Vogel Labs will be up and running on July 1st.  To make this happen, I’m constantly talking to people about it, why it’s completely different than anything that exists in Boston, why Boston needs it, and why it’s the ideal working environment.  Vogel Labs isn’t about space.  It’s about atmosphere.  Vogel Labs is about community, energy, love.  I kid you not.  Vogel Labs is much bigger than what you’ll find within its walls.

Communicating fluffy concepts like energy and community isn’t easy.  It’s even more difficult too convince someone why it’ll be at a certain place.  It’s also hard to tell someone how valuable it is before they feel it at such a magnitude.  Consequently, I’ve decided to give tangible examples of why the Lab will produce such intangibles and will be bigger than what is within its walls.  Here’s the first one:

Starting February 11th 2011, Vogel Labs will start taking applications for the “Vogel Labs Fellowships.”  The concept is simple: give an ambitious and creative individual (AKA someone who is entrepreneurial)  ~$2500 to pursue whatever it is that matters most to them. They don’t necessarily even need to know what exactly that is, but you can spot passionate people, even if they don’t quite know what the object of their passion is. They would then work in the Vogel Labs space and be exposed to a lot of startups and entrepreneurs at the ground level, meet a lot of people in the Boston community, and build real skills that they are personally motivated to use. (And hopefully they’ll begin the road that leads to a $50 Billion dollar home run.)

Anyone can apply.  Age doesn’t matter.  It’s never to late to start working on something you love.  However, by design, it’s more suitable for students and younger  people.

So how valuable can such a thing be by only supplying such a small amount of money?

The best thing I ever did in the course of my education was to take a summer to pursue what I cared about most.  I didn’t even know what that was at the time, but I had some ideas I wanted to get started on.  Before I even really knew it, I started being an entrepreneur.  I had no clue what I was doing, but I started building valuable skills by just pursuing a wild idea I had that I cared about.

In order to make this happen, I searched high and low for grants at MIT that would allow me to work on what I wanted.   I got lucky.  I was somehow able to get $1500 bucks from the MIT Political Science department.  I then got a part-time job teaching 4th-8th graders at the MIT Edgerton Center math/science stuff for $9 an hour. This was enough to live on.

So why not offer more money?  Part of learning to be an entrepreneur is learning to scrap and claw; a big part of it is learning to be a hunter out in the wild.  This is why you can’t learn how to be an entrepreneur while in school.  You’re too safe.  It’s also why I’ve seen big shot consultants fail when they try to found a company.  Resources are scarcer in the wilderness.  (But this doesn’t mean there isn’t support to take advantage of, you just have to go hunt it down ….or build it yourself.)

So through MIT, the Boston entrepreneurial community acquired an entrepreneur for $1500. Will this be a good investment of community dollars?  I’d say so.  Why did it work?  Because I was able to take this money and use it to find and pursue something that was important to me.  And that’s at the root of it all.

How often in your life have you been able to focus primarily on finding and pursuing what you care about?  But at the same time, would you say having some time to do this is very important?  It was a full-time endeavor for me that came with heavy costs and a lot of perceived risk. Let’s lower that a bit.

Now, why does this make  “good business sense” for Vogel Labs (which is the only way to make such things sustainable)? Well, it comes down to the spirit of these Fellowships and what the Fellows will embody: ambition, energy, passion, pursuit of something that matters.  Are there people out there willing to pay an extra 50 bucks a year to be around these things and what these people represent?  I think so.  In fact, I know so.  People are already agreeing to pay to be a part of an atmosphere filled to the brim with these intangibles.

-Kevin
6.1.2010

Vogel Labs is located in Porter Square and opens July 1st. You can have a full-time dedicated desk for $350 a month.  If you’d like to come and go and work part-time, it’s a $100 a month.  There is also more traditional office space (dry wall, carpet, sectioned rooms) available on a square foot basis.  We’re working towards delivering free space to the people that really need it.  Come by this Friday at 9:30AM or 3PM to see it.

In the education system, students are primarily measured by grades and diplomas.  Consequently, the education system–teachers, counselors, parents–equate success to good grades and big diplomas.  Education’s advice: “If you get good grades and you get big diplomas, you’ll be all set.  And you’ll be able to do whatever you want.”

This is completely misguided.

How many students do you see finish school, and then say to themselves, “so what am I going to do now?” It then turns into a crisis.  They simply have no idea what to do.  They’ve been operating largely under the assumption that they just needed to focus on getting good grades and big diplomas.

I’ve seen this “What to do” crisis hit graduates of all levels–college students, graduate students, even medical school students.  I’ve met med school students that go through the long tumultuous road of becoming a doctor, to only end up asking, “Do I actually want to spend my life being a doctor?”

One of the problems is that students end up setting a degree as a goal: “I’m going to get my PHD in Public Health.”  School is just a tool to help you get what you want.  Not an end in itself. Students should be asking, “What do I love? And how can I use my education to get there?”

Apparently, we even have a phrase for this now, The Quarter Life Crisis.  And the education system plays a role in this.  Classrooms only help bolster what you already do.  Classrooms in themselves are tangential to the world outside of education.

It’s easy to complain about any system.  But I’ll offer a solution that I’ll be implementing once it’s time to educate my own kids: Students should be directly measured by their portfolio of work. Making this change, changes the whole game.

-Kevin
5.25.2010

There are many reasons why these statements can be detrimental. Here’s the main reason: You’re wrong. The world (especially their world) will be completely different in 5 years. Consequently, anything specific you tell them (like what subject to study) will be wrong. We can’t predict the future; we shouldn’t advise like we can.

Unfortunately, our education system does exactly this.

More on this, as well as how I think we should advise students, tomorrow.

-Kevin
5.23.2010

Posted from my iPhone, bitches!

In “Learning is About Building Mental Models for Interpreting the World“, I stated a case for education focusing on allowing students to work on whatever they’re really motivated to learn, and pushing them to learn that really well.  We should optimize for motivation–not for specific material. Furthermore, by learning something really well, you learn conceptual models for interpreting the world that are applicable to all fields and situations. I’ll be writing a series of posts on these conceptual mental models  that will hopefully show that this is true and to further the case for optimizing for motivation.

Since I’ve already alluded to it in my previous post, I’ll start with what I’ll call game dynamics.

First, let’s think of what a game is.

A game has rules. These rules could be explicit (“a player that is fouled during the act of shooting within the 3 point arc will be awarded two free throws”) or be more implicit (“you can’t spit on the other coaches shoes”).  The rules set the framework in which the game is carried out. (The framework also defines what happens when players break rules.)

A game has one or more prizes (desired outcomes/incentives.)

A game has players (or agents).  There could be different types of players competing with each competing for the same prize, different prizes, or multiple prizes all within the same framework of rules.

Breaking the rules leads to various outcomes, which could have a variety of outcomes.

Another aspect of a game is “information flow.”  You may have a certain or variable amount of information regarding the actions of the other players (and even the rules).

If you understand a game, the way players will interact within a framework, you are much better able to analyze a situation, intuitively react, and understand a situation.

Games are everywhere.  If you can identify the players and the framework, you’ll not only be much better suited to learn, you’ll be more able to get what you want.

You’ll find games in sports, in the politics of institutions, in business, in biology, ecology, physics, the office, economics, math, and others. Try and name a field or concept that doesn’t have a game somehow touching it.

With game dynamics, you might be tempted to say we should be learning mathematics (game theory in this case).  This is not the case.  Mathematics offers a rigorous language for describing and analyzing things.  It is certainly not the best or only perspective for learning an abstract model.  This same temptation may occur with many of the mental models I’ll present due to the fact that math is about abstract concepts used for analyzing situations.

-Kevin
4.23.2010

Technological advancement leads to more widespread and inexpensive access to technology. Computers eventually made their way into our households and gave people access to new capabilities and tools.  The same thing is happening with fabrication technology, biology, hardware, and so on. Additionally, the interface with these technologies becomes better suited to our use (ex. we no longer have to program computers in assembly language.)

One of the most aspects of this (which we’re closing in on) to me is the implications for education.

The metric for a student is primarily grades; society emphasizes grades and tests scores more than anything for a student.  If anything, grades are a metric for a student’s ability or penchant for academic learning, as well as a metric for “doing as you’re told.”

This is all well and good (or not), but it’s only one scale for measurement.  In my biased opinion, it’s also not the most important scale.  In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that there is a huge disconnect between education’s measurement system and the “real world.”

What we need to emphasize to students is the importance of real skills.  However, this message will never get across as things are now; the metric and culture for comparison is the synthetic system of grades and test scores.

To prove the disconnect and problem: universities, particularly the top universities, don’t focus on grades and test scores.  It’s secondary; “well you did well enough in school, but what did you really do? what’s the evidence that you’re capable of producing real value? “  However, the measurement system for students causes the culture to not focus on building tangible value and skills.  Consequently, many students are very confused when it comes to building and presenting a solid application to admissions offices (I used to work in MIT’s admissions office, I spoke to a whole lot of them).  Universities are much closer to the “real world”, and thus have a better perspective on the scales for assessing an individual.

Due to the developments I’ve listed above, students are capable of doing real work.  They are able to gain access to technologies that allow them to learn and use real capabilities.  Scalable access enables the development of an educational culture that focuses on a student’s portfolio of work. Personally producing something of value is a totally different set of skills.

-Kevin
4.5.2010

I’ve alluded to Hunter vs Farmer Theory somewhat before.  It’s time I brought up the concept directly.

The basic idea: at some point, humans diverged.  Some became farmers.  Others remained hunters.  This created an important dichotomy of characteristics found in people.

Of course, people aren’t simply one or the other.  An individual’s characteristics exist within a multi-dimensional, continuous spectrum of possible characteristics. However, the Theory provides an excellent framework for thinking about the neurological differences in people.

The Theory is particularly interesting because it highlights society’s failure (particularly our education system’s) to understand the neurodiversity of humans, and how society often only admires a limited set of characteristics, while disregarding other valuable traits that are naively considered to be “deficiencies”.

The wikipedia page is a good primer.  Here’s Hartmann’s illustration of the Theory by placing ADD “deficiencies” in juxtaposition to their value when placed in a different perspective/context.

On a similar topic, also check out Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on society’s failure to make use of the full potential of the vast array of intelligences humans exhibit.

Think about it.

-Kevin
3.3.2010

Education through athletics is incredibly undervalued.

In school, I played varsity basketball, ran track, and played football.  I started playing because it’s what my friends did, I thought I could be good at it, and I wanted to compete.

Eventually in college, I realized athletics was the most important piece of my overall education.  I didn’t fully realize this until a sales class that I took at Sloan.  Bill Aulet was talking about hiring, and one of the main things he wondered about people was “did they play competitive sports?”

In US high schools, class room learning just isn’t that good.  You learn next to nothing about yourself, teamwork, leadership, politics, and performance. You certainly don’t learn toughness.

In the US, athletics is the only arena where performance is closely measured.  There’s stats on everything.  Through the entire education system, it’s also the only arena where you’re judged on your performance.  If you aren’t performing, you lose your job or your starting position.  This is important.

For nearly 20 years, I poured the majority of my energy and focus into athletics.  And it took me 20 years to realize the educational value–the value of understanding the athlete’s mindset.

It always pains me to hear people tell kids that they need to focus on classwork.  Our education system is full of flaws.  But I think one thing we need to value more is motivation. If a student enjoys something (anything) and is willing to work hard it, push them forward.  They’ll learn more doing that than half-ass reading Great Expectations and Frankenstein.  When it comes to valuable experience, my time as an athlete is the most important experience I’ve had, even more important than MIT or any work experience.  It’s where I learned all the core skills everyone should learn.

For business, particularly for startups, the competitive sports team is the closest experience you can get in school: You pick your team and go find a way to win.

-Kevin
2.2.2010

Being good at “talking to girls” is an important skill in life.  But, I don’t say this for the reasons you’re probably thinking.

I’ve been going to a lot of meetups and networking events lately, which led me to a few thoughts about social events.

The nature of social events really doesn’t change all that much as you get older.  Some people are talkative.  Some are more reserved.  Some groups mix well.  Some don’t.  These personalities all come to the party to create an interesting set of interactions.

And while the basic nature doesn’t change all that much, the goals/value of social events does evolve.  In middle school and high school, you could say the value of social events are to learn basic social skills (or something like that).  In college, events are more about having fun and meeting members of the opposite sex.  After college, you start seeing more events that are meant to also further business goals.

At a recent networking event, I was briefly contemplating how to get a friend an introduction to a business contact of mine.  For some reason, I realized I was playing the role of the “wing-man”, except in a different context.  Consequently, I then had another realization: being good at “talking to women” (or your preferred sex) is a valuable skill set.  (I think the slang term “hitting on” gets to my meaning more clearly, but I didn’t want to send the wrong message.)

Specifically, I’m referring to being skilled at meeting that one person  you really want to talk to and connect with in a meaningful way.  Now of course, the reason I analogize this skill to “talking to women” is simply because, as a male, this is the first version of this type of competitive social game that I encountered in my life.  Many versions exist.  The point is, being able to connect with that one person in the room that is significant to you (and likely others) is important.

So I guess you could say “talking to” members of your preferred sex is an important part of an education.  And going through this exercise hones skills that have tangible value  in your professional life, if you’re paying attention.

Kevin
10.22.09