Below is the video and here are the slides on Slideshare.

I’ve got a longer post in me that builds on the themes in the talk — hoping to get that up in the next couple of weeks!

Update: just found a talk called “Optimize for Happiness” by Tom Preston-Werner (Github co-founder) about optimizing for happiness vs. money. Tom’s talk definitely pre-dated mine and looks at happiness from a somewhat different point-of-view. Definitely worth reading/watching.

(And don’t get me wrong, I really love artfully-done PowerPoint or Keynote presentations. It’s absolutely possible and the best slide decks inspire and motivate.)

So, I particularly enjoyed this bit in Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s remarkable “burning platform” memo:

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

“Only partially in jest.” Ouch.

(Thanks to @finitor for his tweet!)

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to the unemployed, to poor entrepreneurs and to others living in poverty who are not bankable. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimum qualifications to gain access to traditional credit. Microcredit is a part of microfinance, which is the provision of financial services to the very poor; apart from loans, it includes savings, microinsurance and other financial innovations.

I made two small loans today using Kiva.org, which makes the process really simple:

• One to a 43 year-old woman in Kenya to invest in her crafts business
• One to a 42 year-old woman in Kenya to invest in her dairy business — mainly to buy two cows and feed.

For more about Kiva.org, read the FAQ. I’ll post later about how my loan portfolio is doing, though the repayment window is 10-18 months for the loans I extended, so it could be a while (one key note: these are no-interest loans, so it’s not a money-making opportunity). Kiva claims that their repayment rate to date is 100% and data from the United Nations Capital Development Fund say that the worldwide repayment rate for microloans is 97%. Even if you’re the cynical type, this seems like a good bet.

As the Nobel Prize press release says, “Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Micro-credit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights.” This is definitely a compelling use of the Internet.

Update: my good friend Andrew Leonard offers his take on Kiva in his Salon blog, How the World Works: “Do it yourself microfinance.” I am routinely astonished by the world as it emerges before me, but wrapping my brain around do-it-yourself microfinance has been one of those moments where I feel the earth move under my feet.

After settling into my seat for the 10 hour flight to London, I booted up my laptop, ready to enjoy the videos I had downloaded and presumably paid for. Imagine my horror when I clicked “play” on the first episode and got this screen:

Of course, you have to be connected to the Internet to authorize, so I was out of luck for my whole flight.

Apple, you suck. (At the very least, build the authorization step into the download process — aren’t you known for obsessive user focus?)

See Jeremy and my post for info on the last one, plus some Flickr photos. Expect more after tomorrow.

Bonus reading:

• Kathy Sierra, “Build Something Cool in 24 Hours”
• Gamasutra, “How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days”

So why do I do that? Tim Converse nails it for me:

My hunch is that what being unchained from your desk makes possible is talking to more people face-to-face in more various places, which is really about greater personal control of the all-important Where (and the all-important face-to-face contact), than it is about making Where disappear.

This past Friday was a case-in-point. I left my desk in Santa Clara for the day at 11am to go to a meeting at our main Sunnyvale campus. I hopped the Yahoo! inter-campus shuttle and was soon instant messaging with one of my colleagues while going 60 mph down highway 101 (thank you, EVDO!) When I arrived in Sunnyvale, I IM’ed my colleague and asked him to grab another colleague and call my Treo from a conference room (we had something important to talk about). I was still connected to IM when I folded my laptop under my arm and stepped off the shuttle. My phone rang and I slipped into the landscaping for a little privacy (the mobile office does have its disadvantages). When I hung up, I got a text message on my Treo from Matthew with the room where we would be meeting. All of these communications were high-value, but none were face-to-face until I met up with Matthew. Oddly enough, by the end of the day, I had seen each person mentioned in the above scenario face-to-face for one reason or another. Living out of your bag doesn’t mean avoiding face-to-face meetings at all.

I think all the virtual communication is necessary in the era of Web Development 2.0. When you’re moving fast, lots of small decision points come up, and it’s best to get those decisions out of the way as soon as it’s feasible.

Side anecdote: if you live out of your bag, you have to make sure your bag is well-stocked for all circumstances. One of my great moments in bag history was a day when Caterina was asking around if anyone had a Treo charger because her battery was dead. I had the charger, but instead I pulled out a fully-charged spare Treo battery and traded for her dead one (which I charged later). It was the Silicon Valley high-tech office version of a Mentos moment.

I encourage everyone to pack an extra fully-charged cell phone battery in your bag. One day you will be sitting in stalled Manhattan traffic on a Friday afternoon on the way to the airport and need to make a critical call, and your phone will be dead. That’s when you will remember that spare battery and thank me.

More often, though, the developers and the CEO respond to the majority of the support email. One CEO told me he responds to about 80% of all the mail they receive. How better to know what people are saying about your product? he asked.

These days (especially in the web world), being conversant in “big picture” issues means knowing the details, as the anecdote above illustrates. I would bet that the fact that it cost a hundred dollars to FedEx a 30-pound bag of dog food was dismissed as a “tactical” concern by Pets.com board members back in the dot-com craziness as they pursued the larger “strategy” of selling pet food online. We know how that ended up.

“Strategies” are big and sweeping and inherently pass the task of implementation to someone else. Tactics are inherently about executing. The distance between “strategic” and “tactical” is measured in meetings, PowerPoints, conference calls, and, well, “not writing code.” Limiting (or even mostly eliminating) that distance is the key to making things happen.

I’m not saying that strategy isn’t important, just that strategy directly combined with tactical skill is the real killer combo. “Strategy” in the absense of tactical engagement is a loser’s game. If you’re a manager who gets down in the muck to make things happen (not to be confused with “micromanagement”), take heart: tactical is the new strategic.