reDesign

Coming back from Berlin yesterday, I decided to take public transit. I took BART from SFO to Embarcadero station, where I had to switch to Muni to get home. The fare was $1.25 (after a paper BART to Muni transfer discount) and I had a $20 bill and a $1 bill. I also had about $40 on my BART ticket, but that doesn’t work on Muni. Here are the parameters:

• There’s a staffed booth, but the staff can’t make change and you can’t just hand them money.
• You can’t buy a pass with a credit card.
• The turnstiles take only coins.
• There’s a change machine that will give you $1 coins for $5 and $10 bills.
• There’s another machine (marked for BART) that will make change for $20 bills and give you $5 bills.
• There’s a BART ticket machine that has an option to get change for $1 bills.

It worked out to be a 4-step process using 4 different machines (not counting the machine that issues the BART to Muni transfers):

1. Put the $20 bill in the BART bill change machine and get 4 $5 bills.
2. Put the $1 bill in the BART ticket machine to get 4 quarters.
3. Walk across the hall and put one of the $5 bills into the Muni change machine to get 5 $1 coins. Whoops, it won’t take it. Turns out it doesn’t take the new $5 bills. Fortunately, I had gotten one of the old ones.
4. Put the $1 coin and a quarter into the turnstile and hand the paper slip to the agent to let me through.

No wonder people hate using public transit.

• Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group – He’s my kind of billionaire: irreverent, playful and working for the public good.
• Steve Case, co-founder of AOL – No one person did more to bring Americans online than Steve. I was using Quantum Link on my Commodore 64 more than 20 years ago. Steve also happens to own much of my favorite island.
• Stephen Colbert, right-wing talk show host – A brilliant satirist who has helped shape politics and used new technologies to engage his audience with stunts like the Green Screen Challenge. His portrait deserved to hang at the National Portrait Gallery.
• Don Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Co. – washingtonpost.com was an early leader in the online news business and remains one of the most innovative. I’m not very optimistic about the future of the industry, but the Post Co. is likely to be one of the survivors.
• Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos - I heard him speak this year at SXSW (mp3 podcast). His passion for delivering excellent customer service is practically unheard of these days. Among other things, Zappos offers employees $2,000 to quit after they’ve been through training. The offer weeds out those who aren’t committed.
• Jason Kilar, CEO of hulu – Jason and his consumer-obsessed team built my favorite product of 2008, beating out the DVR. I just hope that his phenomenal success in giving consumers what they want isn’t a death sentence.
• Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo – It’s great to see an Indian woman at the helm of a major American company and the puveyor of my drug of choice. She’s doing a lot better than the other Indian CEO who’s been in the news lately.
• Larry Page, co-founder of Google – Catch up with a high school classmate and hear how it all happened. He talked about googol all through high school.
• Gwyneth Paltrow, actress - I’ve been a big fan since Shakespeare in Love. I had the chance to talk to her on a plane once and she was so friendly and sweet.
• Mary-Louise Parker, actress – I love Weeds.
• Robert Reich, economist and Clinton labor secretary - His perspectives are always interesting. I’m also curious to hear how he dealt with the challenges of being short.
• Jon Stewart, comedian and satirist – There’s a reason more people are getting their news from The Daily Show: he doesn’t believe in the fake balance that results in distortion.
• Biz Stone and Ev Williams, co-founders of Twitter - Hear the story of how something that shouldn’t work became so big and share some of my ideas for making money off Twitter.
• Glen Tilton, CEO of United Airlines – To tell him how much his short-sighted bean counters are costing him in long term business, especially when he has rivals like Virgin America on some of his key routes. If only Hsieh and Tilton had dinner together, maybe flying United wouldn’t be such a miserable experience. Either that or the universe would implode.

This year I realized how little Stuff matters. For more than four months, almost everything I owned was in a warehouse somewhere. Even when I got it into my place, I spent a good chunk of the year on the road – many miles away from my Stuff.

While unpacking I found many generations of electronics Stuff: more than a half dozen cell phones, three or four generations of MP3 players, two GPS units and miscellaneous gadgets and adapters of all kinds. Some of it is still in its original, unopened blister pack.

Then there’s the clothing Stuff: shoes I thought would look good but have never worn, souvenir T-shirts and clothes I might be able to fit into again if I went back to my high school weight.

And the kitchen Stuff: a breadmaker that hasn’t been used in three moves, an abundance of pots, shot glasses from around the world, promotional mugs, water bottles, etc.

Way more Stuff than you can stuff into a San Francisco apartment.

Stuff is bad. It costs money to buy, transport, store and dispose of. You worry about it getting lost, stolen or damaged. And there’s the environmental impact of Stuff.

I’ve been relatively good this year about acquiring new Stuff:
•    My electronics purchases have been limited to a digital camera and an iPhone.
•    I didn’t buy any souvenirs for myself, despite having traveled more than I have in any other year. (Not counting a couple of Aloha shirts I picked up in Hawaii.)
•    I didn’t buy any physical media such as CDs or DVDs.

I feel like a bad American for speaking out against buying Stuff, especially given the state of the economy. But I’ve been spending money on experiences, which in the end may be better for the economy. Eating at locally owned restaurants and staying in hotels generates more dollars than buying crap made in China.

And there’s the bonus that I get to see my friends.

It seems that every time I walk through an airport, I walk by a plane with a destination more interesting than mine. This is what I saw when I landed in Seattle yesterday. The 757 that brought me there was bound for Kona.

I’m always tempted to walk up to the more interesting gate and hop on. One of these days it’ll happen.