Bryan Guido Hassin

2009-12-09

Poken One-Year Anniversary

December 8th was the one-year anniversary of my start with Poken. I can't believe it, that really seems lifetimes ago. What a roller coaster ride it was: arriving just as we launched the product commercially, working feverishly to update the product to meet the massive surge of initial demand, building a team quickly to keep up with the scale of growth, and--ultimately--making the heart-wrenching decision to leave Poken to lead a company that is working toward a better energy future. Poken is still doing well, growing and expanding every day. I wish the team all the best there and I look forward to the day when everyone else has a Poken!

Also in the news recently, my high school was selected as the top public school in the nation for the third year in a row. Once again I am humbled by the company I am in and can only strive to live up to such a standard. I feel very, very fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend TJ and I must make the most of it!

2009-12-07

Arizona

Christmas season has officially begun! Last weekend Katie, my mom, and I flew to Arizona for a "pre-Christmas" celebration with Katie's family. I had never been to Arizona before and found it to be pretty nice. The trip started off on a strange note, though: as we left Houston on Friday, it was actually SNOWING! This was the earliest snow on record in Houston and, frankly, I didn't believe that it EVER snowed here until I saw it with my own eyes and felt it on my own eyelashes. Wild! I'm glad we got out of there because I wouldn't trust Houston drivers on snowy roads. I suspect that people would be overconfident in their huge trucks and SUVs and not drive more cautiously.

We arrived in Phoenix in time to meet Katie's family and my mom for dinner. The weather was cold but very dry. Then we all caravaned to the houses we had rented for the weekend in Sedona. Sedona was really beautiful, with big red rock formations in every direction. The terrain was so foreign to that of places I've lived and been before that it seemed almost other-worldly.

Saturday we mostly putzed around Sedona, walking around and seeing the town. While the ladies shopped for arts and crafts, Katie's father and I snuck away to a microbrewery to sample their wares and watch the SEC Championship game. It ended well (Roll Tide!) so I'd call the day a success. In the evening, Katie's sister orchestrated a wonderful vegan dinner for us all and we exchanged gifts.

Sunday morning began with stockings--Santa somehow managed to find us three weeks early in Arizona! Then we drove up to the Grand Canyon, which none of us had visited before. Wow, was it ever impressive! It was very cold and windy, though, so most of our peeks at the Canyon consisted of parking the car as close as possible, sprinting to the overlook, taking pictures, and then sprinting back to the car. One of the overlooks was significantly below the parking area so we had do sprint down to it, then sprint back up afterward. I was excited about the sprint back up as it was a clear Rocky opportunity. However, I found myself completely unable to yell "Adrian!" at the top since the 7,000 feet above sea level rendered me totally breathless.

Monday we returned to the airport but stopped in Phoenix first so I could meet with an IMD alum who is commercializing a really cool wind energy technology for the developing world. Although networking was not a driving factor in my decision to attend IMD, it has been great to see that it really is a significant benefit.

It was a short weekend but a very good one. Getting to know Arizona was interesting, seeing the Grand Canyon was inspiring but, most of all, it was just wonderful to celebrate Christmas in such a warm family environment. Happy Early Holidays to all!

2009-12-06

Space . . . The Final Frontier

Last week I had the honor and pleasure of presenting at the imagine09 conference of the American Astronautical Society. Breaking from tradition, the AAS followed the lead of TED this year and invited many speakers from across the US and across industries to present topics about which they are passionate. Some of these topics were space related but many were not and the goal was to foster dialog among the AAS membership about how these topics could be used within the context of the space industry. Cool!

One of the organizers is a member of the Rice Engineering Alumni group, of which I used to be president. Over coffee a few months ago, he somehow got the impression that I was passionate about using information technology to address the global energy challenge. I'm not sure how he got that impression . . . ;-) He invited me to join the slate of speakers and I agreed almost before he finished asking!

The guidelines I was given as a speaker were the TED commandments:

1. Thou shalt not simply trot out thy usual shtick.

2. Thou shalt dream a great dream, or show forth a wondrous new thing, or share something thou hast never shared before.

3. Thou shalt reveal thy curiosity and thy passion.

4. Thou shalt tell a story.

5. Thou shalt freely comment on the utterances of other speakers for the sake of blessed connection and exquisite controversy.

6. Thou shalt not flaunt thine ego. Be thou vulnerable. Speak of thy failure as well as thy success.

7. Thou shalt not sell from the stage: neither thy company, thy goods, thy writings, nor thy desperate need for funding, lest thou be cast aside into outer darkness.

8. Thou shalt remember all the while: laughter is good.

9. Thou shalt not read thy speech.

10. Thou shalt not steal the time of them that follow thee.

Accordingly, I put together a 20-minute talk about information-adaptive human behavior--using technology to "nudge" human behavior by providing the right information at the right time in the right way to the right people. After all, this is exactly what we're doing at Enistic to "nudge" office employees to better energy use behaviors. Instead of putting together a dry lecture about the behavioral science theory, I presented the material as part of the story of my own entrepreneurial journey; the presentation can be found at my slideshare page.

The conference itself took place over two days last week at NASA's Johnson Space Center. As someone who has always been fascinated with and inspired by the space industry, I was thrilled to participate. Given some of the other speakers (Bob Rogers, Richard Garriott, Wayne Hale, T. Boone Pickens III, for example), I was also honored to participate.

The talks were very engaging. For example, Wayne Hale presented a history lesson about China's world-leading shipping and exploration 600 years ago. Abruptly they shifted from exploration to isolationism and stagnated for centuries. This fostered a great deal of dialog about what we could learn from such lessons and how they might be applied to our own exploration policy.

In fact, all of the talks fostered dialog. After a speaker presented, he/she was whisked off to a breakout room. Audience members then had the option to go engage with that speaker for more detailed discussion or stick around in the main auditorium for the next presentation. Tough decisions! When it came time for me to present, I myself was torn as I really wanted to follow the previous speaker (executive director of the X PRIZE Foundation) for dialog!

I'm glad I stuck around and gave my presentation, though. It was well received and many people (including some of the other speakers) joined me in the breakout room to discuss energy savings, human behavior, technology, and how to apply all of these to the space industry. I don't think we solved any great problems during the breakout session but I do hope that the discussion seeded thoughts, ideas, and follow-up discussions that will continue to bear fruit for some time to come.

At the end of the conference I was exhausted from all of the energy, ideas, and discussion with new contacts. Great job, AAS, and I expect great things from the space industry! I'll post a link to the video of my presentation once it's available online.

2009-11-29

Thanksgiving

My first Thanksgiving back on US soil in a couple of years was just what the doctor ordered! It began on Wednesday when Katie and I hopped in the car to begin the seven-hour drive to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Having watched the first six Harry Potter movies over the past several weeks, we listened to the audio book of the last in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, on our way up. It was great driving weather and we found ourselves at my aunt's house in Hot Springs before we even realized it.

Truth be told, my aunt's house isn't actually in Hot Springs. Each year more and more of my relatives move further out to the peaceful countryside. The aunt with whom we stayed owns a house way out in the woods, far from the hustle and bustle of city life. When I was a child we used to come out there for bonfires and s'mores. Now the accommodations are much nicer but the stars are still bright and unobstructed by ambient light.

Even though I haven't seen my aunt and uncle for almost a year, we were welcomed with open arms as if we had just been there yesterday. We spent a relaxing night there then began Thanksgiving day with a run along dirt roads, passing by several neighboring farms. The weather was in the 30s and cold air and the smell of fires in fire places filled the nostrils as we ran. Harry Potter 7, clear starry skies, running in cold weather, the smell of fires . . . I could have been back in Lausanne!

Running was fun. Each residence along our road had one or more dogs who came out to see who the runners were and then followed us as we ran. I felt like the pied piper with dogs coming out of each farm to trot along beside us, nipping at our hands and heels.

And it's a good thing we got some exercise in because Thanksgiving Dinner (which begins at noon and lasts all afternoon) didn't help my fitness goals. Neither did sitting around watching football all afternoon! But it was great just to kick back, eat great food, and enjoy the benefits of being back so close to the family I love.

Dinner was at another aunt's house, also out in the country. She has a farm there with dogs, chickens, cattle, horses, and lots and lots of pasture land. Not everyone was able to make it but we were thankful for those who could. Plus it was fun playing around with my aunt's livestock.

On Friday Katie and I continued our Thanksgiving weekend movie tradition and saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Houston's own Wes Anderson. It was very enjoyable and, of course, featured a great soundtrack. We then spent the evening with my aunt on my mom's side going out to dinner at Brauhaus, a German restaurant downtown. I didn't expect to be dining on Bavarian cuisine so quickly after having left that part of the world--and I especially didn't expect to do it in Arkansas--but the schnitzel was very good! Here again, though, the primary benefit was spending time with family.

Saturday Katie and I made our way back, still listening to Harry Potter. It's a good thing we missed most of the day's schedule of college football, because most of the games I cared about were very forgettable. However, the Rice volleyball team has been dominating. After winning the Conference USA tournament, they beat #17 LSU in the first round of the NCAA tournament. I've spent almost as much time supporting Rice volleyball as I have football, so I'm thrilled for the Owls and hope they can keep it up.

Pics are in my facebook album.

2009-11-23

Rice-Baylor Update

Since my post a few weeks ago about the potential merger between Rice University and the Baylor College of Medicine, I have been made aware of many new sources of information. Many thanks to all contributed these, especially to Freddy Nguyen, Lovett '02. All active, engaged members of the Rice community should familiarize themselves with both sides of the debate:

The "official" site
http://www.staff.rice.edu/staff/RiceBaylor_Home.asp

The Rice Student Association Site on the Merger:
http://sa.rice.edu/news/rice-bcm-merger-reports

The Faculty Senate Site on the Merger: (Results from the Faculty Merger Review Committee)
http://www.professor.rice.edu/professor/Senate_Meeting_Held_October_7,_2009.asp?SnID=542837385

Moshe Vardi's Merger Site:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~vardi/merger/

Moshe Vardi's Public Lecture
http://webcast.rice.edu/webcast.php?action=details&event=2048

Here are some blogs:
http://rice-bcm-merger.blogspot.com/
http://preparingfuturefacultyatrice.blogspot.com/2009/10/links-on-proposed-ricebaylor-merger.html
http://rk.md/2009/rice-baylor-merger-update/

Houston Chronicle Articles: (There are more out there but this is the most recent editorial)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6717983.html

Rice Thesher Articles:

2009-11-22

Milestones

The last two weeks have been very, very active and full of milestones. At enistic, we've secured our first investors, our first resellers/installers/distributors, and--perhaps most importantly--our first clients! We still have a way to go to raise the money we need really to get this venture off the ground but this early momentum is very, very encouraging! Moreover, most of these initial angel investors know me personally and/or professionally so I'm encouraged by the votes of confidence they are putting in my abilities.

Closing this round of funding really can't happen quickly enough. Sitting in an office alone working on powerpoints, spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls is not how I am most effective. Building a team and working together to accomplish major commercial and operational goals is where I add the most value. Until we get to that point I feel . . . underutilized. Perhaps it's weird to feel "underutilized" when you're the founder, but my point is that the sooner we get past this initial hurdle, the sooner our pace of real growth will accelerate. We are heading in that direction, but I've never been known for my patience!

Other milestones have also been reached in my "extended" life. Last week was Rice's Homecoming. In addition to a fantastic weekend full of lectures, alumni group meetups, and reconnecting with friends, the mighty Rice Owls football team won its first game of the season! They followed that up this weekend with another win, and today the Rice volleyball team won the Conference USA tournament to boot. Go Owls!

Last week my mother opened a new exhibit, Moving Beyond Earth, at the National Air & Space Museum. It is an immersive, interactive gallery about the history and future of human spaceflight. Katie and I can't wait to see it when we're in DC for the holidays. Mom continues to amaze me with her exhibits, books, papers, conference publications, awards, and myriad other accomplishments--all while managing to be a great mother. Canonically one thinks of a doting mother proud of her children, but in our case the pride goes very much in the opposite direction!

The weather in Houston has actually been relatively cool recently. Katie and I have been taking advantage of the opportunity to sip on hot chocolate in the evenings and remember life in Switzerland. If the weather stays cool, perhaps we'll throw a little fondue party! In the meantime, big eating is ahead as we prepare for Thanksgiving. We can't wait to see the family in Hot Springs and enjoy my first Turkey Day back in the States!

2009-11-09

GoWear fit

Having completed one week with the GoWear fit on my arm nearly 24 hours/day, I now have enough data to begin drawing conclusions about its usefulness. I'll break down my review into nutrition, exercise energy expenditure, non-exercise energy expenditure, and sleep.

Nutrition

GoWear Fit's nutrition functionality is hardly unique. It provides a web-based mechanism for tracking your daily nutritional intake, just like myriad other products and sites. Its UI is probably in the 70th percentile for online food logs, which makes it a mediocre food log but a great addition to a comprehensive calorie management system.

In 2005 I logged every single food/drink item that entered my body into a spreadsheet for the entire year. It was quite a chore, but the take-aways were invaluable. It was readily apparent from the data that the #1 contributing factor to my inability to reduce body fat was consumption of empty calories from alcohol. More specifically, the few evenings of heavy binge drinking (wine dinners a the Petroleum Club or late nights clubbing/bar hopping) would create massive calorie surplusses (2,000+) that would wipe out weeks of modest calorie deficits. I modified my behavior to drink more in moderation and the following year shed 10 pounds of body fat with no other modifications to my fitness or diet plans.

Online tools make the food logging process much easier than entering everything manually into a spreadsheet so I was eager to give this one a whirl. Although I constantly had to battle error messages telling me that I had been logged off, I was ultimately able to enter each food item I consumed each day, drawing from a large database of pre-existing entries, and get a great breakdown of caloric and nutritional content. The task of food logging itself is quite onerous so I will now use averages from the last week to estimate future intake. Here are a few take-aways from my end-of-week analysis:

1. Food logging is absolutely invaluable and should be done, if not constantly, regularly. It's amazing to see what we put into our bodies and how it differs from what we think we're putting into our bodies. Furthermore, the simple act of measuring caloric intake induces behavioral change, causing food loggers to forego that late night snack because they know they'll have to log it.

2. This actually has an unintended negative side effect: I found myself going back to the same foods over and over again to avoid having to enter new custom foods into the food log. This results in lower dietary variety and I'm a big believer in the positive nutritional benefits of dietary variety. Still, I believe the net effects of food logging are quite positive.

3. I consume ~120 calories per day more than I estimate in my spreadsheet.

4. I consume ~1/2 the Recommended Daily Intake of cholesterol for my 3500 calorie/day diet--that's more or less a good thing!

5. However, I also consume ~2x my RDI of sodium and only ~2/3 my RDI of potassium and calcium. Clearly there is room for improvement here. The vast majority of that sodium is coming from dining out so I need to have heightened awareness when making my choices at restaurants.

6. I consume ~10% protein, ~50% carbs, and ~40% fat. Much of the fat and the sodium come from my cheese addiction (Allez Suisse!), so I need to reign that in a bit. My target will be 15% protein, 60% carbs (good, whole ones of course), and 25% fat.

My nutrition clearly needs some work so I'll do another food log soon to show improvements.

Exercise

I remove the GoWear fit for swimming (It isn't water proof.) and beach volleyball (I doubt it's sand proof, given how insidious sand from the courts tends to be!) but I leave it on for strength training, running, cardio machines, etc.

For activities such as running and walking, the GoWear fit estimates caloric expenditure that is pretty close to the estimates provided by my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS/heartrate monitor. That is encouraging for accuracy (of both devices) but by itself it doesn't add much usefulness for the GoWear fit.

The real advantage comes when engaging in activities for which I don't use the GPS/heartate monitor, such as playing Wii or ping pong. For these types of activities I've traditionally gone to my favorite online calorie calculator and estimated my expenditure based on my weight and the nearest activity I can find. I strongly prefer the GoWear fit for this type of measurement, though, as it measures your actual exertion, which may vary a great deal during any such activity. I'll still have to use calculated estimates for swimming and beach volleyball, but I now have much greater confidence in my data for all other activities.

Non-exercise

Although the GoWear fit and my spreadsheet of estimates largely agreed on my caloric expenditure during intense exercise, they disagreed vehemently on my total burn each day. On average the GoWear fit estimated that I burned ~550 fewer calories than I had estimated. That's a big difference! Over a week, that amounts to a full pound of body fat of difference!

So which is right? I'm inclined to believe the GoWear fit because it calculates net expenditure at a much finer granularity. It knows, for example, whether or not I've slept less and, hence, burned more calories than a day during which I've slept more (all other things being equal). It knows whether or not I've gotten up only five times from my desk all day and, hence, burned fewer calories than I would have if I'd been up 20 times. It knows if I've been on my feet all evening at an event and, hence, burned more calories than I would have if I'd been sitting on my couch watching Harry Potter movies.

However, the data is kind of damning. According to GoWear fit, I finished the week with a surplus of ~1900 calories, which would account for the addition of ~1/2 pound of fat. According to my spreadsheet of estimates, I finished the week with a deficit of ~3000 calories, or almost one pound of fat lost. Using a three-day moving average of my body fat (as tested on my Tanita scale/body composition monitor and adjusted based on periodic measurements with a Bod Pod), I indeed lost about a pound of fat during the week.

A week is a pretty small sample set for something like body composition, which can vary wildly with, among other things, hydration. Accordingly I'll keep these two systems running in parallel for the rest of the year to see how it plays out. Either way, I'd rather have a calorie tracking system that underestimates my expenditure rather than overestimating it.

An awesome feature for the GoWear fit would be a system that adapts its estimates of your expenditure based on your actual body fat changes over time. That's what I've done with my spreadsheet and, as shown here, it's pretty accurate.

Also a serious shortcoming in the GoWear fit is the fact that it really just tracks weight which, as we all know, is a poor metric of fitness. BMI isn't really any better. I know most people don't have body composition scales at home but it would be great if GoWear fit let those of us who do enter those figures in addition to weight. Until then I will always have to maintain a separate spreadsheet.

Sleep

I am pleasantly surprised with the GoWear fit's sleep tracking function. I tend to hydrate a lot at night (maybe because of all that sodium I'm taking in during the day!) so sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. This week I noted the times that this happened and compared them with the data from the GoWear fit. Sure enough, it recognized easily that I was not sleeping during those times and counted it against my sleep efficiency measurement.

I'm not sure how useful this feature is per se but I think it's cool and I think it's accurate. I'm getting a little over 6 hours of sleep each night with a 91% sleep efficiency. Not bad, I think that's enough--but I could always use more!