Gumption

Yogi Patel joins MyStrands Labs, Seattle, as Innovationeer

I'm delighted to announce that Yogi Patel has joined MyStrands Labs, Seattle, as Innovationeer! Yogi's arrival doubles the size - and probably quadruples the productive capacity - of our new innovation team. He brings 5 years of development and program management experience, most recently in the area of wearable computing, contributing to the U.S. Army's Land Warrior system. As an example of walking the talk, Yogi was actually a land warrior himself - an infantryman (rifle and anti-tank leader) with the U.S. Army. In addition to his talents with non-traditional designs and deployments of technology, Yogi brings a passion for social media and using technology to help people connect in new ways. He has also inspired - or perhaps inadvertently instigated - two recent blog posts, on The Paradox of Choice and Dark Nights of the Soul.

I met Yogi during a guest lecture on proactive displays I gave at Ankur Teredesai's class on Social Networks at University of Washington, Tacoma, in February. I was immediately impressed with his curiosity and knowledge of both the social and technological issues involved in some of the proactive display applications I presented ... insights that would typically only arise through actually working on such systems. We continued the conversation after class, and I found myself thinking how great it would be for him to be actually working on such systems (with me) ... and I'm really happy we are now continuing the conversation into our planning for the next generation of proactive displays.

We discussed a number of prospective titles (as a self-titled principal instigator, I enjoy interesting titles). Yogi's official title is Innovation Engineer, but we both rather like the mashed up version of Innovationeer.

As I'd noted in my initial announcement of the new lab, I'm hoping to avoid writing job descriptions, but from our planning so far, it's clear that we will need one or more people with keen design skills who can help engineer ambient but engaging user interfaces for our new proactive display applications. We welcome opportunities to expand the conversation with other talented and passionate parties!

Innovating at MyStrands, Seattle

It's been a little over a month since I left Nokia and started principally instigating at MyStrands, Seattle. Most of my time thus far has been devoted to talking with people and looking at places, as my top two initial instigative goals are to attract a dream team and setup shop in a dream space. Eventually, we'll make progress on other p's - prototypes, papers and patents - but not without the right people and only (or, at least, more easily) in the right place.

I'm making some progress on these initial goals - I will be making official announcements when formal transitions take place - but meanwhile I thought it would be helpful (to me, at least) to write a little bit about what kinds of innovation - and what kinds of innovators - I hope to facilitate with this great new team and great new space! Taking a cue from one of Glenn Kelman's pearls of wisdom - "We never say 'I'" - during an inspiring presentation at my crash course in entrepreneurship (NWEN's Entrepreneur University 2005), I'll be using "we" liberally below, even though "we" is, technically speaking, "I" at this particular moment.

The mission of the Seattle Innovation Team for MyStrands is

To design, develop and deploy technologies that weave together the various strands of our activities, interests and passions to bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds and help people relate to the other people, places and things around them in ways that offer value to all participants.

That's quite a mouthful (even for me) so I want to unpack that a little:

• weave together the various strands of our activities, interests and passions: MyStrands started out as MusicStrands, a web application that can recommend new music based on the music you listen to ("what you play counts!"). Since then, the company has branched out into other types of media (e.g., MyStrands.TV), and we want to further extend this extension to additional types of media, as well as other digital representations of our activities, interests and passions.
• bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds: with the growing wealth of digital representations of our activities, interests and passions, and the proliferation of mobile devices and wireless connectivity, there are increasing opportunities to create new value by opening portals to that wealth in the physical world, either through mobile social computing (MoSoSo) applications or more situated social computing (SiSoSo) applications, such as proactive displays.
• help people relate to the other people, places and things around them: we all long to feel a sense of belonging and connection to other people we encounter, the places we inhabit and the things we see (or at least some of those people, places and things); our technologies will be designed to help real world communities better enjoy the benefits of virtual communities, digital communications and electronic commerce.
• offer value to all participants: one of the things I learned - the hard way - during my earlier entrepreneurial endeavor (Interrelativity, Inc.) was the importance of aligning innovative social technologies with viable business models; although our primary focus will be on technical innovations with significant - and positive - social impact, we want to do so in an economically sustainable way that enriches all stakeholders.

As for the types of innovators (we don't call ourselves researchers - or developers - at MyStrands, though we will be doing both) we hope to attract, the primary criteria will be a passionate commitment to the mission of the lab. Of course, following the precepts of Joel Sposky, we also generally want smart people who can get things done. Among the more specific types of smarts that we value are insights into and experience with social computing, mobile and ubiquitous computing, human-computer interaction, many flavors of design (user interface design, interaction design, user experience design, visual communication design), web programming, rapid prototyping, personal and social psychology, economics, business models ... and, of course, recommender systems.

I'm planning to follow the lead of Lars Erik Holmquist with respect to [one of] his goals for the PLAY Research Group: build a multidisciplinary team composed of multidisciplinary people. As Anne Galloway relayed this idea (in what may be an unexpected recursion based on something I may have sent / said to her about Lars Erik's CHI 2000 organizational overview talk):

Alan Kay once remarked that he was attracted to the MIT Media Lab because of the..."attempt to collide technology with the arts, rather than [to] collide technologists with artists," and continued "You're always better getting people who have already had that collision in themselves." In PLAY, rather than composing a multi-disciplinary group, we try to have a group of multi-disciplinary people ... No group member specializes in only one topic. A typical member has a degree in a relevant field such as computer science, informatics or fine arts, but a strong interest in several other fields such as electrical engineering, linguistics, literature, film, or music. Whether accompanied by academic degrees or not, a wide range of interests is seen as a vital factor in the composition of the group.

Ideally, we will compose a diverse group of diverse people, with a variety of skills, from a variety of backgrounds, who respect each other and work well together, even though - or perhaps because - we may not always agree with each other (indeed, I hope we won't always agree with each other). I have enjoyed many conversations with many talented people so far, and I welcome the opportunity to initiate or renew conversations with other talented people. If current trends continue, we may be able to assemble a dream team without ever having to compose or post a formal job description.

As I mentioned in my review of First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, I subscribe to the philosophy of Bud Grant, former head coach of the Minnesota Vikings:

You can’t draw up plays and then just plug your players in. No matter how well you have designed your play book, it’s useless if you don’t know which plays your players can run. When I draw up my play book, I always go from the players to the play.

Given my commitment to multidisciplinarity, I'm going one step further and not even specifying player positions at this early stage, hoping that we will be able attract just the right people with just the right talents to accomplish our innovation mission.

[Update: I forgot to mention that we have a number of more formally specified job openings at many of our other sites around the world. The (Senior) Mobile User Experience / Interaction Designer position may be of particular interest to some of my international friends.]

Entrepreneurial Karma: Call for Early-Stage Recommender System Startups

This is pretty cool (though I'm admittedly biased): a mid-stage startup (MyStrands, the company I work for) that has recently secured funding now offering an opportunity to fund an earlier stage startup - a sort of entrepreneurial karma, where we keep the investment flowing in ways that will [hopefully] benefit us all. This initiative is inspired, in part, by the Y-Combinator, but is more narrowly focused (recommender systems). [BTW, one of the partners in Y-Combinator, Paul Graham, writes provocative essays that I highly recommend to anyone interested in entrepreneurship.]

Here are the details (from the MyStrands blog announcement, Looking for the best early-stage recommender start-ups):

MyStrands is announcing today the “Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-ups“.

We seek to identify the best early-stage project in the area of recommendation technologies, considering the technology, business opportunity and team behind the project (without limitations as to which field the technology is applied).

The Winner will be offered an investment of $100,000 from Strands, Inc. the parent company of MyStrands.

Candidates should submit a one-slide presentation in quad-chart format (example, more examples) by September 15th, 2008 to recommender-startups@strands.com, together with the team bios (in addition to this, an optional 2-minute video uploaded to YouTube describing the start-up enterprise would be highly appreciated).

Eligibility: The Call is open to individuals or sole proprietors and privately held businesses throughout the world.

Five Finalists will be invited to present their projects during the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys08) next October 23rd to 25th, 2008 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Finalists will be announced on October 6th. All Proposals will be judged using the following judging criteria: (a) implementation and integration of recommendation technologies, (b) originality and creativity, (c) likelihood of long-term success and scalability, (d) effectiveness in addressing a need in the marketplace, and (e) team bios.

Five grants. Each Finalist will obtain a $1,500 travel grant to attend RecSys08; Strands, Inc. will also cover the registration fees for the Conference, for one person per Finalist.

The final selection process will include on-site presentations of each project during RecSys08. Finalists will make three presentations of 5 minutes each (focused on technology, business and the team respectively) in front of the Jury and the attendees of the Conference.

The Jury will be composed of renowned experts in the academic, industry and venture capital communities.

The Winner will be announced on October 25th, 2008 during the Gala Dinner at RecSys08. The Winner will receive a commemorative plaque and an offer of a $100,000 investment in the form of a convertible loan.

Proposal submission period begins on March 12th and ends on September 15th, 2008.

Further information: Please visit http://recommender-startups.strands.com or contact the Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-ups organizers at recommender-startups@strands.com.

Important dates:
March 12th: Proposal submission period begins
September 15th: Proposal submission period ends
October 6th: Five Finalists are announced
October 23rd-25th: Presentations of Finalists at RecSys08
October 25th: Winner Announced

Contact and updates:
Email proposal to: recommender-startups@strands.com
http://recommender-startups.strands.com
http://blog.MyStrands.com
http://recsys.acm.org

Re-rethinking Recommendation Engines: Psychology and the Influence of False Negatives

Alex Iskold posted an interesting article on Rethinking Recommendation Engines on ReadWriteWeb yesterday. I like (and recommend) his crisp and clear delineation of different types or sources of recommendations - personalized (based on your past behavior), social (based on past behavior of others who are similar to you) and item-based (based on the recommendable items themselves) - and his emphasis on the importance of incorporating psychological principles, not just technological ones, into the design of effective recommendation engines. [I also like (and recommend) Rick MacManus' associated recommendations on 10 Recommended Recommendation Engines, but that may be biased by MyStrands' prominent placement in that list.] However, I take issue with - or at least re-rethink - some of Alex' contentions regarding the road to successful recommender systems being paved with false negatives.

First, I want to agree with Alex (and Gavin Potter, the Guy in the Garage that Alex references) about the importance of psychology in technology design and in general ("Enhancing formulas with a bit of human psychology is a really good idea") and the value of recognizing and capitalizing on human inertia. However, his characterization of inertia - the tendency of our ratings to be heavily influenced (or primed) by other recent ratings - seems more characteristic of a primacy or recency effect than inertia (as I understand these concepts). However, I do think that inertia plays an important role in the adoption and use (or non-adoption / non-use) of any technology - people do not tend to change much or even expend much effort, unless or until sufficient incentive is provided.

So I think the inertia problem, with respect to recommendation engines, is more one of motivating users to rate things ... and I actually think the Netflix ratings system for movies (which provides the basis for much of the article) is an outstanding example - it doesn't require much effort (you are automatically prompted for a rating whenever you login to the site after having sent a DVD back), and the more you rate, the better the recommendations you receive, offering intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation ... and explaining why the system has motivated millions of its users to contribute an estimated 2 billion ratings. [Aside: I see that ReadWriteWeb is offering an extrinsic incentive for comments and trackbacks - a chance to win an Amazon gift certificate - but I was already planning on adding a trackback for intrinsic reasons.] In any case, however one labels these psychological influences - inertia, priming and/or recency - they are important to incorporate into the design of recommendation engines, and the systems that use them.

Further along in the article, Alex distinguishes false positives - recommendations for things that (it later turns out) we do not like - from false negatives - recommendations against things (it would later or perhaps likely turn out) we do like, and correctly recommends leveraging false negatives more effectively in the design of recommendation engines. [And just to round things out, in case it isn't obvious, true positives are recommendations for things that we will / do like, and true negatives are recommendations for things that we will / do not like ... and thanks to Eric for helping me set the record straight with respect to "do likes" and "don't' likes" in my description of false negatives (!)]

Unfortunately, he extends this thread to some propositions that lie beyond my comfort zone:

We do not need recommendations, because we are already over subscribed. We need noise filters. An algorithm that says: 'hey, you are definitely not going to like that' and hide it. ... If the machines can do the work of aggressively throwing information out for us, then we can deal with the rest on our own.

Now, on the one hand, I am sympathetic to the problem of information overload. However, as I noted in my notes from CSCW 2006, Paul Dourish pointed out that this is not a new problem:

One of the diseases of this age is the multiplicity of books; they doth so overcharge the world that it is not able to digest the abundance of idle matter that is every day hatched and brought forth into the world.

-- Barnaby Rich (1580-1617), writing in 1613 (!); quoted by de Solla Price in his 1963 book "Little Science, Big Science."

I'm also reminded of James Carse's observation about evil in his marvelous (and highly recommended) book, Finite and Infinite Games:

Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed, the contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

I think that too aggressively filtering out [presumed] false negatives can render us more easily manipulated by technology ... and the people and organizations who control technology. Although there is considerable debate about what Web 2.0 is, one of its key ingredients is surely the provisioning of architectures of participation, in contrast to the "command and control" paradigm of earlier technologies (and eras). One of the beneficial side effects of the growth of Web 2.0 - for me - has been enhanced opportunities for serendipity, and allowing more false negatives is likely to yield fewer instances of serendipity. Furthermore, I believe increasing the probability - or acceptability - of false negatives may have the unfortunate consequence of moving further up the head of the long tail ... and/or further down toward the lowest common denominator(s). Book burning lies at or near the extreme end of the "acceptance of false negatives" spectrum, though I do not mean to imply that any of these consequences are intended or desired by the article or author.

In earlier chapters of my career, when I was more focused on natural language processing and automatic speech recognition, I became familiar with the concept of Equal Error Rate (EER), which represents a way of measuring the balance between false positives (which yields what is called the False Acceptance Rate, or FAR) and false negatives (False Rejection Rate, or FRR). The documentation for the BioID biometrics system SDK from HumanScan provides a nice articulation of these concepts, including the graph below:

Perhaps the solution to the tension between false positives and false negatives in recommender systems is to incorporate some kind of control for the user to specify an acceptable balance or threshold (which may default to the EER)  ... although that would also require devising a solution to the tension between user inertia and input ... but that simply provides additional corroboration for Alex's primary argument that we need to incorporate more psychology into our designs of good - or better - recommender system technologies.

Principal Instigator at MyStrands: A Prospective Perspective

This is my first week as Principal Instigator at MyStrands. I wrote last week about leaving Nokia to join MyStrands, in which I focused primarily on the leaving part. I wanted to write a little more today about the joining part, and the excitement I feel about reprising and redefining my principal instigator role in a new organization. I have meetings next week in Corvallis with some of my new colleagues in the Innovation group to discuss more generally and specifically what we'll be doing - collectively and individually - and hope to post another entry toward the end of next week regarding what the soon-to-be-established Seattle lab will look like - and do.

In a bio blurb I recently sent to Dan Oestreich to preface some of my favorite poems about leadership (The Journey, by Mary Oliver, The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, and Our Deepest Fear, by Marianne Williamson) in his growing collection of leadership poems, I wrote that "Joe is in the people business, serving technology" (riffing on a perspective articulated by the passionate, persevering and partnering Howard Schultz that he - and Starbucks - is in the "people business, serving coffee"). So I want to write about both the people and the technology at MyStrands that infuse me with enthusiasm for this new adventure. [Update: a variation of the blurb I sent to Dan is now on my bio page in the collection of MyStrands Management Team pages.]

I first met the Francisco Martin, CEO of MyStrands, and Atakan Cetinsoy, VP of Corporate Development, rather serendipitously at a Supernova conference pre-party in San Francisco in the summer of 2006, where they were going to be giving a presentation (I was in town for another event, and just happened to get on the party invitation list). We started chatting during the party about the work I'd done - especially an earlier group recommender system for music (MusicFX) and some more recent proactive display applications - and they told me about their social recommendation core technology (which started out with music recommendations) and their [then] new partyStrands application that combines music recommendation with large displays and mobile phones to promote social interactions in party settings. I joined Nokia Research Center Palo Alto shortly thereafter, where - among other activities - I instigated a new generation of proactive displays that promote community in a workplace environment. MyStrands, meanwhile, has continued to make great strides in areas of mutual interest.

Francisco recently contacted me about the possibility of starting up a new MyStrands lab in Seattle. MyStrands already has labs in Barcelona and New York that are developing a range of new innovations for the company (and its customers) - not that I mean to imply that innovations only arise out of the labs (at MyStrands or elsewhere) ... indeed, one of the refrains I heard from everyone I spoke with over the past month or so was [what I would call] distributed empowerment - everyone is encouraged to innovate (and feels supported in doing so). The company's recent infusion of capital has vastly increased the ability and incentive to expand, and I'm honored and delighted to have been asked to help facilitate that expansion - in people and innovations - in Seattle.

Other people I spoke with at MyStrands after my reconnection with Francisco reinforced many of the positive prospects I sensed during our initial discussions. Rick Hangartner, the Chief Scientist, confirmed that many of the things I'm interested in doing are very well aligned with MyStrands' vision, mission and goals, and that many of the projects already underway will help support and propel many of the new ideas we all have in mind. Jason Herskowitz, VP of Consumer Products (as well as blogger, creator of me*dia*or, a Ning social network site focused on music, and regular contributor to the Music 2.0 Directory that is charting out the future of [digital] music), shared some of his aspirations for creating ever more engaging future music experiences and assured me that he and others at MyStrands were preparing for the potential disruptions in the music industry I recently read about in the Future of Music. Peyman Faratin, Principal Scientist and director of the new MyStrands lab in New York, has some interesting ideas about economics, market mechanisms and business models that I'm looking forward to learning more about (and capitalizing on) ... and it is very reassuring to have a compadre on the east coast who will be facing many of the same opportunities and challenges that I anticipate in Seattle. Marc Torrens, Chief Innovation Officer and my (& Peyman's) direct manager, described his management style as very facilitative and connective, and hopes to help Peyman and me learn quickly about what MyStrands already has in the works, and how our ideas can help expand or extend innovations most effectively - or perhaps introduce entirely new strands to the growing range of social recommendation systems in the MyStrands family.

Gabi Aldamiz-echevaria, VP of Marketing and Communications - as well as others throughout the MyStrands organization - do a great job of walking the talk of open innovation by openly communicating through the MyStrands blog (which recently posted an entry announcing my joining MyStrands). The blog manifests much of the positive energy I've felt in all my email and phone exchanges with other Stranders, and I'm really excited about tapping into and promulgating that positive energy as our paths (strands?) increasingly intertwine.

A final note on technology: MyStrands is an all-Apple shop. Although Nokia had been a Windows shop, I was one of the more than 50% of researchers at Nokia Research Center Palo Alto who had switched to Macs, so that part of the transition is going smoothly. However, I also got a brand new iPhone (which my daughter thinks is exceedingly unfair), and so I may start nonconsensually exhibiting iPhone iGloat - I have not figured how to modify the "Sent from my iPhone" signature. Nokia was kind enough to let me keep my N95 ... which, as my new colleagues recently noted on their blog, runs the MyStrands Social Player (ranked among 25 coolest mobile applications for the N95) ... so I'm not yet sure which will become my primary mobile "phone" (or, perhaps I should say my primary "mobile social media connection device").

[Oops - I forgot to add a final note on terminology. At Nokia, it became clear that "instigator" did not translate easily into Finnish, the native language of many of my former colleagues. In case the word does not translate easily into Spanish - the native language of many of my new colleagues - I wanted to include a Merriam Webster's definition of instigate:

to goad or urge forward : provoke

I also want to clarify that this title is not intended to suggest that I am the chief instigator - I am sure there are many instigators throughout the company (as there are throughout Nokia) - but rather to suggest that instigation is what I will principally be doing ... I think this better characterizes my modus operandi than "Scientist" or "Researcher", or even "Manager" or "Director", although I do like to intermingle research and science - and even some management and direction - along with design, development and deployment ... and, of course, instigation :-) ]

Leaving Nokia, Joining MyStrands

It seems like just yesterday that I was writing enthusiastically about joining Nokia, and then about my excitement about working at Nokia on an ambitious new project (related to Context, Content and Community) at an ambitious new lab (Nokia Research Center Palo Alto), but in fact it's been over a year since the initiation of that transition (I believe I'm always in transition, just differentially willing and able to recognize it). I am still enthusiastic and excited about prospects for the project and the lab; I have grown to love the people at the lab and throughout the rest of the organization; I am grateful for being given the opportunity to pursue the work I love in a supportive environment (instigating a new generation of proactive displays). All of which creates strong mixed feelings for me as I think and write about my decision to leave Nokia, but as I've noted before, this blog is first and foremost a platform for entering and working through my discomfort zones.

While I am sad about leaving Nokia, I am very excited about the new position I have accepted with MyStrands, a social recommendation and discovery systems company headquartered in Corvallis, OR, employing approximately 100 people in a dozen sites throughout the world. I have chosen the title, and will play the role, of Principal Instigator (which was my unofficial title and role at Nokia), starting up a new lab in Seattle - a startup within a startup - that will help design, develop and deploy new technologies to help people discover, relate to and better enjoy the other people, places and things around them. I am very enthusiastic and excited about joining MyStrands and creating a new lab, and will write more about that in a bit (and in subsequent posts, once I officially start with that company). For now, I want to acknowledge the joy I've felt at Nokia, and the sadness I feel about leaving some of that behind.

A year and a half ago, when I ran out of runway (as my entrepreneurial friends like to put it) for my startup company, Interrelativity, and started having discussions with various people in research labs about re-entering the research world, Nokia was one of the few places where my entrepreneurial endeavors were truly valued. Most research managers I spoke with saw a gaping hole in my publication record, and didn't understand why I wasn't writing conference and journal papers while I was trying to start a company. Even though my startup didn't succeed, Nokia - in particular, Henry Tirri - recognized the risks I had been willing to take ... and was willing to take a risk in hiring me. I, in turn, was thrilled to be able to apply some of that entrepreneurial energy in what is, in many ways, a startup within a large company with a long history that includes many generations of dramatic changes.

Some of this energy has been applied in traditional (or perhaps non-traditional) research channels, but much of it, especially early on, was channeled in far less tangible ways - contributing to the co-creation of a new culture, forging relationships with people and organizations, and attracting world-class talent to the lab. Nokia has an internal process for employees to define - and seek explicit managerial approval for - their own "individual incentive plans" which can include such intangible activities. I've been very fortunate to have a manager, David Racz, who has explicitly supported these activities, and who has empowered all the members of his team to assume leadership roles in activities that benefit the team, the lab and/or the organization ... as well as the team members themselves. I have learned a lot about management and leadership (and technology, economics, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology, to name just a few areas) from David, and hope I can effectively apply some of these insights and experiences in my new role.

Our team has grown from 2 to 12 over the past year, and despite - or perhaps because of - the diversity of people, I feel a strong personal connection with each of the members, above and beyond the professional dimensions of our relationship(s). In fact, it is these personal bonds - that also extend to many other members of the lab (which, under John Shen's leadership, has grown from 20 to 50), as well as people from other parts of Nokia - that I am saddest about leaving. I know from past experience that some of these relationships will persist well beyond the termination of my employment (January 25) ... but I also know that many of them will fade over time. I am grateful to have been a part of the Nokia family in Palo Alto, and to have had the opportunity to connect deeply with many people in ways that transcend "work".

Having recently written about the importance of aligning talents with roles in creating a high performance team, I can honestly say that I have never worked in an environment where I felt my talents – the things I cannot help but do (or, more formally, “recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied”) – have been so well supported, or where I felt I could contribute so easily and effectively by simply doing what comes naturally to me: winning others over, connecting, relating, ideating and adapting (my top 5 talents, according to the Clifton StrengthsFinder).

So, one might wonder, why have I decided to leave such a supportive environment? In a nutshell, it is because my conversations with key members of the executive team at MyStrands lead me to believe that I will be similarly well-supported in engaging my talents there, and that my new role in setting up and coordinating the activities in a new lab will enable me to make even more significant contributions at MyStrands than at Nokia, through practicing what I’ve been preaching about leadership, innovation and – of course – helping people relate to the people, places and things around them ... and doing so closer to home, enabling me to strengthen relationships with my family and friends in the Seattle area.

Essentially, I am leaving the best job I've ever had for another job I believe I will love even more.

In making my decision, I've applied the No-Lose Decision Model from Susan Jeffers' book, Feal the Fear and Do It Anyway. I shared this model in a blog post during my last major transition (when I decided to join Nokia), and want to repeat it here, because I've found it very useful (again) ... and it may prove useful to others:

Before you make a decision:

1. Focus immediately on the no-lose model (whichever path you choose will provide learning opportunities … even if it’s learning what you don’t like)
2. Do your homework (talk to as many people as will listen … both to help clarify your own intention and to get alternative perspectives)
3. Establish your priorities (which pathway is more in line with your overall goals in life – at the present time)
4. Trust your impulses (your body gives you good clues about which way to go)
5. Lighten up (it really doesn’t matter – it’s all part of a lifelong learning process)

After making a decision:

1. Throw away the picture (if you focus on what you expected, you may miss the unexpected opportunities that arise along the new path you’ve chosen)
2. Accept total responsibility for your decision (don’t give away your power)
3. Don’t protect, correct (commit yourself to any decision you make and give it all you got … but if it doesn’t work out, change it!)

So, once again (or perhaps I should say "as usual"), I'm not sure what to expect, but I have high hopes that this new chapter of my career will unfold in ways that offer significant benefits for everyone involved. My experience at Nokia exceeded all my expectations, and I look forward to opening up new dimensions at MyStrands through which unexpected opportunities can be identified and embraced - by me and others.