01.27.10: It's My Money Too

I was researching a grant, offered via a recent announcement by the US Dept. of Education for work that we do. The announcement cites funding available like this --

Estimated Available Funds: $2,682,787.
Estimated Range of Awards: $700,000-$1,982,787.
Estimated Average Size of Awards: $1,341,393.
Estimated Number of Awards: 2.

Seemed logical. So I did some digging.

Here's what I found for same grant for funding --

Estimated Available Funds for 84.304A: The Administration’s budget request does not include funds for this program. However, we are inviting applications to allow enough time to complete the grant process before the end of the current fiscal year, if Congress appropriates funds for this program.

Now I am confused. So I sent a clarifying email to the grant rep on this, specifically asking whether there is allocated funding or not. Here's my response --

Thank you for your interest in the Cooperative Civic Education and Economic Education Exchange Program Grant Competition for fiscal year 2010, CFDA 84.304A. A Notice Inviting Applications was published in the Federal Register on January 20, 2010 on page 3212. Please go to the following link to get an update about the program opportunities: http://www.ed.gov/news/fedregister/announce/index.html. Again thanks for your interest."

The link I received was for an entirely different grant program.

Nice customer service. Glad to be a taxpayer.

Teachable Moment: "What Type Are You?"

Have you ever wondered what your personality would be, if it were a font? Perhaps you haven’t, but the international design firm, Pentagram has. And they've created a website, “What Type Are You?” to answer just that. Based on your answers, you are presented with the font that represents your personality. The website narrator (an amusing psychoanalyst) not only describes the details of the font but gives you the origin and history of it, presenting something you see everyday, in a completely new light.

Why We Like It: Um, because it's fun! And, because indulging the right side of your brain everyday is a good thing (so says Dan Pink, and we agree!). Creative thinking is essential for problem solving and innovation and a simple exercise such as this could get you thinking just differently enough to spark your greatest idea.

Bruce Nofsinger Discusses Pepsi's Latest Cause-Campaign

Watch Topics Education co-founder, Bruce Nofsinger, discuss Pepsi's allocation of its Superbowl ad budget to a community-based cause-campaign instead, titled “The Pepsi Refresh Project”. Hint: It's a good thing!

Bruce Nofsinger Discusses The Pepsi Refresh Project from Topics Education on Vimeo.

Top Five: Favorite Songs

Folks around the office seem to be either talking about music or letting it travel out their office doors for all to hear. So this month, we wanted to share our Top Five (and more) favorite songs with our readers. We have created a Topics Education playlist on blip.fm so you can stream the songs and enjoy them just as much as we do! To limit the amount of songs, we tried to pick songs that are our current favorites. They include, The Avett Brothers, Radiohead, Jay-Z, Allison Krauss and Robert Plant, Passion Pit, The Rolling Stones, Cold Play, Camera Obscura, Metro Station and more.

The Everyday All Around Us

By Phelps Sprinkle

“Take care of the pennies,
and the dollars will take care of themselves.”

My uncle has recited this line to me more times than I care to count. For many years, I took it with a grain of salt. I laughed usually. But as I’ve grown older, progressing through the rites of becoming a business-owner, a husband, a father, a civic-minded citizen, these words have taken on more meaning.

As a business-owner, the past year or so was as trying a year as we’ve experienced at Topics Education, now entering our 15th year. Given the state of the economy, we were forced to double our efforts, make hard decisions, tackle short-term issues, and revise long-term goals. In short, we were forced to focus, and we did. As a result, 2009 turned out ok. We got our feet back under us, ended the year on an up-note, and put ourselves in a good position entering 2010.

Just as importantly, though, the business experiences of the past year taught me a valuable lesson: by getting back to basics, I am more closely in touch with our business, our clients, and our products and services. My short-term decision-making and my long-term planning are better served by the tangible exposure to the everyday mechanics of our business. Additionally, I am finding that by paying attention to what’s right in front of my face – as a Zen master said: “when you are washing the dishes, wash the dishes” – I am also appreciating and enjoying my work that much more.

With this nugget of wisdom in mind, I considered expanding on this business lesson, translating it into new resolutions for the coming year, the coming decade. I considered laying out my personal “Seven-point plan for achieving business Nirvana in trying times.” And then I came to my senses.

It did dawn on me, though, that this same realization is playing out and bearing fruit in my personal life … as a father. My wife and I have three wonderfully-unique children, ages two, five, and seven. Like most fathers I know, I strive to be the guy who does it all, to be there whenever my kids need me. But I’m not sure I’ve always done as good a job living in the moment with them, experiencing what they are experiencing, proverbially getting my fingernails dirty and my feet wet. The times when I have been able to achieve this, though, I recognize it. And I’ve been recognizing it more as of late. It leaves me feeling great. It’s addictive, and I want more of it.

Maybe these realizations come with age, maybe the tough economic conditions trigger (or enable) soul-searching. All I know is that like many people, in my professional and personal lives, I tend to look toward the horizon, the next challenge. As a result, I tend to miss a lot of opportunities to do good, to give thanks to those who care about and support me, and to slow down and experience peace. So this year, I’ve made a resolution for the rest of my life: focus on the everyday all around us.

Now, back to my uncle’s saying: “Take care of the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves.” On the surface, it seems to be talking about a strategy for achieving financial success. At least, for most of my life, that’s how I understood it without going much deeper. But these days – like a good Chinese proverb – its layered meaning and relevance strike me much more deeply.

My current interpretation? If we really focus our attention on what it is that’s right in front of us (the pennies) – whether it’s our kids, our work, or our hobbies – then the big picture (the dollars) – happiness, balance, peacefulness – will fall into place. It’s working for me. Ommm …

01.08.10: Seems Like Old Times

I am working on a project where the scene within the client's walls are ever-changing. Just when we get the hierarchy figured out, the players change, the initiative dies off, revenues fall, etc. Every time we talk, a percentage - not big, yet... - of previous knowledge has to be tossed out of the window and basic assumptions rethought.

It's not a big deal. It's life. When I saw the image here, it reminded me of this situation. When I took the photo, the blades of this thing were not visible to the human eye. But with a click of the camera, they were frozen, static. Sometimes I wish projects would allow me to do the same.

There Has to be a Twist

I came across this provocative (in the good sense of the term) piece from the NYT Magazine, and it reminded me of a quip I've heard a lot in the last year or so.

Me: We do a lot of work on financial literacy for clients like Citi and Wachovia/Wells.

Quip from other person: Clearly, your clients didn't use the resources you developed for them!

Yes, yes ... some painful truth is contained in the quip. If individuals took the equivalent risks that many financial institutions took, those individuals would've been poster children of financially illiterate behavior.

In "Walk Away From Your Mortgage," Roger Lowenstein (NYTimes Magazine, 1/7/10) prompts you to think about some of the double standards applied to businesses that are "underwater" vs. individuals who are underwater in their mortgages. Shuttering a failing factory (i.e., walking away from it) often makes economic sense and is even applauded for its pragmatism. Certainly, people make an economic and moral argument against the move, citing the ripple effect in a local economy and/or the need to demonstrate loyalty to employees and communities. Those arguments, however, tend to be dismissed and ignored.

This paragraph from Lowenstein's essay about "strategic defaults" (i.e., instances when people who could conceivably make mortgage payments decide not to, thereby defaulting) particularly struck me:

There are two reasons why so-called strategic defaults have been considered antisocial and perhaps amoral. One is that foreclosures depress the neighborhood and drive down prices. But in a market society, since when are people responsible for the economic effects of their actions? Every oil speculator helps to drive up gasoline prices. Every hedge fund that speculated against a bank by purchasing credit-default swaps on its bonds signaled skepticism about the bank’s creditworthiness and helped to make it more costly for the bank to borrow, and thus to issue loans. We are all economic pinballs, insensibly colliding for better or worse.

Are we really economic pinballs? With apologies to Pete Townshend ... there has to be a twist. I'd like to think that there is more at play than the whims of survival of the fittest and that just because something can generate short-term profits doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do. And if businesses operate simply on how something affects the bottom line, why shouldn't we expect individuals to take the same tack and walk away from their mortgages?

01.07.10: There's a Show For That

I watched CNBC's Planet of the Apps. Here's their writeup teasing the show,

Apps are popular and profitable. Studies estimate, the Apple iPhone apps store alone generates about $200 million a month in sales. Innovative and often addictive apps are changing the way we work and live.

Welcome to Planet of the Apps: A Handheld Revolution. In this hour we’ll look at how apps have changed our lives, meet some of the creators behind them, and figure out just how big a business they really are.

It's a great piece and tells the story of various people and entities making a run at developing an app that will go viral and make them money. And while the demand grows, it seems that the chance for the home run fades more and more. And yet, the days of the go-go internet craze from 1998-2001 seem to be back. Now on a handheld. At least this time, they're charging.

01.06.10: That's a Kool (Aid) Way to Start

I had a coffee with a gentleman today who drank from the same cooler of Kool-Aid as I have. He gets it. He's committed to public education; to public service; to civic engagement; to making a difference in the community; and working across differences. A great dialogue was had - even at a first meeting - because common ground and vernacular were obvious. And infectious. It was a nice way to kick off the New Year. Cheers.