Leadership insight from one of cycling’s greats:

Men’s Health: What’s it like giving up the spotlight to help bring up the next generation?

Jens Voigt: I hate to admit it, but I’m an older rider. I don’t like that fact. But I think a career should be a circle, equal between taking and giving. You come in young, let people help you, support you. Then you come to the higher part of circle, and it’s “I want to win, I want to win” and you use all of the resources to make it happen. When you close the circle, it’s your time to give back and keep the balance. I have experience I’ve paid for with blood, sweat, and tears. It would be just stupid not to pass it on and keep it for myself. I help younger kids by guiding them a bit, and physically, I try to help the boys on top.

(via http://news.menshealth.com/jens-voigt-interview/2012/01/25/)

Huge kudos to The County Theater in Doylestown (member supported) for landing a string of great movies this year. You’ll have my family’s support again in 2012.

My favorite movies of 2011:

1. Midnight in Paris: A creative, whimsical journey through literary and cultural Paris. Woody Allen for people who don’t like Woody Allen.
2. Super 8: When Alien meets ET meets Stand by Me. This will be another classic.
3. The Descendants: A great performance by George Clooney, but an even better performance by Shailene Woodley. Watch for her to get a best supporting nod.
4. Hugo: All of the focus is on the groundbreaking 3D, but the real star is the storytelling.
5. Young Adult: Proof that Charlize Theron is one of the most underrated actresses of our time. And proof that the screen needs more Patton Oswalt.
6. Martha Marcy May Marlene: Mary-Kate and Ashley who? Elizabeth Olsen delivers a haunting, potentially Oscar-worthy performance.
7. The Muppets: Jason Segal shows what can be done when passion and art collide.

The least favorite movie of 2011 (and, arguably, the worst movie of all time):

1. The Tree of Life: Love Brad Pitt and Sean Penn as actors, but, wow. The only movie I’ve ever walked out on.

(Image via Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/vlastula/450642954/)

“All truth passes through three stages: In the first stage it’s ridiculed, in the second it’s violently opposed, and in the third stage it’s accepted as self-evident.” — German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer via Bill Gross’s ”12 Lessons for Entrepreneurs” at LeWeb 2012.

A couple of clicks and another cup of java later and I realize that the good rebel versus bad rebel characteristics Lois Kelly lays out are too black and white for the real-life I’ve experienced over the past 15 years playing the role of corporate renegade in companies as big as IBM (“Faster Company”), Unisys and Alcatel-Lucent (“Alcatel-Lucent Is Damn Serious About Their Plans To Make Wireless Carriers Relevant”).

Never has the fluid, gray area of corporate rebellion been more pronounced or exciting than the last two years. Led by one of the best (and most tireless) change agents I’ve ever known, Laura Merling, we’ve built a team that not only straddles the line between good and bad rebel, but frequently spends time on each side in an effort to not only change a company’s culture, but also an industry’s.

We’ve been the corporate renegades, as Peter calls us in “Pirates, Rebels, Mercenaries and Innovators.” We’ve been the “brave (or foolhardy) enough to stand against the prevailing doctrine of the organization and seriously argue for another way,” as recently-retired CIA executive Carmen Medina describes corporate heretics. We’ve been called a lot of other things, too.

And that’s why I disagree with Kelly on the hard dividing line between good and bad rebels.

Looking at our team — the personalities, the drive, the success — I believe the best corporate rebels straddle the line between good and bad, embodying a healthy mix of both qualities. Below, in bold, are the good and bad qualities described by Kelly. The straight text that follows is commentary based on my direct experience:

Bad rebels break rules…Good rebels change rules. Often times, you have to break rules to jumpstart change. The consumerization of IT didn’t start because someone asked for permission to change the rules.

Bad rebels complain…Good rebels create. You have to make the squeaky wheel squeak louder in order to get other parts of the organization to realize things are broken.

Bad rebels assert…Good rebels ask questions. I’ve never met a renegade who wasn’t sure of herself or who wasn’t insanely inquisitive. Renegades know in their hearts and guts that they are right and ask the questions necessary to prove it.

Bad rebels are me-focused…Good rebels are mission-focused. Renegades often work on the fringes of an organization. They are given vague missions and asked to accomplish those missions with little organizational air cover. You bet rebels are me-focused; they better be. It’s called survival. But you can also rest-assured that they think day and night about their mission.

Bad rebels are angry…Good rebels have passion. You can have passion for love (or lust) and you can have passion to right wrongs. The passion to right what is wrong burns from an anger that things can and should be fixed. Anger is the fire of passion.

Bad rebels are pessimists….Good rebels are optimists. The best optimists are those who have already (and constantly) think about what could go wrong. Imagining the worst lets you build for the best.

Bad rebels are energy-sapping…Good rebels are energy-generating. The best corporate rebels generate excitement about what they are doing. They also sap the energy of those (organizations and individuals) who are unaccustomed to maintaining the rapid pace required to drive change.

Bad rebels alienate…Good rebels attract. Change is hard. Corporate renegades alienate those who find it difficult or impossible to change. Alienation is good. It weeds out those holding an organization back from growth and innovation. But it is only good when the renegade’s mission attracts more than it alienates.

Bad rebels see problems. Good rebels see opportunities. Opportunity is found in addressing the problems nobody else sees or is able to fix. Good renegades are constantly on the lookout for problems.

Bad rebels vocalize problems…Good rebels socialize opportunities. Too many times in large organizations, the problems become part of the organizational fabric. We know this as “Yeah, it’s broken, but we’ll never fix it.” Vocalizing the problem — giving voice to the frustrated — is how rebels socialize the path to opportunity.

Bad rebels worry that something will happen…Good rebels wonder what will happen. Corporate rebels aren’t afraid of failure. They don’t ask for permission. They try things because they have a gut feel that something good might come out of it. They live by the motto: “What’s the worst they can do, fire me?”

Bad rebels point fingers…Good rebels pinpoint causes. Sometimes it’s necessary — especially in large, established (read: bureaucratic, political) organizations — to out those who block change because of their own personal or professional fear. Unfortunately, sometimes the role of a renegade is to get personal for the benefit of the larger cause.

Bad rebels doubt…Good rebels believe. There is no such thing as a doubting rebel. A questioning rebel? Absolutely. But no rebel ever doubts that the change he’s trying to achieve can’t be accomplished. Yes, renegades hit hurdles, but they always believe in success.

Bad rebels are social loners…Good rebels are social. At an individual level, corporate rebels are inherently social. They are experiential by nature, looking to soak up all that is around them — people, places, sights, sounds, tastes. However, when a team of renegades bands together within an organization, they often become social loners (at least within the social structure of the organization). This happens because they are working on the fringes, pushing change that threatens the comfy existence of organizational lifers, taking the bold risks few are brave enough to take. Corporate renegades realize that success isn’t a popularity contest.

Being a corporate renegade is a constant life of adrenaline rush. It’s a selfless job that nobody ever (really) gets credit for. You’re a mercenary. Many envy what you get to do, but few are willing to accept the sacrifices it requires (personal and professional). It is a career that is never black and white…which is why the best renegades sometimes have to be the bad renegades.

To understand where the combination of mobile sensors, cloud databases and computer algorithms augmented by human action is leading us, consider the self-driving car. Stanley, a driverless vehicle, won the US Darpa (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) grand challenge in 2005 by navigating a course of slightly over seven miles in a little under seven hours. Last year, Google demonstrated an autonomous vehicle that has driven over 100,000 miles in ordinary traffic. The difference: Stanley used traditional artificial intelligence algorithms and techniques; the Google autonomous vehicle is augmented with the memory of millions of road miles put in by human drivers building the Google Street View database. Those cars recorded countless details – the location of stop signs, obstacles, even the road surface.This is man-computer symbiosis at its best, where the computer program learns from the activity of human teachers, and its sensors notice and remember things the humans themselves would not. This is the future: massive amounts of data created by people, stored in cloud applications that use smart algorithms to extract meaning from it, feeding back results to those people on mobile devices, gradually giving way to applications that emulate what they have learned from the feedback loops between those people and their devices.

I encourage you to read the entire Financial Times Article (“Birth of the Global Mind”) written by one of tech’s smartest, Tim O’Reilly.

I’ve set a BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) to post a sub-5:00 minute mile on the track. In high school, I put up a 4:36 minute mile at our state regional meet, so I know it can be done. I’ve also posted 6:05 minute/mile pace over 13.1 miles and 5:30 minute/mile over 10 kilometers. Not to mention countless college cross country races at paces in between.

A lot of people turn to marathons as they get older. I’ve done two (Chicago and New York City) and am proud of that accomplishment. Don’t let anyone tell you that 26 miles is hard. 26 miles is easy. It’s that last .2 that hurts. But the challenge of going sub-5:00 one more time is too enticing.

Alcatel-Lucent is one of the lead sponsors of Defrag and we have some special surprises in store for this year’s anniversary edition (we are also the Community Underwriter of Eric’s other kickass conference centered around APIs and cloud computing, Gluecon). The conference is nearly sold-out (Eric is capping attendees at 325), so if you can make it out to Denver, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to get some of that sweet sponsor discount moving your way.

Keeping to the cool conference theme, I also attended a great Defrag precursor the other week: Monktoberfest. How do you top a conference that began with a simple tweet:

Check out Stephen’s post on the official background story.

As the name implies, yes, there was beer involved. Good beer. Very, very good beer. And lobster rolls. Can’t believe I almost forgot about the lobster rolls. But the food and beer were secondary to the content the gang at Redmonk pulled together for the 150 or so attendees. It was a killer lineup of speakers exploring “how technology is impacting the way we socialize and how the way we socialize is influencing the way we build and use technology.” The exclusive conference was high on brains and low on douchebags, something not terribly common in conferences focused on social. Monktoberfest is without a doubt on my must-attend for 2012 (provided my liver recovers in time).

For those who aren’t familiar with Mobile Monday, it is a global community of mobile industry visionaries, developers and influentials whose goal is to foster innovation and facilitate networking across the mobile ecosystem. I got my first taste of Mobile Monday when I participated in its 10th anniversary summit in Helsinki, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia, which is where I met Mobile Monday’s chairman, Jari Tammisto, and Tokyo kingpin, Lars CoshIshii. Following Helsinki, I was invited to moderate a panel on mobile developer ecosystems co-hosted by MoMoMa and RCR Wireless.

Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic was founded in 2007 and has grown to more than 2,000 members — making it one of the fastest growing technology networking and educational organizations in the Greater Philadelphia region.  According to the 2011 Philadelphia Business Journal, we are the 7th largest regional networking group.

If you are involved in the mobile industry and are interested in what’s going on in the greater-Philadelphia community, give me a shout.