ballve Goto Github PK

👋
Hi, I’m @ballve

I. BIO: In the past I've worked as a restaurant busser, grocery cashier, banquet caterer, and Christmas-store stocker; at one point, I was a wire-service stringer, reporter, and editor. I spent a few years working at the AP's Caribbean and Brazil bureaus. Later, I also wrote and edited for Pacific News Service and New America Media. Along the way, I published articles in outlets like The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and reported on the Honduras coup for the PBS NewsHour.

One time, I was mugged at knife-point in the morning, and detained by Brazil's FBI in the afternoon, in the course of a single day while working on assignment in the Amazon Basin. The agents showed up at my hotel, asked me to get in a tiny two-door car with them, and took me to their dark office downtown. There, they said they wanted to know "what the hell I was doing in their country." The day before, I had cold-called a General while reporting my story on the militarization of the Amazon. Maybe that had something to do with it?

After getting married and having a kid, I decided on more sedentary work, and I went to graduate school on a fellowship, where I finally learned a bit about numbers, mainly through the lens of economics. After Columbia, I was named founding editor of Business Insider's first subscription product: a tech-research service called BI Intelligence. Then I built CB Insights's research team from a rag-tag group of three people into a department of more than 40 research analysts, editors, and managers.

Today, I head research at a seed-stage VC fund called Terra Nova.

II. INTERESTS: I’m interested in the future, the history of computing and the Web, and reading, buying, and keeping too many books

III. SELF-EXHORTATIONS: You won't get anywhere with recursive internal thought loops. Learn by publishing, and learn by tinkering. Action is the thing, i.e. shipping. Also: Other people! They are always worth getting out of your head for.

IV. RFP: I’m always looking to collaborate with a technical teams building in areas related to knowledge, knowledge management, and intel/insight products.

V. CONTACT: How to reach me: Here is fine, but more immediate is my email, which is [email protected], and I am also ballve on Twitter, etc.