This Tuesday (May 3rd) is “National Teacher Appreciation Day” in the US.

I know, it’s easy to feel a little cynical about these ‘National <insert your cause here> Week’ proclamations – it can sometimes seem that they’re primarily about safe uncontroversial camera time for the politicians proposing them.  On the other hand, “National Teacher Appreciation Day” has me taking a minute or two to reflect back on two of the best teachers I’ve had: one from my master’s degree studies, one from back in high school.

Here, by way of a belated ‘thank you’, is a little about them…

Navin Chopra, Economics My master’s degree curriculum was made up of equal parts Stern School of Business MBA courses and NYU graduate-level computer science courses.  At NYU, computer science is part the mathematics department, and although math is a  big deal there, the fact remains that computer science has less to do with mathematics than you’d think – so I always had the impression it was given short shrift at NYU.  Not so the Stern MBA courses I was spending the other half of my time in – while I was there, Financial Times had the school ranked 10th worldwide and 3rd worldwide in finance.  So as I sat surrounded by MBA students for Professor Chopra’s first ‘Foundations of Finance’ lecture, I was eager to see what all the fuss was about.

‘Foundations of Finance’ was part of the MBA core curriculum, and was viewed at Stern as something akin to ‘economics boot camp’.  The material was challenging, and the course moved quickly: NPV, IRR, PVIFA, yield curves, bond pricing, correlation coefficients…  I’ll be honest, I’ve half-forgotten many of those formulas, and I haven’t touched the scientific calculator I had to buy for the course since minutes after finishing my final exam.  To this day, though, I’m still struck by how rewarding (and enjoyable) Professor Chopra made the experience.  Granted, it was a self-selected, highly motivated room to begin with – but he had most of us wanting to learn this difficult material for its own sake - we were  into it.  And let’s be honest, that’s not often the case in business school (it appears Prof. Chopra has since moved on to Columbia Business School – NYU’s loss).

Given that half my courses met in the Institute of Mathematics building, it’s a little ironic that the math I was exposed to while at NYU happened down the street at the b-school, but that’s what ‘Foundations of Finance’ was – essentially, a math class.  What I particularly appreciated were the fleeting glimpses into the beauty of the math that Prof. Chopra seemed to get a kick out of showing us: more than once, we’d be taken up to a certain point with some new formula or chart, and then with a trace of a dry smile, he’d reveal it as another way of approaching the same concept expressed by an entirely different formula or chart we had covered a month and a half ago.  During those ‘eureka’ moments, I suddenly  understood (for the first time!) how a young person could become fascinated enough with math and/or economics to choose a career based upon it, as Prof. Chopra had clearly done (and as has I had done with music, back in high school).

Which brings me to…

Arthur Simeone Mr. Simeone was one of my high school’s three music teachers (I’m pretty confident that’s not so common anymore).   He taught chorus and music theory, and although chorus was not my thing, I did take his music theory classes – and in that laser-like way teenagers can become fascinated by things, I became fascinated by the harmonic architecture of music.

In addition to his teaching, Mr. Simeone was also a jazz piano player of some local renown.  To have a professional musician in my midst, the first I’d ever met – well, that made a big impression on me.  It wasn’t jazz harmony that he was teaching us, though – Mr. Simeone’s theory classes were based around the study of “figured bass” (“generalbass” in German), a type of chord notation used 350 years ago during the Baroque period.  As it happens, the study of this archaic notation makes for a great introduction to music theory, because it introduces into the relatively ‘vertical’ study of harmony some basic counterpoint (which deals with the relative ‘horizontal’ movement of notes) – but I digress.  The point is, although he was the ‘cool’ teacher with a mysterious and (to me, at least) glamorous musical life outside school, Arthur Simeone’s music theory classes were pretty rigorous.  Baroque music is all about structural and logical soundness, and so working with figured bass involves following some hard and fast rules – the teaching of which he took very seriously.  Like Prof. Chopra, he had great respect for the subject matter, which proved infectious in the classroom.

He also managed to approach the subject matter with a curiosity (and even a playfulness) students could identify with, and that proved infectious too.  Granted, by then I had just resolved to pursue music seriously, had little use for high school other than my music courses, and was about to graduate six months early to study music for a semester at a local state university – maybe it’s not surprising, then, that I was so impressed by a music teacher – maybe it was the subject matter itself.  Alas, for my own sake, I wish that was true: in my undergraduate studies I found it was possible, quite possible, in fact, to have some astoundingly bad music teachers – even at a ‘prestigious’ conservatory.

No, Mr. Simeone would have been a great teacher regardless of the subject.  He also would have had an equally great effect on his students regardless of whether he taught at a local high school or at a major conservatory – and since “National Teacher Appreciation Day” is primarily about the same public school teachers who are being made such political scapegoats of these days (cue Jon Stewart), this a point worth using the bold font for.

What makes a good teacher?  I think you’ve first got to have some innate talent for the simple ‘public speaking’ aspect of it, there’s no way around that (I’ve given just enough workshops to suspect that this might be a talent that, unlike my university professor brother, I might lack).  The more crucial quality, though, is intellectual generosity.  Although one taught at an internationally ranked business school and one taught in a suburban New York high school, both Prof. Chopra and Mr. Simeone both ‘got it’ – they both approached the job of teaching without bringing any ego-related baggage of their own to the table, and maybe that in itself was a lesson.

So, thanks Professor Chopra.

Thanks, Mr. Simeone.

And to our readers, I hope you’ve been lucky enough to have a teacher as good as either of these guys – happy National Teacher Appreciation Day.

On internet use at work… There was an interesting article in last week’s New Yorker magazine by James Surowiecki.  Citing a University of Copenhagen study on the effects of willpower and deprivation, Surowiecki raises the possibility that although many companies routinely restrict access to websites such as YouTube and facebook in an effort to increase productivity, overly restricting employees’ personal access to the internet from the workplace could also adversely affect productivity.

The cloud is falling, the cloud is falling… From Lydia Leong at Gartner comes the best explanation we’ve come across yet as to what actually happened last week to cause Amazon’s Web Services/EC2 outage – and what it means to users of its cloud computing services.

As it turns out, it’s both less scary and more scary than you might think: the failure was limited to database access (the actual EC2 server instances were unaffected) in the Northeast US, and was caused by an automated self-induced storm of backups.

That’s the less scary part – the scarier part is there appears to be surprisingly little transparency and consensus regarding Amazon’s EC2 resiliency structure and fail-over options (and consequently, little understanding of them on the part of their customers).

On the economics of the internet… “How much more than the actual cost of your computer and your mobile devices (and the electricity and internet services they require) would someone have to pay you never to use them again?”

“What makes the internet a fundamentally less relevant invention than the railroads of a century ago?”

These are just a few of the questions addressed recently in two interesting articles by Slate‘s Annie Lowrey on the economics of the internet.  You can find them here and here.

P.S. Lastly – for those of you who’ve gotten an iPhone and/or an iPad, but haven’t quite gotten around to getting a life to go with them yet, here’s a list of the 10 best Prince William royal wedding apps.

Our collective clock is ticking. Before year’s end, we’ll be a record 7 billion people co-habitating planet earth. One way or another this presents all of us with unprecedented challenges and opportunities.

With that in mind, the United Nations Population Fund recently started looking to Social Media, to see what this new digital platform can do to help raise both general awareness and individual actions in response to our looming population crisis.

So what exactly can digital media add to this tremendous cause?

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#1 Thing You Need to Learn from This Post:
Sensors inside mobile devices create large amounts of data that can be useful to cause leaders.

A More Detailed Exploration:
While most people want to ignore this fact, the mobile devices in our pockets can be used to track our movements and gather other environmental data when properly outfitted. If you’re living in a blissful state of ignorance about mobile data, you will not want to explore this post by Ben Kunz that introduced me to a website detailing a mobile data experiment. If it doesn’t give you Big Brother nightmares, going to the original website will.

In reading the post and playing around the website, my mind went back to the ideas Ayesha Khanna shared at our Crisis and Media event about the Hybrid Reality and the rising role of sensors in our world. It certainly supports the ideas Robert Kirkpatrick shared at the UN Population Fund summit about data exhaust.

Let’s assume this mobile data is anonymized and made available on an open data platform. What insights and services could be built on top of them? Imagine how this data could help. A few I have seen mentioned elsewhere are:

• drive detection of radiation, toxic chemicals, viruses, and other dangerous things
• chart traffic patterns and migrations over time
• provide insight into human behavior in relationship to other data overlays

These don’t even scratch the surface of what’s possible. What are some ideas you can think of?

Another month, another European trade show.  This time it’s musikmesse, the world’s largest musical instrument and accessory trade event.  Held in Frankfurt every April, musikmesse covers everything from musical instruments to DJ equipment to audio software (which is why I was there).
Think of the largest music store on the planet, spread across 6 or 7 huge convention halls – in other words, heaven, hell, or a bit of both, depending on your point of view.

Last month I wrote about my trip to CeBIT – musikmesse is, as you might imagine, quite a different kind of trade show experience.  One thing both shows have in common, though, is their own iPhone app.  Driven by an app store model that’s made applications safe, easy to install/uninstall, and often free, the use of such disposable event-specific apps is on the rise.  In fact, a dedicated mobile app – complete with exhibitor lists, floor plans, GPS, and some degree of social networking functionality (usually twitter) – has become ‘de rigeuer’ for any self-respecting trade show these days.

So I decided to try musikmesse’s iPhone app out.

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“Whatʼs so revolutionary about doing good?” Welcome social marketing strategist Scott Henderson to digitalmissive. He has the answer.

Scott is a regular keynote speaker and has been featured on BusinessWeek.com, Harvard Business Review Online, Mashable.com, Reuters, and MIT Sloan Management Review.   In addition to blogging at Rally the Cause (www.rallythecause.com), he is also a contributor to the Chronicle of Philanthropy and Advancing Philanthropy.

As managing director of Causeshift, Scott mixes theory and practice: utilizing time-tested behavioral science principles and the power of social networking and internet media, he’s created effective online/offline initiatives for a variety of organizations, including P&G, Center for Creative Learning, Tyson Foods, University of Chicago, and UNICEF.

It’s just this ability to create meaningful relationships that has been central to his career, which has also included forays as an interactive agency executive, major gift fundraiser, foundation executive, and magazine editor.

At digitalmissive, Scott will share key perspectives based both on his role at CauseShift, and his own blog, Rally the Cause.

Try sitting at a restaurant and not follow the over-the-bar TV. Try taking your office building elevator and not focus on the in-car monitor. Even at my local barber shop, a sizable flat screen TV is constantly running, with videos routinely cutting into if not suppressing actual conversation.

Add to that screens at home, at work, inside stores and your favorite local bodega. Frankly, I probably encountered plenty more digital screen today if only I hadn’t been busy, well, looking at another screen.

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