The Audacity of Goal Setting

I had good conversations today, spiced with the reality check of some not so encouraging chats.

The good news is the ratio of supportive conversations to less encouraging chats is running nearly 10:1, so I consider this largely a case of signal-to-noise ratio.

Still, when speaking with supposed "veterans" of successful non-profit endeavors, I’m troubled by the more than occasional meta-message of "lower your expectations, son." (And thanks for the complement of paternal tone, but I’m far older than you can tell by my voice.)

Some have told us that our goal of building a community of the best and brightest to design and build from the ground up truly trustworthy digital voting technology that everyone can see, touch, and try is "inordinately difficult." We’re further told that attempting to operate a non-profit foundation like a typical commercial start-up with the expected entreprenurial spirit is "…Naive of necessary non-proft cultural process." Uh-huh.

Then I saw a quote today that simply sums up how we must see our
challenges to help re-invent how America votes in a digital society.

So in balance, my post and comment for today (unless I find time to catch up on several events and developments here this evening) is this:

"The greater danger for us is not that our aim is too high and
we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."

– Michelangelo