Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
R.I.P. Jo Wheeler
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/02/2007 - 22:46At around 9:30 on a Friday evening, my daughter looks over to me from her computer. She has been reading notes on Facebook from her classmates from The Long Ridge School. She tells me that they are saying that Jo Wheeler has died. I check the local paper and find this obituary.
JOSEPHINE STALDER WHEELER - creative and beloved teacher of young children, died peacefully Jan 28 at home and surrounded by family. She was 81. She had for several years suffered from COPD and lung cancer.
My mind goes back to the numerous times my children brought treasures to school for Jo to talk about in class. You never knew what you would find in her classroom. I thought of the urgent phone calls I would receive from her about some important physical phenomena that I should show the kids.
Long Ridge School always spoke about giving children a life long love of learning. It was more than just a marketting line, it was embodied in the life of Jo Wheeler, and it is now carried forward in the lives that she touched.
In the song Joe Hill, Joe tells young labor activists, that he didn't die, "Where working men are out on strike Joe Hill is at their side, Joe Hill is at their side." Well, perhaps something similar applies to Jo Wheeler.
Whenever a teacher joyfully accepts a little discovery, a dead beetle or a piece of animal dung that some child brings to the the teacher with urgent fascination, Jo Wheeler is at their sides.
Managing Transitions
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 01/31/2007 - 08:43(Cross-posted at Toomre Capital Markets)
Over the past few months, many people have wondered why Ned Lamont lost to Joe Lieberman in last November’s general election. There are many possible explanations which have been discussed extensively elsewhere. One that hasn’t been discussed much is based on the idea that a campaign, in many ways, is much like a business startup.
Campaigns usually start with a lot of enthusiasm and great ideas, but without a lot of funding or necessarily a clear idea about where things will go. They try to build a strong organization out of nothing. If they are successful, at some point they need to manage the transition from an insurgency to front-runner, similar to how a startup needs to manage the transition from startup to a major corporation. It is a difficult transition for many campaigns to make, just as it is for businesses to make that transition.
I’ve often hoped that some day, a group will come along with the expertise necessary to help campaigns make this transition, and I imagine that many investors in startups have similar hopes for a similar sort of group for technology firms.
My thinking about this has been shaped by my work as a technology executive on Wall Street. During my tenure in two different leadership roles, I used the services of Sharon Horowitz, PhD. as an executive coach and organizational consultant. I learned a lot from her about things like managing corporate politics and getting technologists to work better together. It was a great help as I moved into leadership roles. She has now teamed up with some other interesting luminaries to form CenterNorth, an advisory service helping technology organizations and companies in all stages of development, including startups.
While CenterNorth does not consult to political campaigns, I wonder why there aren’t companies out there helping campaigns better manage their growth cycle. I believe it would have helped the Lamont campaign and other campaigns I’ve been involved with.
CenterNorth appears to be offering a valuable service to technology firms. I wish the folks there well and will be interested to track their success.
Law and Order Liberals and the ballad of Ken and Scooter
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 01/30/2007 - 10:06Yes, I’m a Law and Order Liberal. My father-in-law and mother-in-law are retired Special Agents for the U.S. Treasury Department. Many of my mother-in-law’s relatives are local law enforcement. I honor and respect the jobs that all of them do, often putting themselves at personal risk to assure our safety and rights as citizens.
I guess that is part of the reason I get so annoyed when people do things that recklessly put law enforcement officials at risk or squander our taxpayer dollars that are supposed to be used to make us safer and protect our rights.
So, it looks like I may get bloggers credentials from the Media Bloggers Association to help with the coverage of the Scooter Libby trial. Scooter Libby is on trial for obstructing justice, making false statements and perjury in the investigation of who outed information about Joseph Wilson’s wife. If the allegations are true, he contributed to making our country less secure.
Statewide wireless
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/20/2007 - 12:18Over on MyLeftNutmg, MattW points out Rep. Tom Drew’s proposed bill, Proposed Bill No. 6502, AN ACT CONCERNING WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS.
That the general statutes be amended to establish a working group to make recommendations for creating incentives to expand or maximize wireless Internet access in the state.
On initial reading, this sounds like a great idea. Statewide WiFi. As I commented on MyLeftNutmeg:
As a starting point, every public building ought to have WiFi. Schools, libraries, town halls, court houses, police stations, etc. Some already do, and many others can without much work.
Getting WiFi at parks and Community Technology Centers probably brings even more bang for the buck, but is harder get through.
Yet the devil is always in the details. Who will be in the working group? What will happen to the recommendations? What sort of incentives are being considered? Will the group be made up of industry executives pushing for proposals for large corporate giveaways to get the corporations to make $30/month WiFi access more ubiquitous? Will the group be made up of technogeeks pushing for some wonderful but arcane and unusable solution? Will the recommendations end up being one more set of recommendations that get added to a library somewhere and not acted upon? We shall see.
How will this “maximize economic and other development” in our State? Will it be done in such a way that helps alleviate the digital divide, or will it compound the digital divide with policies that make it useful only to people that already have WiFi enabled laptops and the knowledge of how to use them.
I hope that we get a lot of people working together to make sure that this bill does bring about greater Internet access for a wide spectrum of citizens.
Andre Agassi and Joe Lieberman
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 09/03/2006 - 21:19(Cross posted at DailyKos)
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this stanza from A.E. Housman’s great poem, “To an Athlete Dying Young” recently. Andre Agassi’s tearful farewell brought it into sharp focus. I sat in my father-in-law’s living room, with the extended family as we watched his last set, cheering him on each painful step of the way. It is sad to see him go. He has brought so much grace and excitement to the U.S. Open, and it will not be the same without him. Yet he knew it was time to step aside for a new generation of tennis stars, and he has done it incredibly gracefully.
This marks a profound contrast to Sen. Lieberman. Voters in Connecticut no long see Sen. Lieberman as a champion of the causes of the people of Connecticut. Some people question whether he ever was such a champion, others defend him to this day, but still call on him to recognize and acknowledge his defeat last month, when a record number of voters in a Connecticut primary voted for his opponent.
Andre Agassi leaves the field, with his head held high and people wishing it wasn’t time for him to go. Sen. Lieberman sticks around as people wish he would just leave.
