Happy (blog) birthday!
a year on Substack; plus, Japan-US Innovation Awards July 20
Friends - happy Fourth of July weekend. My son and I returned from our own Midbest (hat-tip Will McKelvey) trip Friday night to a very full SFO. Yes, flights may be more expensive, but clearly people are determined to travel this summer (Economist gift link).
The topic of competition and pricing power is on my mind - I’m in the midst of reading Thomas Philippon’s The Great Reversal (hat-tip to Greg La Blanc and to Nath Srivastava for the recommendation), on how oligopoly is squeezing US consumers. Philippon gives broader context to what I experience as a consumer and what I derive from, say, reading Verizon or AT&T’s earnings, as juxtaposed with, say, Rakuten’s or KDDI’s or BT’s. As mentioned in a previous post, Rakuten is providing MNO service at MVNO prices. More to come on this topic, as I move forward with research on Open RAN.
Reading Philippon, I am more understanding of what the FTC is trying to achieve in stretching admittedly dormant muscles.
The Midwest was fantastic - in four nights we covered sights ranging from the Guardian Building in Detroit to the site of the new Intel fab in New Albany, Ohio. (Part of the trip was wreathed in wildfire smoke but I just donned a mask like it was 2020. Keep calm and carry on.)
Goodale Park, Columbus Short North District.
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On to our birthday celebration. In June 2022, I started this Substack.
The choice of Substack as a platform was easy. I had used the combination of Wordpress + Mailchimp for my old Signal newsletter.
, , , and were already on Substack, along with and . So the platform choice was straightforward.The community has been the best part. Back in the mid-2000s, I had a group blog on TypePad, with
among other collaborators. Back then, we had a blogroll with which we proudly displayed our affinities and affiliations. Substack has been evocative of that, but much, much better. (It probably helps that Twitter has spent the past year-plus lighting itself on fire.) Substack Notes still feels like a work-in-progress, but it has provided a less snarky forum for jots and chats.With that, a very subjective year in review:
Total posts: 30 including this one, not including a “coming soon” placeholder
Reads I really look forward to: Urban Technology at University of Michigan,
. (Hoping newsletter will put more of its content on Substack.)
Pleasant Substack community surprises:
(yes, Ethan Iverson, formerly with The Bad Plus, has a Substack)
The Internet should be fun and random. On that aspect, Substack has delivered.
Most impactful post: this post on giving a talk on regional clusters while visiting Tokyo, the mega-city.
Clusters: locations, ecosystems, and opportunity
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Last newsletter I shared my wonder in Tokyo’s ongoing evolution. The pandemic clearly has not stopped the city’s development. While in Tokyo I was delighted to give an in-person talk on industry clusters, co-organized by the Japan Society of Northern California (
This led to connecting with MIT AgeLab and subsequently other people active in aging and longevity, such as
.Most viewed post: this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, as I’ve been adding subscribers slowly during a year-long soft launch. (Meaning, as I add people, views *should* go up.) But, my top two by page views are:
Morro Bay, Part 1: in which I introduce three locations in California that embody our energy transition: Moss Landing, Morro Bay, and Diablo Canyon
Reading and Rehab - written in the wake of rotator cuff surgery in December
My personal favorites:
They say it’s spring, part 1: parachuting into Hollywood to see Kakul receive her award at the Billboard Top 100 Women in Music awards
Detroit, Part 1: on visiting an energetic Detroit city center in summer 2022
PODS, moving trucks, USPS updates and more: measures my fall 2022 Clusters students used in measuring people flows in the wake of the pandemic
What’s next: 30 posts is more than I ever did in a year while on Wordpress+Mailchimp. But, I would like to get that to 50+, and ultimately to 100, or about 2 per week.
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As a member of the event steering committee, I’m delighted to share that the 13th annual Japan-US Innovation Awards will be held Thursday July 20th at Stanford University. The event is an annual collaboration between the Japan Society of Northern California, where I’m on the board, and the US-Asia Technology Management Center at Stanford. Each year we highlight two emerging leaders, one from Japan, and one from the US, and five up-and-coming startups from Japan as part of our Innovation Showcase (link to agenda).
This year’s Emerging Leaders, presented by program supporter SunBridge, are Figma from the US, and Treasure Data from Japan.
Our five showcase startups are: Elephantech, Final Aim, LegalOn Technologies, Recotech, and SkyDrive.
Hope to see you there! Here’s the link to register. (Have questions? Shoot me a note.)
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Have a wonderful Fourth of July!
Onward and upward,
Jon
Blog roll!