Welcome 2010! What has made the last year for me, were words of wisdom about life, work, technology, culture, you name it. I’ll share a few of them with you here.

On getting Started

Inspiration is for amateurs.

Ken Bernstein is a friend and Boulder artist who kindly reminded me, while I was complaining of writer’s block, that if you’re a professional, waiting around for the muse is not an option.

On organizational culture

Your culture is your brand.

Tony Hsieh, zappos.com CEO, has this as his mantra and you can find it on their company website. Maybe it is even in the corporate restroom stalls, I don’t know.  It’s so tempting for a company to go for ROI right off the bat, but Tony’s philosophy has been to hire optimistic, problem solvers who love to give good customer service. They know customers will come back. And a culture like that is going to be around for a long time.

On what makes great technology stand out

It’s actually counter intuitive. To me it’s the thing that’s the least complicated. When I was writing at Wired, any time I got some new, fancy technology that people would tell me, ‘this is gonna change the world,’ I’d send it home to my mom and dad. And if they said, ‘uh we don’t understand how this works,’ then I kind of knew this wasn’t going to gain wide adoption, at least in its early phases.

Ball State University Prof, Brad King, emceed last year’s Business Accelerator at SXSW. In his Level3 Red Couch interview, we got to pick his brain for a few minutes. This response to the question “What makes great technology stand out?” reminded me how easy it is to get caught up in the slickest, coolest looking app that performs awesome tricks for tech junkies, but may not sell to the average person. Isn’t that our goal? Creating new technology because you think it’s cool is fun, but producing something useful, that is accessible, now that’s progress!

On change

The first step towards change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change.

My friend Myrna shared this Will Garcia quote. Myrna Weinreich shares inspiring thoughts like some people breathe. Whenever I need a new perspective, one of the quotes she shares is right there for me. We are in a state of rapid, constant change and it helps to take a breather and remind yourself to adapt.

These words are still relevant for me and will be moving forward. Not a lot of luggage, but something that will get through security anyway.

Happy New Year!