Following Up on Wireless

After this post I made on wireless, its impact, and its shortfalls about a week ago, I was surprised to see a full article on the topic in the Wall Street Journal. It is an excellent follow up to the previous conversation on wireless. Some of you may not have online subscriptions to the WSJ, so I'll put up two key excerpts that cover or expand points in my previous post.

A passage with more background on the Wi-Fi movement:
The municipal Wi-Fi movement is far from dead. More than 90 cities and towns, including Portland, Ore., Corpus Christi, Texas, and others, have already launched service, according to MuniWireless.com, a Web site that tracks the projects nationally. Nationwide spending on municipal Internet projects was $236 million last year, up from $117 million in 2005, and is expected to nearly double this year, the organization said. Wi-Fi technology, generally, is gaining popularity. Consumers are increasingly accessing the Web at hotspots like coffee shops and airport lounges. And they are doing so not just from laptops, but also from new mobile devices like Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

But municipal networks aren't on track to offer consumers a cheaper high-speed alternative to the powerful U.S. phone and cable companies, as some backers once envisioned.

And here's a specific passage that relates to EarthLink:
At the end of the second quarter, EarthLink had only about 4,000 subscribers from its rollouts in Philadelphia, Anaheim, Calif. and Corpus Christi. The company, which is operating under new leadership after the death of former Chief Executive Garry Betty early this year, said in late July it would pull back on further investments in Wi-Fi until it negotiates better deals with cities. In particular, the company wants a commitment by cities to become a significant customer, or "anchor tenant," and thereby guarantee EarthLink a steady revenue stream. "The Wi-Fi business, as currently constituted, will not provide an acceptable return" for EarthLink shareholders, said newly installed Chief Executive Rolla Huff on a recent conference call with analysts.

China and India are coming to get you!

Ok so they're not really coming for you, but here's an interesting post from the Wall Street Journal on the number of engineers they are producing. I agree that just because you produce more of something doesn't mean the quality is better. So why do people get two very different things so confused?

My initial thought is with people like Tom Friedman publishing The World is Flat and warning us about China and India's oncoming dominance, a certain sense of paranoia/fear gets paraded around. Yes, China and India are both rapidly developing countries with many people hungry for "success". I put "success" in quotations because that "success" they strive for is a definition of the word that the western world has created and spread. Thus I find it ironic they're striving for something we mostly have (if you agree with the common definition of success including lots of luxuries and an easier way of life) when its precisely the lack of luxuries that is giving them their current advantage. What I mean by this is that the western world becomes accustomed to luxuries and thus are not "hungry" for "success" like the many people in China and India. It's quite a vicious circle of consumption...

My next thought is wondering what role the private sector is going to play in the balancing of education/training between the western world and rapidly developing countries such as India and China. Take, for instance, this passage from the WSJ post:

In China, a program to expand college enrollment in the 1990s led to slipping standards, says Prof. Mao Shoulong of Renmin University. “Once you get in, it’s [too] easy to graduate,” he says. Many Chinese universities support themselves by charging tuition. Despite taking in as many students as fit in cramped dorm rooms, they can’t generate enough cash to pay for high-quality equipment, labs, and classrooms. The resulting scarcity of strong scientists and engineers coming from universities has led many companies to set up in-house training programs. Microsoft was the first high-profile company to set up such a program in China. Software-services company Infosys Technologies Ltd. has a 16-week training course that costs $5,000 per employee.”

Very interesting! And then there are programs such as the one provided by Infosys for US employees where they send the trainees to their 300+ acre HQ campus, train them for 6+ months, then set them free in various cities around the US. *Note: To read more about such an experience I point you to Rizwan's blog, a former CK employee and a good friend.

Somewhat on a tangent, I wonder specifically how this US to foreign country type of program pays off for a company when it's so obvious how the above mentioned programs such as Microsoft's (foreign country to US or improve skills in foreign country) pay off. In the latter case, it's that the company trains driven, often poor individuals, thus capitalizing on lack of resources/opportunity in said country, then "underpays" the individuals relative to performance in comparison to western world, expenses stay low, profit goes up... and the company has a loyal employee who is likely thankful for the opportunity the company that is often from the western world gave the individual.

More importantly, I'm amazed at the ability of companies to influence the balance of education/skills between the western world and the developing world. However, if you're a young adult like me in the western/developed/whatever you want to call it world, you shouldn't be afraid of the ongoing improvements in China, India, and the like - you should welcome it, because the improvements there improve the companies and way of life here, making us (in theory) all wealthier. Not to mention that certain jobs CAN'T be outsourced and if you're good enough, you're not going to get outsourced... so this phenomenon should only drive improvements in our productivity, the developing world's productivity, and thus the general quality of life should continue improving.

Addendum: But then I wonder about other things, to be written about in other posts. One of these worries is that even with the gap between the developed and developing countries narrowing, the gap (seemingly) between the have and have-nots within the developing countries seems to be widening. This could become a significant issue, if it is not one already...

And after another delay...

Yesterday I had first hand experience with "excessive" flight delays. I was coming back from Atlanta and I noticed upon check-in that my flight was already delayed (great). Once I get to the gate, I see that not only is the flight delayed an hour, but in fact there are no seats anywhere in the general vicinity (not even one). Me being the old guy I am (2o years young) I decide I need to sit down in one of those generally uncomfortable chairs - so I stalk across the corridor. At that point, I'm peacefully reading my book when I look back towards the gate and notice that the plane is BOARDING! Oops! So I run on over, get in line, and get on the flight.

Once I get to my row, I notice a guy is sitting in my seat. I kindly ask him to move over, since it's my seat, and he complies. At this point, I see that two little kids are being loud just across the aisle and I mutter to the young guy that it looks like we're going to be dealing with "two lil' terrorists" for about 2 hours. The guy chuckles nervously and says, "Yeah, I've been dealing with them for 8 and 6 years, respectively" and we both laugh awkwardly when I realize that, well, my comment was *so* awkward.

Fortunately, this mystery person ended up being a pretty fun flight companion. Even though the flight ended up taking off after 7:30pm (it was originally set to depart at about 5pm) I actually had a lot of fun talking about random topics ranging from acai berries (sp?) to 747's.

Oh and the mystery dad, whoever he is, ended up discussing education with me (ah, that was the original point of this post!) We got to talking about CK Tutors, which he got excited about, and he told me that we "are doing a great thing". We then talked about the public education system and he raised an interesting point - if the public education system through high school is so poor, why do we keep funding it? In his words: "why are we throwing money down the drain that could be used to fix so many other problems? why don't we figure out what we pay for public education, figure out what percentage this forms of each person's taxes, and stop taxing that amount?" These are good questions - what do you think?

Giving a Speech!

Great news! I've been invited to give a speech at George Jackson Academy in the fall (and to attend their first ever graduation next Monday). I wrote about GJA in a previous post and for the past few months I've really been in awe of what they do and how they have so many motivated young men at the school.

In honor of the news, I wanted to touch on public speaking. Many people are afraid of public speaking but there are ways to overcome the fear. There are groups such as Toastmasters (which actually has over 200,000 members). Public speaking is a critical skill and I highly encourage anyone afraid of public speaking/presentations to get assistance from Toastmasters or from one of College Knowledge's mentors. For free advice, I think this is a pretty good document they provide with 10 tips for successful public speaking.

For me, public speaking is actually fun. I make sure to know my material, practice it beforehand, but also stay loose. You should provide an initial benefit statement after the hook in the beginning of your presentation/speech. You should also be interacting with the crowd as you go along and sometimes you even need to improvise. Most importantly, for public speaking to become fun for you requires practicing it a lot until it becomes second nature!

Game Theory, Clif Bar, and Giving Back

I spent this past Memorial Day weekend in Waterville, Maine attending Colby's graduation ceremony. Aside from getting free books to read and helping friends move out, I also got to hear Mr. Schelling, the Nobel prize winner for his work on game theory, speak during graduation.

While I didn't find his commencement speech particularly relevant (he spoke about nuclear proliferation instead of giving advice, which he was against doing) I got to thinking about how game theory relates to CK and other companies such as Clif Bar. In particular, I wondered what role the ideas of game theory play when a company makes decisions to "give back" or "take care of its community."

I think too many companies define the optimum strategy on an economic profit basis versus a total return basis that impacts not only the bottom line but also the environment and the community. A company that looks at the big picture, not just economic profit, is Clif Bar and their commitment to the community.

On the drive back from Maine, I got to thinking about how we could do a better job looking at the big picture. I spoke with Orion and we both agree that we want to start a 1% program where we give 1% of our profits at the end of the year to two non-profit organizations of our choice. If you have any suggestions for non-profits, please let us know! And if you have other ideas for giving back, please feel free to contact one of us.

In other news, I finally get to hear G. Felda Hardymon speak today - I'll post about it first thing tomorrow.

And in further news, congratulations to Rizwan for his recent outstanding tutoring. He is one of our great tutors who helped one of his students get a very good SAT II score. Well done!

Democratizing Tutoring

Part of what we're trying to do at CK (College Knowledge) is to democratize tutoring. We were inspired by the idea of "democratizing something" after reading about Henry Ford and his Model T. His goal was to make cars available to "any man earning a decent wage" and we felt the same could be done for tutoring.

So our first thought was "why is tutoring so expensive?" We were surprised that the high cost of tutoring didn't arise from tutoring companies paying their tutors more; in many cases, the larger tutoring companies charge exorbitant amounts and pay their tutors anywhere between only 15-25% of the total cost charged to clients. From the beginning, we decided to challenge them by accepting lower profit margins as a company that would result in fairer, higher wages for our wonderful tutors - we pay 50% or more of the final tutoring bill to our tutors.

Another thing we noticed is that the tutoring companies in Atlanta were all charging $50 an hour and up. Why was no one offering a lower price? It seemed like the companies were quietly in agreement that none of them would charge less than $50 an hour in Atlanta. We decided, before even officially starting the company, that we would charge 40% less and so came about our decision to charge $30 an hour.

Even though we save our clients 40% or more on their tutoring costs, our current clients can all tell you that they're very satisfied with CK tutors and that we have not sacrificed quality. Every client we've had so far has signed up for follow-up tutoring sessions; this is further evidence that our handpicked tutors are not only top-notch students but also very good at tutoring and mentoring. Our goal going forward is to keep adding satisfied clients and keep our operations as efficient as possible to pass on huge savings to our customers; we face many choices going forward but know that we will continue to prioritize the right things and won't seek growth just for growth's sake. We welcome any suggestions along the way to continue making CK a success.

Braylon Edwards: $1 Million Donation to Education

Braylon Edwards, wide-receiver for the Cleveland Browns, announced a $1 Million scholarship donation to 100 8th graders in the Cleveland area that will pay for them to go to college. That's $10,000 per lucky student.

The story points out that the funding will also pay for tutoring and mentoring; it's clear that Braylon Edwards and his foundation also "gets it" when it comes to the importance of supplemental education. It's too bad our company is not yet in the Cleveland area, because we'd love to work with his foundation to provide quality, low cost tutoring and mentoring.

I love reading positive stories, especially when athletes give back to their communities.