GeezerCast

Rich pulled a boomerang fish act and headed back to Northland College after two miserable weeks at George Washington University. I think he did the right thing and spend this Geezercast exploring the difference between a good decision and a bad outcome (along with embarrassing Richard all to heck, which is my duty as a parent). Along the way I talk about sunk costs, “Blink” and why I think sometimes we put too much emphasis on “toughing it out” when in fact you shouldn’t — a lesson that applies to business as well as personal decisions.

Click here to download this 12 minute podcast

This is a longer-than-normal GeezerCast ’cause I’m trying to encapsulate why I’m not keen on municipal WiFi projects and I couldn’t quite fit it into the normal 10 minute slot.

One of the things that has me bugged is that these projects don’t look like they’ll ever make money. I went so far as to post a financial model out there on the ‘net. Let’s do a little open-source financial modeling here and get these numbers out into the light of day instead of in the heads of the Voodoo consultants who are making lots of money walking cities down the primrose path.

If you don’t like my (wildly unprofitable) model, fix it! I’d love to be proven wrong — but right now it looks to me like we’re not solving the digital divide, we’re distracting ourselves from the real issue of open-access networks, and we’re putting cities on the hook for some very expensive project failures down the line.

So there!

Click here to download this 19 minute podcast

It may not last, but I’ve decided to try doing a video version of Geezercast along with the audio version. This one’s about time-machines, the hassles of video blogging, a great speech by Salt Lake City Mayor Anderson plus a few other odds and ends.

Click here to download this 8.5 minute podcast

And here’s the link to the Youtube-video version of this podcast