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Happy Holidays!
Wow! Another year has gone by - and I am still in New York? Well, as always, I wanted to send you a holiday letter wishing you a very Happy Hanukkah, a Happy/Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Since, I missed Hanukkah and Xmas, I thought it would be best to get this letter out before the New Year - so here it goes, giving you a quick and dirty update of what has occurred over the past year.
For the most past, I spent most of the year in New York State - with a visit to Florida and California - but pretty homebound. As always, the year has been fraught with ups and downs, and unfortunately, this has been a bit of a trying year to say the least. I, for one, am looking forward to 2007 and the opportunity to focus on more positive outcomes beyond the experiences I have had for the past year.
January to March:
New Years 2006 found me on a cruise ship heading from Fort Lauderdale to Chile stopping in all sorts of ports. It was the first time I tried cruising on Celebrity, and for all of you cruisers out there - definitely a better experience than Princess. I had a terrific time - and enjoyed myself immensely.
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In addition, I was leading the Social Dance Club as their Faculty Advisor and preparing for the upcoming Culture Show in May/June. And, on top of this, I was also working with a start-up focusing on "social media marketing" (read: how to make videos viral) which was taking a lot of time in developing. In February, two events occurred that steered my course of the rest of the year.
In early February, I was contacted by an old friend of mine who knew of my political background and thought I should meet his sister. Around the same time, as I was practicing the choreography with the dance team, an assistant professor in Chemistry struck up a conversation with me about a company he and his department chairman were trying to start. From these meetings, two new threads began.
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Professor Savinzy (Ruben) had a potential business idea: his chairman (Professor Bove) had come up with an algorithm that could (potentially) identify chemicals from a large database of chemicals. The chairman wanted to create a software application to help chemists search their own libraries. Further investigation began to reveal a real business opportunity.
In the world, no one has been very successful in collecting chemical fingerprints (or signatures) into one single database. And, the chemical companies have not tried sine they make their money on selling the actual chemicals. And, in 2009, NASA is sending a science laboratory to Mars with a handheld chemical spectrometer which could become the lead for future personal handheld items that could help determine bomb materials, breast cancer or even chemical makeup of food.
The idea began to pickup momentum, and by combining a couple of concepts - including "crowdsourcing", "peer review" and "incentive programs" - we built a team of students and professors building our own "chemical genome project". Red Hen Spectra is designed to be a service to allow scientists all across the world to share their chemical "fingerprints" and search for them within a community and/or personal database. The possibilities of this database is as diverse as the Human Genome Project and the potentials for informatics, knowledge sharing and collaboration. There are 35 million chemical compounds out there in the world and here is a chance to make a difference for Cooper Union - which is one of the last Engineering programs that offer a full undergraduate tuition. So, with some computers we scrounged from an old Beowulf cluster, we have been working on the database system with some interesting additions that we look to launch in the coming year.
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This was something different - I had never thought of being a campaign manager, and when I checked with friends in the business, they all suggested that I was more than capable of doing the job. After discussions with him (especially since he suggested that he would be the "perfect Internet candidate"), we came to an agreement and I signed up to the campaign.
That meant putting Red Hen and my job search on hold - but I thought, here was a chance to make a real difference - especially given the chance to run the campaign. So, I recruited students from Cooper, moved myself to Corning and began the process of turning around a 2.5 person garage operation into a kick-ass campaign.
This candidate had everything stacked against him - the DCCC did not like his odds of winning, he was in a red district of Western New York, and he had barely raised $180K up until the day I arrived. All of my friends in the business told me that this was a tough one. And I knew it. But, in the course of eight weeks, we built up the campaign into a 10 person operation, one main office and another opening in June, and a field operation that was beginning to take on the task of getting the candidate on the ballot. And then, as what happens in campaigns, we parted ways.
There are all sorts of things to say from this point forward, but rather than doing so, I would say that on the campaign, I learned a lot of amazing things about management and politics - and how it has so many similarities to start-ups and business in general. Suffice it to say, I learned a lot of lessons here.
July to September:
Once I got back to New York City, my students for the Red Hen project were just coming back from vacation and we began serious development on the platform.
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Goodnight Burbank is a video podcast that my old high-school friend Hayden Black started in the winter. It is a terrific comedy, with a hint of Ricky Gervais (from the BBC's "The Office") and Aaron Sorkin's show, Sports Night. It started with an idea that Hayden had while visiting his parents in Fort Lauderdale, and with his improv group in LA, he created this incredible piece of work. He had announced it on our high-school email mailing list, I connected and we took on changing the website and marketing. Now, after nine months, Hayden has created 23 episodes, getting incredible visibility across the world and now getting serious interest from major producers. If you are interested in becoming part of the "team", check out the website and see what you can do.
October to December:
This quarter, I kept up on the social media efforts (with a trip to California to the Podcast Media Expo and began to return to the social media marketing efforts through a couple of opportunities.
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This quarter also brought about some focus in terms of teaching - at Cooper, this coming semester, I will be teaching systems engineering (read: making math equations out of physical systems) and a new class on "Web 2.0" - teaching programmers to understand the customer point of view by focusing on the product side of software development. It is in an attempt to draw more professional experiences into the academic setting, and making Cooper's engineers more well-rounded.
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In addition, the holidays have been very nice - my brother and his family came up to New York once again for the Thanksgiving Holiday (boy, it is amazing to see his son Luke and see how similar he looks to Andrew when he was his age!). Xmas was spent with my friend Stacey and her parents - experiencing a Polish family Xmas - with perogies and other Polish delicacies. New Years will be in NYC this time, to see the ball drop and to take it easy after a long 2006.
What next?
This past year has been a bit of a stress situation - from trying to make a difference to discovering the ins and outs of a lawsuit (which has been the cause of my frequent disappearances) - I look forward to putting it behind me and taking a vacation sometime in the coming months.
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For me, 2007 will be a year of positive growth and direction - whether from social media company opportunities, other start-up ventures or simply a "regular" role at a company not my own. Cooper and Poly pay small honoraria - but they are night-time courses and are part of my happiness in teaching and building students. These are bright students - and I appreciate the chance to help them grow.
I am searching for a position this year - avoiding the political spectrum - and focusing on either social media or online communities on the web or mobile platforms. As the months progress, we shall see what happens. If you know of some good opportunities, please send them my way - I am more than happy to chat further.
My best wishes to you and yours - and I hope that the New Year brings nothing but joy and happiness to you. Thank you for all the love and support I got from you - the calls and emails keep me smiling.
I wish you and yours all the best - and please, keep in touch. Tell me how you are doing.
With joy this holiday season and this upcoming New Year,
+1 (650) 533 5893 (CA cell)
+1 (954) 323 4450 (FL business number)
+1 (212) 353 4022 (Cooper Union office)
Sanford Dickert, 235 West End Avenue, Apt 5H, New York, New York, 10023, U.S.A.
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