Having spent two days examining as much of the evidence as I could, there are two points that deserve to be mentioned.

Israel acted well within the confines of international law and maritime practice in enforcing a legitimate blockade of the Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, in halting the flotilla, the Israeli forces involved in the incident began with restraint. International Waters are of no account, if it is clear that the ship is clearly heading towards a blockaded area… the US Navy for instance, has been known to halt and inspect suspected North Korean ships bound for Iran on the high seas on numerous occasions.

Blockades and interdictions are common, and have been so for decades since the Second World War (where unrestricted violence was frequently used). The normal convention is to open communications and demand the ship ‘heave to’; if it fails to comply a shot from a large caliber gun or a burst from a machinegun is fired across its bows. If the ship still refuses to comply; this is repeated — albeit the shot is aimed more carefully and comes closer to the ship. If the ship still refuses to halt, it is warned once more before a shot is fired at its bridge. If it still refuses to heave to, the blockading force has the right to sink it. Once a ship has hove to or slowed down, it may be boarded by personnel from the blockading force.

The Israelis offered another choice to the flotilla (which was refused) and otherwise seems to have behaved with restraint. It is not clear if the ships came to a dead stop or proceeded towards Gaza and a slow pace, but it is abundantly clear they were not sunk!

It is also abundantly clear that the passengers and crews of the boarded ships offered potentially lethal violence — using “improvised” weapons that had been carefully stowed beforehand. A crate of dishes dropped on someone’s head from 6m overhead does not seem as malevolent as shooting them, but a crushed skull is a crushed skull regardless. High pressure hoses and swung chains directed at somebody climbing a rope ladder from a zodiac boat are also potentially lethal.

Canadian and US naval personnel boarding ships (as they regularly do) brandish submachine guns and shotguns; the Israelis came aboard with paintball guns only to be reminded of an unwelcome truth. Metre long metal rods and knives do not seem as lethal as modern assault rifles, but they are in close confines in the dark. This is a calculation that was made ahead of time by many of the so-called peace activists. Many police bulletins remind officers — often using graphic photographs — that somebody with a knife within arms reach is equally deadly to a man with a handgun; a man armed with a paintball gun is in very serious danger.

The restraint that the IDF personnel showed on boarding the vessels of the flotilla was directly responsible for the loss of life that ensued when the protestors’ pre-planned brawl erupted. Next time, the IDF should behave in a manner more consistent with those used by other navies (including those of Canada) in similar circumstances — display your firepower and don’t hesitate to use it. It saves lives in the long run.

John Thompson

Director of the Mackenzie Institute

John Thompson is a Canadian military and terrorism expert who spent 13 years in the Canadian military. Thompson has been associated with the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, the Royal Canadian Military Institute, and is currently the director of the Mackenzie Institute, a Canadian think tank focusing on terrorism, political extremism and warfare.

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[via Alan Winer, Chair, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto]

From every corner of the world, Israel is facing condemnation for yesterday’s raid on the ship Mavi Marmara, part of the flotilla carrying goods to Gaza. Unfortunately, nine of those on board died in a confrontation with Israel’s Defense Forces and several members of the IDF were injured. Just as in April 2002, when Israel was accused of a non-existent Jenin “massacre,” the world is, once again, convicting Israel of murder and kidnapping long before the all the facts are known. Sadly, the world is also judging Israel by different standards than even the most tyrannical regimes.

Here are facts to date from Canada Israel Committee and video from other sources clarifying what occurred.

• Israeli sailors, attempting to board the Mavi Marmara, were attacked by dozens of activists armed with knives, metal bars, Molotov cocktails and stun guns. Fearing for their lives, the Israeli soldiers had no choice but to respond. The video below shows IDF personnel under attack, and passengers on board the ship throwing one of the IDF sailors off the boat.

• The Mavi Marmara is sponsored by a terrorist Turkish organization known as IHH, which has a long history of cooperation with Islamic terrorists. IHH belongs to an umbrella organization known to finance terrorism called the Union of Good. In 2008, Israel banned IHH along with 35 other Islamist charities worldwide, for its ties to the Union of Good. The U.S. government also views the Union of Good as a terrorist organization.
• This video shows flotilla members chanting slogans about the 7th century battle of Khaybar in which Muhammad’s forces killed many Jews.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2489.htm

• Israel made every effort to provide the flotilla organizers with an opportunity to avoid a confrontation. Israel offered to bring the flotilla into the port of Ashdod, and to transfer their goods to Gaza following appropriate security checks. The organizers rejected this offer.
• Israel repeatedly warned the flotilla about a maritime blockade off the coast of Gaza and that it would be brought to an Israeli port for cargo offloading. To view the IDF warning, please click below.

• There is no blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza. In fact, Israel delivers 15,000 tons of humanitarian aid – including medical supplies, food, and water – to Gaza every week. The blockade exists to prevent unauthorized individuals and unknown cargo from entering Gaza and falling into the hands of the Hamas regime. Hamas is presently smuggling in massive amounts of military supplies.

Here’s what you can do to help reveal what
really happened on board the Mavi Marmara:

• Post the videos in this e-mail to your Twitter and Facebook pages
• Distribute them virally to all your friends and acquaintances
• Write letters to the editor and online in response to media articles, emphasizing that IDF personnel acted in self-defense after being clubbed and attacked by a mob on board, and that the Mavi Marmara was sponsored by a terrorist- supporting organization, with many extremists as passengers.
• For information on how you can contact Canadian political party leaders, please visit www.cjpac.ca

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I just read Nancy Duarte’s analysis of Bill Gates’ TED presentation. The classic comparison of presentation styles between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates has been written about a lot before. What a contrast to the many comments of how boring Bill Gates’ presentations normally are.

This week at TED, Bill came through with flying colors.

What changed?

Gone were the long bullet lists and boring, complex slides of the past:

Instead, we saw the following:

This week we saw Bill Gates’ connecting to his passion and brilliantly sharing that passion with his audience in a dynamic, authentic and empathetic way.  Bravo Mr Gates!

On a personal note, I took a small leaf out of Mr Gates’ book this past week when I presented “How do companies champion their brands in this current digital age” to the OCAD Masters class in Toronto.

Thanks to Slideshare for putting this up on their “Featured Presentation” section on their homepage and thanks to all of you for tweeting about the presentation!

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As we approach the end of the year, we all think about New Year’s resolutions. Instead of making a whole bunch of new resolutions, I thought I’d share a 12 point checklist on leadership that I just discovered in an old journal of mine.  I made this list for myself back in 2003 and think it still applies for 2010:

Motivating yourself:

1. Keep a positive outlook. When you experience challenges, you’ll find optimism works wonders.
2. Believe in yourself. Guess what – there’s no-one else in the World like you!
3. Set yourself meaningful and achievable goals – keep measuring your success.
4. Develop and follow an action plan.
5. Find ways to enjoy what you’re doing.
6. Keep your enthusiasm levels high. Celebrate your successes / achievements.
7. Be kind to yourself. Self-criticism will lead you nowhere.
8. Move on from your mistakes. Learn from them and grow.
9. Avoid negative people. Know when to cut lose and move away. Surround yourself with successful, positive people.
10. Never stop learning.
11. Know that you will succeed!
12. Set yourself new challenges.

Motivating others / motivating your team:

1. Let your positive outlook be infectious. Spread it around.
2. Tell and show your team you believe in them.
3. Work to set meaningful, measurable and achievable goals.
4. Develop an action plan with them and help them stick to it.
5. Keep it fun for them.
6. Acknowledge and recognize their achievements, privately and publicly.
7. Never criticize. Instead, commend their achievements, make recommendations and lead by example.
8. Don’t worry about their mistakes. They need to make them. Your role is to help them learn by doing.
9. Overcome any negativity with action plans, tips, training and new ideas.
10. Show them, by example, how to duplicate themselves.
11. Keep dreams alive by constantly reinforcing the big picture.
12. Encourage them to keep setting challenges for themselves.

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One year ago, I wrote a blog post entitled, “A Personal Crossroads : Choosing Light or Darkness:

We have been seduced by the “American Dream” for the past 20+ years, borrowed money we couldn’t afford, bought things we didn’t need and speculated wantonly in the pursuit of more and more. Avarice and stupidity at their respective best. Humanity at it’s collective worst.

So, we are at a crossroads.

My brother-in-law once described the choice we face as follows:  “Can’t keep propping up a dead dog .. At some point you bury it and buy a puppy and raise it differently.”

Are we ready to bury this dead dog? Or will we simply continue to prop it up via additional loans to the Big Three, the banks, over-leveraged credit card holders, … the list continues. At what cost?

Looking a little more deeply, this crossroads and choice is a fundamentally spiritual one.

Some see this as simply the symptoms of another speculative bubble. “The market will correct itself.” The US taxpayer will pay for all of this greed and nothing needs to change. We’ll return to times of plenty once we’ve ridden out this current storm.

I believe we are being given a huge opportunity to change the game. To abandon the dominance of our selfish nature and to embrace a new world where giving back and caring for others is the path to our redemption. We have the opportunity to temper the destructive nature within ourselves where personal gain triumphs over everything else. We are being given the change to balance it with empathy, concern and care for others …

What has transpired over the past year? Did we choose the path of Light? Or did we just continue down the familiar road of Darkness? Here’s an example of this huge game-changing opportunity that I wrote about one year ago:

I’ve written several times about charity:water as they continue to innovate to help the 1 billion people on Earth who do not have access to clean drinking water. It’s a major problem that has major repercussions for health, education, woman’s rights and empowerment across the globe.

Their most recent campaign idea, mycharitywater.org, launched at the end of August.

Their vision was ambitious, crystal clear and simple:

Water changes everything. Our vision is simple and ambitious: clean, safe drinking water for everyone on the planet. Welcome to mycharity: water.

Charity:water built an online fundraising tool that enabled individuals to launch their own personal campaigns to help solve this 1 Billion person problem. Over 17,000 people have launched their own personal campaigns and, as of today, the collective fundraising efforts of these 17,000 people and their personal networks have yielded a phenomenal result:

• $1,024,112 raised
• 16,854 donations received
• Average of $60.76 was donated
• Charity:water’s efficient well-drilling operations ensure that every $20 raised, provides water to one person for 20 years. Thus, the total raised to-date via the mycharitywater campaign will provide 51,205 people with clean, safe drinking water for the next 20 years!

So, do you agree that we’ve chosen the path of Light? Or not? Please provide your feedback below in the comment section.

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We’ve all witnessed the crash-and-burn of Tiger Woods over the past few weeks.

At first his corporate sponsors stood behind him but then in the past few days both Gillette and Accenture have officially dumped him. Nike is still standing by him but that is understandable given that they are more than just sponsors — they have a global business unit producing a range of products with the “TW” brand on them.

The paparazzi have had a field day and Woods’ team is scrambling to stop further stories leaking out … Mistresses being paid off; CNN “Breaking News” coverage … the saga continues …

I’m not going to discuss the psyche of Tiger Woods and what drove him to pursue all his “transgressions.” We all now know that he has decided to take a hiatus from golf to focus his attention on being a better husband, father, and person.

The core issue at play here is integrity – both personal integrity and professional integrity. In our ever-increasingly corrupt world, integrity lies at the heart of Golf. The game is all about the alignment of one’s personal and professional persona.

However, we are all human and by definition we make mistakes. None of us is perfect.

What could have been an alternative outcome?

Tiger Woods and his PR agents don’t appear to be living in our transparent world of social media. Their first reaction was to hide, lie and say nothing, hoping that everything would simply blow over. Sorry, in today’s hyper-connected world, that’s just not going to work. In the absence of the human voice of Tiger Woods, the media and the World were left to fill in the resultant void. A static statement on a website just wasn’t enough.

Instead of refusing to make a statement to the police or to the press, just imagine how differently this could have turned out for Tiger if he had come out and told the truth when he was first released from hospital. Speaking out in a human voice (on TV, in person, on Twitter, on Facebook, on his blog, on Youtube, … there are many channels he could have chosen to expose the truth) and letting the world see him as a vulnerable, open and honest human who made a mistake; admitting it and asking for forgiveness.

Wouldn’t we have forgiven him? Wouldn’t his corporate sponsors have stood behind him? Wouldn’t he still be playing golf?

The lesson: Don’t hide; don’t lie; don’t be quiet. Instead, speak out in a human voice. Reveal your vulnerabilities. Be honest. Be open, Be transparent. Engage in conversation with the World.

Remaining silent in today’s world can be very expensive.

(Update: Tiger’s wife apparently plans to file for divorce in California where any prenuptial agreement will be set aside and she can get half of all that Tiger has)

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Starting on Friday night, December 11, I’ll spend 8 nights lighting candles for Chanukah. Every year, I’m reminded of why these days matter. Because by a miracle, oil enough for one day burned long enough to last eight days. As with our faith, and as with many things in life, a little proved to go a long way.

When I found out that more than a billion people live without clean, safe water every day, I realized Chanukah was the perfect time to start a campaign. A little can go a very long way with water. Just $20 gives someone clean water for twenty years. And just $250 gives two families of six clean water. These are small amounts of cash to us. They are years of life for others.  Donate here!

My goal? I want to raise $1,000 by the time we light the 8th candle on Chanukah. But I need your help. Because of charity: water’s innovative new business model, 100% of every donation funds water projects in the developing world, and each project is “proved” using GPS technology and photos and placed on Google Earth.

Together, we’ll be able to see what we’ve accomplished.

Let’s make our little go a long way. Donate here!

Happy Holidays!

Best,
David

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There has been a lot of positive sentiment recently around the trend of releasing government data to the public. Some prime examples are Washington DC’s Apps for Democracy contest and Toronto’s OpenTO initiative. The noble intentions are to spark innovation, transparency and discovery.

However, here’s a scary tale from the New York Times Magazine’s Ninth Annual Year in Ideas highlighting the dark side of Open Data:

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As we approach the end of another year and the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it is time to celebrate our successes, express our gratitude and share some festive time with our family and friends.

It’s also a time to reflect back and examine the challenges and obstacles that were offered to us. Did we learn, adapt, change and evolve? Did we overcome? Were we able to help others on their journey?

As we enter into the dark Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, this is the season of Light (Christmas, Chanukah.) It’s our time to light up our World – to spread positivity and joy to our individual and collective networks.

In the Jewish tradition, this Friday night we will light the Chanukia, one additional candle every day for eight days. (Here are some insights into the power of Light.)

Whatever you believe or whatever path you follow, the central theme of “Lighting Up The World” applies.

Please join me in spreading some Light to those of us who are less fortunate by donating a few dollars to Charity:Water as they continue their mission of providing clean drinking water to the 1 Billion people who don’t have it.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

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This past week we’ve witnessed a global celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit.  I haven’t slept much all week as I’ve been busy networking, listening, learning and participating in a whole bunch of events in Ontario — Entrepreneurship Week in the Waterloo area, the Ivey Venture Forum in Toronto and SproutUp to name a few.

What a magnificent time for entrepreneurship across the globe!

I’ve been energized and invigorated by the amazing personal stories of discovery, failure, heartache, passion and success of the following people:

• Chris Hughes (cofounder of Facebook, MyBarackObama)
• Ali Asaria (founder of Well.ca)
• Razor Suleman (founder of I Love Rewards)
• Tim Bray (cofounder of Open Text, father of XML and Search)
• Andy Macaulay (founder of Zig)
• Matthew Corrin (founder of Freshii)
• Mitch Wolfe and Emily Rayson (cofounders of bTrendie)

I love looking for patterns and extracting and distilling common themes in life and business and this week certainly has provided much opportunity to do that. Each of the entrepreneurs above come from different backgrounds, different countries and different environments but they all live and breath the following 10 themes:

1. Solving a personal problem in a way that is disruptive and adds meaning to the world – In my opinion, entrepreneurs who are focused on building a solution to a personal problem have a clear advantage over those who aren’t . They have personal experience of the problem and they have built-in, natural  authenticity and a personal, passionate story they can use to rally their teams, attract investors and sell into the market. They’ve experienced something that got under their skin, drove them crazy with frustration and they said, “there must be a better way.”

2. Having a global market for the product or service their building – an obvious one. Entrepreneurs look to achieve success at scale.  This is different from someone who starts a small business to serve a local market and has no desire to grow or expand beyond their local market. There’s nothing wrong this that but it doesn’t fit into the realm of entrepreneurship.

3. Hard work – by definition an entrepreneur is a doer who is self-motivated and isn’t afraid of hard work.  In fact, an entrepreneur doesn’t define what she does as work at all.  When one is aligned with one’s internal mission and focused on achieving the milestones and tasks required to succeed, the “work” becomes a driving force, an all-consuming passion that becomes an obsession.

4. “Just Do It” – There’s a place for planning and strategy but it is meaningless if it not executed.  True entrepreneurs get sh*t done and are naturally oriented to action.  We live in a world of action and to be successful entrepreneurs must be able to conquer their fears, move out of their comfort zone and execute. In today’s world, it is far better to do, test, learn, measure and iterate that to spend time planning and strategizing.

5. Team, hiring and culture – Many of us have failed because we haven’t had the “A” team; have hired the wrong people and have not built a culture of entrepreneurship.  This one is especially close to my heart.  A past company I built was growing rapidly (3x growth) and we needed to scale staff to meet demand.  We hired rapidly and indiscriminately and later almost lost our way as product quality fell, customer service suffered and profitability took a hit because we had not hired “A” players and had not built the right culture or processes. Razor Suleman from I Love Rewards and Matthew Corrin from Freshii both related their own experiences that mirrored my own past experiences.

6. Scarcity and abundance – Entrepreneurs thrive in an environment of scarcity: scarcity of time; scarcity of capital and scarcity of resources.  When startups raise too much capital (which would seem to be a good thing on the surface) they can often lose their focus and go down a path of self-destruction. There are many classic examples of this in the pre-NASDAQ meltdown of the late 1990s where VC money flowed in abundance.  Razor Suleman spoke about what happened at I Love Rewards in 2006 when they suddenly received several million dollars of VC money.  They had already experienced several quarters of positive cash flow and when the VC money flowed in, they decided to spend it on a cool new office space and new “cool stuff.” Razor spoke about how destructive this was to his business and how they suddenly started burning cash and almost lost their way before course correcting themselves back to profitability.  Extreme discipline and focus is needed to counter our natural tendency to relax and lose focus when we’re suddenly surrounded by abundance – it’s a part of human nature that is hard to conquer.

7. Business model focused on profitability – many of the entrepreneurs spoke about their focus on getting paying customers; their focus on the numbers and their focus on tracking and managing the key business metrics to drive towards profitability.  In my opinion, I think it is very healthy that the current scarcity of VC money and the global recession has brought us back to the key driver of entrepreneurial effort – making a profit.  Some may disagree and say that startups need to focus on scale / building a user base / a community and that profitability will follow.  Both top line and bottom line are important.

8. Speed and agility – Tim Bray spoke about the need for speed and agility.  This is especially important in the world of Internet-based startups that are developing software platforms.  In today’s world of open-source technology (e.g. Ruby on Rails), Facebook, Twitter and Ning, startups are able to build prototypes very quickly and build community very quickly. It’s the perfect environment to do rapid prototyping, test, learn and iterate. Speed and agility are key competitive advantages that are being used to great effect. This also works really well in a scarcity market because you can get into market with a minimal investment. I recommend looking at Eric Ries and his “lean startup” philosophy to learn more about rapid prototyping and fast cycle times for both product development and customer development.  One of my favorite mantras is, “Innovation is failure sped up.”  Success comes to those who can learn quickly from failure. The faster you can operate, the faster you can learn and the faster you can get to success.

9. Tie into the megatrends of the day, as many as possible.  Most, if not all, of the startups I saw this week are tapping into the 10 global megatrends discussed here.

10. Luck – after all of the previous 9, luck still plays a key part in whether an entreprise is successful or not.  It was very refreshing to hear Chris Hughes and others talk about the fact that luck played a key part in their success.  Howard Hughes’ famous quote, “Wake up early; work hard; strike oil” is eternally valid.  The first two are essential ingredients for success and are in the control of the entrepreneur but the last one still has an element of luck attached to it.

The world is full of hungry, passionate entrepreneurs and I feel privileged and grateful to be living in this time of huge change and opportunity.

So, that’s what I got out of this past week and I’d love to get your feedback and comments – do you agree? disagree? What would you add?

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