that alignment between your head and your heart, while at the same time not getting caught up in external pressures, is critical.

Oh, if everyone could be true to themselves, what a world this would be.  But as Sandi noted it is so hard to do because being true to ourselves doesn’t always go over well with other people in our lives.  Aligning head and heart is something I struggle with as do many others because what your heart/passion wants you to do in your career and life doesn’t always mesh up with what is practical given life’s responsibilities and other people’s expectations.

I’m working on trying to mesh some of my passion/heart’s desires with life’s practicalities.  Today I scheduled a make-up voice lesson with my voice instructor, Gene Raymond, who I really enjoy working with, and brought the kids with me.  I’ve brought them to a lesson once before.  I bring them coloring books and they color without fussing at all.  I think they think it is funny to hear mommy sing scales and do vocal exercises.  Some of the vocal exercises are quite funny.  🙂

A few of the songs I’m working on right now are Killing Me Softly With His Song (Roberta Flack), Play Me (Neil Diamond – changing the ‘she’s’ to ‘he’s’), and The Rose (Bette Midler).  I have the opportunity to take a lesson with a teacher at a level higher than Gene in this particular style of coaching called Speech Level Singing in a couple of weeks.  This teacher has sung with Bette Midler and trained several American Idol singers.  I’m looking forward to it and hoping I don’t choke!

About Sleep
Oct 22 2009

Now for the third post in the “About” series.  The first was About Writing and the second was About Car Paint.  This one is About Sleep or the lack thereof.

Sleep is so important but for entrepreneurs and parents it’s often hard to come by…and not from lack of trying.  I consider my two kids two little ventures and I often say, I’ve now been involved in 4 start-ups, 2 being my kids.  Kids are unique and require special attention and you definitely don’t want to screw them up.  You can’t file bankruptcy on, sell, or shut down your kids!

There’s the physical sleep deprivation that comes from the newborn days and even as they grow older and wake up with a bad dream or just like us they sometimes can’t sleep.  I’m a light sleeper so when they come to my bed I usually can’t get back to sleep very easily.  There’s also the mental sleep deprivation that comes from trying to make sure you keep everything straight while your mind is exhausted from thinking about all the things you need to do.

I know many an entrepreneur even without kids who does not sleep well because they have so many things to think about from money to employees to product development, etc.  Now add worrying about your kids on top of that and it can be overwhelming on little sleep.  I see how tired some of the entrepreneurs are sometimes in the companies we have at the Austin Technology Incubator.  I sometimes want to tell them to take several deep breaths, take a walk, or take a break.  But most entrepreneurs (myself included) don’t hear that kind of advice.  I also see how elated they are win they get a big win which makes up for the long periods of time of spotty sleep.

I’ve seen entrepreneur’s mess up meetings with investors or customers when they haven’t had enough sleep because the words they mean to say don’t always come out coherently.  I know I certainly mix up words when the neurons aren’t firing correctly when I haven’t had good sleep.

The entrepreneurs and people I know who sleep well usually feel good about where they are in life, their company is doing well, or they are taking some serious drugs!  I’m actually amazed at how many people these days take sleep medication.  It’s actually quite common in my peer group and comes up often in conversation as we all try to manage the tons of responsibilities and information that comes our way.

I’m more amazed at how well many of us keep it together on such little sleep and present to the world an image held together sometimes with invisible glue, coffee, Red Bull, fake smiles & laughter, and quite often fear.

I wonder how much more productive we would be if we were all forced to take a nap just like babies and little kids do?  Or if we could go to bed when our kids go to bed around 8:00 or 8:30 p.m. and somehow by some miracle not wake up until 6:00 a.m. ish the next day.

It’s too bad there aren’t adult sleep sites like there are great baby sleep sites!  I wonder if there are positioners, pacifiers, or people who can rock adults to sleep. 🙂

Ah to sleep, perchance to dream...

100,000 Miles
Oct 19 2009

This past weekend my car rolled over the 100,000 miles mark.  When I bought the car 8 years ago, I never thought I’d have it this long.  This is the longest that I’ve ever owned a car.  I agonized over purchasing it 8 years ago because I wasn’t sure if I should spend the money and if I deserved to have my dream car (Lexus RX300) so relatively young in life.  After too much over analyzing, which I’m famous for, I got it and have not regretted it once.  I’m not too much into material things so my car was my one indulgence.

On the second day I owned it, I got hit on the side by a weary mom and I said a few choice curse words, which is rare for me.  Since it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t have to freak out extra at the $4,500 of damage.  Then I was thankful nothing happened to her or the baby she had in the back seat of her car.  At the time I didn’t know I was just a couple of weeks away from getting pregnant myself.  It was a big reminder that material things come and go…and get damaged so we shouldn’t get attached to them.

And now here it is 8 years, 2 kids, 3 jobs, several written articles, 381 blog posts, and one mid-life crisis later and the car has been solid (knock on wood).

My son knew I was waiting for the 100,000 mark and on the way back to Austin, he suddenly asked me how many miles there were and I looked down and saw 100,015 and realized it had hit the mark somewhere on the way back from church, which we only go to when we visit my friend.  We had gone to the small town carnival the day before and her son and mine still had remnants of snakes painted on their cheeks making them the heathen boys in their Sunday kid’s class!   My daughter had remnants of a rainbow on her cheek.

I was too busy chatting with my friend at the time to notice when it hit the 100,000 mile mark.  I later thought how appropriate it was that I was with my best friend of 21 years…my longest friendship and my longest owned car.  Not sure how the two relate but hey people force connections on things far less obvious. 🙂

I wonder for how many more miles I will own this car…

Babble Soft Has Found A Home
Oct 12 2009

So back in late June, I announced that Babble Soft was looking for a new home, and I’m happy to report I found one and it’s really not that far from its current home.

I put some feelers out for interested parties and got some great leads and potential interest, but after a few weeks I realized I just didn’t have the time with a full time day job and kids to really do the sales effort well and even if a large company said they were interested it could be 6 to 9 months before they could actually do anything about it!  And frankly, I didn’t have it in me with the other things I’m juggling to play the waiting game for an unknown outcome.

So my partner, Nicole Johnson, and I discussed possibilities.  Nicole also runs Pick Nick’s Brain, a baby sleep consulting site.  And like a true angel, she decided she could take it over and run with it!  So a couple of weeks ago, we made it official!  She will be running Babble Soft going forward.  She’s an amazing individual who is also juggling many things, but she had maybe 2-3 less things on her plate to manage than I do right now, so the dream lives on!

I couldn’t think of a better person, who gets the vision (and who knows how to code!), to take our vision and grow it.  And to think I’ve never even met her in person.  I found her through a bunch of online connections and even wrote about finding a partner online for GigaOm.  I couldn’t have wished for a better business partner.  She adapted when the situation changed for me and for both of us.  I’m hoping I meet her in person sometime soon.

I’m still a part owner so I’ll be continuing to support Nicole and talking up Babble Soft when and where I can, and I hope that many of you readers will too!

Now, I must take some extended time to decompress, sort a few things out, and figure out what my next entrepreneurial endeavor might be…possibly creating a music CD or writing a book!  😎

The Difference Between Girls And Boys
Oct 8 2009

Some of you may recall that I accidentally published a version of this post a while back.  In my blurry eyed state of doing too many things I hit the little blue button that said Publish instead of the black and white button that says Save Draft inside WordPress.  So here’s my next attempt to try to have it make more sense.

Everyone knows there is a physical difference between boys and girls, but I think not many (especially in the business world) understand the mental and emotional differences.  Many studies have been done on the subject including ones done on the differences between male and female brains mentioned HERE, HERE, a psychological overview called Understanding The Difference Between Men and Women, and a 2007 one done by McKinsey & Company called Women Matter (pdf) that suggests that companies where women are strongly represented in senior management and on the board perform better than others.

McKinsey also did a report called Centered Leadership: How talented women thrive (you have to register to read the full report).  My boss at ATI, who use to work at McKinsey, gave me a copy of that report late last year and a good overview is on a post on the glass hammer blog at Factors that Sustain Successful Women Leaders.  When I first read the report I have to admit I was pretty cynical and felt like it was mostly taking a man’s perspective’s (i.e., researchers) to try to ‘explain women and their emotions.’  But a series of unexpected events happened in my life, combined with working at ATI, which was my first steady office job since having kids, that changed my mind.  I happen to think men are just as emotional as women, they just express it differently which, of course, is more acceptable among other men.

As a woman who got her MBA and was founding CEO of a venture capital backed tech company, there always seemed to be an expectation that one had to be like a man to succeed, which was mentioned in the Women Matter report.  Only 20% of my MBA class were women and I daresay less than 5% (that may be 1%) of technology company founding CEO’s are women.  Many of those women dropped out of their careers for several years to have and rear children.  I took years off from a high-paced job too but at the same time attempted to keep my knowledge up to date by teaching entrepreneurship at UT Austin and founding Babble Soft from my home office.  My first company was a business-to-business company where you sell directly to businesses.  Babble Soft is a business-to-consumer business where you sell directly to consumers.  I now know a dangerous amount of how things work (or don’t work) in those vastly different kinds of business models.

From my perspective, the more you could act like a man without being too confrontational/aggressive the easier it was to navigate the world of high tech business.  More than 90% of the time I was the only women in a room full of older, White men.  Gail Evans, former VP at CNN, and author of Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: What Men Know About Success that Women Need to Learn mentions that many men put women into one of 4 categories: Wife, Daughter, Mistress, or Mother.  The best of these categories is, according to her is Daughter because men take on a more mentoring role.  She also says there is no such thing as work/life balance.  It’s all one life that you work and play in so trying to balance those two doesn’t really make sense!

I really enjoy working with men and women so I think that’s helped me break some barriers and fortunately 99% of the older, experienced men and women I’ve been around in business have been helpful.  I have avoided most of the horror stories.  I remember being amused at what some of the good ‘ole boys I ran across when I worked for an oil & gas company would say and do.  I could usually tell if a guy was being malicious, sexist , disrespectful, or just joking around.  It helps that I’ve had a lot of guy friends.

As I watch my two kids, an older boy and younger girl, the differences are fascinating and have been noticeable since birth.  They are both wonderful in their own ways and some of the differences I’ve noticed is how they show their affection as well as how they assimilate information, hear you, and how they want to be heard.

I’ve noticed that boys in general like to show their affection in a more physical way by running in to you, talking about their bodily functions, wrestling, and being overall less aware that sitting on you is not always comfortable.  But my son also wants his cuddle time and hopefully he’ll still want it  for a few more years.  He’ll sit close to me when he’s watching TV, give me a hug, or if he wakes up at night, he’ll want to lay in bed next to me for a little while.  He much prefers throwing a football, playing soccer, playing video games, or watching TV than engaging in long conversations.  I end up turning the TV or Wii game off when I really need him to listen to me though, which frustrates him.

My daughter shows her affection more through drawing things, sitting next to you, talking to you, hugs, saying she loves you, and generally being calmer.  I think she’s a little bit more active than she would be because she has to keep up with her older brother, who encourages her to talk about bodily functions!  But she wants you to be generally softer with her.  Certain things seem to affect her much more strongly and she’ll get a bit more emotional and require much more talking with to get her out of a funk.  But once you explain things to her and help her express her thoughts she’s usually fine.  She’s still not big into long conversations either.

I’ve always found the world of human dynamics fascinating and have enjoyed the complexities of both men and women.  Both genders have such great things to contribute to humanity and I think the best leaders take the time to understand that and play to the strengths of each gender and each person in particular.  The greatest, well known leaders (political, military, and business) of the past had teams of 99% men on their team.  The great leaders of the future should be aiming for a balance of men and women on their team, and they will hopefully take the extra time and effort to make sure each is supported to meet his/her goals.

Aren’t people wonderful? 😀

Fighting Breast Cancer
Oct 5 2009

The following post was written by Jessica Hanover, Bioscience Director at the Austin Technology Incubator and originally posted on the ATI Blog.

When we found out that our friend and co-worker, Melissa Rabeaux, was diagnosed with breast cancer a few short months ago, we decided to do what we could to support her and other people less fortunate who are fighting breast cancer.

ATI formed a team called Tech Riders, to ride in the Texas Mamma Jamma race to raise money to help breast cancer patients.  Below is a wonderful letter written by our very own Bioscience Director, Jessica Hanover.  The team has raised over $6,000 and anything more is icing on the cake!  Please check out the letter below and donate if you are able to a very good cause.

Thank you for your support for helping us support our friend in this ATI team endeavor!

Just a few months ago, the work we do with our cancer-focused startup companies at the Austin Technology Incubator took on a whole new meaning: our ATI colleague and friend Melissa Rabeaux was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Our daily conversations, usually centered on CleanTX Forum and our upcoming Clean Energy Venture Summit, quickly turned to surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, nutrition and oncologists.  It was startling and unsettling for us, to say the very least, to watch Melissa’s daily focus change so abruptly and critically.

We rallied around Melissa immediately as best we knew how, but we wanted to find a way to do even more, for Melissa and for the significant community of breast cancer patients right here in Austin.  So, we took action, and on October 10, 2009, we will be participating as a team – Team Tech Riders – in a powerful grassroots event to help thousands of Texans diagnosed with breast cancer, and to honor Melissa as she recovers from her recent surgery and deals cancer a mighty blow.

With hundreds of people, we will bicycle up to 100 miles through beautiful Central Texas in the Inaugural Texas Mamma Jamma Ride.  We’re raising money as a team, and the funds will provide direct care services through ten local non-profit agencies to Central Texans diagnosed with breast cancer.  Simply put, your donation will save and improve the lives of thousands of Texas neighbors.

Our Team Tech Riders goal is to raise at least $5,000.  So I ask that you donate to our team and make a difference for some wonderful people who really need us.  Every dollar you can spare – whether it’s $75 or $10 or whatever you can give – will have a positive impact.

You can make a tax-deductible donation online to Team Tech Riders by simply clicking on the link at the bottom of this message.  Or, if you prefer, you may write a check payable to “Texas Mamma Jamma Ride” and send it to us here:  Team Tech Riders – ATI, 3925 W. Braker Lane, Austin, TX 78759.

Thank you in advance for your great generosity.  Breast cancer affects everyone, and this fact has really hit home for us here at ATI.  We’ve chosen to ride for all of Austin’s patients, and in honor of one very special person in particular, and we need your help.

With much appreciation,
Team Tech Riders
http://www.mammajammaride.org/site/TR/Events/General?team_id=1310&pg=team&fr_id=1040

Clean Energy Venture Summit: A Behind the Scenes Look at Smart Grid
Oct 4 2009

The following was originally posted by Laura Benold, marketing associate at the Austin Technology Incbutor (ATI), where I work, on the ATI Blog. 

The third annual Clean Energy Venture Summit: Bringing the Smart Grid to Life is scheduled for October 14 and 15, 2009 at the AT&T Executive Center in Austin, Texas.  The Clean Energy Venture Summit (CEVS) will focus on technology related to the Pecan Street Project (PSP), the largest clean energy laboratory in the United States and a place where researchers and entrepreneurs can develop and test their technology on the grid.

The day-long summit on October 15 will include a competition of 20-30 early stage clean energy companies in five focus areas: distributed generation and renewable energy, energy efficiency, transportation and storage, demand management and miscellaneous. From each area, the strongest company will emerge and compete to win overall. We summit organizers will pre-screen participating companies based on innovation, overall market opportunity, stage of development, intellectual property position, resource requirements, environmental impact and potential return on investment.

CEVS also presents an opportunity for networking and software companies, including wireless mesh companies, broadband power line companies, energy dashboard web interface makers and software systems developers.

In addition, CEVS will host an invitation-only, pre-conference event called the Smart Grid Showcase on October 14 for CEI-accredited investors and sponsors to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Smart Grid agenda from the Austin Energy technology pathway. The University of Texas at Austin Office of Technology and Commercialization will introduce presentations by key university researchers who will highlight clean energy and wireless solutions for distributed generation and renewable energy.

For more information or to attend at the great price of only $100, check out the Clean Energy Venture Summit site.  The Who’s Who in Clean Energy will be there!  We’re bringing the Smart Grid to life!

About Car Paint
Oct 3 2009

I think I’ll do a few posts starting with the word “About” just for the fun of it.  My last post was called About Writing.  I’m writing about car paint now because of an unusual series of events that have taken place that led to a better than expected outcome.  A few weeks ago I was rear-ended.  Fortunately I was at a stand still and he thought I had moved on so he was also starting from a stand still, but he bumped into me twice.  He followed me into a nearby parking lot and we exchanged phone numbers.  The damage seemed so mild that I figured we’d take care of it without getting insurance involved.  I was a little shaken up, but he was so nice and apologetic.  He also happened to do body & paint work on the side!

I called him to set something up and he was working at a moving company.  I called him later when I knew what weekend day would work for me and it turned out he had left that company and is going to start at a mobile paint and dent fixing company next week. He loves to paint cars!  How fortunate for me.

In the meantime, I was trying to park in a downtown parking garage and went in the wrong side – the employee parking side instead of the visitor side.  I figured that out too late when there were a couple of cars already behind me.  I tried to back up and happened to misjudge the angle and scraped the passenger side car door against a brick wall that had yellow paint.

So he came out this weekend buffed out the back fender, removed the yellow paint from my scratch, and touched up the entire car with paint he had personally mixed to match the car.  I paid him $40 for the touch-up even though he only asked for $30.  The car still needs work and the damage I did myself resulted in a dent on the side panel that will probably cost about $600 to fix right but at least there’s no more yellow paint on my car and hopefully in the light of day (it was raining so we were in the garage) it will still look better than it did.  He warned me that it might not look as good as he would like in the light of day and sunlight.

Anyway, I was really impressed with this 22 year old guy who said this was his very first accident of his life.  Hard to believe that a 22 year old guy exists who hasn’t an accident, but he seemed genuine and so thrilled about his new job at this fantastic paint and dent place that would give him a guaranteed good salary, 401k, benefits, and would even pay for Lasik surgery if he wanted it.  He seemed so excited about the opportunity to do what he apparently loved to do: paint cars.   He was very well mannered and called me “Ma’am” and spoke about being raised to do a job right.  I learned a little bit about him while holding the flashlight so he could do the touch-up.  I learned about where he was from, where his mom lived, how he learned to paint, who taught him to paint, paint fumes, acetone, his ‘ex-lady’s’ driving challenges, and other such things.

It’s always nice to run across people who follow through on what they say.  He could have easily blown me off and not returned my phone calls.  He could have not accepted his role in the situation and moved on with his life, but he didn’t.  We didn’t exchange insurance cards because to me the damage was so minor and many people take care of things like this without getting insurance involved.  He could have just disappeared or given me a wrong phone number, but he didn’t.  I have a feeling this guy will do really well at his new company with the kind of personable, customer service attitude he has.

So I guess in a weird sort of way a not-so-great thing (i.e., getting rear ended) ended up in a situation that was less of a pain than it could have been.   Well that’s of course assuming I don’t have long term brain damage, but if I do that’s probably just from living life and having kids. 🙂  Now I have to decide whether I want to fix the dent and scrapes since I hope to be able to sell my 8 year old car, which has almost 100,000 miles on it, next year…

About Writing
Sep 24 2009

I’m sure many of you have noticed that I’m not writing as frequently as I have in the past on my blog.  This is due to a variety of things being led by lack of time and inspiration as well as logistics.  I have also been doing some personal hand written journaling so some of my writing needs have been met through that avenue.  The thing about writing, at least for me, is that I often have to have a spark of inspiration to start something and then it usually flows.

When I started this blog over 2 years ago now, I felt like I was forced to write because I started it as a tool to promote and build awareness of my business, Babble Soft.  So I dutifully wrote.  Somewhere along the way, the duty wore off and I started to enjoy it.  The comments helped but even when the comments weren’t numerous, I knew hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people were reading (thanks to feedburner, google analytics, and wordpress stats tools), and I was getting something out of it too.

It has became a vehicle for me to sort through and share insights in business, parenting, and life in a somewhat thoughtful, crafted, connect the dots sort of way.  For some of my posts I take all the swirling raw thoughts and attempt to distill them down into something usually coherent and sometimes imbibed with meaning that only myself or those close to me can sometimes fully understand.  Yet hopefully most people take something away that helps them in business or life…or if not maybe it’s sometimes entertaining?

Since I’ve started blogging, I have come to better appreciate the nuances of writers whose works we analyzed in depth in high school or college English classes.  As much as we try to infer from their writing what they were experiencing or trying to convey, we will miss much of it.  We probably made up stuff that actually never crossed the writer’s mind at all and did not pay attention to certain words and phrases that were full of meaning to the writer herself, but to other than maybe a few people who shared her space in time would be summarily dismissed.  As a woman writer, I’m particularly aware of how women writer’s even 50+ years ago had to make sure their writing not only lived up to their image as the fairer, weaker, well mannered, and sublime sex but also didn’t offend those who could not fathom the depth of a woman’s knowledge, insight, and passion.

As a South Asian, naturalized American, woman writer writing on the topic of entrepreneurship, leadership, management, (the aforementioned still typically a man’s world) and parenting, whose family sometimes reads her blog, I choose my words as carefully as I can.  Outside the blog, the words sometimes come out a lot messier, less filtered, and a bit more humorous for some reason.  The constraints and richness those life experiences and labels give me have added greatly to what moderate success I have achieved as well as sometimes to my self imposed dramatic misery.  🙂

I have made two attempts to write a larger body of work to publish.  One was a fiction novel I started back in 2001 after leaving my first company about a devastatingly handsome, blue-eyed, Jewish male CEO, an Asian female CEO, their relationship, and their different experiences starting technology companies.  I created an outline, table of contents, and generated probably about 16 pages and then soon after got pregnant.  My first readers (my sister and cousin) seemed to like it, but because life with kids started I left it sitting idly in my computer. Fortunately I printed it out because in one of our upgrades, the soft copy disappeared.  I’ve since scanned it back in and one day hope to do something with it.

The second attempt was to write a book on the meaning of life which I discovered most people were uncomfortable talking about so I morphed it to the meaning of success.  I got many more people to speak with me but couldn’t really find the right way to pull it together or an interested publisher, so I morphed that project into the university alumni magazine articles on the Success Profiles page of this blog.  The great thing was that I actually got paid for those articles!

I sometimes get frustrated at not having the time or energy to finish that fiction novel, but I keep recalling something that one of the wives of the people I interviewed for the Meaning of Success book said.  She was a writer and interestingly she wrote about being a vegetarian and hating people who eat meat I think, but she said ‘let the writing marinate in the juices of your life.’   Which thinking about that statement right now is ironic considering you probably marinate meat more than you marinate vegetables.  But anyway, she said writing can’t be rushed and it will happen when the time is right.  Whenever I say this on my email club of college friends, my screen writer by night and document proofer friend by day, Robb Lanum, who lives in Los Angeles, gives me a hard time and tells me what he pictures when I say that.  A description of his vision is not suitable for this blog but it has something to do with the word ‘juices,’ and he’s a guy so you can probably infer the rest!

On an unrelated note, Robb finally finished a script based on a challenge I gave him two years ago to write a main stream script.  He completed it a few weeks ago and I, The Annoying Challenger, still have not had the time to read it and others on our email club have already read it.  It pains me actually.

So I keep wondering when all this marinating will be done and when the juices of life will be more manageable so I can write a book that might get published some day…

Oh and by the way, stay tuned for some interesting news about Babble Soft in the next few weeks! 😎

Dr. Ari Brown – Success To Me
Sep 20 2009

I interviewed Dr. Ari Brown (pdf) for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, for an article that was published in the July/Aug 2006 issue.  My writing partner, Pam Losefksy, and I pulled these articles together a while back and you can see them on the Success Profiles page of this blog.  You can see the full article on Ari by clicking HERE (pdf).

Dr. Brown is a board certified pediatrician at the Capital Pediatric Group in Austin.  She’s the co-author of Baby 411: Clear Answers and Smart Advice for your Baby’s First Year and Toddler 411.  She received her MD from Baylor College of Medicine and did her residency and fellowship at Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital.  She has two children.

She shares:

The hallmarks of successful people are perseverance, self confidence, and satisfaction in what they do. In my daily work, I interact with parents, and I truly think being a parent is the most rewarding thing you could possibly do. A parent who is raising his or her children well, being a good advocate for them, and ensuring that they grow up healthy and strong in every sense of the word is a huge success.

She goes on to say:

My advice to young people looking to be successful in life is this: You can do it all, but you can’t do it all at the same time. Pace yourself. You want to accomplish many things in your life, but at the end of the day, your family is really the most important. Don’t put your family on hold to build your career; you have your whole life to work!

Parenting is one of the hardest yet rewarding things I’ve experienced.  It’s so true that if you can help someone be a better parent and connect with their kids, the world can be a better place.  That’s why I admire those people who take care of children from a childcare or medical perspective.  As a parent, it was great to get affirmation from our kid’s doctors that we were doing OK or to get advice from them on what things we could do differently.

I have to constantly remind myself of the fact that I can do a lot of things but not all at the same time.  I have a hard time pacing myself but I’m learning and trying and saying “no” to many things…even things I want to do but know I can’t do well right now until I get a few things settled.  My kids (as are most parents) are the most important things to me in the world and I hope when all is said and done they grow up knowing, believing, and feeling that so they can do anything (within reason of course) their hearts desire.  🙂

Subtle Yet So Profound
Sep 12 2009

Photo by my very talented 5 year old niece.  She saw this shark outside of her window while they were driving on I-405 in Southern California and quickly took a picture of it!

I was talking to someone I admire the other day, and we were discussing how people are affected by certain things in their lives.  Sometimes there is no easy explanation as to why things happen the way they do.   There is no 1 + 1 = 2 with everyone nodding knowingly in agreement which can sometimes make post mortem analysis of situations and business projects complicated.  She said the things that happen can be subtle yet so profound.  Those words resonated with me.  It can be very subtle, little things that over time have a profound effect on you.

The effects can be positive and negative.  On the positive front, in the right company culture people can achieve more than they knew they were capable of.  In those environments the positive reinforcement can be obviously observable or subtle, which is most often the case.  The people often don’t realize the difference until months or years later when they look back and see what things they were able to achieve and observe how they feel about coming to work.  It can even positively affect their home lives because if they are happy at work where they spend most of their waking hours, they take home less stress.

On the negative side, a friend of a friend of mine was recently telling me about an experience she had at work in a large organization where for three years she worked for a manager who yelled at her occasionally when something wasn’t going quite right.  Since it didn’t happen frequently, she thought she would just take it and move on, but it took a huge toll on her psyche and her energy was drawn elsewhere making it hard for her to do her job as effectively as she would like because she never knew when he would start criticizing her.  She started to be able to tell him that he should not talk to her that way, but it took a lot of her energy to deal with it.  Even after leaving it took her a couple of years to get out from under the berating until her self confidence was up enough to find a job she really enjoyed and performed well in!  I was proud of her for doing the work on understanding how she needed to build back up her self esteem.

One of my stay-at-home mom (I still hate that term and she calls herself a zoom-around mom) friends and I were discussing how our children’s behavior can affect our mood.  She was telling me how she woke up one day feeling good and then her toddler was in a terrible mood most of the day and it affected the rest of her day.  Of course that’s not so subtle but if there aren’t enough smiles and laughter to offset the “I want to pull out my hair” days then you find yourself depressed.  And more importantly you find that you subconsciously establish a way of relating to your child or other people in your life based on the subtle and not so subtle cues you send to each other.  If it’s not more positive than negative, then more often than not one or the other doesn’t want to be around the other and if it’s really bad they end up on the Dr. Phil or the Montel show.  🙂  This can happen at work or at home.

You often don’t even notice the effect of these little things until later.  They can deeply affect your psyche and how you relate to the world.  That’s why it’s so important to focus on the proper culture in the workplace and at home because if there is no one paying attention to the subtleties, you might just find yourself in a sharky situation.  Yes, I know that was a lame attempt to tie the photo taken by my neice to the content of this post, but I thought it was so interesting that I had to find a way to use it in a blog post! 😎

Double The Trouble But Double The Fun
Sep 2 2009

I haven’t done a parenting post in a while but I’ve been thinking recently about siblings.  I always knew that if I was going to have kids, I was going to have two.  I have a sister and despite the occasional hair pulling ups and downs, I wouldn’t trade her for the world!  There were times growing up I probably would have traded her, but now I can’t imagine having made it this far without knowing she was there.  Although we are very different in many ways and sometimes we don’t understand each other, we are the only two people in the world who have experienced our pre-college years living in the same house. We can reminisce about the good times, the bad, and our perfect dog.

My sister was the pretty/creative one and I was the smart/determined one.  Some time in college I realized I was kind of pretty and some time before she got her Master’s she probably realized she was smart too.   It’s funny how the labels we get assigned in a family stick with you even when you’ve left home for so many years.  I learned a lot from her and was always amazed with what she was able to get away with. 🙂  I always usually laid everything out on the line and tried to be hyper rational about things since I was a nerd, and she always seemed to know how to get what she wanted.   We always had each other.  Being the eldest, I would protect her when I could even though she might not remember all those times and even when it got me in trouble.  I would bribe her to help me with rolling newspapers when I signed on for my first job, and by association I was a little less nerdy.  As little kids we would laugh and play with each other, as older kids we fought and played, as adults and mothers we share.

And that’s why I wanted two kids.  The thought crossed my mind for a nanosecond that I couldn’t survive another kid after our son was born.  He didn’t sleep consistently through the night until he was probably 4 1/2 years old.  He had night terrors and I finally concluded it was past life trauma that he was still trying to sort out.  It was a horrible and sleep deprived hazy time.  But even after a miscarriage and not sleeping for 2 years, I was determined to have another kid for him before my body couldn’t handle it and fortunately we were blessed with an angel of a girl who slept like a dream.   At the time I kept thinking I don’t know if I’ll survive this but I was going to do what I had to do for him to have a sibling.  Many of my girlfriend’s felt the same way since we all agreed giving birth and parenting was the hardest things we had ever done.  We wondered if our parents felt the same way.  Some of my friends weren’t able to have another one for unexpected reasons, but almost all of them wanted at least two kids for the simple reason of them having that shared bond with someone.

As I watch my kids play together, it makes my heart happy.  They will run around the house, jump on the bed, and make each other laugh hysterically.  They also make each other whine or complain that one is getting more than the other but mostly right now they play well together which gives us a break.   They play hide and seek, they build a fort out of all the pillows in the house, they scare and tickle each other, they watch TV together, etc.  They genuinely seem to like each other right now.   As they get older, I’m sure having each other will hone their negotiation skills plus they will try to devise plans to outsmart us and I’m sure they will succeed!

I am so glad they have each other to share the great times and the inevitable not-so-great times.  I hope they will always be there for each other and I hope they’ll be there to turn to each other (knock on wood) after we are long gone.  At least they can share the burden of figuring out what to do with us when we get old and senile. 🙂

Yes, although I know we will probably have to deal with some sibling rivalry, I feel truly blessed that the greatest gift we were able to give them is each other.