Pride Might Be Greece's Biggest Export

We're all too aware that Greece is having a bit of a rough go. If you're like me, you don't only empathize with the Greek people, but also feel a bit of helplessness - for what can you do to change the economic situation of an entire country?

Well, my buddy Yorgos didn't want to stand around while his homeland choked for air. He co-founded Up Greek Tourism, an organization of volunteers like himself dedicated to driving Greek tourism in their spare time.

They used Loudsauce - a media crowdfunding platform founded by another buddy of mine, Colin Mutchler, to get the message out.

Together, they've funded a billboard in New York's Times Square. The digital mosaic promoting Greece was designed by Charis Tsevis and has already been successful. According to Yorgos: "Petros Zisimos, a Greek-American travel agent based in Times Square came to meet us to tell us about the effect of our billboard to his business! A young couple planning their honeymoon saw it this morning and were like 'Hey...let's go to Greece!' No package deals, no special prices, just a reminder of our beautiful country!"

I'm so proud of Yorgos (and Colin for providing the technology) that I felt compelled to share this with my network. The story underscored for me the characteristic I most associate with the Greek people: their unfaltering pride in their beautiful country.

If you're in the process of planning a holiday this year, might I suggest you consider Greece? I am.

Some more articles about the billboard campaign and resources:

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120323005073/en.

http://www.upgreektourism.gr/category/in-the-news/

http://www.upgreektourism.gr/creativefiles.

GuyQuotes>Cowboys

"The things that get you fired for when you're young are the same things you win lifetime achievement awards for when you're older."

- Francis Ford Coppola

See You in September - Dal Video

This little video won't make any sense to anyone that didn't go to university in Halifax, Nova Scotia but my friends from Dal will smile. Nice to see my alma mater has not changed one bit since I graduated a decade ago.

Some quick pics from Samir's and Julie's wedding

A beautiful and totally unorthodox ceremony in an old fermenting cellar in Toronto's Distillery District. A mini-INSEAD reunion since both bride and groom are alums from different years. A great DJ and waaaay too many shots of whiskey.

Saranac 2011

Had our annual boys' fishing trip to the Adirondacks this weekend. We managed to avoid the predicted thunderstorms and have a very pleasant and characteristically relaxing weekend at our favorite campsite.

The Paleo Proof

A seven-week experiment proved to me that a "Paleo" or "Slow Carb" diet works. My bloodwork revealed a considerable improvement across several important biomarkers. Here is the story...

It couldn't have been a very fun March for anyone who shared a meal with me. My colleagues grumbled about the complexity of my lunch orders, my dining companions fretted over restaurant choices. My girlfriend had to hear me explain and extoll my diet so often that I had to find new words to describe it because she would get so triggered at the word "paleo".

But for all the complications, I think it was worth it. I saw a very noticeable improvement in a short period of time, enough to convince me that this way of eating actually does work.


What I Did

My diet was essentially the "Slow Carb" diet as described by Tim Ferriss on his blog and in The Four Hour Body which to me is a modified version of Robb Wolf's Paleo Solution Diet. The "paleo" diet, was introduced to me by good friends across the river in Brooklyn, and popularized in New York by John Durant and Melissa McEwen in this NY Times article. The idea is that our bodies have not evolved as fast as our food has and frankly cannot tolerate a lot of the food common in today's Western diet: way too many grains, bad fats, and so on. The hormonal response and digestive-irritation of these foods leads to obesity and a plethora of inflammation and autoimmune-related diseases from diabetes to cardiovascular diseases to IBS to hormone-dependent cancers. Too much to get into here, but worth reading the book for the real scoop. Instead, Wolf (and his mentor Professor Loren Cordain) focuses on the pre-agriculture diet of our paleolithic, hunter gatherer ancestors: lean meats, fish, healthy oils with the right Omega 3:6 profile, fruits and vegetables and avoid grains and bad fats like the plague.

After reading the Four Hour Body, I realized I could improve up on this slightly via the Slow Carb diet by removing starchy vegetables like potatoes, adding cooked beans and lentils (which do not seem to irritate my digestive tract), and having an entire cheat day (instead of just one cheat meal per week). The legumes help me feel fuller longer and the cheat day has enormous psychological benefits for me.

So essentially here is what I was doing for six weeks:

Diet (except for my one cheat day):
- No grains of any kind
- No dairy
- Wherever possible: organic/kosher/grass-fed meats and healthy oils (e.g., macadamia nut)
- No more than two glasses of wine a day
- No potatoes or starchy tubers

Supplements:
I also included a fish oil supplement (1 tsp of Ascenta Health's NutraSea HP twice daily) and as my initial bloodwork had indicated a Vitamin D deficiency, 1000mg of Vitamin D twice daily.

Exercise:
My workouts were consistent with my pre-experiment period, and consisted of three workouts per week: one P90X strength workout, 1 HIIT cardio workout (typically 20 - 40 minutes of tabatas intervals on a treadmill) and one other random workout class at my gym (sometimes just yoga).


The Results

In the spirit of quantified self, I tracked my bloodwork carefully and the results really speak for themselves, as there was a moderate to strong improvement across every health marker I tracked. For each metric, I've shown the my result on Feb 22 and my results roughly seven weeks later on April 11 as well as the % improvement.

Total Cholesterol
Per Robb Wolf: "A measure of several blood lipid fractions that are in part proteins used to shuttle fats and cholesterol around the body."



HDL Cholesterol
The form of lipoprotein that considered the "good cholesterol" as they help "scrub" cholesterol from our arteries and veins and transport it back to the liver for processing. Typically lower HDL levels have been linked to CVD.





LDL Cholesterol
This is the "bad" cholesterol. It's hard to get into a real discussion here without looking also at the particle size, which is beyond the scope of this post. We'll park that topic for another day.




Triglycerides
This is a measurement of circulating blood fats.




Glycated Hemoglobin (Hb1Ac or "A1c")
Per Robb Wolf: "Ths is a measure of how much sugar is sticking to your red blood cells...If your A1c level is above 5, you have big problems brewing. Your likelihood of CVD, cancer, and all the problems associated with elevated insulin levels [like diabetes] is greatly elevated."






C-Reactive Protein
This is a measure of systemic inflammation.








My Next Steps
Despite these positive results, there were two disappointments:

Body Fat
The first was that I only lost 1.2% body fat during this period - much less than I expected from this diet. I attribute my poor results due to weaker compliance which I estimate at about 80%. I travel a fair bit and had a few slip-ups due to lack of airport food options and one particularly indulgent weekend back in Montreal. For the next six weeks I'm going to try to plan better around these obstacles, and aim for 90%+ compliance to see how that affects things. I'm also introducing a PAGG supplement stack.

Vitamin D
My Vitamin D levels are still below general medical guidelines, due in no small part to the fact that I'm a Canadian software exec living in New York City - and it is (still) winter. To address this I'm going to triple my Vitamin D dosage and switch from pills to liquid D3 as Tim suggests.


But overall I am very pleased with the results. Robb Wolf's book convinced me of the science behind this way of eating, and the Four Hour Body helped me tweak it a bit. I will continue to eat this way along with the modifications above and track all of these biomarkers and my bodyfat closely. I will share results and findings as I go along.

4HHH

Loving that Timmy Ferriss is finally copying my 'do. I really hope his next book is the Four Hour Head of Hair. (P.S. Props to Chino Loco for snapping this pic at sxsw)

Two Words: Cheat Day

Cannot wait for my next one:

The Power of Discipline

One thing I always admired about people in my parents generation was the discipline that they demonstrated - especially the many of them that attended a Catholic school at some point in their lives (which seemed to be many of them). While certainly not without problems, the Jesuits seemed to do a fantastic job of teaching its pupils the rewards of discipline. (I often wondered if Stanford does the same thing, since I know a lot of alumni whose disciplined approach to life I admire, but I realized I probably have the causality wrong and that the discipline was needed just to get into Stanford).

At any rate, I've had a chance to reflect lately on how disciplined I am in my own life. At work and home, I've took a cold, hard look at how little discipline I've applied lately. It an attempt to be agile and accommodating, I've chosen spontaneity and flexibility over a more structured and disciplined approach. At least in the last little while.

And in the short-term, I think it worked. I think I managed to get my stock price up. But what does this mean for the long term viability of PGuy Inc.? I've been wrestling with this lately and realized that a measure of discipline is needed across all elements of my life so that I can ensure progress in all of them. Living life reactively doesn't work for me. Not that I'm going completely to the other side, because that is definitely not my style either. But a balance is needed. And that balance is what I'm trying to figure out.

One small step I made is with respect to chow. And it has been remarkably successful. I have been getting increasingly disciplined about what I allow myself to eat. In order to deal with the frequent cravings I have for foods that are on that list, I mentally bookmark them. Once a week (usually Saturday) I permit myself a cheat day. I can eat whatever I want...all day long. Every truffle fry, slice of pizza or peanut butter cup that might have tormented me during the week, can now get annihilated.

And it works. It works because my brain loves the idea of bookmarking it. It loves the idea of waiting a few days to indulge. It feels good because it's making a small investment, while still ultimately getting the pleasure. So I really don't mind ignoring the temptation in the moment and replacing it with something healthy. And here is the brilliant part: when cheat day comes around (today is Saturday, by the way), I don't even feel like cheating. Ultimately, I will, because it's too easy not to. But the interesting thing is I rarely tackle the bookmarks. Instead, they get tossed out and I go for whatever tempts me in the moment. For whatever reason, this has worked well for me. It's a small bit of discipline that goes a long way towards one of my bigger objectives of total health. This short-term delayed gratification is a powerful discipline tool for me.

I am in the process of building or overhauling systems for all the other areas of my life. The 5-year strategic plan has been written. Now I'm in regular meetings with accounting to get the right systems and controls in place. Stay tuned.

Pics from SF (January 2011)

Best of SF

Talking Torch

I have had my BlackBerry Torch for six months, and frankly failed huge on my promise to blog a review of it. Partly due to work distractions and partly due to lack of inspiration. Let me explain:

The BlackBerry Torch came out six months ago but is about 2 years old. Or at least that's how it feels relative to the market. Now for a BlackBerry, it was a MAJOR improvement. If you focus your comparison on the Torch relative to its predecessors you can't help be feel excited.

But relative to the iPhone and Android options, it feels me three.

The good news is this, The device is solid. It feels good, and has the reliability of a standard enterprise device. There's none of iPhone's ubiquitous screen cracks and dropped calls. I'd compare it to an Android, but I can't, because I've admittedly limited hand time with any. But everything works as it should. Nothing holds me back. I can pound out emails in record time. I can navigate quickly thanks to the touch screen. I know my calendar is accurate and accessible.

What is misses is the wow. Or the pow. There was nothing on the Torch that I wanted to show off. Nothing new to make the device sticky. Nothing particularly sexy or fun - for me anyway.

But, it puts RIM back in the game, which is perhaps most important. RIM now has a platform they can iterate on. I still believe that these guys can do amazing things. They have relationships with carriers and CIO's that Android and iPhone don't have and that's a competitive advantage. The question is can they innovate on this platform at record pace while they're (rightly) racing to enter the ring of the other battle they're a contender for: tablets? Are they hungry enough to double down on both to stop their hemorrhaging smartphone market share? And can they get the marketing right?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I know the my Torch works and is reliable. Despite the digs from Google/Apple fanboys, I don't feel like a dinosaur, since BB does everything they do and everything I need. I'm not a seventeen year old girl so I'll skip the iPhone. And I'm not taking a chance with a new interface until there's a clear leader in the Android space.

I am excited to see what the Playbook does. This is a place where RIM's core competencies can shine. I love the name and I love the hardware. Let's see if it complements my Torch in the way I think it will. It is possible that RIM will optimize the notebook-handheld-tablet triad for me giving me the right experience on each, with enterprise-grade reliability, and abstract out all the management and sharing. That could lead to a big productivity boost.

Let's see what happens...

Spring Cleaning

I'm pleased to say that the springlike weather in New York yesterday inspired me to do some major spring cleaning. Coupled with a surge in energy and passion for all aspects of my life, I actually stayed in last night and tore my to do list a new a-hole.

This blog is undergoing some changes. It's a work in progress, but I'd say we're one or two iterations from it's new form.

Now to just carve out some time for new content...

My postlady's been busy...

The day I left

The day I got back

IBM Predicts that Our Cellphone Will be Our New BFF

I agree with the following. In fact, my BlackBerry does everything listed below. Tracking my preferences, suggesting places to go, monitoring my progress (gym visits, expenses, account balances, frequent flier miles, etc.) Currently most of it happens via disparate apps or different databases in the cloud. For me, the next real gain is convergence: standardization and integration across these individual apps that will show me a dashboard of my life instead of requiring me to remember to check each one. One-stop-shops are key.

Excerpted from Parag and Ayesha Khanna* on The Big Think:

Did you ever wonder why so many celebrities end up having affairs with their personal trainers? In some ways, it’s not a surprise. When you’re very busy, you spend regular time with very few people, and they become your trusted friend. Or as good friends are now called: BFF – best friend forever. A BFF is someone who knows everything about you (your tastes, your history, your desires), who forgives all your mistakes and pushes you to achieve all your goals, who helps you plan vacations and parties, and is always there when you need her.

IBM predicts that your new BFF will be your cell phone. Mobiles will become so smart that they will become your personal assistants – storing all your preferences, reminding you to go to the gym, finding you great restaurants, keeping track of your doctor’s appointments, warning you if you are near your credit card limit – the list goes on. For example, “When you turn on your phone in a city you are visiting, it automatically provides you with local entertainment options, activities, and dining options that match your preferences, and then make reservations and purchases tickets for you – like a personal concierge.”

* Parag Khanna is one of my favorite authors. He wrote "The Second World: How Global Powers are Redefining Competition in the Twenty-First Century" which is a contender for the best book I've ever read.

Things I Learned in My Thirty-Fifth Year

1. That I have to interact differently with different people. I think at some point in my teens I developed enough empathy/emotional intelligence to tailor the tone and body language of conversations. But I'm realizing this year that in social situations, I actually have to also tailor the message, much like I would in business settings. People are so different, and no amount of rapport or connection can pave the way for every message. I'm happy to have discovered this and think it is a beautiful thing. I love how everybody is different, and I love how life does not stop handing me these challenges and opportunities to learn, grow, develop, screw up, and start over.

2. What OPP means. (To avoid confusion, I am talking about Naughty by Nature here peeps, not the Ontario fuzz.) Now obviously I decoded the acronym when the track first dropped for me in gymnasium of Bicentennial Junior High School in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. But I never actually realized what that expression was referring to. Like the cheat-on aspect. I made the connection literally a few months ago, driving from Austin Bergstrom Airport to the Westin @ The Domain when the track came on Sirius Nineties on Nine. It was like I just solved the Da Vinci code. Cannot believe what a wee-todd I was for the last couple decades. Now that the song makes sense, it's even better. Like Rumpshaker.

My Birthday Gift

OK, back to buying Akon's wardrobe from this video, starting with the violet-lined leather jacket.

Birthday Bumping

When choosing my birsday gift, remember two things... I like my beats fast and...



My bromance with Akon continues...



My long lost baby sister...

My Life in Predictive Analytics

The real reason this blog has suffered over the last couple years is my day job. The explanation is two fold:

1. We've been growing exceptionally fast and my role has kept me working long hours and traveling to the tune of almost 200K miles a year - domestic. Servicing our amazing customers has cut hard into my leisure time as nearly everyone in my life from Kara to my mom will attest.

2. What we're doing is largely unbloggable. Most of my work with customers is obviously confidential.

However, we have recently overhauled our website www.lattice-engines.com and it includes a blog that does offer some of the more newsworthy tidbits from our space.

We improve B2B sales and marketing, and provide software solutions such as our flagship sales intelligence product - salesPRISM. We also have a B2B Marketing product called playMAKER that helps marketers drive more effective campaigns.

The growth hasn't stopped, and we're busier than ever, but I thought I'd take this opportunity to direct people to our site and blog until I find a few spare cycles to invest in overhauling this blog.

For folks that are looking for information on INSEAD, this should give them an idea as to what sort of post-MBA opportunities there are, since this was my third gig out of b-school, after a short VC stint and a year trying to capitalize data center player Bastionhost.

Anyway, look for a fresh coat of paint here soon, but in the meantime, please pop by Lattice Engines to see what we're up to.

While we're on awesome youtube shiznit

ALSO props to DSchein

This makes me really smile

Nice one DSchein + London, ON.