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Sunday August 13

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Up early.   Up late.  Exhausted.  Long stressful day.  Can't talk about it here.  

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Up early.   Up late.  Exhausted.  Long stressful day.  Can't talk about it here.  

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Up early.   Up late.  Exhausted.  Long stressful day.  Many veiled, duplicitous activities underway.  Most of them involve you, the reader of this diary.  

Can't talk about it here.  

Coffee with TravisM this morning, post-sitting at Curts.   Then, no breakfast at Vera's with CurtG, BillR, TobinB, and BobW.  Fun stories, belly laughs about who and how we are.  

Can't talk about it here.   

Wonderful BBQ in Issaquah this afternoon -- the most exercise I've had since I was in Maui in early July -- throwing soft footballs with a small blonde Jack Murphy was a blast.  Nice to see and be with the entire Singleton family out in the countryside.    SteveE and JohnL along made for a very nice afternoon outside the city.   

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This evening, sat 3 feet from Maggie and Terre Roche performing at an outdoor backyard party/concert.  Wow.   With "big nothing"  and "hammond song" my heart exploded with memories of the role of this beautiful music in my life during the past 20 years.   I missed RF on hammond song, but felt the ongoing overlapping connection between the past and the present in a intense way this evening.   

Spoke with Terre briefly after the show -- we met  10 years ago at the Bottom Line in NYC when she came out to see the RF and the League.   We spoke about the ongoing work of Guitar Craft, the SGC, and she mentioned that she still uses a 4 against 5 exercise that RF showed her many years ago with her songwriting students.    She was one of the few guitar students of RF in the pre-GC days.

MaggieR is a complete gem.  Her voice kills me.  Her presence is magnetic, and her effortless mastery is humbling. 

Wished DebraK, DeanJ, JaxieB and BobW could have seen this show.  Especially Jaxie and Debra.  Very inspiring for the singers in the audience.  Or at least this one.

The date I had wished to take to this show found herself working this evening so I had to settle for TreyG.   We met up with CurtG, TravisM, ScottA, and DerrickD at the show, and then afterwards, headed downtown to meet the date I had originally wished to see the show with at her place of work.    

A relaxing, stressless, satisfying night out.

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Sunday evening in the office, preparing for a two day trip down south.   This following an afternoon of preparing to move back downtown after four years in the suburbs.   This diary will be silent again for a few days as I make this transition.  My guess is that it will be next weekend before I get reconnected and online in Belltown. 

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Listened to the new Terre Roche CD twice in my car today.  The combination of what she sings and how she sings it is intoxicating and beautiful beyond words.  

Those who know me well know that I have a very real weakness for and natural attraction to the music of certain ultra-intelligent female singers: Jane Siberry, Jonatha Brooke, Jennifer Kimball, the Story, Roches, Tori Amos, Shawn Colvin, Mary Lou Lord, Sheryl Crow -- aside from Peter Gabriel and the odd David Sylvian, these are the singers whose CDs cycle endlessly on my home and car CD players. 

The following is not a request -- it is a requirement:  please buy and give your attention to the following CDs:

Jane Siberry: The Walking, Bound by the Beauty 
The Story: Angel in the House, Grace in Gravity 
Jennifer Kimball: Veering from the Wave
Jonatha Brooke: 10 cent wings, Plumb
Roches: the Roches, Keep on Doing
Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink
Shawn Colvin: Fat City, A Few Small Repairs

Perhaps this music is plugging some immense energy vacuum which exists in my life?  

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Excerpts from morning reading:

"Compensation for the pioneer salesperson should have the opposite characteristics.  It should provide the bulk of the rewards immediately, in recognition of  a single key achievement - winning the account.  This is an extraordinary event, one that only a few can accomplish, and it si critical to determining the firm's long term future.  It is an extraordinarily high risk endeavor, with the odds stacked heavily against the sales person.  it therefore deserves extraordinary compensation.  On the other hand, if ti was achieved by promising more than anyone can deliver, perhaps even more than anyone really knew, then, that is not behavior we want to reward.  So , although we would like the compensation to be front-loaded, there must also be a reality check built into the process."  p.206

"Moving over to the development side, there is one remaining compensation challenge - the pioneer technologist.  These divide into two camps - true company founders and very early employees.  The former have bet their lives on the equity gamble, and there is nothing further to discuss, except to hope that in reading this book they learn to conserve a large portion of that equity to fund crossing the chasm.  The latter pose a real problem.  They can point with accuracy to the notion that they created a large part of the core product.  Thus, should that product become a mainstream market hit, they feel they should get a majority share of the gains.  The fact is, they don't , and the truth is, bluntly, they don't deserve it either.  Mainstream success, as we have argued at length, is a function of the whole product, not the core product, and that is a very large team effort indeed."

"The final word on pioneer technologists, I suppose, is that they are in the same bind as authors - a fate I can identify with.  Like authors, they are compelled to conduct their craft regardless of whether anyone will pay for it.  As such, their negotiation position is fundamentally weak, and their normal compensation reflects it." 

Crossing the Chasm, - Geoffrey Moore    

Geoff is a partner at MDV.  No wonder his books are best sellers.   Replace "authors" in the last paragraph, and you pretty much have the story for division II and III musicians as well.

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Still much packing to do this evening before my 6am flight.  Duh.   Jennifer Kimball is making this possible in the background.  

See you back here in one week.   

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