“From the San Jose Mercury News, a report on venture capital honchos John Doerr and John Denniston’s push for investment in clean and green technology at last week’s Cleantech Venture Network conference…”

“More bad news for actively managed mutual funds: A ’survivor bias’ in the Morningstar mutual fund data relied upon by most individual investors and financial advisors has the effect of ’systematically and significantly’ overstating the performance of actively managed mutual funds relative to their related indexes for the 10-year period from 1995-2004, according to a major new study to be released today by Savant Capital Management Inc., of Rockford, IL., and the Zero Alpha Group (ZAG).” (Thanks kottke.org!)

“[T]he two Johns (who will be performing a duet at PC Forum) embody their own message: They are more productive as a team. Brown, former chief scientist of Xerox and long-time leader of Xerox PARC, has more of a philosophical, scientific bent, while Hagel, a long-time McKinsey consultant now working on his own, has a closer-to-the-metal appreciation of business realities and strategies.”

“Manage her time: You may represent only 1% of her problems, don’t make it as if it is 100%. Yes, you have preoccupations, problems to solve and issues to tackle. However, while your time is entirely devoted to them, do not expect your boss’s time to be also.”

“Today I moderated a very good panel at a conference, and while this experience is fresh in my mind, I want to explain how to kick butt on a panel. At any given conference, there are about three keynote speakers and twenty five panelists, so the odds are much higher that you’ll be a panelist than a keynote speaker. Thus, I hope this entry appeals to a broader audience. Superficially, a panel looks easy. There are four or five other people on it–all of whom you think you’re smarter than–and it only lasts sixty minutes. How hard could it be? Herein lies the problem: everyone thinks a panel is easy so they don’t take it seriously.”

“Sometimes the best presentation is… no presentation. Ditch the slides completely. Put the projector in the closet, roll the screen back up, and turn the damn lights back on! Especially if the slides are bullet points. Or worse… paragraphs… The second you dim the lights and go into ‘presentation mode’ is the moment you move from a two-way conversation to a one-way lecture/broadcast.”

“Caterina Fake has a peculiar list of reasons why starting a company today is a bad idea. I say it’s never been a better time to start a business. You know, the kind that develops a product or service and asks money for it.”

“I just don’t feel like leaving. I should, because if there was ever a time to be updating one’s resume and exploring one’s options, this is one of them. So why am I standing pat? I’ve been a newspaperman for the past 20 years and I’ve always faced the same issue: Most towns have one newspaper that pays a living wage. If you want to stay in the newspaper biz, you either decide the town is nice enough to make up for the paper’s failings, or the paper’s nice enough to make up for the town’s failings.”

“If someone drops by your office and you’ve got a conference call starting in two minutes, give ‘em 30 seconds, but let them know you’ve got the call starting and that you’ll follow up with them. That’s a world of difference from pretending to listen, while straightening papers on your desk until the call starts.”

“Startups typically attempt to compensate for this effect by hyper-motivating employees using stock options… Typically the managers enforcing the overtime have infinitely more to gain in terms of ownership, and find that the only way to keep the underlings working overtime is to dangle increasingly ludicrous stories of wealth in front of them. The eventual burnout and turnover is not worth the temporary gain given by overtime.”

“People separate knowledge into two major categories. The first consists of areas where some people know more than others (math, physics, computer programming, history, linguistics, etc.) and the second consists of areas where they don’t (religion, politics, raising a family, etc.). The second area has always baffled me. Why will people willingly say they know nothing about math, but will rarely admit the same thing about politics or religion? Why will people accept advice on a subject, from someone that has studied it in depth, if that subject is programming, but not if it has to do with raising their children? Why, in some areas of knowledge, do we equate studying with mastery, and in other areas we don’t? I’ll call this the ‘wisdom fallacy’ — that people believe wisdom has no correlation with knowledge for some subjects, when really it does.”

“I know new folks arrive here every day, so it seems like an opportune time to look back at some of my favorite GTD posts from the earlier days on 43F. They’ll be familiar to many of you but — as someone who re-read Getting Things Done this weekend — I think it never hurts to go back and review.”

In the Japanese language Nikkei newspaper yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting article featuring stories on people who have started small grassroots movements — however unintentional — by doing something in a unique way. One such person is Mr. Masayoshi Takahashi who has gotten a lot of people interested in his unique way of presenting, now labeled the ‘Takahashi Method.’ Takahashi uses only text in his slides. But not just any text — really big text. Huge text. Characters of impressive proportion which rarely number more than ten, usually fewer.

“As Jerry Seinfeld once noted, at a funeral, most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy, since public speaking stresses people out more than death. But giving talks doesn’t have to be such a frightening affair.”

“The truth is, you are building your reputation–your brand–one response at a time. People are shaping their view of you by how you respond to them. If you are slow, they assume you are incompetent and over your head. If you respond quickly, they assume you are competent and on top of your work. Their perception, whether you realize it or not, will determine how fast your career advances and how high you go. You can’t afford to be unresponsive. It is a career-killer.”