Archive for the 'Politics' Category

I’ve always held the belief that we should focus on people first.  Whether in our professional or personal life, most everything we do involves people – our actions, emotions, etc. are tied to people.  Related to these beliefs, a  quote from Dick Clark (no, not the Band Stand one, the Merck CEO) resonated with me today as I was reading his comments on Merck’s recent acquisition of Schering-Plough (from the recent JP Morgan Healthcare Conference):

And certainly I use a statement, perhaps too much, that culture eats strategy for lunch, and so if you don’t get the culture right, it really doesn’t matter what the strategy is.

I couldn’t agree more.

No, this isn’t about the health of your car, it is related to my last post – Continuous monitoring of your health. I guess it does relate to the health of cars a bit in that the idea is a bit like OnStar, save a little more complex of course.  After all, a car is quite simple compared to the human body.  “auto-health” will be the next “big thing” in the healthcare space.  It’s in the infancy stage, but will rapidly progress, especially if the feds keep driving HIT and if the X-Prize people keep coming up w/ fun contests.  The idea is a device companies using wireless-enabled devices to monitor your health, auto-upload it, and then have machines analyze it letting you know if the sense anything irregular compared to others your age, the massive databases (Ingenix-like) they’ll have at their disposal, etc.  Imagine: “Want to have the internet keep you healthy?  There’s an app for that.”  “Want to be notified of a new flu strain in your area?  There’s an app for that?”

Kudos to the gov/Obama for actually creating a site that helps us stay in the loop/educated with what is going on in this country and up “on the hill”.  This evening I spent some time reviewing the site – Recovery.gov.

It looks like the site was just released so only limited information is available right now, but the FAQ suggests the site will be posting much more information on the ARRA (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) spend in the near-future.

So… I finally found a moment to breath between movies. The parties, people watching, time to hang out with friends and family, and the films are fun.  There is more though – each year Sundance continues to change my views and understanding of film.  The festival helps me better understand films’ impact on society, their value, and their power as a medium to communicate.  With organizations like the Sundance Institute and Indiegogo.com independent film makers will continue to receive help to tell their story/ies and also help involve others interested in film.

This year started out strong with many movies the first weekend and the beginning week starting with an excellent Indiegogo party (Robert Redford decided to stop by).  In addition  there were many current and past friends from work that made it out to the festival – fun fun (Eric/Slava – get Absolut as a sponsor again next year!).  This year I have been lucky in that all (save one) of the movies I have seen have had their director, producer, and/or major cast members present after the film.  This is one of the best parts of Sundance – a chance for everyone to ask questions about what they just saw, to better understand the motivations and journey of making the film.  It’s fun for those involved with the movie too – a chance to get feedback.  Sure, seeing some hit movies before they are out is unique, but not nearly as exciting as being able to interact with those who made the film.  A good example is World’s Greatest Dad.  After the film I was able to ask Bobcat Goldwaithe about the ending of his film – planned ahead or planned on the fly?  Turns out he planned it from the get go.  Why?  He writes his films backwards.  The other aspect of the Q&A is inspiration – we all have stories to tell and seeing beginners producing great movies shows that it can be done without a big budget and a ton of experience (although it does help ).  Wanna make a movie?

Additional Info:

In total I saw 22 movies which brought forth many emotions and thoughts within me.  Our movie comments and grades for each of the movies can be found on my wiki.   The pictures and videos are posted in my picture gallery – the pics/videos include Robert Redford (who attended a Indiegogo.com party  we were at), Michael Cera (from Arrested Development and Super Bad), and Kevin Spacey.  For a list of movies we saw please click here.

Are we living the book? ‘Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years – WSJ.com