I didn’t know what to do with myself, so first I tries heading to the mall to get some food and so some reading. The mall had no power. Even worse, cars were pouring away from the mall, and having a godawful time negotiating intersections with no lights.

Heading down the freeway I could see stoplights along the roads not working. 5 miles down the freeway and the power was still off.

So what does one do these days without power? Well, I guess you just pull out your phone and connect right back to the gird =)

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a Heaven for?

-Robert Browning.

Business and Feudal Society

Picture Europe in the Middle Ages: landowners (nobles) passed their land, title, and privilege to their sons. They profited from their workers (peasants), and carried the attitude that the peasants existed to serve the nobles. Duty flowed upwards from peasants to the landowners.

Eventually, a revolutionary idea surfaced: that nobles existed to protect and serve their peasants, and that duty flowed downwards

Fast forward to today and the corporate America that we live in. Corporations have owners (shareholders) and employees. Many consider the ultimate responsibility of every business is to the business owners. Many corporations push their workers, and will lay off employees when it can increase or secure profit. In this current scenario, duty flows up from employees to the corporation.

Here’s a thought: does the atmosphere exist for a revolutionary idea that corporations exist, and have responsibility not only to themselves, but to their employees as well? Should duty flow down from the business to employees?

1. Polish. No, not a Polish hot-dog. Polish. Make it shiny, so that any defect can be seen and eliminated. Blizzard Entertainment, famous makers of the Warcraft series of games, and the greatest grossing game of all time, World of Warcraft, are famous for the time and effort they expend polishing their games. It shows. Their games just work, and moreover, are fun. Every aspect of their games is gone over to make sure that the experience delivered is one that players can enjoy.

World of Warcraft (or WOW) is the ultimate example of this. Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games had existed (and many had prospered) for many years before WOW, and WOW was not technically superior to existing offerings. However, WOW delivered a cohesive game experience that drew players to it, and kept them paying $15  month after month to play the game because it was polished and did all the little things very, very well.

2. Originality. Those who can present something in a novel or unique way have a greater chance of success. I really like the example of Auto-Tune the News. They take clips from news shows, mix together sound bites from talking heads, and use that as the basis for an original song and video. It’s a concept that is often hilarious, and is a perfect example of the remix culture that has emerged over the last two decades. Remixing isn’t original, but the way in which they do it is something that hadn’t ever been done before, and they quickly found a significant audience.

3. Develop a Voice/Brand. If you can’t be totally original, then at least develop your own way of doing things that is consistent and that people can begin to identify as being uniquely “you”. Ever heard of the band “Ok Go”? I don’t really like much of their music, but their music videos are nothing short of spectacular. Not for any sort of special effects. For choreography. They have become famous for videos that are masterfully choreographed and shot all in one long take without any cuts. All of their videos are available on YouTube, and they have developed such a following that each new video they create is an event. Right now, Ok Go is long-take videos.

4. Routinely Provide Value. This is the easiest way to be excellent online, and I probably should have listed this first. Providing valuable information in a niche can help you to establish your own voice or brand, and can be the basis to grow and begin to be recognized as an expert.

Ask yourself: What information or creativity do I have that I can share with others? What knowledge do I possess? Is there a niche or market that I belong to that I can answer questions about? You can start doing this easily through Quora, a question and answer site. After creating a free account, you can list topics or areas that interest you. New questions posted to these topics will become part of your “stream” and will appear on your home page on Quora. You can then post an answer to any of these questions, ask your own questions, and vote on which answers you think best address the question posed.

Quora can be a great way to start providing value to others, can help you establish your presence in a niche, and will start you on the path to being excellent online.

What other ways do you have to be excellent? I’d love to hear your ideas!

In any facet of life, there of those who fail to distinguish themselves, and those who stand out. This has become increasingly true online, where resources such as Blogger, WordPress, YouTube, and cheap web hosting have made it possible for anyone with the desire to voice his or her thoughts and opinions online. (Please excuse the inherent irony in this post. I am that person voicing his opinions.)

Distribution of web site quality

A consequence of this flood of opinions and online voices is a steep decrease in the average quality of online material. For better or worse, the bell curve of quality content has shifted far, far, to the left (in this case, towards “terrible”.) The vast majority of web sites out there are mediocre at best. A small percentage contain good, quality content that many readers can appreciate, and a tiny fraction of online content is excellent, crafted by content producers that understand the medium and know how to grab an audience and convey their message in an entertaining way.

For those of you out there who want your voice to be heard online, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that in a saturated market, the chances of a random visitor finding you are smaller. The good news is that there is so much crap out there that if you have skill, put effort and time into what you are doing, and put a small push into marketing, you can stand out from the mediocre crowd.

The number one way to stand out is to be excellent.

Conversely, you can be so unfathomably terrible that you can achieve a level of fame (well, ignominy) through sheer awfulness.

Greatness or excellence, like many things in life, is a choice. Nearly anyone can achieve greatness, but it requires time, effort, and most of all, commitment. Pick something you love – something that you can spend your free time devoted to – and be great.

But this world is changing. More and more people are beginning to realize that how long you’ve been doing something matters much less than what you’ve actually done. Experience does count, absolutely, but it’s the projects you have worked on and what you accomplished and completed to get that experience that matters a great deal more.

Years from now, you’ll never remember how many emails you returned each day, how many people you got back to, or how many meetings you went to. What you will remember, however, are the projects you believed in, worked at, completed, and then looked over with the satisfaction of having created something good.

What you do and what you work towards every day should be about those projects. Find one that matters to you. Find one that you can be passionate about. Find thy “why” in what you are doing. And spend you time on that. Make that the most important part of your work day.

For a really good, inspiring article about projects and finding that “WOW” project that you can pour yourself into, check out this great article, originally published in Fast Company Magazine:

The Wow Project

Try one. Now!

So what’s up with this whole electric motorcycles thing? That’s what I had been wondering for a while, so I decided to set up a test ride and find out for myself. And since this Motorcycle News Guy happens to live about 100 miles north of the headquarters of Zero Electric Motorcycles, I figured what better way to try out an electric bike than with a visit to their company headquarters?

A quick call to the number listed on Zero’s website for demos, and I got Bryan on the phone who was more than happy to schedule a visit for me to come in and try out a Zero S street bike. Three minutes and one email later, I was all set to meet up with Jeff, Zero’s factory coordinator/customer service guy/man of many hats. The whole scheduling process couldn’t have been easier and it really seems like Zero is happy to have people come in and sample the electromechanical wizardry they’ve been brewing near Santa Cruz, California.

It's even curvier than it looks

Loading up Google Maps and planning my route to Zero, I see this map:

And I start getting giggly. Looking at that map just brought up memories of my last ride to Santa Cruz 5 years ago – a gorgeous route through tree-lined hills and 70 mph sweepers that keep going for miles. Highway 17 is one sweet stretch of road, and the perfect way to prep for my visit to Zero.

But besides a nice ride there, I really didn’t know what to expect from my visit to Zero – motorcycle test rides are a rare commodity these days – but I hoped that it wouldn’t be like a typical pushy car test drive. Honestly, I was a little afraid that since Zero is such a new company with relatively few bikes on the road, their factory staff would be pressured to try to make sales from anyone that tries out their bikes.

Once arriving at Zero, all my fears about pressure were totally wiped away. The guys there seemed to genuinely enjoy what they were doing, and Jeff, the factory coordinator, was totally friendly and enthusiastically showed me all the great stuff going on at Zero. At one point, while Jeff was grabbing release forms, a guy was walking by me and suddenly stopped and asked if I was wearing BMW City Pants (which I was, and which I frickin’ love, by the way.) He introduced himself as Richard, the new heard of customer service at Zero (and another really friendly guy.) Turns out, he used to work for BMW and was responsible for designing the pants I was wearing. Cool stuff.

My favorite casual motorcycle pants.

In the hour and a half I spent at Zero, I got pretty much the whole tour – from the shop where bikes get fixed up all the way to the separate assembly building where the guys there can churn out about 12 bikes a day. (And if that doesn’t sound like much, just do that math and you’ll see that a few thousand bikes a year is actually pretty damn good for a company only a few years old trying to introduce a new transformative technology to an existing market.)

What really impressed me was that Zero seems to have a good plan in place for the future. They’re already pushing bikes in some European markets and are getting a lot of great feedback about what works and have been drawing up some new bike ideas from that. The thing that gets me most excited, though, is the possibility that advances in the next few years will improve the engine and battery life of these bikes to a level where they can really start to compete with gas-powered engines on the street.

Riding the Zero S

Once all that tour business was done, and I signed my release form, it was time for what I had really come to Zero for: my first electric motorcycle ride.

Turn the key and the Zero fires up, running through a series of electronics checks, and produces the sound of… silence. Press in the engine cutoff switch near the throttle and the bike, though still dead silent, is ready to go. There’s no clutch to pull in, no neutral to shift out of – just twist the throttle and the bike goes. Close the throttle and the bike slows down and stops. Easy as that. And unlike, say, a car with an automatic transmission, the Zero’s idle speed IS zero, which means on a flat road you don’t even have to hold a brake to stay stopped.

With all this, and a pretty friendly power curve, I kept thinking that the Zero would be such an easy bike for someone to learn on. No shifting and no clutch means that a newbie can focus on the most important skills: throttle control, keeping the bike upright, and lane/car awareness. There is a huge possibility here to introduce a new generation of riders to motorcycling – ones who would otherwise be too intimidated by a typical 600cc sportbike to even think of hopping on a motorcycle.

So after Jeff and I got the bikes started up and sorted out, he took me on a little ride through some windy roads near the Zero factory. It really gave me a chance to get a feel for the bike and begin to appreciate the unique riding experience you get from it. Twisting on the throttle there is some noise; the bike isn’t 100% silent. You can hear the chain going, and the Agni DC engine does produce a quiet buzz/whirring sound as it’s RPMs increase. But the vibration is almost nonexistent, and once you get up to speed you barely notice anything other than wind noise. And that’s when I started to see the beauty in a quiet electric motorcycle. Diving into curves, and gently rolling on the throttle without worrying about a clutch or gears, the riding experience was more about the road. And without loud engine noise and vibration, riding began to feel more like gliding along the road. Or even flying. For me, it felt like I was connecting more deeply with the essence of two-wheeled riding.

I liked it. A lot.

Now, that isn’t to say that I’m going to ditch my 600cc inline four tomorrow and get a Zero. Electric bikes still have a ways to go to reach the performance levels of production sportbikes. But they’re on their way. The fact that they are cheaper to operate and are better for the environment is a big plus for me too. And you know, if I was living in a city like San Francisco, I would be all over getting a Zero S for riding around the city. Federal and State tax breaks make buying one a lot more economical.

Really, though, riding a Zero makes you aware of how close we truly are to zero emissions electric vehicles for everyone. Imagine LA without smog. Imagine not having to worry about putting so much CO2 into the environment. Imagine cleaner power. A more sustainable future is our future, and electric vehicles and going to be a big big part of that.

I think Zero is going to be a big player in that future, and look forward to even more innovative electric motorcycles soon.

As someone who previously lived in a linear fashion, I went years without questioning the course of my life. Since I realized I needed to follow (and figure out) my passions, my life has changed substantially. This video is especially resonant for me, because I think it speaks to the type of education we should be providing our children with; namely, education on how to live a life of meaning.

Watch this video. If you find it to be as relevant as I do, please share it.

When judging new cell phones, I often see reviews with comments such as: “has a solid, sturdy feel” while another phone “feels plasticy and cheap.”

There is plenty of evidence – both from everyday experience and in psychological studies – to support the idea that when judging similar objects we value the heavier one above the lighter one.

The implications for that go far beyond just using nice thick paper when job hunting.

One study took two groups of people and gave each group a clipboard with information regarding a proposal. The participants were asked to look over the proposal and then argue in favor of or against the proposal. Sounds like a pretty boring study, right? Here’s the kicker: the second group’s clipboards all had secret compartments filled with a pound of paper. Their clipboards were heavier… so… they judged the information in the clipboard to be of greater value. And this led to a really startling conclusion. The people with weighted clipboards argued much more strongly either for or against the proposal. They thought more deeply about the information and actually put more energy and effort into the whole process. All because their clipboards were heavier!

I love this. Really. This is psychology that is easily applicable on a daily basis.

Not only that, but it is far reaching. Sales presentations: heavier handouts materials. Consumer good have been working on miniaturization and weight reduction – but it’s possible adding weight to products could improve sales (pens, phones, and computer mice are the first things off the top of my head.)

There’s a lot of value in this concept and it’s a really useful piece of consumer and marketing psychology. I hope you’re able to put it good use.