Bill Watt’s Blog

I can’t believe that May is done. It has been a bit of a whirlwind with birthdays (my brother and nephew to name two), people having kids or finding out they will have one (Mai & Peter, Amelia and Ben, Jen and Chad, and more that aren’t announced yet), goodbye dinners (J Scott and Carol, several for Lily, Jonny from Current, Eric Nordby from Current, and many others), work projects, and Alice wrapping up work.

There are a few things I wanted to blog but haven’t had the time for unique posts:

• Work has been good. I can’t believe I’ve been there 3 months already! I’m learning tons, like the folks on the team and the commute isn’t bad at all. I even get to commute with a few folks so it feels like the time is more useful than it would have been. The hardest part is the hours in the office vs hours online when I get home and trying to be a part of the social scene while living so far away. At least I have people willing to get lunch and coffee with me so it is starting well.
• My AppleTV is getting more use these days now that I can rent movies and watch other content on our new HDMI-enabled TV
• I’m really enjoying the Dr Who series on SciFi while Torchwood is still taking some time to grow on me.
• I have an incredible appreciation for my friends. I was stressing last week about a work project and several of my friends stepped up and helped me out. Thanks especially to Kathleen and if anyone is looking for SEM help I highly encourage you to check out iProspect.
• While I have made the most of my meals while Alice is gone (can you say Korean BBQ 3x times week) I’m more than a little jealous that she’s eating at the Border Cafe tonight with Heather and Karen and tomorrow with Eric. No fair! (For those of you that don’t know, the Border Cafe has the best chicken fajitas ever and a good selection of margaritas.)
• I wish I bought a hybrid last year. The difference was only like $3k and even if it doesn’t make a huge difference it would have been something. I know… I know. A hybrid SUV is still stupid for me considering I usually drive myself. I’m going to get the bike tires pumped up tomorrow and see about riding my bike to the train station instead of driving.
• I picked up the book “The Post American World” and am really liking it. I’m not a person that thinks it is a forgone conclusion that America will lose it’s place at the head of the table but I do think that the rest of the world increasing in standard of living is a good thing. Heck, we’re always talking about exporting democracy… now that the rest of the world is catching on (in various shapes and sizes) how does it feel?

OK- that’s enough. Time to watch BSG and then get some sleep. Coffee with Alex @ 9AM is going to come very soon!

I was reading this post from Seth Godin:

Ordinary is cheaper than you

The folks who answer the phone at information and the airlines aren’t folks any more. They’re computers.

And the person taking your order at the drive-through isn’t in the same state as you. They might not even be in the same country.

It’s now clear to employers everywhere that they can hire ordinary, perfectly-acceptable staff for a fraction of what they have to pay you to do the job.

In other words, if all the best you can do is ‘good enough’, then why on earth should I pay you the benefits and wages that it costs to get you to do that work

And I can offer one reason why. Henry Ford paid his people more than the lowest rate for a couple reasons not the least of which was so that they could afford the products he sold. We keep going for the lowest price in goods and service and we’re surprised that we’re unhappy with the quality. Ok, that’s like an immediate return on investment. But if we keep pushing these things lower and lower eventually we won’t be able to afford the low prices on low salaries.

Now, I understand the point of Seth’s post… be better than ordinary. I do think there are many ordinary folks out there who are getting caught in the lowest price at any cost war and it is taking us all down.

So, I think everyone who knows me would agree I’m a Cornucopian and that I believe we have the means to fix our current problems. As such I find it amazing that we haven’t yet fixed this oil dependence and reliance on other parts of the world for our standard of living.

Then I read articles like in this month’s Fast Company article featuring a story on Johnathan Goodwin, a co-partner of SAE Energy, who converts some of the biggest gas-guzzlers in America into some of the cleanest and most efficient cars on the road. It ain’t cheap but if he can do what he says then I have to imagine Detroit could find ways to make it market ready. We all won’t be pulling up to restaurants and asking for fry oil if they just worked with the valley and the government and got the ball moving on real solutions instead of arguing against competition from European diesel imports.

I really think you should read this article as written so I won’t pull out all the interesting sound bites but here is one section I found really interesting (since I tend to think about the execution issues involved):

“Goodwin admits all these things are true but believes the country could be weaned off gasoline in a three-step process. The first would be for Detroit to aggressively roll out diesel engines, much as Europe has already begun to do (some 50% of all European cars run diesel). In a single stroke, that would improve the nation’s mileage by as much as 40%, and, because diesel fuel is already widely available, drivers could take that step with a minimum of disruption. What’s more, given that many diesel engines can also run homegrown biodiesel, a mass conversion to diesel would help kick-start that market. (This could have geopolitical implications as well as environmental and economic ones: The Department of Transportation estimated in 2004 that if we converted merely one-third of America’s passenger cars and light trucks to diesel, we’d reduce our oil consumption by up to 1.4 million barrels of oil per day–precisely the amount we import from Saudi Arabia.)

The second step in Goodwin’s scheme would be to produce diesel-electric hybrid cars. This would double the mileage on even the biggest dieselvehicles. The third phase would be to produce electric hybrids that run in “dual fuel” mode, burning biodiesel along with hydrogen, ethanol, natural gas, or propane. This is the concept Goodwin is proving out in his turbine-enhanced H3 Hummer and in Neil Young’s Lincoln: “At that point, your mileage just goes really, really high, and your emissions are incredibly low,” he says. Since those vehicles can run on regular diesel or biodiesel–and without any alternative fuel at all, if need be–drivers wouldn’t have to worry about getting stranded on the interstate. At the same time, as more and more dual-fuel cars hit the road, they would goose demand for genuinely national ethanol, hydrogen, and biodiesel grids.”

See, this is the part that makes me crazy. Everyone is worried about the rest of the world taking our jobs. I’m from Ohio and I hear the stories about steel mills closing and the work going over seas. (I read an article last week about how international companies are growing and are expanding by buying our closed steel mills and running them more efficiently. Hmmm. Seems like there is another blog post there.)

We are a country known for our innovations and if we got off our asses, built some new technology that removed our dependence on foreign oil, especially from the Middle East where our dollars are arguably supporting folks who don’t have our best interests at heart, and if we used the new technology to create a leap forward that created a new industry then we’d be in the lead once again. I’m not even sure that it is debatable anymore that we’re in an innovation economy and trying to be protectionistic is the wrong approach.

Manufacturing can always be done by cheaper locations (funny to see China is now pricing itself out of the manual labor work as other countries seek to take the business and get China’s year over year growth rates) but you can’t really outsource innovation. In my mind our options are to be on the cutting edge or be competing with the low cost factory providers. I’d rather be in the former and create the markets that others then adopt.

Read the full article and let me know what you think.

I’m adding a new category to my blog and a new thing I want to think about as I go day to day and that is how to live a sustainable life.

I’m not talking about going whole hog and only eating what I grow organically in my front yard but instead want to think of how to live a life that gives back more than it takes. From now on this category on my blog will track my attempts to do a better job at it.

I’m not trying to make a self promotional thread but given it is a public blog, you can think what you want. I also don’t expect everything will be a success but it will be a trail and error that hopefully will be more success than failure. Also, if I do the right things, maybe something that my nephews can learn from as they make their way.