Tyler’s Toolbox

MIT has conducted a recent study that seems to link socializing face to face with co-workers can lead to a 30% rise in worker productivity. This inherently makes sense, and I think it’s crucial to remember that as a manager, you want people to like each other, to spend time together, in or out of the office.

However, I bet there’s an interesting sub-study here about proximity of workspaces. When working on something soloitarily, I work significantly slower in office than I do from a coffee shop or from home. In the office, I’m interrupted frequently by questions about my tasks or announcements of good news — I’m literally never able to get into a flow state.

This is not to indict my co-workers, for I’m equally guilty of laying off personal thoughts onto co-worker’s conciousness. By asking someone about a task, I’ve reminded them and can remove that worry/thought from my mind.  It’s human nature to offload these responsibilities as much as possible.

It’s clear, however, that face to face communication is best for collaborating, and that socializing around breaks in focus points on work is beneficial to overall output. So working in physical isolation makes no sense.  My solution has been to work daily from the office, but to complete some work tasks in the morning or early evening from home, therfore working potentially fewer daily hours in office.

Every year I write a long email update to my friends, which you can sign up for on the far right hand side of this site. This year I’m also posting it on this blog as an experiment. The following is the full, unedited text of that email.

Happy New Years!  You are receiving this email from me because I want to keep you updated on what I’m up to. I send out between 1 and 4 emails like this a year (but always one on New Years Day) and focus on big updates and “best-of” tidbits to share.

If you’ve never received an update from me before, it means you signed up on my website for an update or that I added you to the list — you probably did something that was awesome enough for me to say, “Hey I should keep in touch with them.”  If you thought I was less awesome, or don’t want to receive these updates from me in the future, please accept my apology and unsubscribe (or reply to this message and let me know — I’ll unsubscribe you by hand).

I hope to summarize my year for you and then proffer a few lessons I’ve learned. Finally I’ll include a few links I feel are worth sharing. This is the longest message I’ve ever written, if you’ve only got the inclination to read one part, please skip to the end and read the segment titled Reflection and Projection – it’s the part I feel is most important and that I’m most proud of.

 

This message is broken into several parts and should take about 9 minutes to read all the way through. Each section can be read independently of the other sections and includes a title and estimated reading time at the beginning.

 

Summary of 2008  (estimated reading time: 3.5 Minutes)

I’ve always found the act of waiting for a specific day to look back and project forward a year a little ritualistic and weird, but it does create an interesting phenomenon — my friends seem to be singularly focused on reflection and projection and that makes it easier to see what friends, mentors and idols are doing. This is good because applying the lessons they’ve learned is a great way to improve.  And with tools like Twitter, Tumblr, Blogs, and Facebook, sharing those lessons is easier than ever – making massive emails like this valuable. I think in the next 5 years or so, I’ll be able to send yearly updates via a service that makes email less valuable.  I’ve started doing that already by posting this note on my blog (link)

2008 was a heck of a year, I struggle with picking the parts to summarize. I turned 22 this year, and, largely speaking, 2008 has been one dedicated to making Involver succeed.  For those of you that don’t know my company, we help marketers distribute and track video campaigns on social networks, like Facebook. The company is young, and it’s been a wild and fun ride watching it succeed.

With regards to that work, Involver has truly had a breakout year. At this time last year we were subleasing a small office in Palo Alto and were yet another unheard of startup, toiling in a popular and crowded industry.  In the first quarter of the New Year we established some great success with the Help Vinay campaign (which registered 26,000 South Asians for the bone marrow registry in 6 weeks) moved to a new office in the financial district of San Francisco and changed our name to Involver. Following that we launched our Pilot Program and started creating commercial campaigns. Now, brands that have used Involver’s platform include Puma, Chiquita Banana, Maker’s Mark, Reader’s Digest, Serena Software and Kiva.org. Not only that but our first commercial campaign won an OMMA, the industry leading award for Online Marketing, and our campaign for Kiva.org resulted in $300,000 for loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world.   This generated some amazing press for the company — we’ve been featured by countless bloggers and appeared in Inc., Wired and PBS — and Inc. Magazine named our co-founders two of the “Top 30 Entrepreneurs under 30 Years Old”.  And we moved, again, to bigger offices; we’re now in the SOMA district of San Francisco.  Just imagine what we’ll be able to do with a year of experience under our belts and you’ll see why I’m so excited about next year.  J

I’ve taken my work close to heart this year, but I still was able to take some time to have a personal life. In 2008, I moved apartments twice in an effort to experience more of this city and continually vary my experience (being open to randomness is a very effective way to grow quickly). I’m now in a beautiful place and have really enjoyed the live music, better access to transportation, and ample eateries in my new neighborhood.

I also launched a new personal website — http://www.tylerwillis.net — which chronicles my life and aggregates a lot of information about me. If you’re interested in more frequent updates on who I am and what I’m up to, that’s a great resource, and if you want the up to the minute updates, I post often to two services that allow for frequent but short updates, you can always visit my profiles on twitter or tumblr for that. 

I spent much of my remaining free time this year supporting Barack Obama by writing articles, donating, and hosting an event — my birthday party featured live music and raised several hundred dollars for the campaign — I believe he represents an amazing opportunity for American politics and I’m ecstatic that he’s our leader.  There is a movement growing in America, which is making politics attractive again to the best and brightest. Our political system will benefit from the economic collapse and a generational changing of the guard, and there is great opportunity to improve the system. I’ll be participating on a more local level in 2009 and implore you to do the same.

In the bucket that qualifies as both personal and work life, I made some strides as well. Early in the year I hosted a massively successful event, called Weekend Apps, which launched 11 new companies and brought together 100+ entrepreneurs to work together in new ways — around the same time, I shut down the consultancy I’d founded. Willis Media Group had a good roster of clients, but at the end of the day, I simply couldn’t get it to profitability. I learned a lot about struggle and the difficulties of service businesses, and even more about the value of limited liability — but life has trotted on nicely despite that failure.

Finally, I was also blessed with the opportunity to travel around the country a bit, in 2008 I visited New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Black Rock City, and Vancouver. I took two road trips through the West and Pacific Northwest and was able to reflect on the joys of travel and it’s importance to maintaining a healthy mind. On these trips, I took up a copy of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and yet again found inspiration there for my traveler’s soul.

I closed out the year in the most fantastic fashion, by doing an 18,000 foot skydive in Monterey Bay with very good friends who are all as excited about the future as I am. I was happy to be surrounded by them and their optimism, the same way I’m happy to be surrounded by you and your experience, intelligence and friendship heading into 2009.

 

Looking Ahead   (estimated reading time: 1.5 minutes)

2009 is poised to be a great year for Involver. The horrible financial crisis seems to be affecting almost every vertical in the industry except the ones we’ve focused on. I’ve heard that recessions don’t slow trends, they speed them up – and that would seem to be true. With advertising budgets dropping across the world, most agencies and companies are reporting increases in video and social media spend. We’re hiring and I think we’re well positioned to grow by helping more marketers run more effective and successful campaigns. The trends are on our side — and we’ve got more money and experience than we did at this time last year — I’m very excited for 2009!  I’ll also be hosting some events, the largest so far planned being SF Startup Weekend 2 in the spring.

2008 has also really excited me for the future on a larger scale than just work. Specifically when it comes to the possibilities of space.  Watching the Mars Phoenix mission (link) filled me with a sense of wonder and awe, and was a moment I felt truly engaged with what was unfolding. I was lucky enough to meet Peter Diamandis shortly afterwards and in a span of about 15 minutes, he convinced me that there was a tangible way to funnel that excitement into compelling action.

So, this year I joined the International Association of Space Entrepreneurs and started supporting the X Prize Foundation. In the next 12 months I plan on attending several space related conferences and events, read and write more about industry successes and failures, and explore ways to volunteer some time or resources to help groups at the cutting edge of commercializing space access. I can’t think of a more exciting way to spend my free time than supporting this burgeoning industry.

I’m also planning several trips.  In addition to work travel, I’d like to make it to either Dubai or India for a vacation and I will be returning to Black Rock City for the Burning Man festival in late 2009.

Reflection and Projection  (estimated reading time: 2 minutes)

It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.”  I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth).

Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay.

Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.

Support stabilization efforts in governmental structures, by joining the change congress movement or forming, researching, refining and voicing your opinions at Change.gov, the new open government system Obama’s administration is attempting to create. Volunteer for an organization that you think is going past triage, and actually doing something to solve a major problem systemically — do the triage also, but let’s work a little harder and make some headway on these problems.

These don’t have to be big efforts, but they should be continual and properly focused.  A group of us, doing small actions continually, will inspire larger groups and result in larger change.  There’s a trend of human’s banding together to build a better future that we can align with and help propel.  Remember Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I’m excited for 2009, and I look forward to sharing it with you.  I hope to build more frequency into this email list, and as such would love to hear about what you’d like to hear from me.  Please don’t hesitate to ever email me at tyler@tylerwillis.net

Happy New Year!

Tyler Harrison Willis

Things Worth Sharing           

·      http://bit.ly/KIrF  My friend Ramit is giving away $2500 to a young person with a concrete idea for social innovation. Deadline is Jan. 15th

·      http://bit.ly/2qXWUp  Malcolm Gladwell gave a great talk at The Moth, it’s a tall tale about his experience getting into Journalism.

·      http://bit.ly/ovOx   Explaining the political awakening of Generation X in the form of an apology to politically active Boomers for taking so long.

·      http://bit.ly/m1NC  A 4-minute-long video about wearable computers. Something I think will change personal interaction in the next 10-15 years.

·      http://bit.ly/17Rvn  The evolution of wearable, non-intrusive displays. Extremely important to improving the move towards wearable computing.

·      http://bit.ly/M0pD  A good mini video bio of my favorite modern poet, Rives, watch it, then watch this: http://bit.ly/2OiC8g

·      http://bit.ly/w24M  An elegant short story about the subject of death.

·      http://bit.ly/kCpq  Several very good remixes of Silversun Pickups songs.

·      http://bit.ly/11ML1  How to create the bullet-time effect from the matrix cost effectively.

I, for all intensive purposes, am a Libertarian. The Libertarian Party is running Bob Barr as a candidate for President. Living in California, I also happen to believe that my single vote has very little influence in most presidential elections (and I’m probably right, as long as you ignore any social influence). Therefore, I believe in voting for the person I think is the absolute best choice for the presidency, not the best two party guy who can win it.  With all of that said, it would appear possible that I’d be voting for Bob Barr. I’m not. Barring (eh? eh?) some crazy, unforeseeable event, I will be voting for Barack Obama in November. This is my attempt at explaining why.

Disclosure: I will make an attempt to lay this out in a rationale, organized manner, I may fail. Writing concisely about issues I’m passionate about is something I’m working to become better at.

The issues that matter most to me are the economy (Stances:Ob, Mc, Barr) and foreign policy (Stances:Ob, Mc, Barr), and I also value the ability to be an effective leader. The first two are relatively easy to research, but the latter is a bit less concrete, more intuitive. It’s my belief that in these 3 issues, Barack Obama is the best choice for our country, and I’d like to offer my reasons why. In the interest of reading time and space, I’m going to address just the economy in this post, more to come later. Thanks for caring enough to read -Tyler

Economy:

Barack Obama has a clear economic plan that he has presented in speeches and online. It involves tax cuts for the middle class that are specifically aimed at jump starting the economy. In our current economic situation, something like this is needed. The middle class will spend money much more freely than people with larger incomes, which will affect the economy in a quicker fashion.

I do have some fear that Obama’s plan would stifle small business growth and the rate of entrepreneurship, he has helped address these fears with his $500 tax credit to help 1099 contractors offset the extra payroll tax they shoulder. As an independent contractor who made relatively normal (read: way less than 250k) salaries for 15 months out of the last 24, I can attest that a measure like this would have helped me. I’m not sure this break will be enough to encourage small business growth, and I think more can be done on this front.

I’m not sure how many of the 20-some million small businesses will be affected by a marginal income tax increase proposed by Obama; my understanding is the company would have to have more than 250k/year in revenue to be affected, I’m assuming that a large percentage of these small businesses are one-man shops and fall under this rate. If you have more than 250k/year in revenue I would assume you’re incorporating and playing the corporate tax game, and not filing under the individual system. I’d love to see some #’s on this though, it could make a huge difference in the health of this plan.

Note: Obama has also suggested eliminating the capital gains taxes for startups and small companies, but I must admit that I’m relatively ignorant on how this might affect the average small business — I will need to learn more about this and may expand on this point at a later date.

Compare this to Bob Barr: I like that Barr is against the bailout, as I am (although Buffett’s arguments in favor of it may eventually sway me), but I can’t seem to get any specifics out of his campaign. Barr’s website has little information on specific suggestions. I agree with the standard speaking points of the Libertarian Party: less taxes, free markets, cut spending, etc. But it’s hard for me to back a candidate that doesn’t put forth a plan, even if it’s just tactics on withdrawal. The same way you should put together a “get out of Iraq” plan, you should put forth a “get out of mucking around with the economy” plan.

The Libertarian Party as a whole generally has a problem with this. They are one of the largest third parties in US politics (4% of voters, according to Rasmussen which is slightly less biased than the 13% reported by CATO). The party is very broad, tying together an incredible amount of diverse opinons (most elections see Libertarian swing voters splitting between Democrats and Republicans 60/40 or closer) — putting forth specific plans would drive many party members away. So instead they stay vague and promote intellectuals working on these problems from many different approaches. Great for a think tank, shitty for a presidency.

McCain fares OK here. His small business plan makes some suggestions that will encourage growth in that sector, like lowering corporate taxes. His individual taxcuts look less interesting. McCain and Obama both talk about re-energizing the middle class, and it’s clear McCain’s plan doesn’t trump Obama’s on that front (verification from TPC). If McCain wanted to argue that Obama’s plan couldn’t be passed, or if he wanted to push for some form of trickle down economics, I’d listen — but they’ve both picked the same battleground and Obama has verifiably won it.

On top of all this, I’m very suspicious about where the money will come from. John McCain will not be able to decrease the size of government, and he supports an expensive war, yet he doesn’t seem to be securing new money to cover these massive cuts. That scares me.

His Gas and Energy platforms are nothing more than meaningless talking points that are essentially non-sensical (read them here, top of the page and middle of the page below this picture).

McCain’s HOME loan program seems misguided, and the suggestions on his website (strict requirements including a proof of due dilligence on all investments for bailouts on a firm by firm basis “only to prevent systemic risk” (Paraphrased from here) don’t seem to match his actions over the past 10 days.

I’ll confess an ignorance to some of the macro-economic issues at debate here. I’m not well versed enough to know, with relative confidence, which of these policies will fare the best. In situations where this is true, I find I need to take 3 actions.

1. I have to write out what I know, discover what I don’t know, and try to learn that through research or talking with semi-experts (people that may not be qualified to set policy but that keep up with historical and current thoughts on the topic and are accessible to me).
2. I have to look at the professionals, the people who are the real experts in the field, and see what their public thoughts are on the matter.
3. I have to make a rational assesment of the information as I know it today, and try to get close to the right answer. As Warren Buffett has said, “I’d rather be approximately right than perfectly wrong.”

In this process, I have found the information out there on economist blogs to be in favor of Obama, based mainly on the criteria of who he’s getting his advice from. In terms of the pros, Obama has recruited amazing advisors and supporters (Paul Volcker, Warren Buffet, Robert Rupin, Laura Tyson, and a slew of others). McCain hasn’t fared poorly on recruiting pros either; he’s got a revolving list of people with economics degrees who support him on his site, Peter Wallison has done some pretty amazing work at AEI (including foreseeing the current crisis 9 years ago) and Gary Becker is nothing to shake a stick at (and writes half of a fantastic blog). They’re both impressive teams, but on the issue of where are the intellectuals I personally respect more are leaning–they seem to be leaning towards Obama; I think Buffett and especially Volcker lend better insight than Wallison or Becker — this is arguable, but Volcker/Buffett certainly have much more credibility within the finance world than anyone on McCain’s side.

Since both teams are impressive it’s important to note that, Obama seems to actually be listening to his advisors more. His statements on the economy are measured and well thought out — he doesn’t often have to change his stance or re-word things in light of new developments (which McCain has had to often). Obama’s certainly being rewarded in the polls, to quote the Financial Times, “…his instinct to reflect before opening his mouth and his impeccable taste in advisers are both working to his advantage.”

On the economic front, I think Obama wins.  *UPDATE* The Economist has realized an article that I think backs up my point pretty solidly, see this chart:

FYI: This (and all political posts) will be reposted on my.barackobama.com blog

PS: I highly recommed a recent interview with Warren Buffet (60 mins), his take on the crisis is very interesting.

PPS: If you want to donate to Obama’s campaign, please do: My Obama Page

…is something my dad used to say all the time when trying to corral the dispersed Willis children into giving up their “way to busy for family” lives for a few days and making a communal trek somewhere for a very untraditional Christmas. We were usually pretty successful in making this holiday a fun one, but that’s neither here nor there, since I’m not going to be talking about any of that in this post. It’s just a nice story.

Instead, I want to talk about presence as it pertains to recording who you are online. I’m not talking about branding or building reputation here, but rather presence in the most pure expression: participation. As Malcolm Forbes once said, “Presence is more than just being there.”

Just as a sulky family member at Christmas is worse than an absent one–an online friend who seems uninterested in interacting with you unless it benefits them, worse then someone who abstains from hanging out with you on the interwebs.

I love when people create a hub for you to look for interactions with them. Some Examples:

• My friend, Andrew Hyde, lists very clearly on his site most of the things he’s working on (Startup Weekend, VC Wear) and provides a good bio and links to his profiles on different web services. If you spend 20 minutes on his site, I guarentee you’ll find something to strike up a chat with him about next time you see him.
• My friend, Ben Casnocha, has a slightly more “company” version of essentially the same thing. He’s a little more conscious of creating a brand for himself so the site reflects that. At it’s core it’s similar to Andrew’s site, a hub for “all things Ben.” You can find out what he’s thinking about from his blog, find his accounts (twitter, FB, del.icio.us, etc.), even sign up for a newsletter digest he send out (which is very good incidentally).
• New Friend, Amit Gupta, will probably serve as inspiration for me in building this site. He hosted smaller projects on his domain, instead of a separate domain. Talk about centralization! Of course, once projects hit a certain size, it needs to be spun out, but while it’s a baby idea - why not let it live at home?
• This site now has tons of information about me. Not sifted, carefully chosen and cleared information - but rather a bevy of information about who I am and what I do. So does my Facebook profile.

So, if real presence is equal to participation — it only makes sense that your online presence should reflect all your participation. I used to think it was a good idea to create a separate corporate web page that can be separated from my personal page and cleaned of any personality so that I can be sure I’m not making the wrong impression, but likely because of that I ended up making no impression at all.

The alternative is, I can build a hub that is open, inviting, and full of possible talking points that may drive interactions. That’s how I’ve decided to go about it this time around.

I’ve created this as a web hub, and while it’s not complete, tonight I am working on building a Facebook Hub using pages. Since I use Facebook so frequently, it seemed logical to have an aggregation of data like events, groups, stories, etc. using one of FB’s most robust tools. So here’s my page, it should stay up to date with community projects I’m working on and events I’m putting on. Fan me on Facebook if you want infrequent updates about this stuff.

I’ll continue to build out both my Facebook page and this website with as much information as possible, until I’m documenting almost all my online participation, as a way of extending my digital hand to you for what might be the start of a beautiful future.

Just under two months ago I received the news that I, along with 10 of my co-workers, would be laid off. Unlike most I was OK with this as I felt I’d learned an immense amount of knowledge and I had my compensation package to pay rent and bills while I looked for another job. Long story short is I got appendicitis, and later an offer to go back to work for one month. I took it and by the time I had recovered, I was just starting to look for another job. The company offered me a full-time position. No suspense, I took the job. But I’d like to delve into why, and the benefit of working in a challenging environment.Over the 7 months I was at the company pre-layoff I learned an encyclopedias worth of knowledge about sales. I had never held a real sales career, and honestly I found the work dull. Then, relatively early on in my career my manager/mentor was out sick for a few days and I got to delve into the sandbox and close my own accounts. Luckily there was an easy win in there (it certainly wasn’t skill) and I got a taste of what it feels like to sell somebody. It’s an invigorating experience. That taught me the value of sticking through the mundane to get the win, and when I get mad, lazy, bored, or distracted I remember the sale and it refocuses me. I also developed a skill-set, which I refer to as “Bassilisms” in honor of the man who taught me 90% of the skills. I learned that I have a natural aptitude for sales and I refined the first layer of skills.

Now in June, when deciding whether or not to come back I had to weigh many factors: skills I could learn, new experiences I could get, the money I could make, how much I would enjoy my job, etc. I ended up taking the job because I felt as part of a smaller team I would be well positioned to continue refining my skills and that I would have an opportunity to take on new responsibilities if I wanted them. A larger company would have paid me more, but it would have possessed more bureaucracy and would allow me less opportunity to learn new skills. As a 20 year old starting a career and with my goals not lying in working for a larger company, but rather successively smaller ones until I can start my own; I knew learning would be more valuable in the long run then taking the money now.

So the cost benefit of salary versus development has been on my mind a lot as of late and I think the mix is different for everyone. As luck would have it, a former classmate of mine has been tracking his internship in Taiwan via Facebook and eloquently records some interesting thoughts. A lot of them are simple and seem to be common sense, but that’s what most people need reiterated. Everyone knows how to dream, do you know how to systematically go about implementing those dreams? That’s what makes an all-star. Since Facebook is a closed system I will copy some of my favorites here with my reactions below. Alex, you should really write a blog - you have been a compelling writer at least since 2004 (and my guess is longer) and you’re only getting better. Share those thoughts!

“Sitting there with the other two new-guys, it really dawned on me how much you get from the first impression. Quite a cliché statement, that, but none the less true. After hearing about the solitariness, the stress, the long hours, the ‘corporate’ side of law, it was very informative to talk to my mentor, Edison about the nature of his work. I ended up asking him straight up if he liked his job. He sorta grinned at me and rambled off a response about what part of the job makes a difference ect … then he advised me that law isn’t a happy profession, but you can still enjoy it.”

This is almost word for word my feeling for my sales job. Any job that requires full attention to detail to win a small percentage of battles is usually boring. In law, most commas are going to be in the right place but miss the one wrong placement in the 100 page document and it’s a million dollar mistake. If you program NASA satellites, a missing comma could blow up a MGS satellite. In sales a 10% increase in method could double your sales, or more. Not the same stakes, but the same lesson — being able to take pride in the big win and value your own consistent effort is an important skill to master.

“It’s not enough for an attorney to be satisfactory, anything less would be malpractice. Rather, a good attorney must spot future problems that could arise, as well.”

Alex goes on to tell a story which I won’t repeat, as he gives an example of a poor choice made by an attorney at a law firm, and I’m not sure about the implied confidentiality of Facebook (it is a closed system). Probably far enough removed, but better safe than sorry. The message is a simple one, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” (Ben Franklin), but it’s one worth repeating. In sales you could waste months chasing a customer before realizing you never asked if they could afford it. Low and behold, they can’t. When you “eat what you kill” that inefficiency hurts. If you prepare completely and actively look for problems, they become a lot more manageable. Paraphrasing Alex’s summation of this experience, If you’re lost in a snow storm it’s nice to have your ass covered, but wouldn’t it have been better to have gotten a map and not deal with frostbitten toes?

Note, posted updated quotes July 10, RP’ed to RSS. Original written July 6th.