Image: Wikipedia

I was very sad to hear of the passing of Steve Jobs today (October 5). The world needs more visionaries like this, but there are no others. My thoughts from when he resigned from Apple, in August . . .

So, Steve Jobs is gone — resigned as CEO of Apple.

Consider, for a moment, the meaning of Steve.

By my count, Steve Jobs changed the world five times. Five.

He introduced the Apple II when I was a teenager. Sure, there were Altairs before, but there were no “personal” computers — such a thing was unimaginable. After that, we knew anyone could own a computer. That changed everything.

He introduced the Macintosh when I was working at Software Arts, the company that created the first spreadsheet, VisiCalc. I remember the Mac’s predecessor, the Lisa — we had one in a special room behind a locked door. My 24-year-old mind saw it and boggled — this was a completely different way to use a computer. Mouse, windows, icons, graphical UI — and I saw what happened when children started playing with it and using “Paint.” This would change everything. And it did. Sure, there was Xerox PARC, but it was Steve Jobs that changed everything.

After Jobs left Apple, it went way downhill, eventually under the unimaginative Gil Amelio. I actually wrote a piece about it for Forrester Research, with a heading that read “Wake Up And Smell The Toast.” Toast it would have been, but Jobs came back.

When Apple introduced the iPod, the interface on the hardware was a revelation. Still, the iPod was just another music player until Jobs made iTunes happen. iTunes changed everything. The music industry turned inside out. A new device, microprocessor controlled, caught fire — probably the first really significant one since the game console. Sure, there had been MP3 devices from the likes of Creative, but Steve Jobs changed the world — made us realize what a cool device connected to a cool service could do. He changed the world again.

The iPhone changed the world. It changed the dynamics of the phone industry — it was subsidized, but Apple controlled the interface, not the carriers. It became your real-time, all-the-time portal to the world, in your pocket. The apps, the multi-touch interface — another revelation. It changed the world yet again — now, increasingly, we all have devices like this in our pockets.

The iPad was the fifth change. It’s destroying the PC industry with a new mode of interaction.

(If you want to stretch it, Pixar changed a whole industry, too. Call it five and a half times.)

Nobody else comes close.

Bill Gates changed the world twice — once with DOS, and once with Windows.

Sergei Brin and Larry Page changed it once, with Google.

David Sarnoff once, with color television.

Tim Berners-Lee and then Marc Andreessen once, with the Web and the browser.

Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston once, with the spreadsheet.

No entrepreneur changes the whole world five times. Not since Edison, at last.

You can admit that Steve is out of all of our leagues. But what is the meaning of Steve? What can we learn?

One. Strategy – see the whole board. The content companies, the carriers, the hardware manufacturers, the engineers, the patents. Jobs saw not just what was possible, but what industries would be affected and how to bully, cajole, sweet-talk,and persuade them into working with him.

Two. Timing. As I mentioned, Jobs, was often not the first. But he saw what technologies were on the verge of being possible — and what technologies consumers were ready to accept. There could have been no iPhone without the habits created by iPods and Blackberry, no Mac without Apple and IBM PCs embraced by those who came before. Timing is crucial.

Three. Supply chain and differentiation. Apple doesn’t make flash memory, microprocessors, touchscreens, or, for the most part, Web sites. It just puts them all together. Profit margin comes from assembling commodities in a fantastic, must-have package.

Four. Design. Apple’s products are the first family of computing devices that tell people about your style. The other ingredient is lots of advertising. Design plus advertising equals lust. Lust is good for an entrepreneur.

Five. Audacity. Imagine the impossible, possible. Persuade with showmanship. Make people believe.

None of us has all of these. But you, reading this, have some of them. You can be audacious and have great timing. You could excel at strategy and design. You can’t be Steve Jobs. But you can learn from him. Work on it.

If you want to change the world, now you know where to start.

Click on this link below about a young football player and leave me your comments:

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/americas-newsroom/index.html#/v/1190532974001/boy-banned-from-scoring-touchdowns/?playlist_id=86909

Parent, Teacher and Community

It’s our turn! Parents , Teachers and Community Leaders must join forces in order to turn around our education system. It is true that we could all home school our children or at least try or maybe send them to a Charter School, but in reality, most cannot afford it. Why should we spend even more of our hard earned money when we already are paying into an education system? Well, to be honest, because our current system is broken. We continue to go backwards. 23rd out of 30 countries in education????  America use to be number one! WE, together must make a change. If you are one that has decided to Home school or send your child to a Charter school, good for you and good for your child….SHORT TERM!  If we as a whole, do not blossom, there’s a good chance your son or daughter will be working for another country (Another country that did educate the “right way” and as a a result, their own country is thriving economically). Which again is good for that individual but not good for OUR country! If you really want to be smart about your child’s future, help change our public school system your already paying for! Use that “extra” money you have to empower our teachers and parents and community leaders to fund an education revolution that we as a country will ALL benefit from!

A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working adults.

Sure, there was some moral outrage at seven-year olds losing fingers and being abused at work, but the economic rationale was paramount. Factory owners insisted that losing child workers would be catastrophic to their industries and fought hard to keep the kids at work–they said they couldn’t afford to hire adults. It wasn’t until 1918 that nationwide compulsory education was in place.

Part of the rationale to sell this major transformation to industrialists was that educated kids would actually become more compliant and productive workers. Our current system of teaching kids to sit in straight rows and obey instructions isn’t a coincidence–it was an investment in our economic future. The plan: trade short-term child labor wages for longer-term productivity by giving kids a head start in doing what they’re told.

Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.

Of course, it worked. Several generations of productive, fully employed workers followed. But now?

Nobel-prize winning economist Michael Spence makes this really clear: there are tradable jobs (making things that could be made somewhere else, like building cars, designing chairs and answering the phone) and non-tradable jobs (like mowing the lawn or cooking burgers). Is there any question that the first kind of job is worth keeping in our economy?

Alas, Spence reports that from 1990 to 2008, the US economy added only 600,000 tradable jobs.

If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do.

Do you see the disconnect here? Every year, we churn out millions of of workers who are trained to do 1925 labor.

The bargain (take kids out of work so we can teach them to become better factory workers) has set us on a race to the bottom. Some argue we ought to become the cheaper, easier country for sourcing cheap, compliant workers who do what they’re told. We will lose that race whether we win it or not. The bottom is not a good place to be, even if you’re capable of getting there.

As we get ready for the 93rd year of universal public education, here’s the question every parent and taxpayer needs to wrestle with: Are we going to applaud, push or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable and mediocre factory-workers?

As long as we embrace (or even accept) standardized testing, fear of science, little attempt at teaching leadership and most of all, the bureaucratic imperative to turn education into a factory itself, we’re in big trouble.

The post-industrial revolution is here. Do you care enough to teach your kids to take advantage of it?

You’re already ahead of the curve! Just by saying your DREAM out-loud or writing it on piece of paper will make it more real & more achievable! Your DREAM is actually “something” now. Somewhere to go when you wake up each morning. Untie Your Sailboat and experience LIFE!

Here are the CONTEST Rules:

• Your topic must be clearly stated. “My DREAM is….and this is how I plan on getting there!
• Post it on YouTube.
• Then post the YouTube link on my Ricky Blog page along with a 200 words or less essay that summarizes your DREAM and how you will plan on making it come true.

Terms & Conditions:

All entrants grant use of their video on this website and or used in advertising, sharing and viewing by others. Entries must be submitted by students that are currently attending the school in the school district of that particular event. Deadline for each video is 7 days prior to the date of that school’s event. All videos will be posted live on Untie Your Sailboat’s website on the Ricky Blog page after the event. Winners will be announced the night of the event. Winners must be present to win.  All rules, scholarships and prizes are subject to change without notice. Scholarships, products and prizes are awarded by individual sponsors. Winners, schools and school districts agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Untie Your Sailboat LLC and Rick Chandler of any and all responsibility of awarded scholarships, prizes or products. Winners and all persons entering contest & attending nightly events agree to indemnify & hold harmless the school & school district of any liability associated with contest and nightly events. Each individual sponsor will be responsible for awarding their advertised scholarship, prizes or products.

Can you guess which one is Eric Swann who played 9 years in the NFL with the Arizona Cardinals? Him along with Kansas college coach Dyzell Wilson, Rick Chandler and Dan Krammar with Running Start all met up at Northern Arizona University at a football combine camp to figure out more ways to help the kids!

You have to see it to believe it!

At 212 degrees…it boils.

And with boiling water, comes steam.

And steam can power a locomotive.

And, it’s that one extra degree that…

Makes all the difference.