Carl Stormer's JazzCode

StudentUniverse gets written up in the Wall Street Journal

An expensive logo from the dot.com area -- called "the pickle" by the employees. 

When Espen and I StudentUniverse back in 1999, we joked about how cool a WSJ writeup would be.  Today, nine after we started the company with 2MUSD in funding, the article is here.

According to the article, our company -- first conceived at Espens kitchen table in New York - is now the leading online travel agency for students in the US.  In tough times, the busines model works great, and the company is still to this day, growing rapidly.

I only found one mistake in the article -- it says that the company was founded in 1992.  Espen founded Prism Travel in 1992, but that was not an online company, and it was later merged in as part of SU. 

I will never forget when we purchased the logo.  It was made by Cipriani in Boston and cost us -- are you ready for this -- $100.000.  We did get fresh fruit and view from a high floor in the Prudential Center when we bought it, and in the beginning, everyone hated the pickle.  But over time, we have learned that it has a great personality, and I actually think it is a great, classy logo. 

Read the full article in pdf

Thoughts about the JazzCode, open source and complexity

I am always very impressed by classically trained musicians and what they are able to do on their instruments. Yet, most classical musicians are unable to perform if you take their music away and ask them to improvise freely on their instruments. Jazz musicians on the other hand are unable to perform if you give them music and ask them not to improvise. Classical musicians are expected to replicate exceptional performances.

Jazz musicians are exptected not to replicate themselves. Whereas classical musicians are better equipped to handle very complicated music with many pre-planned interlocking parts, jazz musicians are better capable of creating very complex and unpredictable music where each voice becomes part of the dynamic context to which each musician must adapt in the moment.

An exception? Wynton Marsalis does both jazz and classical

As we move from the industrial economy, the world is looking more and more like jazz. Yet, it seems to me that most political discussion these days seem to build on an implicit assumption that we need more rules to solve problems, and that solutions based on central control and closed systems works better than open source systems.