Disrupt•ion?
It’s been a little longer than 7 hours and 15 days, it’s been 6 years since that first Disrupt in New York, feels far longer, like a lifetime ago for me. A lot has happened in the world …
World-shattering earthquakes in Haiti and Japan. Greece defaults. BP spills. Arab Spring and Occupy. Syria is destroyed. Bin Laden killed. Jobs died. Dubai is sky-high, Felix.B is sky-fall. Popes shuffle. Russia invades. Snowden leaks. Malaysian flights disappeared AND destroyed. Hurricanes, typhoons, flooding, fires. Mandela and Thatcher are gone, Chavez too. So are Prince and Bowie unfortunately. Ebola and ISIS surfaced and infect. Boko Haram kidnapped. Landing on comets, water on Mars. Cuba’s open. Shootings: Sandy Hook, Charleston, San Bernardino, Orlando, Paris. Bombings: Paris, Boston, Beirut, Moscow, Nairobi. A pathetic disaster, a lying disgust, a poor excuse is one step away from the Oval Office. ‘GOD’s particle’ has ZER0 spin. We are 7B+. Gravity’s waving, Einstein was right.
Or rather, Einstein is right. [If gravity is waving, what do you think they are saying?] Most of that sounds pretty heavy doesn’t it? It is, but work with me here. The truth is, [ir]respective of all that is going on in the world, I’m excited to return to Disrupt tomorrow and, not unlike that first fine day in lower Manhattan, see what there is to see. Some have already reached out. There is gaming cybersecurity, non-gaming VR/AR, martech [stack] automation, devops efficiency solutions, and more. Much, much, more. There is also Uruguay, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Spain, Germany, Italy, and S.Korea; along with who knows how many from China, India, Brazil, France, and the UK; as well as I’m sure Chile, and Turkey, and Australia, and Japan. Hopefully Switzerland too. Can’t wait for it all.
I’m excited to return to Disrupt tomorrow and, not unlike that first fine day in lower Manhattan, see what there is to see.
Once-upon-a-time when the ever-present ‘we wanted flying cars and got 140 characters’ complaint would surface, my position has always been ‘talent has the luxury of choosing’. That’s why it’s called talent (#options). If a [young] developer wants to build another food-delivery &/or ride-sharing app, that is for them to discover along THEIR PATH. Furthermore, no one has any way of knowing when a seemingly insignificant venture metamorphosizes into the next chapter of web development as a function of the right EXCITED team building the product THEY feel matters. DO NOT PRETEND you do, nor that your outside opinions apply to someone else’s reality (let alone priorities).
But to that talent building [for] their dreams, if you think there is someone better to start addressing the problems and difficulties our world faces, you’re kidding yourself. You think that’s the work for heads-of-state and the business of 3-letter acronyms? Come on, think again, wake up. You want to achieve your first exit to improve your life and that of your loved ones? You should do that. But I would like to take a second to address those that have accomplished it, and now are looking …
Looking for improvement, and meaning, and the opportunity to contribute to something that matters, and yes stability on some level. Those that wish to create the [next] framework of understanding, dare I say principals. This is not East v West. This is not China v US, or Russia v US, or Iran v US, or any other old-world competition. This is about our plan for giving every person on planet Earth the freedoms and luxury that all coming to America seek. And last I checked, millions and millions continue to attempt that pilgrimage for the betterment of their children.
This is about our plan for giving every person on planet Earth the freedoms and luxury that all coming to America seek.
The problem stems from the fact that many know their home circumstances aren’t going to improve, nor can they leave, and furthermore, they don’t believe they should have to. I believe that too. To have the advantages we have, you should not have to accept being force-fed the post-WWII blatant consumerism that has trademarked America’s ascension. Capitalism has been staple-gunned if not chained to this notion, but they are not one and the same. Not by a long shot. Short-term workings that produce unarguable profits have laid precedence for far too long. There is more to us. Ironically the insatiable, even infinite, thirst for growth is crippling our long-term outlook. So what is our answer? Make sure all adopt that model thus distributing the problem from ours to everyone. I don’t accept that answer. I won’t. [Even though I’m sure the brightest risk analysts/creators argue it must be the way.] The United States is going to decouple its agenda, or people far smarter than me will use their collective strength to do it themselves. There are simply too many brilliant people born into an internet-ready, developing-world standard of living. So let us devise how we shall make Earth a developed-world, in its entirety, one that holds true a baseline of human decency.
In my world? I haven’t experienced any of those things first hand, but collectively I experienced them all, even shed tears over some. I all-out bawled over the murders at Sandy Hook, and I wanted to absolutely annihilate those that blocked gun control after. But no, I haven’t experienced anything that resembles hardship on the level that most effected by that list have. Nothing even close, but I did go from wanting my cake, to eat it too, and even thinking I owned the recipe; to realizing that we should be more inclined to consistently delivering the best ingredients possible, whatever that happens to be for us as individuals &/or our team. And I also got a taste of what it’s like to be rocked, even broken to your core, and then have to build yourself back. I now know what that’s like, so there’s that.
… we should be more inclined to consistently delivering the best ingredients possible … [and I’m not talking about In-N-Out here]
But far and away the largest thing to have changed for me in these six years is a little girl that calls me Dad and doesn’t like that I insist she eat things other than vanilla yogurt and chicken tenders. She’s an amazing creature that learns so fast and depends on me not only to shape her world directly, but also pass along a better, not worse, planetary system than my generation inherited. A more perfect planet.
Disrupt, see you tomorrow. -j
