I recently received my private pilot license. It feels great to be able to fly like a [noisy] bird; I can’t wait to go on bay tours and longer cross country flights.

One thing that kept me focused during the learning period was to maintain a document that captures everything I learned. It’s like the Cliff’s Notes of a private pilot course, and I decided to make it available to other student pilots. You can download it here. It wasn’t reveiewed by anyone yet, so don’t treat it as the single source or truth. If you find any mistake, by all means - let me know.

Many of the qualities that make a good pilot also define outstanding managers and leaders. Product managers in particular can benefit from learning to fly. Taking your product off the ground is not an easy feat, and learning to fly can hone your skills and help you excel. Here’s a list of ten skills you’ll get better at while learning to fly:

1)      Risk management. Managers take calculated risks all the time, and so do pilots. The consequences of miscalculating business risk are often severe; pilot errors can be catastrophic. Learning to manage risk and optimize reward is an invaluable skill.

2)      Appreciating the value of time. You quickly learn that time is money when each hour costs you around $100 plus instructor fees. Plan wisely and make the most out of the time and resources you have at your disposal, or you’ll end up wasting loads of money.

3)      Healthy fear. When you’re the single pilot in a single engine airplane, mistakes can be fatal or just very expensive. This is a good forcing function for keeping you on your toes and ensuring you do your absolute best at every situation.

4)      Attention to detail. Cutting corners, hoping for miracles, and ignoring the facts are all very dangerous when flying and while managing and organization. There’s no substitute for facing reality and paying attention to every little detail.

5)      Planning ahead. A flight plan is much like a product road map in that it deals with optimizing resource use in order to reach a well defined goal. Having a plan B in case something goes wrong is a good practice.

6)      Be flexible. Even the best plan often fails and has to be altered. Plan B may be obsolete by the time you need it. Being able to quickly adapt and correct your course is an essential skill.

7)      Coordination. Being able to control your aircraft at various conditions is key. Same with an organization you manage - coordinating the various functions and balancing the forces that act on it and within it is key to success.

8)      Technical aptitude. Understanding what’s going on under the hood is very important. Being hands-on is even better. The higher you are in the corporate ladder the less you’re expected to know about the technicalities, but some managers (like this guy) have been known for being very particular about them.

9)      Continuous Learning. A good pilot is always learning. You can never rest on your laurels and assume you know everything. This is true in any endeavor. It’s particularly important for managers to keep abreast of new information and trends.

10)   Stabilization. Inherently stable systems take less effort to control. If you manage to bring your organization to a state in which - just like an airplane - it follows the same trajectory when no force is applied on the controls, you gained yourself considerable peace of mind. When the route changes, course corrections have to be made, but a well structured organization will stabilize quickly again.

For many of years, bookstores and libraries played a significant role in the lives of many people including yours truly. We even have a special word for them: “bookstore” (one word) as opposed “barber shop” or “shoe store”. Due to our increasing reliance on electronic media, bookstores are rapidly disappearing. Most small ones are already gone, and larger ones are gradually following suit.

So, what’s next? Where will we browse through books? How will we get a sense of what’s interesting, and more importantly - how will we get that “bookshelf level” breadth of view that seems to only be possible in a bookstore? Electronic books answer these questions through searching, filtering, and viewing recommendation. The technology works seamlessly on the Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and other e-readers, and I believe the written word has a great future indeed.

Before paper books vanish from the face of the earth, though, someone has to solve the following problems:

Book lending: Libraries are evolving to feature more internet stations and such, but how will a library look like without printed books? Like a coffee shop? Indeed, some libraries have opened coffee shops to lure visitors. Still, it’s not clear how e-books will support lending and borrowing.

Used books: This market will die, but the popularity of new books will follow the same decreasing curve it has been following for decades. What to do with less popular books? Sell them for half/quarter/eighth of an already low price?

Hanging out, sipping latte, and browsing books: Borders (RIP) and Barnes & Noble have coffee shops inside their stores, but they won’t last long. Coffee shops can carry loaner iPads and Kindles with limited access to e-books, magazines, and news sources. Most people who hang out at coffee shops bring a laptop or an iPad anyway, so I’m not sure it’ll fly.

Touching and smelling printed books: People will probably have to get used to touching and smelling other things.

Home bookshelves: It’s hard to impress your friends with your collection of Kindle books, unless you have a collection of Kindles to show for (but that can get quite expensive). Ikea re-purposing their iconic bookshelves must signal the end of an era.

Coffee table books. Put a couple of iPads at the dentist’s waiting area? Not a bad idea.

You know those people who use curse words not to insult anyone but to emphasize their message? Like a respected business man who says f%$! every few minutes in a conversation about oil futures or hiring or saving panda bears. A young mother of three living in a posh neighborhood who spices up her endless blurb about shopping and nail salons and house maids with an occasional curse.

I’ve been puzzled by this behavior for years. Why did these words, which cause a strong, often negative reaction in many people become such a common part of our language? Thinking about this it dawned on me that this is just a defense mechanism like being cynical or condescending. They swear in order to hide something. I’m not talking about people who suffer from Tourette syndrome (or more accurately, Coprolalia) - just normative folks who use expletives often, hiding fears or insecurities. By revealing part of their inner self and exposing their weakness they give us an opportunity to leverage what we have just learned about them.

One option is to help them. Try to figure out what’s on their mind, what’s bothering them, intimidating them, or stressing them out. Then see how you can help by making it easier for them to handle the situation. Offering a solution is probably the wrong thing to do – just be a good listener.

You can use your newly gained understanding to disarm them, helping them calm down. It might be that they got used to cussing all day and are completely oblivious to the root cause. It is down there somewhere, though, and if you can help them pinpoint it you would do them a great favor.

Another option is to use their weakness to your benefit. In a negotiation setting, when the other side utters the F word, try to quickly figure out what they are insecure about - or better - why they are insecure about it. They are probably angry (or pretending to be), banging on the table and trying to intimidate you into submission. Don’t give up; the curse word is your trigger. Leverage what your opponent just revealed about themselves and get a leg up on them.

Whatever you do remember that if you’re an expletivist yourself others can use these techniques against you, so you better learn to control yourself before they do.

Last year I wrote about Science Olympiad, an amazing science-focused competition for middle and high school kids.  I was surprised by the fact that the vast majority of participants were Asian, and was quite happy to see that this population group cares about their children’s future and is connected to the global reality, in which engineers and scientists drive innovation.

This year, you could barely find a white person in the audience. Try to look for them in the picture above. These blond people in the top row? they’re immigrants from Sweden. As the 2010 census indicates, white people are leaving the Bay Area en masse. Even with this trend in mind, I can’t explain the dearth of non-Asian’s at Science Olympiad. I’m pretty sure the population makeup is similar in other science related events. While this spells bad news to white children and their parents, it’s great for Silicon Valley at large. Research shows that immigrants are more likely to be entrepreneurs, especially in the valley.

As I said last year: “I’ve seen the future of Silicon Valley, and I’m happy to report that it’s multicultural, passionate, and hard working.”

In late December I was awarded US Patent 7,860,673 - Distance Measuring Device. I essentially patented the use of a parallax to measure distances from the user to a nearby object using a simple device that can be manufactured for a very low cost. First conceived when I was 17 years old, I kept toying with the idea and entertaining the thought of patenting it for years. A lawyer friend helped me write the patent application 5 years ago. It was a very interesting exercise in turning an abstract idea to a formal patent applications written in legalese, complete with claims, drawings, and calculations. Following a long review process and after hiring a professional patent attorney to fight a prior-art claim, the patent was finally approved.

What should I do with this patent now? not sure. Devices based on it can measure distances alright, but nowhere near the accuracy required for serious usage. I’m thinking about turning it into an educational toy and selling it online and at science museum stores. It can be a great tool for teaching the parallax effect and geometrical optics in general. Doing this will force me continue this multi-year exercise and complete the invention process by commercializing it. Should be an interesting ride.

Science Olympiad is a competition for middle and high school students who get excited by math and science. These are the geeks and hackers of our future; the kids who are good at math and are not ashamed of it. Last Saturday I attended the Bay Area competition, where 500 or so kids competed in events like Science Crime Busters, Ornithology, and Mousetrap Vehicle. Plenty of excitement and love for math and science seen in broad daylight on a weekend; not a common sight.

The picture above is from the closing ceremony. What do we see here? the future of Silicon Valley. Look closely – who do you see in the picture? Happy kids and families from Asia, mainly China and India. This is a self selecting group of people who demonstrate their love for science and math through their deeds, not their words or good intentions. And where are the Caucasians and other ethnicities hiding? They aren’t hiding, they simply didn’t bother to show up. An event like this would interrupt their busy Saturday schedules, and besides, it’s so un-cool. The entire crowd had maybe 10 non Asians.

Why does it matter? It doesn’t, really, but isn’t it amazing that they amounted to about 2% of the crowd, an order of magnitude less than their makeup in the Bay Area population?

I risk sounding racist here, but nothing is farther from the truth. I’m writing this out of sheer admiration to the Asian parents who encourage their kids to participate in the Science Olympiad. Largely an immigrant generation, they made it to the US by virtue of their education, not through a birthright. These brave people arguably understand the value of education far better than the “natives”. Being enterprising newcomers, they leverage the excellent schools and the volunteer workforce to better their children’s future.

I’ve seen the future of Silicon Valley, and I’m happy to report that it’s multicultural, passionate, and hard working. I’m so glad that at least one group of people cares enough about science and math, as this is the greatest hope for this area and indeed the entire country.