Michael Chevy CastranovaMichael Chevy Castranova is business editor at The Gazette. He's been instrumental in a number of start-ups of business newspapers and magazines, and is the author of the 2002 book, "A Perfectly Logical Explanation." |
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On Topic: A possible truth about consequences and wellness programs
I’d never heard of parallel computing before, either. But as I understand concept, it has to do with trying to figure a bunch of calculations all at the same time. Using computers, one assumes. The general idea behind something called Amdahl’s argument, though, sounds more familiar. Named for computer architect Gene Amdahl, this “law” refers [...]
On Topic: J.C. Penney made some wrong turns
Early on in Orson Welles’s mostly magnificent 1942 movie, “The Magnificent Ambersons,” Joseph Cotten shoehorns himself into a contraption no larger than a Big Wheel, but with far more levers and handles — a prototype of what will become the automobile — and sputters off along the turn-of-the-last-century town’s main street. The camera cuts to [...]
On Topic: Should we take a breath or forge ahead?
Venture capitalist Anthony K. Tjan suggested on the Harvard Business Review’s website earlier this year that we all should just take a moment. Perhaps channeling an “Ally McBeal” character, Tjan advocated what he deemed a “slow conversation movement” — an effort to get back “to real, authentic and live conversations.” Fewer screens, more face time. [...]
On Topic: Book suggests we could use a few more geniuses
An artist friend of mine, occasionally dubbed a genius for his large, ahead-of-his-time performance pieces, once landed a contract to design a fountain for a new hospital lobby. Knowing plumbing was not his area of expertise, he partnered with a guy he’d met who claimed to be handy with a wrench. They set to work, [...]
My Biz: Shores Event Center idea grew from love of historic buildings
Tim Sieck and Mindy Seiffert have a shared passion for historic buildings. They created historicbuildingarchives.com, a website dedicated to storing information about historic properties around the country. But when the business partners came across the space in the basement of the restored Shores Central Park building on Cedar Rapids’s northeast side in spring 2011, they [...]
On Topic: Yes and no on a Linn County casino
My parents used to engage in this whimsy, before gasoline prices started their climb to the moon earlier this century, of slipping into their car on an unpremeditated sunny afternoon to “go for a drive,” as they would call it. And before they’d decide to turn around to head home, they’d often find themselves several [...]
On Topic: Our best guesstimates as told by forecaster Nate Silver
One of the ways you can tell something is a great idea is when, in hindsight, we smack our foreheads and declare, gosh, why didn’t someone else see that coming? Nate Silver says lots of forehead-smack-worthy things in “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t.” His book offers [...]
On Topic: Eyes in the backs of their heads
She has skyward of 1,000 “friends” on Facebook. Which means when the Cedar Rapids-based marketing agency chief commented on the social media site earlier this year about witnessing what appeared to be a “very drunk” restaurant operator — she wasn’t certain if he was the owner or manager — accosting the band, lots of folk [...]
My Biz: Cedar Rapids custom jewelers keep the brand their own
Sandy Freese recalled that she and her husband, Rick, had been shopping for a memorable piece of jewelry for their 20th wedding anniversary. They weren’t having much luck. So they decided to start their own jewelry store. “I was working as an insurance clerk for a family practice at the time,” Sandy Freese said. “Opening [...]
On Topic: Do we know what Corridor residents think about regional collaboration?
Observant readers will have noted we’ve been writing more about regionalism in Business 380 of late. So we thought it might be a good time to bring back Ms. Trendingdata to learn what residents might think about the matter. We last spoke with the researcher-consultant back in November on the subject of chief customer officers. [...]
