Keep these tips in mind to make sure your vacation isn’t a waste of coin:

Be prepared.

Maybe you’ve watched too many movies, but for some reason you have it in your head that everything will unfold smoothly once you arrive. All you need to do is parachute in with a rucksack and an assured outlook on life and you’ll instantly be ushered into an affordable, comfortable hostel and bump into a shy, but quirky and cute local girl who will act as your interpreter and personal guide. That may happen if you set out on your journey without a game plan, but a more likely scenario involves you, alone, in the train station, ten minutes to closing without a euro or a clue.This can be a wee bit stressful.

Instead of dropping yourself immediately into emergency mode, where you’ll be desperate enough to pay exorbitant prices for any available taxi or bed, have some of the basics mapped out and booked before you arrive. Yes, you could ask around town until you stumble upon the best deals, but, amazingly enough, most of the legwork can be done from home, seeing as you obviously have Internet access. (Or did you get someone to print this article for you? Tree-waster.) Researching hotels at sites like hotels.com or venere.com or ricksteves.com can easily be done during your lunch break at the office, weeks or months in advance – you know, when you’re not in a foreign land, jet-lagged and lugging 80 pounds of luggage.

Do as much planning as possible ahead of time. Consider yourself a military operative with a clear objective: relax, have fun. Your mission is only to execute the orders delineated at HQ, not to cook up directives on the fly. Have a plan of attack before you touch down so you can go about the business of chilling on autopilot. Find a couple good restaurants, figure out where to change your money, find a place to stay (at least for the first few nights), read a recent guide book cover-to-cover, print off a map and a bus or train schedule before you hop a plane. Take care of the basics – once you are oriented and have a place to stash your stuff and sleeping body, then you can start winging it.

Remember: You are visiting a foreign nation, not an amusement park. You aren’t guaranteed fun if you haven’t planned for it, and no one is going to go out of their way to keep you smiling except you.

Stop being a sitcom male and ask a damn stranger for help.

Even a former Boy Scout won’t be prepared for everything. When you roll into town, straight off the boat, there is likely going to be something that throws you for a loop. Maybe something has changed since your guidebook was published or perhaps you have no freaking clue how to get into the pay toilet. Don’t sit there like a tourist consulting your guidebook in a crowded train station when you can easily reach out to any number of strangers bustling about you. Someone who lives there will have far more information than the intern that was sent by Lonely Planet to scope out Gare du Nord.

I know, I know, you’re a man and you ain’t never asked for nothing from nobody. A snow leopard could rip the arm from your socket and you wouldn’t so much ask for a band aid. But here’s the thing: being lost in a foreign country is an entirely different universe than being lost on the interstate in Ohio. You need to ask for help.

Memorize key phrases such as, “Excuse me, where is the tourist information center?” and “Where is this train headed?” and “Where is [my hotel]?” Also note that most employees in Western European countries do speak English, but they’d really prefer that you at least try to speak their language, even if all you can say in their native tongue is, “Excuse me, I am a silly monolingual American, please, do you speak English?”

And for God’s sake, don’t resort to the slow, loud-talking, wildly gesticulating attempts at communication that some hapless tourists adopt. For one, the person you are trying to speak to is merely Spanish or Italian or German, not deaf, and also, even if they can’t understand your words, they can read your tone loud and clear and if you sound annoyed and condescending, they’ll feel less obliged to help you. Locals in the know are your saviors when you are in a jam, and getting on their good side requires a dose of humility and patience.

Budget like a bean counter and then spend like a jackass.

One big problem with vacations is that they are expensive. It’s expensive to get there, and, at least recently, with the dollar in the doldrums, it’s expensive to do everything else once you arrive. Knowing this can throw a wet soggy blanket on your fun factor. If you’re the fiscally responsible spendthrift that I think you are, you are likely to feel every euro or pound that passes through your fingers and wince at the thought of spending so much per day.

Budgeting on the fly leads to one of two major hang ups: either you overspend to the point that you run out of money before you get home (”C’mon, I’m on vacation” is the argument here) or you underspend for fear of breaking the bank and miss out on a one-of-a-kind experience.

Read the rest of this article at Primer Magazine.

We know already: your boss sucks, your salary sucks, your co-workers suck, your commute sucks, your benefits suck, heck, with so much suck in the room it’s starting to feel a little bit like you suck. Loathing your job, it seems, is par for the course. But does it have to be? If it feels like you have a potential “case of the Mondays,” and are having trouble stomaching the ol’ rat race, you should consider some lessons from some actual rats.

Check this out.

Some disturbingly sadistic scientists took three rats and put them each in a little box-like container. You could almost call it a cube, or maybe even a cubicle. These three rats were walled off in their little cubes with nothing but their tails sticking out. For 21 hours, the scientists administered shocks to the rats at random intervals. All the rats received the same amount of shocks – however, one of the rats had the ability to deactivate the shocks by pressing a button. He quickly figures this out and whenever the shocks come, he starts pounding away at that little button. The other rat, meanwhile, is getting shocked off and on and has no clue what’s going on.

At the end of the study, the scientists compared the amount of “stomach lesions” (i.e. ulcers) each rat developed due to the shocks. As it turns out, although both Rat A and Rat B received the same amount of shocks, Rat B had twice as many ulcers as Rat A. (Rat C, by the way, was a control rat. He’s just chillin’ and has no ulcers.)

So, what’s the X factor? Control.

Look – everyone has to work to make a living (except, of course, the trust fund babies who live off of mommy and daddy for their entire lives – but I know none of those types read Primer). We all put in our 40+ hours a week, we all get shafted by middle management, we all get our thunder stolen from co-workers. In short, we all get the same level of shocks in our little cubicle.

But the key to escaping the pain and suffering of a workaday existence isn’t crying to your LiveJournal about being passed up for a promotion or boring your date with epic complaints about the smarmy IT guy who keeps deleting your iTunes. The only way out is to gain control over the stressors in your career. For the rat, control was given to him by his quasi-benevolent overlords. But you’re a man, not a mouse. And it’s your job to seize control. Here’s how to do it:

Change Your Outlook

Stress is a mental thing. As we learned from the rats, it’s not about how many shocks you receive, it’s how you respond to the shocks. Poor Rat B rightfully considered himself a victim, subjected to a cruel, unusual and inexplicable regimen of torture. And this is how many disgruntled workers view their situation.

This may or may not be true. If it is, you should go ahead and skip down to the last section. But chances are, it’s not. We largely focus on the frustrations surrounding our jobs and often ignore the value of our toil. Instead of loathing your cubicle as a prison, you really should be rejoicing for the freedom it grants you. The freedom to pay the rent, stay out of debt, pay off student loans, go out drinking with friends, buy an X-Box, rent movies, go on dates. All of that takes money and that’s what your job gives you. In this economy especially, you should be thankful for being privileged with a job to complain about.

In spite of how you may feel, your job is not slavery. You are, in essence, selling your time. And depending on your line of work, you are leasing your mind and body as well. This is all part of the arrangement. This is what you signed up for. From 9 to 5, you aren’t you. You are your occupation – you’re a customer service rep, a programmer, a janitor or whatever it is that you agreed to be in exchange for cash. It doesn’t matter where your loyalties lie or what your ideals are or how bored you are, because for those 8 hours a day, you are a mercenary. It’s unpleasant to think of it this way, but it may help you from feeling victimized.

With that being said, make clear divisions between work and personal life. Don’t bring your frustrations home with you. Don’t log into Outlook from your apartment. Dedicate yourself fully to your job when you’re there and dedicate yourself fully to your personal life when you’re not. Because if you let them invade your private space, then you are basically giving them more of your time and energy than you bargained for.

Think of it this way: when you’re punched in, you’re playing a role. Alexandra Levitt mentions something like this in her book, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College. She calls it a “corporate persona.” This is the professional version of yourself that only cares about doing your job and serving the company. At the end of the day, go ahead and feel free to take the mask off.

Change Your Expectations

What have you learned after five grueling years at the same job? Are the same things ticking you off? Are the same people grinding your gears? If so, then there’s something you need to understand: you can’t change people.

Read the rest of this article at Primer Magazine.

When I first agreed to be someone’s husband, I knew I was in for trying times. Accordingly, I steeled myself by researching solutions to problems I assumed husbands faced: picking out an engagement ring, cooking up whiz bang proposal ideas, learning how to smoke cigars and appreciating football.

But as it turned out, every aspect surrounding marriage that I thought would be an issue worked itself out naturally while everything that I never considered turned out to be a challenge for which I was wholly unprepared. All in all, I learned that getting married and staying that way takes more than wearing a tux for one day and hiring a DJ. But I also learned that some of the changes that I dreaded as a bachelor turned out to be surprisingly okay.

Here are some of the pleasant and not-so pleasant surprises I’ve encountered so far:

Meet the Parents

Pleasant: It ain’t so bad.

I don’t care how rich Ben Stiller got by playing off stereotypes about in-laws: my wife’s family rocks. Sitcoms and the big screen like to instill an inordinate amount of trepidation when it comes to meeting the extended family of your future spouse. I think it might be one of the foundations of bad situation comedy along with getting trapped in a walk-in cooler with your arch-nemesis or an “intimate gathering” turning into a raucous house party (subsequently joined by a pop punk band, a dude carrying a keg on his shoulder, the pizza delivery guy, the cops and then the parents home early from their cruise).

That’s not to say that there aren’t some differences between my wife’s family and mine. They are Catholic, I am (sort of) Episcopalian. The men in her family are engineers and the men in mine are English majors. Her dad likes Rush Limbaugh, I like Ira Glass. My family functions are tame, wine-sipping, screened-in porch affairs that wind down around 9pm while hers are boom-ba stickin’ all night polka parties.

You’d think that these were the makings of a semi-hilarious box office smash, but they aren’t. Because all it boils down to is that we are family and we treat each other as such. And if either of our respective families were the type to violently or passive aggressively haze a guest, then chances are we wouldn’t have made it into adulthood with our sanities intact anyway.

Not-so Pleasant: More birthdays, more weddings, more funerals.

The downside of doubling your familial connections is that you are also doubling your obligations. I often find myself at a birthday party and shaking the hand of the wrong person, or meeting someone for the first time at their wedding reception or, worse, at their visitation. I’ve also had to cancel a couple nights out with the boys because my wife’s great aunt’s second cousin was in town for the week and we were all going for brunch.

But on the flip-flip-side, I’ve been getting a lot more birthday cards than when I was single. These issues of unfamiliarity with my new found kin are just a matter of the connections being new. Some of the gestures that my new extended family have made in order to get to know me have been quite surprising and touching: receiving a congratulation card for a new job, housewarming gifts and showing a general interest in what I do (which I’m not really sure what that is), for example.

Bottom-line: Meeting new people with different values and different ideas is, surprisingly, not that bad of a thing. If you find yourself unable to be cordial with someone who is a little different than yourself then I’d say you have some more deeply-seated issues than merely being a fish out of water.

Read the rest of this article at Primer Magazine.

The months leading up to this past November were marked with many prophecies and promises from both sides. While some seemed well founded and others a bit more far fetched, all the rhetoric slung one way or the other was meant to do one primary thing: stir up hopes and fears.

Now that the votes are all tallied up and the transition is underway, those that voted for the next President of the United States may see their dreams coming into clearer focus while those that adamantly voted against him may have the prickling feeling that their worst nightmares are coming true.

But whether you view Obama as the liberal messiah or the bogeyman, there is some writing on the wall that is likely to be baloney.

Here’s a quick sample of some of the things that are unlikely to happen once Obama takes the helm:

One surefire way to win a popularity contest in the 2000s was to stand against republican President George W. Bush. Both political sides offered a veritable all-you-can-eat buffet of change (”Change We Need,” “Change We Can Believe In,” “Ready for Change!”) which made many voters assume that Obama will work to undo one of Bush’s most unpopular moves: The War in Iraq.

Though President-Elect Obama’s campaign website asserts that action on Iraq will be taken “immediately upon taking office,” the rest of the wording is a bit more wishy-washy. The rest of the promise goes like this: “Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: successfully ending the war. Removal of troops will be responsible and phased.” With so many caveats and qualifiers, the sentiment would have been more succinctly stated: “We sure would like to end the war in Iraq.”

Who is to say what qualifies as “responsible,” and how long a “phase” will be? (For example, I know some people who have been in the “phase” of adolescence for decades.) And regarding “successful,” we know from experience how effective simply declaring a mission accomplished prematurely can be. It’s unlikely that the next administration will make the same mistake, and will instead opt to stick to their guns until victory can be declared unequivocally (a seemingly impossible task in itself).

But the real bugger to those who voted for peace will be the fact that Obama hasn’t been shy about his plans to trade one war for another, possibly more. In speeches during his campaign, Obama promised to “shift the focus of the war on terror to Afghanistan and Pakistan,” where our troops would attempt to engage Al Qaeda more directly, according to a Politico news report from July 15, 2008.

So while the right wing opposition may have mocked Obama for being “too soft” on terrorism, and the left had its hopes up for a full withdrawal, the likely scenario will be neither/nor.

American’s are prone to buy when they panic. And when rumors started circulating that Obama was going to put an end to those salad day’s when getting your trigger-happy paws on a gun was as easy as signing up for a checking account or buying a car, well, let’s say some of us panicked.

According to a CNN report from November 11, 2008, the FBI received “more than 374,000 requests for background checks on gun purchasers” the week Obama was elected, which was “a nearly 49 percent increase over the same period in 2007.” Anticipation of our new Democratic administration caused a bigger spike in boom stick buys than fear of a digital apocalypse, impending terrorist attacks and cataclysmic natural disaster, a gun shop owner told CNN.

So what’s scarier than all that? What do American’s fear more than threats against our cities, Casio calculators and the well being of our families and colleagues? Taxes.

A little bird (i.e. the NRA) began whispering (i.e. spending $15 million) to the public that Obama was “a serious threat to Second Amendment liberties.” One favorite shocking factoid that loves to get forwarded in emails is that Obama “endorsed a 500 percent increase in the federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition.” Wowzers.

(By the way, the comment was to raise the tax by 500 percent not to 500 percent. So, that would be boosting the current federal rate of 10 percent to 50 percent. By comparison, the $2.57 tax on a $4.00 pack of Pall Malls in New Jersey is a 64 percent tax.)

So, what appeared to be a hostile taking up of arms against a historic shift in power was really, in a way, just Americans sniffing out bargains as usual. Rumors of tax hikes simply made firearms the next Wii Fit or Tickle Me Elmo.

Only time will tell what Obama will do about ammo taxes, but according to his presidential campaign, it seems like it’s likely to be “not much,” mostly on account of bigger fish needing to be fried. The NRA cites a December 13, 1999 Chicago Defender article for the 500 percent figure where Obama did indeed comment at an anti-gun rally that, among other measures, he was “seeking to increase the federal taxes by 500 percent on the sale of firearm ammunition.” However, Obama wasn’t even running for president at the time, as he was just beginning his second term as an Illinois senator. In a more recent Q and A from OnTheIssues.org, during his run for president, markedly less radical standpoints were taken on gun control and the 500 percent hike hasn’t been specifically mentioned since.

Read the rest of this article at Primer Magazine.

No matter how civilized and urbane you may believe you are, there are certain primal urges that you undoubtedly share with your hairy-knuckled ancestors. (That is, if you believe in all that evolution jazz. If not, you should just stop reading now and hang out with that guy who’s all “Bueller…Bueller…Bueller.”)

Even James Bond acts on instinct while bedding buxom beauties from beyond the British border – and he wears a suit most of the time. Although he’s spent years refining his distinguished taste for shaken martinis, many factors contributing to his taste in women were simply handed down through evolution – just like yours.

Here are a few ways that our notion of sex appeal is hardwired into our systems:

Eyes

Let’s say you are a gentleman, and when asked, “What’s the first thing that attracted you to her?” you answer, tactfully: “Her eyes.” Eyes, we all know, are the windows to the soul, and this is what we are attempting to say when we lie about love at first sight. Rather than admit that you were initially stirred from across the bar by more animal lusts, it is nicer for everyone to believe that your connection was built on soulful insight. But there may be more truth to that than you realize.

Much of the important communication between humans is neither verbal nor even conscious. When chatting about jobs, hometowns and hobbies, the question we are really asking is simply “Can I trust you?” True, finding out someone makes their living by stealing identities may be a game changer, but for the most part, the answers to small-talk questions themselves don’t help us reach this conclusion nearly as much as the manner in which they are answered. Our face-to-face interactions are more about reading the subtle cues – fidgeting hands, shifty eyes, pursed lips – than parsing the meanings of words. It’s what Steven B. Johnson, author of “Mind Wide Open” calls “mind sight.” From a New York Times review of the book:

Even before we can talk, almost all of us know how to read subtle hints in the faces, voices and gestures of the people who hover around our cribs. That is, we can do by instinct what neuroscientists are just learning to do with scanners and monitors. [...] Our innate ability to read people’s faces is outside conscious thought. As with breathing or swallowing, we can’t explain how we do it.

Eyes are the main event in a one-on-one mind reading session. And we tend to like them big and open, with long lashes and steady, yet responsive, gazes. Those with beady eyes or dodgy glances come off – sometimes wrongly – as hard to read, and therefore, perhaps untrustworthy. Someone you can’t read is someone you can’t trust which is decidedly unsexy. Unless, of course, mystery is your thing. But in the grand scheme of reproduction – the whole point of this mating ritual – feeling like a person is honest and reliable will be an important feature when choosing a potential parent of your offspring.

Exoticness and Genetic Diversity

A lot of the criteria described herein hinges upon the advantage of genetic diversity. Essentially, this means that in order to survive a changing environment, a species must adapt. And the adaption of a population relies upon individuals choosing genetically dissimilar mates. For the purpose of this article, that’s all you need to know and you can skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to hear any more evolutionary gibbly goop.

The opposite of biologically diverse would be a monoculture, which is most identifiable (and problematic) in agriculture. Monocultures are susceptible to disease, because if one plant contracts it, it will quickly spread throughout the population which is comprised of identically vulnerable plants. For a human example, take the case of sickle cell anemia and malaria in West Africa. In this situation, there were three types of genetic makeups: those with two copies of genes mutated for sickle cell anemia, those with one sickle-cell gene, and those with no sickle cell genes. The first group suffered from sickle cell but was immune to malaria, and the third group succumbed to malaria but had no symptoms of sickle cell anemia. Meanwhile, the second group was immune to malaria but had low enough symptoms from sickle cell anemia that they survived. If the first group and the third group would have never mingled, then the second group wouldn’t have existed to carry on. So, it all comes back to that first rule of investing: diversify.

In spite of all these scientific studies, chances are you don’t go out on the town with genetic diversity on your mind (”Dude, get a load of that honey, she is mad genetically dissimilar to me. Mm!”). But there are ways that our sexual proclivities nudge us towards novel genes. For instance, consider accents. Every guy has his favorite sexy accent – be it the staid British intonations of Keira Knightley, the fiery Latina syllables of Shakira, or the French phonology of Audrey Tautou. The likely reason why exoticism is a turn-on? Simple – if a woman hails from a faraway land, you can bet that she comes from a drastically different gene pool than you. Plus, if a parent is a world-traveler, there’s a better chance that little versions of you will begin popping up on further corners of the globe.

Read the rest of this piece at Primer Magazine.

Do you know how to pick a good stock? In the unlikely case that you answered yes to that question, then I’ve got another one for you: are you among the less than 4 percent of stockpickers that will beat the market over a span of 50 years? If it’s a yes to that one, too, then I congratulate you and wish you well in your burgeoning career as a high flying money manager. If you’re among the vast majority of those that answered no to both, don’t worry – we can still make you a millionaire by 60.

Of course, there are many routes that theoretically lead to big money – clamor your way up the corporate ladder, join a pyramid scheme, murder your brother and marry his wife – but if you’re like me, you prefer the method that doesn’t require any work or bloodshed. Luckily, a fella named John Bogle invented a thing called an “index fund” just for guys like you and me.

What’s an index fund?

An index fund is a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the movements of a stock market index. You’ve heard of stock market indices: Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI), Nikkei 225 (N225), Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500) and the FTSE 100 (”footsie”), for example. An index is meant to provide a snapshot of a market sector’s performance. In most cases, the media cites indices to report on the overall health of the economy. We all know that a headline reading “Dow Jones down over 500 points” translates to “We’re boned!” whereas “Dow Jones up a bajillion percent” means “Drinks on me!”

The stocks that make up an index are typically picked by committee (subjectively) or by a set of rules (objectively). The S&P 500 is composed by committee, with analysts picking the 500 stocks that they believe best represent certain industries based on the GICS. For example, Tyson Foods is included in the S&P 500 representing the “consumer staples” sector while Microsoft is included representing “information technology.” The Russel Indexes, on the other hand, are selected based on objective criteria, with the Russell 3000 Index being composed of the largest 3,000 companies in the U.S. by market capitalization (estimated value of a company by multiplying the share price by the number of outstanding shares).

A mutual fund is, essentially, a pile of money collected from various investors (you and me) and given to a money manager who chooses which stocks to buy. Most mutual funds have clearly delineated strategies and target certain sectors. Basically, instead of your investment being at the mercy of one stock’s gyrations, you are spreading your bets over several stocks. But really, you are simply betting on the man who is managing your money. And you’re paying him hefty management fees for it, too. Which is fair, really – that guy (or group of guys and gals and sometimes robots) have to pore over pages and pages of research and cut through all the corporate PR bullshit to find the healthiest stocks. The name of the game is “beat the market” and it’s hard work. It’s estimated that fewer than 20 percent of mutual funds outperform the market each year.

By now, you’ve probably figured it out. If the Wall Street kids are reinventing the wheel and still losing to the market, why not just invest in the market? That’s what an index fund does. Instead of busting duff to sleuth out stellar stocks, an index fund simply plunks money down in the stocks that the thinktanks at the likes of Dow Jones and S&P have already spotlighted. And because most of the hard work is already done, the management fees are bargain bin affordable while the investment is nest egg reliable.

Wait, reliable? Really?

Believe it or not, yes, index funds are a safe bet. I know that the news is constantly sounding the alarm on market dips and, yeah, we’ve had a recession, depression or crisis here and there, but historically, the market has steadily been on the up and up.

For example, Vanguard’s 500 Index (based off of S&P 500) has returned 9.84 percent since inception in 1976. (Compare that, also, to the highest savings account percentage I’ve ever seen: 3.00 percent.) As long as you are in this for the long run, you have virtually nothing to worry about. Of course, you’ll want to diversify to some degree (there is the old advice: “own your age in bonds”) but if you can spare $83 bucks per paycheck (paid bi-weekly, that’s about $2,000 a year) you can be well on your way to being a millionaire by 65 (60 if you start early).

Punch some numbers into Fidelity’s Growth Calculator and see for yourself:

• Start with an initial balance of $10,000. (Optimistic, maybe, but hopefully someone’s been saving on your behalf.)
• Contribute $2,000 a year. (Depending on how you do this, it’s tax free.)
• Invest in an index fund at about a 9.00 percent rate of return. (Like the aforementioned Vanguard 500 Index)
• Let it stew for 40 years. (Beginning at age 20 and investing until 60)
• Come out with $1,050,678

Now, of course, there’s other factors to think about, such as taxes, management fees and inflation, but you get the idea. Play with the numbers a bit and you’ll notice that:

• The sooner you start, the more you’ll make. (Einstein called compound interest the “most powerful force in the universe,” only half-jokingly.)
• The more you begin with, the more you’ll make.
• Even a small contribution – especially made early – will make a sizable difference to the final number.

Even when times are tough economically, it’s well worth it to squirrel away as much as you can. Those nickels and dimes that might buy you a pounder of PBR today can snowball into a comfy retirement tomorrow.

Read the frest of the article at Primer Magazine.

Chug, chug, SQUEAL! Hear that? Chugga sliiide. That’s the sound of Metal Tuesday – the day of the week when all Electric Owl Studios employees are required to rock out to heavy metal for the entire day. Stuff like this isn’t exactly standard operating procedure in a typical office – but it is for the next generation of start-ups and young entrepreneurial firms. How does anyone get any work done in an environment like this? Well, it takes a special breed.

“If you can’t handle a Nerf rocket flying at your head when you are trying to code…” says Fred Gallart, CEO of Electric Owl. “…then you might not be a good fit.”

I won’t say that it’s not all fun and games at Electric Owl – after all, they do design video games – but that certainly doesn’t mean that nobody’s taking care of business. In just two short years, Electric Owl Studios has raised funding from Idea Foundry, bagged a tidy contract from the Childrens’ Hospital of Pittsburgh and, in a way, helped the Pens win the Stanley Cup.

While Electric Owl has its own unique personality and niche market – they create high-tech toys to keep kids entertained in waiting rooms, called the Kids Interaction Creation Kiosk (K.I.C.K., partially inspired by fellow Pittsburgher, the late Fred Rogers) – Electric Owl’s style is notably representative of the changing skill sets needed to be a successful entrepreneur in the digital age – characteristics that are, in some ways, starkly contrasted to the go-getters of yore but in other ways, just the same. A DIY-attitude, resilience in the face of risk (and failure) and adaptability – especially adaptability – are still as important as they ever were. Stuff like donning a three piece suit, organizing high octane power lunches and nabbing an Ivy League MBA – less so.

Take a look at the education background of the team at Electric Owl Studios – they have three masters of entertainment technology from Carnegie Mellon University, a couple bachelor of science degrees and some bachelors of fine arts. Conspicuously absent from this list: MBAs, business school alumni and management majors. Which, if you think about it, isn’t particularly peculiar. In this age of innovation, qualities like creativity and collaboration are far more valuable assets than the ability to read a balance sheet and tactfully layoff an employee. For the folks at Electric Owl, that very creative spark was fanned into a flame at CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center (tagline: “The graduate program for the left and right brain…”) and carried over to their offices in East Liberty, Pittsburgh.

“CMU is different from many schools in that they encourage interdisciplinary study rather than setting up barriers to prevent it,” says Gallart. “The ETC itself is a very unique animal in that it is a ‘melting pot’ of people from backgrounds ranging from music to psychology to computer science. When you have access to such a broad range of talented people, the chances that dynamic teams can form dramatically increase.”

In the office, Electric Owl continues to favor the melting pot layout over the cubicle catacomb. In fact, the mezzanine level of 6101 Penn Avenue is home to both Electric Owl Studios and another ETC venture, Interbots. Like the ETC program, the workspace is notably barrier-free. It’s an open floor plan loft in a renovated bank building – a no wall productions property – which provides apt opportunities for ideas and innovation to spill over.

“You have this amazing collaboration between two entirely different companies/teams. It allows for very open communication, and keeps everybody very honest,” says Gallart. “Everybody’s personality is on display.”

Coincidentally, on the sixth floor of the very same building is another CMU spinoff: Deeplocal. Deeplocal is a “software design, development, and strategy studio” that brings together “artists, designers, and technologists to solve complex communication problems with a focus on usability and simplicity.” Like Electric Owl, the curriculum vitaes at Deeplocal are markedly free of business school degrees. “Above all else, Deeplocal is a culture of innovation,” says Nathan Martin, Deeplocal’s CEO. Like his downstairs neighbor, Martin also has a penchant for collaboration, passion and pinch harmonics – he screamed on behalf of the mathcore band Creation is Crucifixion until 2002. He also served a stint teaching courses with names like “Parasitic Media” at a college level – but he’s not particularly fond of teaching by the book.

“I don’t believe in teaching skills,” he says. “I believe that great people will teach themselves what they need to know and school is about fanning passions and allowing great minds to explore and experiment.”

Martin first attended art school at age 16 and now holds two fine arts degrees – a BFA and an MFA. And he is nearly evangelical about the virile merits of studying the arts – even for those who want to start their own business.

“Business school is not where you learn to be an entrepreneur,” Martin says. “I think that, right now, university arts programs are the one institutional place where people seeking to become entrepreneurs can learn the most necessary skills to being an entrepreneur.”

Essentially, Martin seems to be saying, the driving force behind a successful business isn’t technical knowledge or business savvy – it’s passion, something that’s difficult to teach. Coaxing out your true passion is a matter of exploration, not regimentation. “I think that everyone should just take courses they think sound interesting. Ignore grades and degrees as much as possible,” Martin says before adding a call to action: “Take more art classes and fund the arts!”

Read more at Primer Magazine.

Indochino, the company, was born in Canada, at the University of Victoria, where two entrepreneurial students hatched the idea out of necessity and fostered it into an international phenomenon. But the spirit of Indochino’s business model has its roots in the reinvention of the tech space. Just as social media gives everyone a personalized voice, Indochino gives every man a suit that fits. And not the shabby, one-size-fits-hardly-anyone thing you’d get off the rack at Macy’s or some mall department store. Indochino’s suits are tailor made to order in record time and FedEx’ed directly to your door in two weeks.

The history of Indochino is inspiring, in spite of it only spanning about three years. There’s something populist and revolutionary about it. High quality men’s clothing, like the upper echelons of business, has long been an institution deeply rooted in tradition, exclusive to those with familial or financial legs up. After all, clothes can make a man – and a well-tailored suit is symbolic of the stately cultivation that serves as the runway to a well-connected, well-endowed launch into the corporate world. A gangly guy with the wrong knot in his tie and high-water slacks that reveal his should-have-been-brown socks, on the other hand, bears the hallmark of a neophyte. But without daddy’s tailor and checkbook, getting the right look for that critical job interview is somewhat of a crapshoot. Doing so without spending thousands of dollars is a damn near Olympian undertaking. Indochino co-founder Heikal Gani pulled it off, but it wasn’t easy.

Gani bought his first real suit when he was a psychology and political science major at UVic. A conference had come up and Gani had to look the part. Like most of us with our checking accounts close to the edge, the purchase of a suit isn’t exactly premeditated. Unfortunately, a properly fitted and tailored suit can take weeks to attain – especially if you’ve never been measured, don’t know what to buy and don’t know where to buy it. Gani did the only thing a 21^st century man without a network of old boys could do – he researched it on the Internet.

Being a slimmer guy, he quickly found out that he needed something different than what was on the rack. But in a city with a population of less than half a million on the west coast of Canada, the only place that he could find (and afford) was Moore’s – the Canadian equivalent of Men’s Wearhouse. He got the suit, but wasn’t satisfied. It was boxy, generic and overpriced, considering.  After dropping an additional $100 on tailoring, he looked good enough. But the frustrating experience stuck with him.

He talked over his experience with his friend and fellow UVic student, Kyle Vucko, a business major, and together, they identified that the problem lay not only in the product, but also in the process. Factory-made suits seem to call upon the man to fit the suit, rather than the reverse. It’s like something out of a dystopian novel about cubicle estrangement. Those that don’t fit inside the box are penalized with higher costs, a second-rate appearance and a notably cramped style. The notion is somewhat preposterous, once you consider how far we’ve come as a consumer society, where a house, a car and an education are attainable by the vast majority, but a decent suit is not. The need for accessible, affordable, and most of all, well-fitting and fashionable men’s suits was clearly there. The seeds for a compelling business opportunity were sown, and together, Vucko and Gani seized it.

Fast-forward to 2009, and now you can find the exact kind of business that Gani could’ve used back in college embodied in Indochino. It’s a mix between straightforward, well-produced style tips and instructions for the uninitiated and lightning-fast, responsive customer service. Here’s essentially how the process works:

Read the rest of this article at Primer Magazine.