I was pleasantly surprised to discover she also designed the Verdana font which was named after her daughter Ana. I have been teased for liking that font too much and its nice to know its origin story.
I have run a ColdFusion users group in East Lansing for the past twenty five years. I have helped many first time speakers and this is some outstanding advice.
Although I have never done it myself I can also recommend Toastmasters. Seen some speakers soar after attending this group for a year. You wouldn't even think that it was the same person presenting. Having that experience of public speaking can also greatly accelerate your career.
rmason- I love how supportive you are of tech groups in Michigan. I’m trying to organize an Anthropic meetup, and you helped provide some great advice. Your love of tech and community is evident.
The idea that East Lansing, Michigan, can support a regular gathering of ColdFusion users in 2025 is the most astonishing thing I've learned in quite some time. Consider me quite impressed.
I too am avid reader and was visiting five local bookstores on a weekly basis. Several of them had huge areas stocked with tech books. I had tried Amazon maybe six months after it launched and bought there sporadically. But almost any book i sought was available locally and the savings weren't worth the convenience of purchasing locally.
Then in a three month period in late Spring 2000 all the programming books disappeared. Then my choice was between Amazon with quick delivery and the local store with a slower delivery and a higher price. So been buying from Amazon ever since and I can't remember the last time I have visited a bookstore.
Mitch Albom is Detroit's triple talent. Award winning Detroit Free Press sports writer, best selling novelist and the King of Detroit's(maybe America's) Left Wing talk radio. He also runs an orphanage in Haiti.
One of the more interesting things about Detroit after its long decline is the creative things that are not happening anywhere in America. Houses have been razed creating lots of vacant land, thousands of acres. One entrepreneur has planted a tree farm. Lots of traditional farms and greenhouses have sprouted. Now the city is planting a solar farm and the electricity being generated will power all city buildings.
The area they chose to begin was South of the old city airport now known as the Coleman Young Municipal airport. Coleman Young was Detroit's first black mayor. Its in the infamous 48205 zipcode where most the city's crime is concentrated.
I remember getting invited to a meeting in around 2007 at the airport. Detroit had a really smart idea to play on its strengths in manufacturing and go after the then emerging drone market. They leased out hangers at an attractive rate to startup drone companies and drew them from all over the US. There were a dozen companies aimed at a wide range of potential uses.
Unfortunately China wanted the drone market as well and they underpriced the offerings from Detroit. I was inspired by the meeting but extremely nervous that evening driving through the neighborhood known by cops and the criminals at 4820-Die. This has absolutely nothing to do with the downtown area that is safer than most big cities.
Here is a video of the project under construction:
What about Replit? Two guys in a coffee shop in Jordan, you cannot be much further from Silicon Valley. They got turned down four times from YC and decided never to try again. But pg fell in love with the startup and urged him to try again. Then during the interview one of them got into a heated argument with Michael Siebel and thought for sure he had failed.
Yet he got in without a wealthy family and an American Ivy League degree. There are lots of other examples, I can even think of a one in Michigan.
I don't think GenZ and Millennials have the expendable income. Between college debt and a house mortgage the extra money just isn't there, even if they find the Harley's attractive.
They just aren't very good motorcycles. You can get almost any other motorcycle and they will be better to ride, more reliable and probably cost a lot less.
Harley Davidson also didn't modernise its brand. Also a lot of the image of Harley Davidson is attached to the heyday of motorcycle gangs, old movies between the 50s-80s e.g. "Easy Rider", "Electra Glide in Blue" and Music from that era.
Twitter friends with the guy who built this as a side project. He has applied to create a Detroit Anthropic Users Group. Even though I am over an hour away told him I was coming to his first meeting if it happens. Apparently Anthropic is only approving a handful, hope Detroit is one of them.
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