I'm pretty mixed on patents. I understand that if a company invests huge resources into discovering something, it is unfair for someone else to simply piggyback and copy it (but I think companies should make money from execution and service, not ideas). I understand there is societal benefit to sharing inventions (but I think the current system doesn't accomplish that since it's impossible to keep up with the multitude of patents granted and in-progress). I believe that many of the lawsuits around software patents are frivolous (and many of the duplicating/overlapping patents shouldn't have been granted in the first place), so the whole situation is a mess. Too many people still pay attention to "patent portfolios" (with quantity often more important than quality), and that attitude causes difficulties for entrepreneurs wondering if they should spend their time and money collecting [often useless] patents simply to show off. Also, the recent law change that gives priority for patentability to those who file first instead of those who invent first requires filing patents immediately upon thinking of an idea, which is costly and sort of ridiculous/impossible for everyday people or entrepreneurs to do (and incentivizes patent trolls). I heard an interesting session last week at UCLA Anderson by an accomplished patent attorney, Todd Miller. It was generally on tips for entrepreneurs (and less on controversial issues like should there be patents or how the system should be reformed). Below are my main notes and takeaways. What do you guys think about the issues I've raised above? Tip 1: Work backwards.
Add Comment  This quarter, I'm lucky to be taking a class taught by Jim Stengel, the former Global Marketing Officer of P&G (the "UCLA CMO Experience"). I wrote about this class in my admissions essay, and I'm excited about finally experiencing it. Below are my main takeaways from this week's readings and lecture.
Notes on Autobiography of a Yogi 01/11/2012
In Steve Jobs' bio, it said he read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda every year. So I figured there must be something to it. (I had also heard of the book several times from other yogis and figured I would give it a try.) The book was slow to start (and sometimes included way too much detail), and I had trouble getting used to the writing style for a while. I also didn't really understand the overall point or trajectory of the work. Then, part of the way through, I began to enjoy it, and I noticed more and more pearls of wisdom on the pages. The book is about religion, but it's also not about religion. It's about faith and spirituality and the common one-ness uniting everyone, and I like those ideas. (The book is not about doing yoga sports exercises. It's about meditation and mind control, some of the most difficult and rewarding activities a human can apparently engage in.) The book featured many accounts of supernatural episodes (visions, reincarnations, levitation, and teleportation); those didn't sit well with me, but I will tolerate it as there's enough good elements in the book ignoring the supernatural events. After reading the book, I'm wondering what parts of it appealed most to Jobs. Meditation? Spirituality? Below are my notes. I apologize for butchering the spellings of many of the people and places mentioned in the book; I was listening to the audio version (which again unfortunately but understandably featured a reader with an English accent). Ch. 1: My parents and early life
Ch. 19: My master
Ch. 21: We visit Kashmir
Ch. 42: Last days with my guru Ch. 43: Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar
Ch. 46: The woman who never eats
Continuous Deployment at Lean LA View more presentations from Brett Durrett Another awesome talk by the guys at LeanLA and IMVU! Here's the blurb about the talk and the really knowledgeable speaker: "Continuous Deployment takes continuous integration one-step further, where every commit goes live to production servers. When this process is described it is frequently met with skepticism around site reliability and the ability to scale a business this way, but it works, it scales (with challenges) and it is embraced by the entire organization. IMVU is a leader in Continuous Deployment, with over 5 years of experience scaling this process to support a technical staff of 50 and a business of more that $40 million in annual revenue. Brett G. Durrett, Vice President of Engineering & Operations for IMVU explains the basic mechanics of Continuous Deployment and discusses the value it creates for the entire company. Specific topics that will be covered: Attendees will understand that releasing to customers 20+ times per day is possible and that it does scale from individual developers to large companies. In addition, they will understand how they can make Continuous Deployment successful at their company, from both a technology and cultural standpoint. Brett G. Durrett has over 20 years experience leading development of software and systems ranging from large-scale Internet services to video games. He serves as VP of Engineering at IMVU where he leads the engineering and technical operations teams and was responsible for the operations infrastructure that successfully scaled from two machines to over 700 servers. Prior to IMVU, Brett served as the Director of Engineering, VP of Operations and General Manager for the virtual world at There.com. Brett was also co-founder and CEO of Asylum Entertainment, a game development company." You can watch the talk (in two parts) and see the slides above. I'm pretty much sold on what Brett preaches and am thinking of how to implement continuous deployment in my current projects. He says that having little code and process in place puts you at an advantage, though I'm still wondering how to put in the right infrastructure to have all the tests and deployment run as smoothly and automatically as they do (and how much to prioritize this process infrastructure work around other initial start-up goals). My notes on the talk are below. Overall, I learned a lot and very much enjoyed hearing Brett speak. Their process:
Work process:
amount of time you need to run test depends on volume of people going through funnel all work done on trunk (no work on branches)
use selenium continuous integration: they use buildbot, others use hudson, jenkins, atlassian bamboo build servers
Deployment:
everyone emails changes to the change list (basically everyone in company) with before and after state and people can catch problems they have one monolithic code base don't have anything that ensures they have test code coverage automatically Getting Started (story):
if new code breaks something old, must write test to catch that expect some hurdles:
added query killer (issues kill statements on long queries; better to have code die than DB to be overloaded and take down everybody) schema changes on large tables (they use mysql):
hard to work with outsourcers who build over several days (impossible to integrate) build system itself is critical business function; keep metrics on build system (web dashboard of build process) integration with A/B testing inside the code (nice slide with pseudocode)
sprints:
Notes on The Finkler Question 01/07/2012
A friend of mine recommended to me The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, which recently won the Man Booker Prize. The book explores the question of religious (Jewish) identity in modern times through one man's daily life experiences. The book features both Jews and non-Jews, and the different levels of religious observance (or anti-observance, including self-hatred) tell the story of how different people viewed religious identity differently. I found it remarkable how various non-Jews in the book, like the main character, did more to be Jewish (and wanted to become Jewish), while the Jews behaved in the opposite manner. The book raised many questions, like the meaning of religion and its differences from culture and family (style and tradition). Overall, the book started very slowly and was quite a long read. It takes place in England, and the audio version featured a reader with an English accent. While this was "authentic," it was painfully difficult to understand (at double or triple speed like I like to listen to audio books); it took me about half the book to get up to triple speed with good comprehension. (Audio books should be offered with multiple speakers to choose from!) I found the book mostly depressing and sad (this was also the main character's recurring personality), with many themes related to mourning and death and little in the way of humor or comedy. I guess it's not my preferred genre, but after making it through to the end, I do realize why the book won its prize, and the central questions of religious identity and cultural tolerance the book raises are important for everyone to consider. I did enjoy the actual language and literary style as there were many plays on words and cool language tricks that I appreciated. My notes on the book are below; I'm sure I must have messed up some chapter numbering (and name spelling) at some point, but I hopefully captured the main elements of the plot and my most important takeaways. Part 1 Ch. 1
Ch. 6
Notes on Noah Kagan at LeanLA 01/05/2012
Watch live streaming video from leanla at livestream.com Noah Kagan is the founder of AppSumo and has worked on marketing for 4-Hour Workweek, Facebook, and Mint. You can watch the video above, and the main things I learned are below. He's a funny, straightforward, and brutally honest speaker, and it was cool to hear about many of the specific tactics he used to get AppSumo off the ground in a lean fashion. He even included a couple deep life lessons in here as a bonus.
I was lucky to visit Walt Disney World for the first time in my life this past week. On the one hand, the weather was great, but on the other, it was the busiest week possible for the theme parks. Given the craziness of the week, I learned a lot of lessons during the trip on what worked and didn't work. I also spent some time researching and preparing for the trip beforehand at the recommendation of some good friends, and I just wanted to share what I learned in case it can help other travelers. The advice and observations below are made from the perspective of a twenty-something male with no children and a large appetite for action and rides, so the points below might not apply to everyone. General:
| About Max Mednik
Max is an avid entrepreneur and student of life. He is a graduate of Stanford and founder of Ridacto and AMA Capital. He is a member of the business school class of 2012 at UCLA Anderson. He lives in Los Angeles with his family and spends his free time enjoying his many hobbies and interests.  ArchivesJanuary 2012 CategoriesAll SubscribeConnectFollow Me on Twitter  Connect on Facebook   Shazam Tags |
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