Category: Young People’s Plight

World Wide Web is 25! Oh, Baby!


Happy_birthday_by_babsdraws-d61xnoeOh, boy, World Wide Web!  You are 25!  So young, yet so much happened to you already! You are like a fucking child rock star!

When you were born, I was still in my 20s; so were Madonna and Michael Jackson; Brad Pitt was 25 (he just turned 50 – the jury is still out on whether you are good at math or not).  Now I run to you to roll time back and see people who witnessed your birth being young and alive – you keep them all and more inside your multitude of brains.

In only a quarter of a century that flew by with incredible acceleration you have spread yourself wide and deep.  You became a source of memories, references, entertainment, political battles, nationalistic agendas, a wide range of freedom and "freedom" fights, and the supreme motherbitch of it all – communication.  Oh, the connectivity of it! 

Just like other immature tech moguls born in the eighties you strive for world domination without any care about what you have and will destroy on your way to that lofty goal.  Just like them, you carelessly offer your services to those who uphold personal liberties and those who do whatever they can to extinguish them.

Talking about mixed emotions!  On one hand, it seems that I cannot exist without you and I don't even want to remember how I managed, oh, so many things before you were born.  Hey, you gave me this very outlet of self-expression!  On the other hand, I think you are a source of some major-scale evil; you made everyone more stupid; you will accelerate further retardation of minds and  degradation of humanity – all before you exhaust your own sources of existence (aka energy and servers' capacity) and bring life functions that rely on you to a grinding halt.  So, as much as I need you, I still keep my Britannica; I still buy hardcover books, CDs, and Blurays; and I still write checks.  I use you, but I don't trust you.  If I look closely I see that you are a sneaky creep.

What can I wish you on your 25th birthday?  What can you wish anyone on their 25th birthday?  To become a mature and responsible adult.  You go and figure out what it means.  I still didn't.       

Small Business Crusader Presents: Slate Coffee Roasters


 

Espresso Deconstructed

Photo by © Yana Alexandra Crow

As I mentioned in my travel reflections, it is not enough to treat my visit to Seattle's Slate Coffee Roasters as just another thing I did during my trip to the West Coast in August.  The place definitely deserves its own dedicated post. 

I personally know espresso aficionados who are obsessed with Slate, and I can totally understand why:  Even if you are a jaded connoisseur, you will have a novel, unforgettable experience here.  From the very beginning, Slate's founders conceptualized their business out of three exceptional building blocks: niche high-quality raw materials, superior preparation techniques, and singular finished products.      

Conceived and founded by Chelsea Walker in a partnership with her brother and mother, Slate was born two years ago, in November 2011.  It started its life in an Airstream trailer strategically positioned in Seattle's Capitol Hill.  Now, transplanted to one of Seattle's northwestern neighborhoods, Ballard, the establishment continues to cultivate the same aesthetics of grace and elegance that inspired the founders to start the business in the first place.  It applies to everything: the offerings, the methods, the decor, the ambiance, the hospitality, even the service sets.          

What fascinates me the most is that this young woman did exactly what I advocate all young people to do.  She found something that she (a) feels the most passionately about; (b) has talent for; and (c) knows well how to do, both technically and commercially.  She utilized her reputation as an innovative espresso barista to solicit valuable advice from local coffee-business celebrities and went full force after her entrepreneurial dream, attacking the odds on all fronts: Her business model includes the wholesale of Slate's roasts to other coffee boutiques (so far 9 locations in Washington, California, Massachusetts, and Illinois), the online store selling the current selection of beans as well as a few signature coffee implements, a coffee subscription, and, of course, the bar itself, where you can experience the magic firsthand and then leave with a bag of the fresh roast you've just tasted.

Everything in Slate Coffee Roasters is unique.  The uncluttered decor complements the minimalist menu very well: There are no lattes, cappuccinos, macchiatos, frappes, and such other potions here.  The only espresso-based drinks you can get are, well, espresso – either neat or cut with milk, in various proportions.  The rest are hot or cold-brewed coffees – usually from no more than 3 or 4 sources.  The coffee bean is treated here as a tropical fruit that it actually is.  So, just like good wine makers, Slate folks pursue rich bouquets and go after small-batch sources that harvest the most flavorful products: a 1500-farmers estate in Kenya, a specific lot on a Panama estate populated exclusively by Gesha trees, an Ethiopian co-op, etc. 

The single-source beans are roasted in house twice a month in 15-kilo lots.  Slate abandoned the tradition of the deeply roasted espressos and goes light on the heat for the sake of preserving the flavors.  In order to provide the bar's customers with an unadulterated experience, no sugar or any other sweeteners are offered.  They use non-homogenized local-farm milk here – so sweet and real, you feel happy for the cows that gave it away, and the desire to taste it on its own motivates some people (me!) to order the full Espresso Deconstructed set twice in a row.  If you do like something solid to complement your espresso or coffee, you should try the hand-dipped in chocolate… no, not conventionally dried orange peels, but syrup-soaked fresh orange slices.  It only makes sense that these exquisite offerings are served in a bar (rather than the common coffee house) setting, with espresso presented in designer stemware.  Other straight coffees are brewed to perfection in a variety of methods expertly matched to specific beans.

Of course, when judged by the field's elite, this, for a lack of better words, artistic and somewhat rebellious approach to the provisioning of coffee-based beverages, elicits high recognition and praise: Many a West Coast barista know of Slate; the wonderful Brandon Paul Weaver, who's been at Slate from the start, won the 2013 North West Regional Brewers Cup; and Slate's team captured the title of America's Best Coffee House 2013 in Seattle, which, considering the city's history with the drink, is a feat, especially for such a young establishment.    

It goes without saying that all these elements set Slate apart from the rest of Seattle's coffee scene and theoretically should've given them a tremendous competitive advantage.  Yet, the company struggles commercially. And it is my strong opinion that it has a lot to do with its geographical location – not just the remote Ballard specifically, but Seattle altogether.  Of course, the bar has its own devotees, who come in all the time (some are even willing to fly cross-country just to feel the magical brews on their lips), but, generally speaking, there are simply not enough people to generate a steady stream of clientele to the counter.  There is no question in my mind that the good people of Slate would be so much better off  in a place famous for its unyielding hyperactivity.

Yes, New York City is the most competitive place on this planet.  And yes, it is especially true for the majority of food establishments – according to Business Insider, 80% of restaurants here close in their first year of operation.  It makes total sense to me: you've got to do something extraordinary to survive here as yet another deli, a French or Italian restaurant, a Japanese sushi bar, or a Chinese take-out.  That said, the field of designer espresso is pretty barren.  Well, we maybe have about 20 highly rated specialized places – a ridiculously small number for NYC!  Yet, people with really discriminating tastes still complain that it is impossible to get a good espresso in New York.

The top places in competitions and recognition by connoisseurs are great, but at the end of the day, for a consumer-dependent establishment it's all about the statistics of public exposure: the more people pass a place, the higher the number of those who will enter.  And only then can you start wowing them with your miracles, hopefully achieving a sufficient level of the customer retention:  In order to succeed a small coffee-bar business needs a steady 10-people line during the morning, lunch, and coffee-break rushes.  Alternatively, this particular business can position itself as an exclusive Art House of Espresso with people coming in specifically for the Slate's religious experience and willing to pay exorbitant prices for it.   Neither possibility, unfortunately, is going to present itself  in Ballard.   

To illustrate how the statistical probabilities are impacted by geographical locations, let me use an analogy from my recent music experience:  Royal Canoe, a great small band from Winnipeg, Manitoba (don't jump to Wikipedia – they are not there) primarily performs at alternative festivals and small peripheral venues with, let's say, 50-300 people capacity.  What is the probability that someone who sees them at The Garrison in Toronto (capacity 270) will go out of their way to attend their concert in Brooklyn?  I'd say, close to zero.  But on 09/14 they opened for Alt-J at NYC's Hammerstein Ballroom (GA Floor capacity 3400, plus galleries) and I know of at least 5 people (two independent groups), who went to Canada specifically to see them play again.  And there might have been more.  And even if only 10% of the live audience buys t-shirts and CDs, it translates to 27 music lovers in Toronto, but at least 400 in NYC. 

Numbers - they don't lie.  So, is it surprising that at this moment Slate has only 28 reviews on Yelp, while Lucid Cafe (even though a very nice place, but no award winner or espresso breath-taker) located 4 blocks from Grand Central has 93? 

What I hope for is that Slate's current operations will create enough momentum to ignite in owners the desire to solidify their success and branch out to the busiest spot in the world, the city that never sleeps and, therefore, is in a dire need of Chelsea Walker's heavenly concoctions.  Plus, we have the highest concentration of people who adore the high-end, luxurious, elite products and services.  So, see you in New York?!            

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Economic Reflections of a Traveling CFO

Some Economists Say That a Robot Can Replace My Paige. For Real?



RobotThere are
quite a few optimistic economists out there who convinced themselves
that,  even though the Industrial Revolution, which was responsible for the unprecedented economic development of the United States since the 19th century, is pretty much over, there is no need to panic and envision impending doom.  According to them, we are yet to pull through.  Do you know what will save us?  Artificial intelligence and 3D printing, i.e. fucking robots and compressed plastic powder.  

Ok, let's leave the 3D printing alone for now. I'm quite impressed with the replication capabilities of the so-called printers: the manufacturing of complex forms, moving parts and all directly from scanned or modeled images looks like magic; and I do think that this innovation will revolutionize toy-making and change sculpture forever.  However, because the "printing" powder recipes are kept secret, I cannot really say anything about the quality and/or safety of the household items, tools, auto parts, etc. made this way.  I hear the plastic guns shoot people dead pretty well, but what else is new?

I am more curious about the robotized future though.  From the vantage point of the economists in question, 65% of American employees are engaged in tasks that they classify as "information processing" (sounds pretty arbitrary to me, but let's go with it) and these poor "dehumanized" worker bees will be replaced with super-efficient highly intelligent machines, who never get depressed because information is what they do. And it doesn't matter that the damn toasters will never be able to look at a plant and pick an appropriate tool to trim it (it's just something that cannot be programmed). 

In case you are wondering, the other 35% will be occupied in professions and functions that require superior intelligence and talent: executive management (you wouldn't believe how many executive dumbasses I know, but whatever!), strategic planning, creative work, and of course, gardening (on account of the robots' deficiencies mentioned above).  

Seriously though, I hope you agree with me that defining ALL tasks performed by office employees as "information processing" essentially turns these people into some sort of robots already, which creates an illusion that replacing imperfect human tools with slick intelligent machines is an efficient, easy, and necessary process.  And yes, some of the office routines can be tedious and dehumanizing.  Yet, the reality is that only in large companies, marked by narrow specialization, standardization, and redundancy, work can be likened to the repetitive conveyor operations.  Everywhere else people multitask!        

Ever since my doctoral studies of economics (many year ago), I had a problem with the pervasive tendency of theoretical generalization; with the application of the macroeconomic approach to microeconomic systems.  Again, maybe such abstractions are somewhat pertinent to giant enterprises, but you and I know that every small business operates differently – none of them will fit into an artificially constructed etalon.  It scares me to think that these pseudo-scientists possibly envision the future without any entrepreneurship at all – just fucking GMs, GEs, Microsofts, Starbucks, Smithfields, Apples, Googles, COSTCOs, and Carl's Jr. (Wait a minute, doesn't this ring a pretty loud bell?)

But what if this nightmare doesn't come true? (Call me a fucking optimist!) Imagine that 20 years from now small businesses still exist, but now they can be outfitted with highly efficient (and affordable!) intelligent machines available to step in as your trusted office workers. Let's conduct a mental experiment and see how a robot will deal with three (could've been 100) straightforward issues customarily handled by one of my most reliable and teachable subordinates of all time (I call her "my Paige").  In other words, let's see if a robot can really replace my Paige.

#1.  A commercial customer has a $300K credit line.  The total of the customer's open invoices is $265K.  A $51K order for the product your company really needs to move is transmitted  for the robot's credit approval.  Of course, a discretionary flexibility is programmed into the algorithm (robot designers are not stupid) – it's 5% above the limit (remember, standardization is unavoidable with machines), making the total allowable credit exposure $315k.  But approving the order would exceed it by a mere $1,000.  The robot rejects it, denying its employer an opportunity to move the product, increase the revenue, make a nice profit.  In addition, the relationship with a long-time customer is at jeopardy over a thousand bucks; and the salesperson is mad because he lost his commissions.  And what are you going to do?  Fire the robot?  It cost the company a fucking mint!         

#2.  The operations department (also robots)  needs to make sufficient room in the storage facility to accommodate the upcoming delivery of 5000 mt of a product from overseas.  They transmit a message to Sales to start pushing the shit faster.  Sales plea and beg customers to take as much product as they can – discounts and all kinds of other tokens of gratitude are flowing.  One customer says that he can take a delivery on September 29th, but he doesn't want the inventory on his books just yet and the invoices must be dated October 14th (the "I do something for you, you do something for me" principle).  This information is relayed to my accounting robot.  It's perplexed: It's programmed to record sales according to the order terms; the terms in this case are Delivered; the proof of delivery transmitted into his system by the trucking branch states September 29th; yet, somebody is overriding his algorithm and forces the wrong date!  SCREECH!  SYSTEM FAILURE!      

#3.  The payments-to-suppliers program kicks in.  The robot tallies all invoices that need to be paid – the total is $3.3M.  Now, funds-sufficiency program kicks in: there is only $300K available on the account and the robot transmits a funding request to the CFO's all-in-one communication device installed into her left ear's diamond stud.  The borrowing and investing functions are still done by the human CFO, because the risk of some crafty thief hacking into a fucking toaster is, as you can imagine, pretty high.  The problem is that the CFO is in London dining with a Financial Director of a company her employer targeted for acquisition.  She is trying to pump the stiff for some information beyond the official reports, and she just got him talking, and there is no way she can lose this opportunity on account of some payments.  But the robot must do his job – he must be timely, the payments must be made.  Yet, he sees that, if he actually makes the payments, the account will be overdrafted by $3 million.  The conflicting algorithms are tearing the machine apart, literally – it short-circuits.  

What? Are you telling me that the economists don't have these tasks in mind; that these are semi-managerial-somewhat-analytical duties? Guess what, Mr. Big-Shot-Futurologist? That's what's going on in small businesses with flat structures: Every sector of the value chain is manned by one executive/manager and a handful of her direct reports aka the "the information processors." No middle management. You cannot possibly reassign these minute but essential issues to CFO's and Controllers – that's just too expensive in terms of the compensation, wasteful in terms of the time taken away from more strategic obligations, and demeaning in terms of the moral incentives. And if I have to buy robots AND keep my subordinates for the semi-managerial-somewhat-analytical work, what kind of progress is that?

According to the US Census data, there are over 6 million companies in this country with less than 100 employees.  Obviously, they are too small to see from the top of the theoretical mountain. So, in articles for academic magazines and thick manuscripts for Wiley publications, their diverse office workers first get bundled together with the narrow-niched redundant zombies of large bureaucracies, and then replaced by robots in one sweep of a Montblanc pen.

Just for argument's sake let's get back for a second to the scary possibility: The economists, politicians , and the big businesses paying for them actually erase small companies from the national map. The intellectual flexibility is ignored in the interest of standardization, and all of the "information processors" in the remaining giant conglomerates are replaced by machines. What kind of plans do the movers and shakers have for these 65% of American workers?  How about their children, lately multiplying at the three-per-family rate?  Considering the dramatically falling IQs of the general population, it's unlikely that they will be viable candidates for high-level managerial or creative work.  So, how is the robotization going to make the whole nation wealthier in the same way the Industrial Revolution did?  I see a more polarized society with hordes of people pushed below the poverty level.

But the biggest question I have for the big-time big-picture economists is: Where the fuck are you going to get the energy to power all those robots and their managing network servers?  

  

US Open Women’s Quarterfinals Prove that 30 Is… the New 30


1378253439001-USP-Tennis-US-Open-S-Williams-vs-NavarroNo, it's not an error in the title of this post – I meant what I wrote.  30 is not the new 20, even though some women in their late 20s and early 30s look like high schoolers. 

At 20, our poor over-achieving and uber-pepped children are still tainted by their immediate adults' high expectations; their psyche is all screwed up by fear of failure, which results in terrible confidence and self-worth issues.  No matter what some psychologists say about "infantilism," I firmly believe that these are the main reasons why the majority of the 50 million people in their 20s today appear somewhat stunted in their life cycle.  It's our fault. 

Far from all, but definitely the best ones, after 5-10 years of struggling through all the psychological and social tribulations their parents, guardians, and the society created for them,  come out of it knowing exactly what they want from their lives; acting with more maturity and confidence than any 20-year-old could've possibly mastered, even in "the good old times." (When were they that good for children and young people? I have no fucking clue!)  Thus, at its best, the new 30 is something we've never seen before: it is a unique combination of teenage physical youthfulness and adult mental toughness.  These 30-year-olds didn't waste their twenties (no matter what the bitter over-the-hill farts say), they used it to get better and free themselves from the bullshit that dragged them back.  The ages-old statistical measurements concerning the attainment of stations of life simply don't apply to them, and I can't believe that some esteemed sociologists and psychologists still use them.

This brings us to tennis as a perfect example of this phenomenon.  For the first time in the US Open history, three out of four ladies advanced to the semifinals are over 30: Serena Williams (will turn 32 in exactly three weeks), Li Na (31), and Flavia Pennetta (31).  If 30-year-old quarter-finalist Daniela Hantuchova overcame Victoria Azarenka (ranked #2 in the world), it would be a 30+ quartet.  Azarenka herself, at 24, is not that overwhelmingly young either - she turned pro 10 years ago.  And it's not like the three older women played in their "age group" – they went through a bunch of much younger competitors on their way to the semis.      

It's  remarkable, especially considering that this sport fairly recently saw 16 to 18-year-olds winning multiple Grand Slams in a row (Martina Hingis with a career slam at age 17 in 1997 comes to mind).  Now, there is not a single teenager among the top 30 ranked players on both men's and women's sides.  Serena Williams after all ups and downs of her, still remarkable, twenties last year won Wimbledon, the US Open, and two Olympic Golds.  She played more matches this year than she ever played in her life before (reaching #1 rank) and already pocketed the French Open title.       

According to the contemporary medical science, theoretically speaking, these 30-year-young people will have 10 years longer to live than we do.  So, if we don't completely destroy the environment, the economy, and the democracy, people in their 30s will have plenty of time to at least try to realize their potentials and can consider their twenties as formative years.  If we let them to survive, they will look 35 at 50 and continue rocking on well into their 80s.

The Frustrated CFO Recommends: A Theory of the Economic Doomsday


Industrial RevolutionWhile I am trying to restore some bits of sanity in my hopelessly depressed mind by breathing the magical air of the Pacific Coast's Redwoods and pretending for a hot second that the rest of the world doesn't exist, you, my readers, should not be laxing.  Especially those who are interested in the posts I file under the sad category It's Only Gonna Get Worse. You MUST check out Benjamin Wallace-Wells' article for New York magazine The Blip about Robert Gordon's economic theory on the inevitable halt of US Economic Growth.

Trust me, it's excellent and incredibly enlightening, even for people in the know.  In fact, I have nothing critical to say either about the article (for once a journalist managed to cover a lot of ground in a very concise manner) or the subject matter.  Let me give you a little teaser:

"'You look at the numbers, at how much more it costs now to get ahead – all the tutors, the college-prep courses, in some cases the private admissions consultants – and it is just astonishing," Gordon said.  What he was describing was a society where the general privilege of simply being American was once again losing out to the specific, inherited privilege of being born rich."

How about that? 

Also, it turns out that I'm not the only person with a Ph.D. in Economics who believes in connection between the economic conditions and the quality of cultural environment. When Gordon speaks about Hollywood's golden age he chokes on his tears.  My kind of an economist for sure.

So, go on, just click on that link.