Physical Safety
Be pragmatic about it. You are genuinely popular. You are popular like Michael Jordan. So if I have physical safety concerns, it is less because you are a black man in a largely white America and more because you are plain famous. You need bodyguards because Madonna needs bodyguards. Hire the right people, and let them worry about the details. If they feel the need to escalate the coverage over time, so be it. The voters will understand. After all, they are looking at their next president.
If you have physical safety concerns, hurry up and become president. The POTUS has the best security detail of anyone on earth. I mean.
Family: Wife, Children
Do what is right by them. You chose to keep them back in Chicago after you became Senator. That was right by the family.
Now is the time for a repeat performance. Don't bring the two girls to any public events. They don't need an iota of media glare. Michelle can continue to stay home since that helps. And by stay home I mean she does not need to make public appearances with you. She is a working woman. Most important, talk to them. All three of them. Both of you need to explain it to the two kids. They need to be prepared for what is coming. They have to be explained to in terms they will understand.
Do not, do not cut on family time. Your runnig is hard enough for you and your family. Don't make it harder for them and for you by cutting on family time. Not cutting back on family time is right by your family, right by you, and right by the voters. The voters want a president who is an actively involved, loving, doting father and husband. You don't do it because it helps your campaign, but it helps your campaign if you keep doing it. Be a family man. That is what you want, that is what your family wants, that is what the American people want. There is no clash of priorities.
But do it. Run. Your two daughters are no excuse for you to not run. You run for them. You run because you want them to have a great future.
Political Safety
They are going to make your age an issue. The counterhit is easy. You make their age an issue. The biggest thing working for you is you signify a generational shift. Your age is a huge plus, that is the best thing working for you.
Health And Well-Being
Running for president is a lot of travel. But stick to the basic rules on eating, sleeping and exercise. You have to keep being yourself. The challenge is to invite the media glare and still be yourself.
Policy Making The Matrix Way
Obama's Weapon On Clinton: Iraq
Obama Will Announce In January
Eliot Spitzer For Running Mate
Barack Obama: Time For A Generation Shift
New Orleans: 2008 Democratic Convention
Next Stop: White House
On November 7: In Harlem: For Obama
Democratic Vision For The 21st Century
The Matrix
The Audacity Of Gravitas: Restore Intelligence To The White House
Barack Is A Deaniac
Barack Obama: This Is A New Century
Barack Obama: New Approaches To Old Problems
Switching To Obama
In The News
EMI buyout of Toshiba signals change of strategy
Hewlett-Packard board cutting ties with top Silicon Valley lawyer San Francisco Chronicle
HP board distances itself from longtime counsel
Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard forge alliance newratings.com
Skyworks Surges on Possible Apple IPhone Houston Chronicle
Toshiba, Sony, NEC Electronics unveil system chip process China Post
Intel set to launch UK-based movie download service PVR Wire
Cisco approaches WiMAX with caution ITBusiness.ca
Cisco Inc invests US$50 million in Chinese telecom Taipei Times
Google Plays the Name Game MSNBC
Microsoft Patches Windows XP Wireless, Tells No One InformationWeek
Yahoo Fixes Messenger Flaw InformationWeek
Amazon hits back at IBM over patents CNET News.com
Ahead of the Bell: Oracle BusinessWeek
Oracle sees opportunities in broadband sector Economic Times
Oracle finds India better than China
Sun Microsystems releases Java 6 SWBusiness.fi
Wal-Mart.com Suffered Brief Outage InformationWeek
Wal-Mart’s arrival jolts more into action Daily News & Analysis
Comets' origins may turn out to be hot San Francisco Chronicle
S. Africa's AIDS policy makers may consider circumcision plan People's Daily Online
Smashing The Clock BusinessWeek The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours. ..... Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. It's O.K. to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid. ..... Best Buy did not invent the post-geographic office. Tech companies have been going bedouin for several years. At IBM, 40% of the workforce has no official office; at AT&T, a third of managers are untethered. Sun Microsystems Inc. calculates that it's saved $400 million over six years in real estate costs by allowing nearly half of all employees to work anywhere they want. .... 85% of executives expect a big rise in the number of unleashed workers over the next five years. In fact, at many companies the most innovative new product may be the structure of the workplace itself. ...... By the end of 2007, all 4,000 staffers working at corporate will be on ROWE. ..... its clockless campaign to its stores--a high-stakes challenge that no company has tried before in a retail environment. .... It wasn't imposed from the top down. It began as a covert guerrilla action that spread virally and eventually became a revolution. ..... old-guard saboteurs, who continue to plot an overthrow and spread warnings of a coming paradise for slackers. ..... average voluntary turnover has fallen drastically ..... productivity is up an average 35% in departments that have switched to ROWE ..... tailoring stores to local markets and training employees to turn customer feedback into new business ideas ...... most companies are stuck in the 1930s when it comes to employees' and managers' relationships to time and work. "Our whole notion of paid work was developed within an assembly line culture," Moen says. "Showing up was work ...... Outside the office, Thompson and Ressler couldn't help noticing how wireless broadband was turning the world into one giant work kibbutz. ..... protect ROWE and then dribble it out under the radar in tiny pilot trials. ...... Top performers were complaining of unsustainable levels of stress ..... classic work-life hex: jobs with high demands (always-on, transcontinental availability) and low control (always on-site, no personal life). ...... Managers would base assessments on data and evidence, not feelings and anecdotes. ...... opposition to it grew more intense. Critics feared executives would lose control and co-workers would forfeit the collaboration born of proximity. If you can work anywhere, they asked, won't you always be working? Won't overbearing bosses start calling you in the middle of the night? Won't coasters see ROWE as a way to shirk work and force more dedicated colleagues to pick up the slack? And there were generational conflicts: Some boomers felt they'd been forced to choose between work and life during their careers. So everyone else should, too. ...... "It wasn't hugs and smiles," she says of Ressler's and Thompson's campaign. "Managers in the old mental model were totally irritated." ....... In enemy circles, Ressler and Thompson are known to this day as "those two" and "the subversives." ..... the 13 ROWE commandments. No.1: People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer's time, or the company's money. No.7: Nobody talks about how many hours they work. No.9: It's O.K. to take a nap on a Tuesday afternoon, grocery shop on Wednesday morning, or catch a movie on Thursday afternoon.
....... Achen's performance metrics ...... He could measure how many orders per hour his team was processing no matter where they were. ...... ROWE'ers are posting higher metrics for quality, too. ..... Cube-Free ...... a paper, prewireless mentality ...... Offices also waste space and time in an age when workers are becoming more and more place-neutral. ...... Work groups that go cube-free will be able to redesign their spaces to better accommodate collaboration instead of working alone. ....... their boldest move yet, testing ROWE in retail stores among both managers and workers .... slash its 65% turnover rates in stores ..... disgruntlement is common and workers form groups on MySpace with names like "Best Buy Losers Club!" ..... If Best Buy's business goes south, human nature dictates that the people who always believed the clockless office was a flaky New Age idea will see an opportunity to try to force a hasty retreat. ...most big companies fail to grow at the rate of inflation. That's true in part because the bigger the company gets, the harder it is to get the best out of each and every employee. ROWE is one of Best Buy's answers to avoiding that fate
The Google/YouTube Come-On once we get advertising and revenue sharing worked out. ... YouTube's reach. (Some 23.5 million unique visitors went there in October.) .... no publicly traded media company today is in a position simply to dismiss, say, $100 million. Such a sum far exceeds what any single broadcast network can extract from the online world--and drops straight to the bottom line ...... But taking the dough fortifies an already threatening rival. One executive privy to the discussions says: "The reality is, if they are able to lock in major media [companies] for three years, then by default YouTube is the place to go" for Web video. ...... believing that 5 or 10 of them can grind through nightmarish cross-corporate decision-making and emerge with something as simple and compelling as YouTube is nuts ..... no programming giant has sued YouTube yet .... they know that they can't sue their way out of this.
The 25 Best Affordable Suburbs in the U.S.
Vista's Many Turnoffs How many geeks does it take to shut down a computer? ... Vista, for all its capabilities, could end up being too complex for the average consumer ..... the involvement of dozens of people, operating in too many teams, led to what he calls "the lowest common denominator." ..... Microsoft has a specific way of designing software where they never want to eliminate an option that users have had in the past. They always want you to have 37 different flavors ...... a bloated organizational structure with too many engineers working on small problems likely contributed to Vista delays and unnecessarily complex designs ....
Challenges Await Mexico's New Leader the poverty, drug violence, and incessant political infighting that threaten growth and competitiveness in Latin America's most developed economy. .... and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger watched the chaotic scene. "It's good action," Schwarzenegger said. ...... Mexico's $720 billion economy is Latin America's second-largest, after Brazil's. It is also one of its most open, with free trade agreements with more than 30 countries. Over the past decade, thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico has become an important manufacturing center for the hemisphere—and has helped the country become the U.S.'s No. 2 trading partner. ...... more than 40% of all Mexicans still live in poverty. .... 15 years of focusing almost exclusively on export-related industries. ..... Calderón and Fox both hail from the pro-business National Action Party (PAN). ..... During Fox's six-year term, Mexico grew just 2% annually. .... most economists believe Mexico must grow by more than 5% annually if it is to achieve its full potential and pull millions out of poverty. ...... Calderón's biggest challenge is to convince the nearly two-thirds of all Mexicans who didn't vote for him that he will represent their interests. ...... His main goal, he said, is "to reunite Mexico." That could be an even bigger challenge than creating jobs and jump-starting the economy.
