I went on a 70m bike ride today, and a pretty hilly one I had no reason to believe I’d be able to complete. I did, and for the most part, I hung with the five other fastest riders out of the group ride, which was cool.

I’m in a lot of pain now.

One of the things I’ve done to great success in my Expedia career is to throw myself at the hardest thing I didn’t think I could do, and then work my way out of it. I take on projects I don’t think I’m quite technical enough for, I sign on for workloads I don’t think are rational… and then I have to struggle to complete them, but I’m smarter and better for having done them.

I’m starting to do that with my bike riding now: I’m picking off goals I don’t think I’m quite ready for, and if I fail, I’ve learned a lot. Like the Mercer Loop — I can get from Expedia World HQ across the water, around the loop, and back in just an hour and change, but I hadn’t really challenged myself on the loop itself, so I tried to match a time my friend Joel (who kicks my ass at climbs) and his former boss (a competitive biker) put up when they were trying to grind each other down. I was a minute off (on a 17.4 mile loop). And I think I can get that down even further.

The result of all this is that I looked at riding RAMROD (Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day, one of the hardest rides in the northwest) with some fear and doubt, and now I think if I get a ticket, I can absolutely do it — and I’m thinking about running REDSPOKE (Redmond-Spokane) this year. I don’t know when I’m going to fail, but it’s going to be an interesting riding season.

I have, because I went through high school with it, an irrational emotional reaction to Nirvana music. It’s too teenager-y to get into, but I would be willing to bet ten, twenty years from now you could play even a less-famous song with one of those amazing hooks (“Scentless Apprentice” for instance) and I’d stop whatever I was doing and look up.

I realized today that it’s probably only a matter of time before a Nirvana song is used to sell cars, or something. Courtney Love, when she’s not trying to claim credit for Kurt’s music (see: the “Old Age” controversy), funds her downward spiral on her share of the Nirvana royalties, and would probably sell “Lithium” to sell Lincoln Navigators tomorrow. The issue’s whether Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic can hold out forever.

As far as I know, yes.

But for the rest of their lives, as long as they hold out and go about their lives (their cell phones purring with the calls from Love’s lawyers asking about potential deals) there’ll be this temptation that follows them, offering millions of dollars if they’ll consent to use of “Love Buzz” in an energy drink commercial.

The advertisers will dog them forever, because for people like me, it’s a cue to pay attention, already emotionally vested. This is why Led Zepplin was such a perfect way for Cadillac to attack aging Boomers with disposable incomes, why today bands are co-opted almost immediately (M.I.A. with all their radical politics selling Hondas, Postal Service tunes hawking whatever): you form your emotional connections to music, and then they’re available for easy switching to a commodity of choice.

Hold out, Krist. Please.

I got a bunch of really good feedback on refining it and my one-page pitch is now a strong 1.5 page pitch, and I’m baffled at how I can get it back down to one without chopping some persuasive stuff.

I’m frustrated I can’t discuss the idea itself without risk yet, but I’m really hoping in a month or so I’ll be able to write at length about how awesome it is and what the larger implications are.

There’s an opportunity to get it in front of a much wider audience this week, so I may be forking the attack and going wide as well as trying to get the big wigs a chance.

Man, if this doesn’t work it’s going to break my heart.

I worked out a refined one-page summary of the idea today in preparation for having it pitched to the big execs. Now it’s got a five-second summary, a 30s pitch, and a nice set of high-level “what does this do for us” explanations. I’m happy.

People who’ve seen it keep mentioning it — even people I didn’t distribute it to directly. This keeps me happy as I pound the idea out. I feel like I’m making a katana the old-fashioned way, banging a piece of metal flat, folding it over, banging the folded sheet flat, folding it, over and over so that when someone gets their 5s or 30s or 10m with the president the idea will be perfectly formed.

I scan the news every day looking for announcements that someone else has done it. If we don’t get this out soon I’m going to show up for my next physical with a blood pressure spike that’ll scare the nurses.

There’s this guy that I’ve had a fairly hard time working with, for a whole set of reasons that are unimportant here, and on this one thing (see, this is why writing about work sucks) he took the position that one thing was going to turn out to be important to how user testing went, and I just didn’t see it. So we started showing the widget to users today, and he was totally right — the users would be going along, see real-looking fake data and screech to a halt: I know that hotel’s not there… that’s not how much that room costs. Totally took them out of using the widget. I’d figured if you’re testing a piece of functionality, it wouldn’t much matter if it said “fake hotel A” or whatever, as long as they could turn the dial back and forth and talk about using the dial. I wonder, as I type this, if that might not be true — if you either have to present plausible data if you make it look real or you have to go all the way and make it obvious it’s fake so they shouldn’t expect anything.

Anyway.

When I had the chance, I conceeded the point. I said “you were absolutely right, when they see this stuff… blah blah blah…” and that was it. I didn’t get a reaction at all. I don’t know if he didn’t know what I was talking about, or thought it was natural that he’d be right, or didn’t hear me… Doesn’t matter.

So here’s what bugs me: now I’m embarrassed. I went out of my way to concede a point, and for what? I feel like instead of making a good-natured overture I now look like I was kissing up or something.

And now I’m mad it even bugged me. Soon I’ll be frustrated I spent that much energy on it. And then I’ll go biking or something and feel fine about the whole thing.

Bleah.

Got another director today, and we may have a way to get a chance to pitch right to the top. Other iterations on things we can do with the idea have come up, some of them unexpected.

Getting a chance to pitch the big boss would mean I don’t reduce the mini-spec to 1 page but instead, as I heard today, “5 perfect slides”. No pressure, though.

It’s cool too to toss around potential impacts of the idea, as well — I think our competitors have to copy it immediately, and it might well spread outside of the industry really fast and make an even larger secondary impact on other industries outside of ours. Everyone who flips over the idea when I pitch it seems to have a follow-up reaction of “and wait, I’ve been thinking about this, and it’s potentially much larger than this–” to which I smile and nod.

Further iterations and refinement, and maybe I’m pitching the folks at the top soon.

More people saw it, and more people volunteered. The short spec’s been refined with some feedback.

It looks like the next barrier’s going to be finding executive sponsorship. Some people have been concerned that the idea’s going to be denied because it doesn’t fit well enough with the brand concept of the day, or whatever.

The next step’s going to be distilling it down into a one-pager that can be presented to exec types and win them over. There’s no mechanism at Expedia for small, cool ideas to percolate up (and again, I’ve fought this for a long time), so I need to find someone in power and say “here’s how this idea helps Expedia and you” and hope they bite.

That convincing executives is different than shopping the idea to my peers and having everyone want to volunteer to build it is a understandable but a little depressing.

I began sounding people out today, looking for ears sympathetic to… uh… the general area of concern. It’s a biased sample, of course, but everyone so far loves it, which is great. Better still, it seems like it’s sticking in their heads, bothering them to come up with ways to help.

At this point, I’ve got what amounts to a 2-page mini-specification: here’s the idea in summary form, here’s what we’d have to do (very little) and here’s the good stuff that happens if we do it.

What I’ll face later this week, after I get some more feedback and refine the mini-spec a little, is a common Program Manager dilemma:
– I can go through the project initiation process
– Network — build a groundswell of support, hopefully including an executive sponsor and others who can help

The problem with the first is that projects like this (small, awesome, with potentially huge jaw-dropping impacts that haven’t come through standard processes and stamps of approval from the people who normally start up projects) is that they’re extremely likely to get dumped out of a process at that point, no matter how good they are.

This is stupid, but it’s the truth, and it’s been the truth anywhere I’ve ever worked (if you work at Google, and read this, you suck). Now, I’m stubborn and dogged and I can be persuasive if the occasion calls for it, but I think I’m going to have a real hard time getting this through the giant sausage-maker.

The other option appeals to me as a wanna-be revolutionary. It has the added benefit that at some point I may be able to convince an exec that it’s their brilliant idea, and then it’ll get built. I’ll give up credit if it’ll get this done, though obviously I’d like the attaboy and pat on the head.

Plus, I feel that if I recruit enough people, it makes it much easier to go into the process and fight it out.

Now with enough people, I could potentially skunkwork the software side, but my idea requires some business process and relationship-building. It’s not something I could get built and have show up on Expedia.com tomorrow without there being some big trouble (which I think we could get away with, but… it’d be large enough I think it might be as much trouble for me personally as it good for the company and the world). I’d be willing to make that sacrifice as well, but if I get it out and it gets pulled immediately and I get fired, I haven’t won anything.

The downside to continuing to recruit quietly and then build up ground-level support is that you risk being perceived as running a rogue operation — even if you aren’t — and you have to fight past that when you do go into the process.

And if you’re wondering if I’m frustrated that this is the case, and that I can’t just throw the idea out to everyone, have people flip out and then get it built in a wave of joyous togetherness — I am. I’ve fought for ways Expedia can be more innovative for a long time, and I think I’ll leave it at that.

For now, I’m going to keep recruiting, and try and find some more sympathetic ears in the company to talk strategy with. Hopefully I’ll track down at least one big fish in the next couple of days. If not, I’ll have a larger ground operation working.

So I’ve been boderline obsessed with global warming most of my life, which is part of why I have this nuclear anti-social streak. This article was pretty chilling, particularly in illustrating “if we managed to cap emissions at today’s levels, or even 1990 levels, that’s still not enough”.

Anyway, this ties into the Great Idea thread, which I’ll update tonight.

I went into Gregg’s Bellevue Cycle a while back to pick up a jersey I wanted (side rant: jerseys in the US don’t fit tall, skinny guys) and while I was waiting around, I drooled over the display of Seven bikes. I’ve seen them on the road, and they’re beautiful bikes, but up close I almost started to drool. The workmanship is amazing. They seem to hum to themselves on their stands.

Now here’s the thing:
– You can buy a decent bike for a couple hundred dollars
– You can buy a nice bike for under a thousand dollars or maybe a little more

After that, value takes a walk. I used my modest book advance to buy a bike (yes, I know) from a crazy shop in Florida. It looks a lot like this picture from their site. This is me being really cheap compromising with my desire to have an amazingly cool bike (and, admittedly, my need to be into obscure stuff no one’s heard of).

Seven’s marketing is a lot like, say, Ferrari’s. If you’re enthralled enough to pick up the brochure, they’re not trying to tell you why the bike’s worth more than a $1500 Trek. You know why you’re there. They know why you’re there. They’re now trying to explain why spending an insane amount of your annual income on their product compared to others is a good choice. They’re not even haggling over whether you should donate that money to charity, or buy a decent used car.

When the guy found my jersey, he apologized for the wait, and I said it was no big deal, I was just drooling over the Sevens. He mentioned that he owned one and then offered to let me take one out. I turned him down, not because I wanted to get back to work, but because I knew, if I took one of them out and it was as good as I felt it would be, I’d start feeling dissatisfied with my current (quite awesome) ride until I inevitably bought one.

That’s marketing: Seven has established, through little more than reputation, knowing its customer, and letting an experienced, jaded eye stare at their bikes at a local shop for a while, that they’re almost certainly the next step up from what I’m riding.

That’s a little frightening.