I grew up in a home pretty devoid of music.  The first time I started to really listen to music was when I  about eight years old and would go to the coffee shop/soda fountain down the street to get a cherry coke or eat a hot fudge Sunday (how I miss those). They had a juke box which played 45 RPM records  This was a few years before Elvis came on the scene and popular music changed forever.  Good thing for me because I got to listen to the “standard sung by people like Nate King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.  I still like to listen to this music and better yet play these songs on the piano.  Later, when I was eleven years old or so, I started going to parties where I could dance with girls.   I was mostly interested in the slow numbers for obvious reasons.  My favorite was “Put Your Head on my Shoulder” song by Paul Anka.

In 1960 I was fifteen years old, and ended up taking a class in Chorus at Lincoln High School.  I was doing very poorly at school and was in danger of being put back a semester for the second time.  My high school counselor suggested Chorus because no one really flunked that class even if you could not carry a tune.  It was a decision that made a major impact on my life.  By the way, I never did graduate from Lincoln.  Luckily my mom sent me Drew High school, private school in San Francisco where I tested out and got degree in about six months.

I became friends with another student taking the class, named Rich Falvey (we are still friends now after 52 years).  Rich and I had many similar interests such as history, philosophy, poetry and science. We were pretty nerdy guys.  Rich really wanted to become a composer.  He played piano, listen to classical music and composed music.  Rich is still writing music but has never made a living from music.  He introduced me to classical music and provided me with a very extensive knowledge of the history of western music which serves me to this day.

I asked Rich to tell me how music works. It was the scientist in me that was asking for an explanation of music theory.   I learned about  the structure of musical pieces and how they evolved.  I learned about modes,  scales and rhythms. I had already learned to read music in my chorus class. In particular, I studied from a very advanced book by the composer Paul Hindemith.

Then one day, I wrote my first piece of music.  It was pretty good for a first piece  and somehow it allowed me to get a small scholarship to take classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  Playing piano was very useful to a composer so I started taking piano lessons as well. I had to get a part time job at a Jewelry Shop to pay for a piano and my lessons.  Everyone told me that at fifteen, it was too late for me to become a pianist.  That was probably true with respect to playing classical piano but it turns out starting late has not been much of a limitation to my ability to play jazz.  I am pretty sure the greatest limitation was not listening to more music as a child. I still have to work on ear training.

I continued to study classical music theory, composition and arranging.  I took up a few other instrument so I would get a feeling for what it was like to make music with them.  I loved the trumpet and the clarinet in particular. Later I would try to play the guitar but I never could get into it.

In my 18th year, I discovered Jazz.   I listened to John Coltrane play “My Favorite Things”, and my life was changed forever.  I started listen to Jazz. When I gave up being a Merchant Seaman later in that year, I started taking jazz piano lessons.  I worked up an arrangement of My Funny Valentine, a piece I still love to play. Unfortunately,  I did not have the drive to practice  more than an hour or two a day.

Around that time I fell deeply in love with a sixteen year old  girl who had the most amazing soprano voice.  I would accompany her on the piano but she was so much better then I was and went on to sing professionally.  I wrote an arrangement of the Bachianas Brasileiras by Villa Lobos for her.  I think it was guitar, cello and sax.

There was a pretty good Jazz scene in San Francisco in the early 60s mostly located in North Beach. Some of the greatest jazz musicians would perform at the  a Jazz Workshop on Broadway.  I was under age but snuck in to see a number of performer.  The Fillmore District still had a few jazz clubs left over from its its heyday in the 50s.

Some of my friends were aspiring jazz musicians.  We went to “after hour clubs” where musicians would go after their gigs would finish.  Alcohol would be served in bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. The clubs were typically in the basement of Victorian houses in the Fillmore District. The would be dark with a few tables and a make shift stage. Many of the musicians and audience were on hard drugs and were shooting up in the bathroom.  I never took anything more than Pot, Speed and LSD and even that was pretty  rare.  I use to joke that my friends wanted to get stoned and then practice while  I wanted to practices and then get stoned.  It was pretty clear to me that the music life was not a healthy life style.  And I was really not that good as a musician and but I still dreamed of writing music.

The San Francisco music scene was really taking off.  There was so much musical energy. The folk movement was still going strong  thanks to the impact of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.  The Jefferson Airplane had their debut in 1965 in San Francisco.  I knew Paul Kantner at the time and hung out at Airplane home on Page Street. Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company showed up in 1966. I was lucky enough to be around them when they rehearsed. Janis was an amazing singer.  She could bring tears to my eyes.  There was music everywhere.  Group like the Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the  Fish would be protesting the Vietnam War.  Much of this leading to the Summer of Love.

But I did not really like Rock music.  By 1966, I was focused on my work at the Langley Porter Insitute working with  Joe Kamiya where I developed the equipment to do the first brain wave bio feedback experiments. I was now a scientist.  Music took a back burner in my life.

I did have a fantasy that I could program a computer to improvise jazz  while monitoring the physiological  changes in peoples as they listened  to the music.  The program would use that information to effect the music it was creating but the technology at the time was not adequate   Even though I was working very hard,  I still had a piano and continued to play the piano but no longer wrote music.  Things continued this way for the next twenty five years.

Then in the early 90s, I began to write music again.  By that time there were computer programs to help write and arrange music.  The leading company was OpCode.  I met Chris Halaby the CEO around this time and ended up as a member of that company’s board.  That is when I learned about midi which is a computer protocol for music.  I started writing music again but now could use my computer to record, edit and print my music.After a while, I realized it took much more time than I could devote.  It was not something I could just jump into for 30 minutes a day.  So I stopped once again but made a promise that once I was able to devote the time, I would start to compose again.  That time came about ten years ago when I cut way back on my professional life. I used this time to improve my piano playing and now study with an very capable teacher. But I did not start to compose again.

Now as I approach  this quarter of my life (my wife won’t let me say “the last quarter of my life”), I feel the urgency to both have the experience of writing music and the need to leave something behind that others including my grandchildren might enjoy someday.  I have much better tools than I could have ever imagine.  I am using Logic Pro to edit my music.

I have posted a piece I have been working on.  It is called LA Morning.  It is not complete by a long shot.  I need to add several sections to it and then I will orchestrate it.  I am hoping by going public with this work in progress, I will be encouraged to finish it. I am the piano player by the way.  I hope you enjoy it.  You can hear it here.

Music Theory
Paul Hindemith
John Coltrane

Bachianas Brasileiras

OpCode

San Francisco Jazz History

I am hoping that the next wave will involve senior citizens becoming billionaires by inventing things or at least one certain senior.

I thought I was done writing about Steve Jobs when I wrote this post but then I read Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky (editor at large at Fortune Magazine).  I finally understand why Apple was able to achieve so much.  We all know of Jobs the visionary, Jobs the communicator and Jobs the bully.  But frankly, I never thought of Jobs the manager. I learned much more about Apple and maybe even Jobs from this book than the Walter Isaacson’s bio.  I am not going to review Inside Apple  other than to say, I think it was done very well and it is worthing reading not only to understand Apple’s past, present and future but also as a business management book.

Now I am left with a puzzle.  How did Jobs learn to manage in such an effective way (even if it was not in a nice way)? How would  his approach translate to other businesses and organizations?  I am also struck the similarity  between Digital Equipment Corp and Apple.  I vaguely remember that someone left Digital Equipment to run HR at Apple but I am not sure that is correct.  It seems that Jobs took emulated some of the things Ken Olsen did (for instance the off site meeting of 100 key people which was not based on reporting structure but on who Ken wanted) and he rejected some of the things that really damaged Digital like the product lines having a P&L.

These are my views on a very complex situation.
Iran is trying to provoke Israel into attacking it. The result would be a massive change of sentiment particularly in Europe and America. Israel would find herself even more Isolated.  Iran would then be able to play the victim. The ruling Iranian government bodies would get more support from their populace. Few Iranians would be injured or killed since Israel’s target would be the reactor facilities which are not located near population centers. The Iranians would have an excuse for delaying making a bomb, and a better reason to have one. But while Iran is playing this game, they are paying a high price because of crippling sanctions.
Israel wants to convince the USA that it is willing to attack Iran and wants to get concessions from the Obama government. Some of these involve actions that the USA would take against Iran in different situations.  Some involve things that will never be made public. Israel is in a good position to get these concessions because Obama does not want Israel to attack Iran before the election.  Such an attack would have a very negative effect on oil prices which could tank the US economy and could cost him the election. Furthermore, Obama would be in a very difficult position responding to the Israeli action.

If Obama wins the election, he will probably honor whatever commitments he made to Israel.  If he loses to a Republican, that person will probably honor the commitments and maybe even give a bit more. But things could get out of hand.  There are militant elements in Iran and Israel that actually want to have this war.  There are also such elements in the United States Congress.

I also believe that Israel has infiltrated the Iranian government and military computers.  It would not be surprising to me, that if  Iran launched missiles at Israel they might “accidentally” blow up Iranian cities.  The Iranians probably suspect that this might be the case.

Now, I need to get back to writing my novel.

I understand that some people believe in God or some other spiritual  force.  My relationship with God would be best described as “its complicated”.  There is a lot we do not understand about the Universe and our own existence, such as “How did the Universe get created?”, “Why is the Universe so finally tuned that life can exists?”, “How did life begin?”, “Why are we conscious and what does it meant to be conscious?” , “What is time and does it really exist?” Trying to answer such questions takes scientists to some strange places like String Theory (multiple-dimensions) and the Multiverse (infinite numbers of Universes which means that we exist an infinite number of times).  We still do not know how life was established and are not even sure what consciousness means.  If science has a religion, it is belief that someday we will be able to answer all these questions.  I personally am not sure.  We will have to survive long enough to answer these questions and even then we may not be capable of understanding the answers.

I have spent my life studying physics.  When I was a child of seven, I started listening to science programs on the radio.  There was one show that dealt with physics.  Einstein was my hero. I had trouble tying my shoe laces and my mother told me that Einstein could not do that either so began my life long identification  with him.  My other hero was Superman.  I thought that someday I would be able to jump into a phone booth and emerge as a superhero myself.  I had very acute childhood asthma and spent most of my 7th year in a convalescent home in Palo Alto, CA (now the location of the Ronald McDonald Home).  I had a lot of time on my hands to ponder the mysteries of the universe. One things I wondered about was the ratio of positive energy to negative energy.  I only knew of protons, electrons and neutrons then.  I wish I had known about anti-matter and dark energy – it certainly would have keep my mind even busier.

Over the years, I have explored Jewish mystic teachings, the Kabbalah, before Madonna made it fashionable.  I  continue to study physics and have become a student of evolution as well as  exploring my own views about time and space. I think of human beings like the cells in my body – they are alive in their own right but totally dependent on the other cells.  While my cells may not be aware, they are the foundation of my awareness.  What ever I am, I am probably dependent on them for my awareness and existence.  So we humans may be like these cells in making up  something much greater and much more aware, the Universe (or Multiverse).  But just like a single cell in my body has little impact on the body as a whole, we humans individually have little impact on the Universe as a whole.  And just like I have limited ability to effect the behavior of a single specific cell in my body, the Universe might have limited ability to impact us individually.  So I struggle with the concept of Rick Santorum’s God.  He (I am pretty sure that Santorums God is a “he”) seems more like Superman than an all powerful force. So while he can run faster than a speeding bullet, is more powerful than a locomotive, and is  able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, he cannot guarantee the election for Rick.

I am hoping that one of you can help me understand this better.  If God wanted Rick Santorum to be president, then why would God not make him President?  Why does Rick Santorum have to campaign? If God, does not want us to use birth control, why does it exist?  And what is God doing all day and night?  Oh, by the way, how did he get to be God?  Normally, I would not think much about this kind of God but this year, God has joined the campaign.  According to Rich Santorum’s wife Karen, the Campaign is “God’s will.” I would think that if God were on your side, you would not need a PAC and a billionaire  (Foster Freiss), who believes that putting aspirin between he knees of a woman is effective birth control.  But then again, I guess God works in mysterious ways. I just wish he had put some aspirin between the knees of Rich Santorum’s mother.

So I said, ‘are you looking for  me?  I am Avram Miller”.   He said “The Avram Miller”.  I thought that was pretty funny but did not laugh.  It seems that the CEO of Philips had sent a handwritten letter to the Director of the Division telling him to make arrangements for my visit and instructing him to provide me with any information I requested.  The note said that I was the CEO’s personal advisor and would be reporting directly back to him about my views regarding the future of division.

I spent the day meeting with different department heads and their staffs. It was a different time for computers. IBM was still king as were mainframes.  Sperry, Burroughs, Univac were still successful companies. HP and Digital Equipment were just beginning to ascend as mini computers became more popular.  Personal computers as we know them did not exist.   I can’t really remember much about what I learned that day  but I knew that this part of Philips was not going to be successful.  The technology was mediocre and there was  a lack of energy in the place. The best way to describe the Division was to say it was “middle aged”.

The next day, I called the CEO of Philips and said in a nice way “you can’t be serious”.  I told him that I could not see how the Computer  Division could be successful and I recommended that they get out of the business.  He thanked me and told me he had come to that conclusion himself but he wanted an outside opinion and I was really “outside” because not only was I not a Philips employee,  but I was not Dutch either  (even thought I did speak Dutch). The company did not actually close the division but reduced  its  investment significantly over the next several years.

Oh, I forgot to explain how it was that the CEO of one of the world larges companies came to ask a 28 year old former hippie for advice on one of his major businesses.  Readers of this blog will know (but may not remember) that I went to Rotterdam in 1969 to lead the computer activities of a new Medical Institution focused on Cardiovascular Medicine called the Thoraxcenter.  In addition to the government money behind this new facility (which cost 50 million dollars  back in 1969) there were some contributions from Industry. The largest contributor was Philips.  That activity was connected to their research lab (Natlab) under the leadership of  Henrick Casimir, a truly great physicist and a wonderful man.  He was one of the people that was involved in recruiting me to come to Holland to join the Thoraxcenter (I came in 1969 having just turn 24 years old).  One day the top management  of Philips came to visit us.  I remember that the Director of  the Thoraxcenter, Prof. Paul Hugenholtz , and a  few others on his staff including me, went to the small Rotterdam Airport to welcome the CEO, Dr. Casimir and some other Philips notables.  We had a “site visit” where  I gave a presentation about our computer activities.  The next day I got a call from the CEO asking me to do him a favor and visit the Computer Division. I guess I made a good impression.

Meeting the current Queen of the Netherlands.
Around the same time, it was decided  Princess Beatrix would visit the Thoraxcenter along with her husband Claus.  Claus was actually a German.  When they married just twenty years after the war there were a lot of negative feelings about him in Holland.  Later, he actually became very popular.   Anyway, we were to get a royal visit in which we would discuss the work of the Thoraxcenter.  I was to present the computer systems that we had developed.  A protocol  officer of the Court contacted  us to instruct us how to behave during the visit.  One of the things he did was to specify the kind of clothes we were to wear.  I remember that we  had a choice between wearing a gray suit or a blue suit with the appropriate tie.  The only suit I actually owned was purple.  I told the officer that I was trying to decided if I should wear a purple suite  for Royalty or a Orange suit since the royal family was from the House of Orange.   They almost died!  I said,” ok, if I have to wear a blue or gray suit, I am not coming.”  Not sure what happened next  but they must have made an exception since I ended up meeting  Beatrix, now Queen of the Netherlands and  her husband, Claus.  We were at a rather informal (I use that phrase lightly) reception.  In the room, there were only two men that were not wearing blue or gray suits.  Prince Claus was wearing brown and I was in my purple suit.   I liked him and we kind of hit it off.   Sadly, he died in 2002.  Beatrix  seemed nice but I did not really spend much time with her.  By the way, Beatrix’s mother, Queen Juliana signed off on my appointment to the Academic Staff of Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

Just finished reading the Outlaw Blues by Jonathan TapIin. I recently reconnected with Jonathan, an amazing man and the director of the Anneberg Innovation Lab at USC.  We probably had not seen each other for over tweleve years. We found each other on Facebook.  Since I am now living in LA part of the year, I reached out to him and he invited me to meet him at his lab. I also found out that he had written a book called, Outlaw-Blues last year.  The book had a powerful effect on me which I will explain later. It is an experimental e-book that I bought on iTunes and read on my iPad.  Actually, I expected more from the “experimental” part than just short embedded videos even thought they were very effective. Outlaw Blues is the name of a Bob Dylan’s song and also a movie staring Peter Fonda.

This post is not a book review but I will say a few things about the book.  First of all, I strongly recommend it to anyone that is interested in the history of popular music and in particular, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones and/or the history of independent  film makers like  Martin Scorsese  (Taplin produced his first film, Mean Streets).  Or if you are interested in people like Jonathan that have found their own unconventional way  through life and has impacted the development of today’s media industry. The book is a combination Jonathan’s recollections and experience  from the mid 60s to the end of the 90s.  Intersperse are stories of key figures that had profound effects on the evolution of media and culture.

I first meet Jonathan in 1997 or 1998, I think.  In 1996, Intel and Creative Artist Agency created a lab to educate talent about the coming possibilities of broadband residential Internet and personal computers to create a new medium.  I  drove this project from the Intel side after meeting with Michael Ovtiz who was the founder and principle owner of CAA.  I knew that we were creating a new medium that would effect every aspect of our lives from commerce and education to communications and entertainment.  In my position as Vice President of Business Development,  and my additional  role as “Czar” of Intel’s broadband development activities and a leading investor in early stage companies dealing with the consumer market. I wanted to accelerate the development of these “applications”.  I was particularly concerned with how entertainment content would finds its way to this new world.  I was pretty sure that the folks in Silcon Valley would not be able to create compelling and entertaining content with the exception of computer games.  So I thought, lets get the people that make todays entertainment excited about the opportunity.  We set up the lab  within CAA with state of the art computing technology. CAA’s clients and others would come by the lab for demonstrations.  They key person on my side was Sriram Viswanathan.  In addition, we decided to invest in early stage companies dealing with entertainment and to do this together with CAA.  This activity was lead by Matthew Cowan from the Intel side and Hassan Miah from the CCA side.    We had some hits like Launch Media which was founded by Dave Goldberg. Launch was selling enhanced  CD’s.  I required that they move to the Internet as part of our investment.    Launch was eventually sold to Yahoo where Dave ran the Yahoo music business.  Lucky for him, he meet Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook , soon to be one of the richest women in the world….and a lovely person by the  way.  We also invested in Mark Cuban’s  Broadcast.com which went public and then was bought by Yahoo for more than five billion dollars. Of course they were not all successful and we invested in some duds like American Cybercast.

During this period we learned of Intertainer, founded by Jonathan Taplin.  While I was aware that Jonathan had a background as a movie producer, I did not know anything about his extensive history in the music industry.  Intertainer  was one of the first companies to make deals with the movie industry and provide download-able movies.  Remember this was 1997/98. There were not that many consumers that had broadband in their homes. Intertainer did very well until the movie industry, lead by Sony, created an alternative called Movielink.  The result was that  studios cut off access to movies by Intertainer; bringing that company to its knees.  Intertainer sued a number of companies for Anti-Trust Violations in 2002.  In 2006, the suits were settled out of court.

As I began to read the book, I was shocked to learn that Jonathan and I had a lot of overlap in our early days.  Jonathan, at 65 is two years younger than I am.  He grew up, went to school and lived  on the East Coast during the 60s.  If he had been living in San Francisco, we would have surely known each other.  Jonathan became Bob Dylan’s road manager.  In the early 60s, I was surrounded by the San Francisco music scene but in a very peripheral way. Bob Dylan showed up sometimes at the Blue Unicorn where I hung out.   I met Janis Joplin  while she was rehearsing with the Big Brother and Holding Company (she was not a very nice person I thought but when she sang it would bring tears to my eyes).   I hung out at the home of the Jefferson Airplane and went to a few parties at Gerry Garcia’s home.  But I was not into rock. I had studied classical music, composition and arranging.  I preferred Jazz (and life long addition) and so I spent my time listening to Jazz players when they came to San Francisco.   My engagement with first the “beatniks” and later the “hippies” was more extensive.  I would listen to Allen Gingsburg read poetry in North Beach even though I was just a kid.  I spent lots of time at the  City Lights Book Store.   Later, I became  friendly with Allen and was invited to his apartment a few times.  Outlaw Blues deals a lot with these people. I was also drawn to Jewish Mysticism and was for a while a follower of Shlomo Carelbach and very politically active in the anti war and civil rights movements.

In reading Outlaw Blues, I realized how easily my life could have gone in a different direction.  Maybe, if I liked the music better, I would have become part of the rock music scene. My management and leadership skills might have taken me on a path similar to Jonathan and eventually my creative side might have emerged as it did for him.  I had a similar experience reading Holy Beggars by  Aryae Coopersmith  whom I recently met.  In reading Aryae’s book, I realized that I could have easily continued to explore the spiritual side of myself and may have ended up in Israel as a Rabbi. But I fell in love with technology. By 1966, I was working at the Langley Porter Institute, UCSF Medical School, designing equipment for brainwave bio feedback.  From that point on, I had a continuing connection to technology.  Now I am back to studying music.  Jonathan is a Professor at USC.

At this point in my life, it is interesting to speculate on  the different paths I could have taken.  Life is so strange and random… or is it?

Some relevant links:
Outlaw Blues, the song  
Outlaw Blues, the film 

WSJ  on the book  
Jonathan Taplin 
Allen Ginsberg
Michael Ovitz   
Dave Goldberg

Mark Cuban
Broadcast.com 
Intel/CAA Media Lab
Holly Beggars   

Shlomo Carlebach 

Hong Kong 1963-Courtesy of Tim Brown

Here I am in Hong Kong some 49 years after I first arrived here.  I wrote about that experience recently here.   In looking for photos to use with this post, I found  some that were taken in 1963 by a family that actually traveled on the President Cleveland,the ship on which I worked.  I was able to make contact with Tim Brown who published the photos.  He was eleven years old when he sailed on that ship at the same time I served on it.

President Cleveland in Hong Kong 1963-Courtsey of Time Brown

The next time I came to Hong Kong was about 30 years later, 1992.    I was working for Intel at the time.  Of course by 1992, a lot had changed.  I remember there was still an electronics industry in Hong Kong then.  And it was still a place to buy cheap goods. But in the late 90s, my relationship with Hong Kong changed dramatically.  As readers of this blog will know, my major activity (and  professional accomplishment) was driving the development of residential broadband utilizing my position as   Vice President of Business Development for Intel Corp.  This was accomplished in the US and in many other  parts of the world  by working with the cable industry to utilize their infrastructure  to provide two way high speed communications to homes.  At the same time, we worked with phone companies through out the world to use their infrastructure  to provide broadband (DSL).  While the combination of cable and telephone infrastructure reached much of the developed world, it could not reach most of the developing world.  That is when I became interested in Satellite communications.  An example of this is a joint venture which I put together between Intel and SES Astra  (Europe’s largest Satellite Operator) to provide broadband to be delivered to PC’s via Satellite.

Avram signs his deal with Richard Li

Sometime in late 1996 I was asked by my friend, the late John Evans,   to meet Richard Li, the son of Li Ka-Shing, one of the riches and most powerful men in the world.   When I meet Richard he was about 30 years old and already a billionaire in his own right having created Star TV in 1990 and selling it to  Rupert Murdoch in 1993.  Richard had a strong interest in technology although he did not really  know much about it.  It turned out that he was considering  acquiring a startup called WebTV and wanted my advice.  WebTV was founded by Steve Perlman, a serial entrepreneur that I have known for about 20 years. It made sense in a way for Richard but at that time, I was convinced it would not succeed in the market.  It was too early for Interactive TV and it still has not really happen.  Soon after, and lucky for Steve, WebTV was bought by Microsoft for about 400 million dollars.  Steve is now the founder and CEO of OnLive.

A few months after that, I was contacted by Michael Johnson and George Chan both of whom played key roles  in the creation and operation of StarTV.   Michael was the “idea guy” and George was the “get it done guy”.  Both still worked for Richard Li  and they were figuring out what their next moves might be after Richard’s non-compete lapsed.  One idea was to bring the Internet to China.  This was the mid 90s and there was very little Internet penetration in China.  Strange to think that less then 20 years later, there would be more Internet users in china than any other country in the world.    Michael wanted to take advantage of the cable TV systems that were installed  in cities  throughout China.  The idea was to use satieties to download content into servers that would be located in these cities.  The cable TV structure would be used to  connect homes to the server.  The device at home would be similar to WebTV. The company providing do the service would  do the actual programing. The cable operator would get paid for the use of their infrastructure.   It was kind of a hybrid of TV and interactivity.  We were going to support some amount of upstream (to the Satellite) bandwidth so that email could be sent an received.  I know it probably sounds like a dumb idea but please think about the mid 90s and China.  Richard’s company, Pacific Century CyberWorks and Intel formed a joint venture called  Pacific Convergence Group (PCC).   We set up a development organization in California.  Michael Johnson came over to lead the effort.

Avram and Michael Johnson

About a year later, I resigned from Intel (April 1999) to start up The Avram Miller Company which was pretty much a way to brand me.  That name had come to me after attending the Allen& Co Sun Valley Conference for seven years.  There was always a list of the companies present. One of those  companies was The Walt Disney Company.  Herb Allen kindly invited me to attend the conference in July 1999 even though I was no longer with Intel.  I loved the listing of companies.  The Avram Miller Company was right above The Walt Disney Company.

Just before I left Intel, I told my plans to leave to  a select number of CEO’s in the companies I was working closely with.  I had lead Intel’s investment in CMGI in December 1997 and was a board observer.  When I informed the then CEO of CMGI, Dave Wetherell that I was leaving Intel, he asked me to join his board as an independent  director which I did.  When I told Richard I was leaving Intel, I mentioned I would be joining the CMGI board.   He then asked me to join his board as well.  Frankly, I was not too keen on joining his board.  While I had developed a close relationship with Dave Wetherell, I did not feel very close to Richard and was concerned that I would not have a lot of impact. This turned out to be correct.   But I was also intrigued with the idea of have my own global reach. Richard asked me what it would take financially to get me to join.  I was pretty “hot” in those days.   So I was asking for a lot.  So I said, I wanted 0.5% of the company in options and 500k dollars.  And that is what we agreed to.  I actually asked for the cash because I had no idea how things worked on the Hong Kong stock exchange and was not sure if I would actually ever be able to get my options.

So this is what happens  next:   Richard, acquired this public company and renames it as the Pacific Century Cyberworks (PCCW).  Intel invest $50 million into PCCW and eventually folds PCC into that company as well. Intel then folds in the joint venture.  I am not yet on the board.  I am advising Richard and we do a number of things including setting up a venture capital group within PCCW. I introduce Dave Wetherell to Richard Li and they decided to have each company invest in the other and enter into a number of strategic relationships.  By that time, I  also joined the board of World Online (based in the Netherlands) , which was one of Europe’s leading Internet Service Providers.  I liked having the Asian, European and USA reach.  It was a critical part of the strategy for my own company.

For a number of reasons, my appointment to the board was delayed.  One of the key reasons is that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange requires that my compensation be appraised by an independent  company to determine if it is was fair and reasonable.  In the meantime,  PCCW stock is going crazy.  The strike price for my options where set at about $2.40 (Hong Kong Dollar).  But the company is ridding the Internet bubble of the 1999.  Soon, the stock is trading up in the 20s.  I believe that at one time PCCW might have been the most valuable Internet stock in the world.

PCCW stock chart during the time I was involved

My stock options were valued at 90 million dollars.  One of the major HR companies did the Appraisal and sure enough, they agreed that it was fair and reasonable compensation.  I wish I could find their report.  Of course, by the time all this work was done and my option package  was finally approved at a stock holders meeting, the bubble burst and my options were underwater. I never realized a dime from them.

I continued on the board for a number of years.  A long the way, PCCW acquired the phone company of Hong Kong  (Cable and Wireless HKT) for 28 billion dollars. The Company was able to buy that asset with Internet Dollars.  So there I was 36 years after sailing into Hong Kong as an 18 year merchant seaman, serving as a board member the Hong Kong Phone company, meeting with the top officials of Hong Kong including the Chief Executive.

PCCW continues to function and is the leading provider of broadband in Hong Kong.  Richard Li is still chairman of PCCW.  He tried to take it private recently but was prevented by Hong Kong Stock Exchange.  George Chan is he managing director.  Michael Johnson left PCCW many years ago and lives in South Africa. As for me, well those days are over.  And I am stopping in Hong Kong my wife Deborah on our way back from Thailand.  I can still afford a limo from the Airport and an amazing hotel room with a beautiful view of an amazing city that has played such an interesting role in my life.

View from Upper House Hotel Room

I like the way Woody thinks about this.  I guess he wrote this a few years ago maybe as he was turn 75.  He is now 77 years old.  Next week I all be 67 years old.  Time and my genes have been good to me.  My biological age is about 15 years younger that my real age (check with Real Age to find out yours) My brain speed is about 25 years younger than my real age  (check with Posit Science to find yours).  The good news is I hopefully have many more productive and enjoyable years ahead.  Right behind me is the baby bummers. Having so many people who will be in the last third of their lives is exciting because it is something new in human history.  Jane Fonda speaks of it in this TED talk.

It is not about being retired but as my wife, Deborah says, it is about being rewired.   I have to confess that I find it personally a bit confusing.  As I often joke, I no longer enjoy what I am good at doing and I am not good at doing what I enjoy.  This is actually a true statement.  The expectation  for the last third of life is changing with more and more seniors being both physically and mentally fit.