The following post was inspired by Jim Collins, author of best selling books Built to Last & From Good to Great

A big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) is something everybody and every organization should have because it creates a goal to aspire to. It creates meaning for yourself and your colleagues. It gives you a sense of purpose! Without a big hairy audacious goal, how does one motivate him or herself to do remarkable things in life?

When I was thirteen years old, my first BHAG was to setup a cool company. My last company thrived on the fact that it was run by 13/14/15 year olds. Once we had something going, we reset our BHAG to owning a rack full of servers. After that, we reset a BHAG to getting an entire cage at multiple datacenters, and that's about when we died. It was good that there was a mental gap between our confidence, wisdom, and capability for taking risk. In other words, young kids are ignorant. Setting a BHAG is fun and motivating, regardless of how stupid or farfetched the goal may be. In fact, that's the point! If we had gone through the conventional planning of business, we wouldn't have started a company until graduating from college. I probably wouldn't have gotten into early college. I probably wouldn't have decided to start a blog that's based on my few experiences. I probably wouldn't have had the pleasure of meeting all of you!

Big hairy audacious goals don't have to be limited to business. Apply this to your personal life. Do the non conventional because it'll foster your motivation and success. The idea of going to college early sounded outlandish to my parents and my friends, but that was precisely the point. If they had supported me on making the change, it wouldn’t be a big hairy audacious goal, now would it?

Of course, if the goal is achieved, there no longer is a BHAG. Once achieved, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps this is the reason why entrepreneurs are "never satisfied," regardless of the success they previously achieved. So let's say I run a company called Powerset and my goal is to oust Google from the search market. Once I've succeeded in doing this, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps, to oust the leader in online advetising -- and after that, to oust the leader in online entertainment… etc.

Of course, sometimes it's reckless to go for your big hairy audacious goal. A lot of the time, the critics are right in that the product you want to create will go nowhere, depending on the capabilities of your team. If I ever faced such an issue, I would turn to my "board of life." (click here if you don't know what the super important board of life is) I'd see what they thought about my BHAG, and I would ask what's needed in order to execute on my outlandish vision.

Once you've established what your BHAG is, YOU NEED TO COMMIT TO IT. Set milestones. Make sure your team meets those milestones. I set a BHAG to own my own datacenter within 3 years of starting the company. I invested 80% of the company's profits towards buying assets and renting DC space. Of course, we failed at achieving the BHAG, but at least we died trying. As I'll mention in another post, there are a few things a company can do: 1) grow, 2) fail, and 3) go nowhere. Going nowhere is by far the worst. Not growing is not an option for me. The opportunity cost in going nowhere exceeds any cost of failing. So we chose to sell out prematurely, thus failing. It was unfortunately the right choice to make based on the circumstances.

Committing to a BHAG is obviously 1000X harder than setting the BHAG. You're putting your money on the line. You're putting your business on the line. You're putting your personal well being on the line, and it's a tough commitment to make. Unfortunately, I don't know how to teach someone to feel content when committing to a BHAG. It just has to be done, and if it doesn't get done, you're going to find yourself paying a much heavier opportunity cost. True entrepreneurs are willing to make these commitments. If you’re not willing to make such a commitment, I suggest you join one of those multi-level-marketing schemes.

It's important that BHAGS take on a life of their own. They must be goals in themselves that your team members will always seek to achieve. The main question is, will the BHAG outlast the leader? This poses a problem for super charismatic leaders, or overly-demanding disciplinarians. At that point, the goal is to satisfy the leader -- not to reach the goal. Perhaps this is precisely why over-protective parents are ineffective in parenting. Children do what the parent says, but they don't understand the underlying goals and purposes for achieving those goals. Once the leader (or in this case the parent) is gone, there's no longer a sense of purpose.

If you don't currently have a BHAG in your life, set one now. Matter of fact, I won't let you leave this blog post until you've established at least a basic idea for what your BHAG for life may be. Think it through and remind yourself everyday how you might be a step closer towards achieving your goal.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Amsterdam was an amazing experience, but no one blog post can do the city any justice. As I've previously mentioned, I was invited to speak at the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam only a few weeks ago - received an email invitation while I was down in Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest Festival, and decided that this would be a pretty cool trip.

Shortly after I accepted the invitation, I told you all that I'd slow down on my travels and take a break from all of this, but a few conferences get special exceptions: TED, South by Southwest, and the Next Web. There's no better excuse for a 17-year-old to fly out to Amsterdam by herself in the middle of spring break. I'll leave it at that :)

So i spoke! I gave my first real presentation to my first real crowd. I've spoken at Model U.N. and at the Supernova Conference, but neither was to an audience of more than 100 people. As I've also mentioned many times before, conferences are only as good as the people who attend. Next Web attracted only high rollers because it cost 750 Euros to go. The real quality was in the time I spent with fellow speakers at exclusive dinners and parties. So basically, if the conference doesn't offer super awesome parties or exclusive events, it's not something I see as worthwhile. Why? Because then you're less likely to make actual connections.

The long-term connections happen by investing time into out-of-the-office fun. For example, a guy from intruders.tv interviewed me on the first day of the conference. He was professional. I liked him. But then at one of the after-parties, we started the connect up as actual friends. Same goes with Robert Scoble -- I see him at conferences a lot, but big deal. The real fun happens in the hotel, at the dinner table, and at the after-parties.

This trip was good enough to tie with South by Southwest. Top five best events ever? This one's on the list. More to come!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Phew, so I'm finally here! I ran into a few other speakers on the KLM flight here, so that was super fun!

Diggnation is filming live as I write this. The two guys sitting next to me traveled over four hours just to get here. Crazy!!! It's like a cult! As always, you'll find me sitting in the front rows :)

Anyway, tomorrow I present my keynote at 3PM Amsterdam time. Fun! Keeping busy, but I'll keep you all updated.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Ok... fine.. I'll admit it: Very frequently, I write a blog post about something that I dislike or expect to dislike. Several days later, I would then write about the same topic and have a much more positive opinion. Harvard Model United Nations just so happens to be one of these things.

After all, I've been to over 30 conferences now. I've only paid for two of them. Therefore, who could blame me for having such high expectations on what is a good conference versus a bad conference? Of all the events I've been to this year, I'll probably place Harvard Model United Nations in my top 5 list for all conferences I've been to. Impressive!

The first question is, what makes an event better than the others? The speakers, the topics, the food, the atmosphere? Wrong! The quality of the attendees takes precedence over everything. If there are good speakers, you could probably read their interviews on the interwebs. If there are amazing topics at the conference, I'm sure that any average joe could probably find it in the local book store. But people are different - in order to make lasting connections/friendships or whatever you'd like to call them, you must physically be present at the event.

Next, what is considered to be a high-caliber conference attendee? You could look at this from many different perspectives. Firstly, no sales people, and absolutely none of those silly network marketers! If you're paying hundreds/thousands of dollars to go to a conference, (I'm not one of them!) then you probably expect the sales people to be completely rid of. A good conference attendee may not necessarily be a wealthy celebrity. In fact, these people may be so popular that they'll want nothing to do with you. That's why it helps to have invite-only events. In the example of Harvard Model United Nations, only undergrads from colleges came. There was no application from attendees, but the expectations of a "Harvard" conference weeded out the lazy kids who didn't really care about debating and negotiating on world issues. As you may have read, I recently got accepted into TED - often described as a "group of remarkable people that gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value". The incredible value from this conference comes from the fact that most TEDsters are of such a high-caliber. This is the precise reason why invite-only groups are of such high value. Events such as TED don't only want smart people - they want attendees who are open to helping others with their interests and aspirations. And at the Harvard Model United Nations, there was no option to sit passively in the back. Sure, many people did it, but plenty more motivated students sat in the front and played an active role in the committee sessions.

Picture of me and my fellow "early-college" classmates at Harvard Model U.N. I'm the Asian down below if you couldn't guess that much.

Conferences need to manage the work-play relationship. For example, having too many workshops and/or keynote speakers can be boring! When I first wrote about the Harvard Model United Nation Conference, I mentioned how I saw plenty of people falling asleep at the opening ceremony. The basic idea is simple: bring in a charismatic keynote speaker or don't bring one at all! My opinions are controversial, but I hold my belief that a boring keynote speaker will do nothing but help set a *boring* attitude to the rest of the conference. This means that the conference had a rocky start, but quickly picked up pace when the attendees were thrown into action. After the committee sessions ended, the conference organizers threw cocktail parties, delegate dances, and more! Of course, the attendees threw their own private parties that nobody can know about. Whoops.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Great people, great work-play balance, and all of the other good things that go along with having a grade A event. (minus the super boring keynote speaker) Don't be misled: Sure, this was a kiddie conference and I'm still one of them, but it seems essential that any good event must bring in quality people who are engaged in both learning and helping fellow attendees. Harvard Model United Nations, TED, and any "un-conference" are particular good at achieving this.

Plenty more to come! I can't wait to report on Northern Voice 2008.

PS - I wore formal attire throughout the conference. First time ever. Now THATs impressive!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

I know, it sounds dorky. Here I am at the Harvard Model United Nations Conference, serving the great Republic of Guinea. I'm at the keynote and I'm bored, so here I am blogging :)

First off, I was hanging out with my friends one day when I heard that someone dropped out of the Model U.N. trip. Some girl was planning to come to the conference, she paid in full for transportation and hotel, and had to ditch last minute. So I took her place. Free of charge. Awesome!

After a 3 hour bus ride, here I am. The first thought that came to my mind was, "what's with the clothing?" It's so incredibly formal here! Everybody's wearing a suit and tie, then you have Ms. Jessica Mah wearing jeans and Juicy Couture. I've always found the formal-wear to be tacky and superficial, but what else can I do but conform? I'm at a Harvard conference, so I adjust. In 20 minutes, I took a cab over to Barneys, bought my first pair of slacks, and came back. I quickly changed, ran over to the Imperial Ball Room, and was told that the room was over-filled. Of course, when anybody at any conference says the room is over-filled, they're just pushing you to find another way in. Walk past them or find the back entrance, it doesn't matter. I saw somebody exiting in the back, so in I ran!

Picture of the jam-packed opening ceremony - taken with my iPhone

As for the opening speakers... I can't hear them, they're un-enthusiastic, and boring. I even prefer hearing Mark Zuckerberg to this! I could easily point out a few people slumped over their chairs taking a power nap. zZzZzzZz....

Anyhow, I'll be here for the next few days, but I'll keep you updated!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Gosh... ok, I'm so out of breath! Basically, the conference people wouldn't issue me a press pass until 10AM. Oh wait, the keynote ends at 10 something AM. Oh noes! Of course, I wasn't planning *not* go to the keynote. That's the only thing worth seeing! So me and a huge mob of Apple geeks marched across the street to Moscone West and did everything from cut the line to just walk right in. Most of you know that I'm no newbie to Moscone West. Remember how I got front row seats at the Web 2.0 expo keynote even after they overflowed? Well, I managed to find a way into Macworld's keynote, sitting next to the people who've been waiting on line since sunrise. I'm on the press list, but let's just say that the security people "forgot to check the press badge that I'm yet to pick up." I didn't get front row this time, but I'm not complaining. :D The following coverage began at 9:20AM:

I'm sure you've read the predictions: Movie rentals, iPhone/iPod Touch upgrades, etc... Newbies:

- Apple TV Take 2: No computer needed and the capability to rent movies for $3 or $4. It has a kickass interface as usual with all Apple products. Steve was trying to demonstrate the Apple TV's capability to take photos from Flickr, but the silly photos wouldn't pop up! So he ended it by saying something among the lines of, "oh well, Flickr doesn't want to display the photos... So isn't that amazing?" What a great speaker! The price of an Apple TV was downgraded from $299 to $229. Again, Yay!

"There's something in the air," says pretty much every huge banner here at MacWorld. What the hell does that mean? We've been hearing about it for weeks now, and Apple has finally launched the MacBook Air. "In a sentence, it's the world's thinnest notebook." And that means what, Steve? A 3 pound, 0.76 inch, envelope sized laptop. No new product introduction is without an impressive introduction: Steve brought out the laptop in an envelope! Downsides? A tiny 80 GB HD for one. A lack of CD drive for two. You expect a small battery, but no: 5 hours in that tiny piece of beauty! The laptop starts at $1799 and ships in two weeks.

Phew, wasn't that exciting? On another note, I was silly enough to bring my Dell laptop to MacWorld. Big mistake. I almost died. Pictures are forthcoming.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

I'm reporting live from a congressional hearing on Energy Independence and Global Warming! The first two speakers were amazing at presenting a case to fight off global warming and energy dependency. Unfortunately, I was pretty unsatisfied with our third speaker. Throughout the conference, we were taught about public speaking. We were taught the art of persuasion. We were taught about choosing good representatives to present our case to political leaders. Yet somehow, a school girl from Alaska came to the Capitol steps unprepared. Everybody in the room felt so nervous as she spoke. Simply put, her arguement was mostly compromised of words such as "like" and "ummm" and "uhhh..." After a few minutes of terrible and unmotivating speaking, she broke down in tears. She couldn't get her grip together and there was an utter silence for a good 15 seconds before everybody applauded her in support. Then another 15 seconds go by, and she's back to her terrible public speaking.

LIVE from today's rally at the Capitol - Credit to SRManitou

When trying to convince government (or business) to take action, it's important to concentrate on what THEY want. This third speaker made the issue limited to her small town in Alaska. If I remember correctly, the speaker was referring to a town with a population of under 400 people. Sure, I sympathize with her. But for her to come to a congressional hearing unprepared? That just makes EVERYBODY look bad. Fine. She's just a college student trying to act on an issue important to her. To silence the criticisms I see coming, I'll give her an A for effort. More to come...

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

Yay, after many long hours of driving, I'm finally at Power Shift - a conference on combating global climate change.

I'm sitting in a panel that discusses fighting global change in local communities, and here are a few things I got out of it:

1) When making an argument for creating a sustainable world, make it relevant to the group of people you're talking to. How does it benefit them?

For example, this girl from Sugarland, Texas had a discussion with her mayor on how to create a sustainable city. Ended up that the mayor had many of the ideas she offered, but didn't want to make them public because it could possibly upset the large and powerful oil industry. To make it work, keep in mind how it may or may not benefit the individuals you're talking to.

2) Connections, connections, connections. Find allies and don't be afraid to ask them questions. Students always seem so freaking hostile towards business executives and government officials. There is some truth behind their thinking, but hostility doesn't solve problems. Once again, look at everything from THEIR perspective. Suck out as much info as you can and use it for your mutual benefit.

When I meet with founders and management at companies, I ask them about their business. I ask them about their ideas and why they do what they do. I ask them why they don't do X, and more often than not, they've thought of the idea and found a reason as to why it wouldn't work. (or they're in the process of implementing that X) At the end of the day, I give them good or bad press via my blog. :)

3) It's important to be able to measure everything. Set goals and measure your improvement by solid numbers. This way, you know what's most effective, what's best to invest more time and money into, etc...

For example, in regards to advertising, it's important to have necessary data: who's visiting your business, where are they coming from, etc… this is why TV advertising doesn't work. You have no way of distinguishing if your customer is coming from a TV ad or from word of mouth. Google AdWords, on the other hand, offers you control over everything. You can cap your spending to any amount of money, you can specify the physical location your visitors are from, you can specify certain keywords, etc…

4) Garnering support is all about targeting communities. Get huge groups of people excited about a common cause. I'll write tomorrow about their conference marketing… but I must say, it is borderline manipulative.

In a nutshell, the conference would recruit "campus coordinators" who would take charge of organizing the conference trip to Power Shift. Basically, the conference organizers made these campus coordinators feel super important and gave them the noble responsibility of bringing as many people as they could to this conference. Brilliant.

The bottom line? Everything about this conference has SO much to do with business, whether it be related to marketing, communications, etc… If you want to combat global climate change, be a doctor, be a fashion designer, or whatever - you're going to be using business related skills. If you want to help stop global climate change, look at the source: big and powerful corporations.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

Colleges may invest millions of dollars into academic programs and dormitories, but they often fall behind when it comes to good food. Businesses may spend millions of dollars into useless marketing campaigns, but they can't even provide their employees decent free food. What is this? How is it that businesses and schools fail at providing their employees and students food that doesn't taste like dog crap?

Well, first things first: The colleges will say that it's their job to educate; not to entertain. Businesses may say they need to make money, but how is employee satisfaction not part of running an effective business? Good food provides people with energy and the satisfaction needed to be productive.

The business or college unable to provide good free food may point at the plethora of fast food joints nearby. The problem with this is, businesses should be keeping their employees at the workplace. It takes less time for them to eat and makes them more productive. Google, for example, not only has amazing free food, but they also have amazing entertainment and even laundry machines for its employees. The more time people spend at the workplace, the better.

Sketch of what probably happens in the kitchen of my college's dining hall

College students are important, too. They study almost as hard as they party. They need good food to keep them awake from their all-nighters. Parents care about their children's nutrition (I would hope) and college food really sucks at a lot of institutions. (Bentley, UMass, Simon's Rock)

There's always the problem of attracting the best students and best employees to you. If Google has good free food, Yahoo will be expected to match that standard. If Cornell has amazing food, Harvard will be expected to match that standard. I'm sure that there have been many cases where Google has attracted employees over its free good food benefit. They pay like shit, but they have good food. And we all know that good food = more happiness = more productivity.

Businesses and colleges, get better food. Please. For your own sake.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

My first day streaming live on ustream was super entertaining. I found myself on the homepage of the ustream website nonstop with as many as 92 people watching the LIVE with Jessica Mah show.

First thing I quickly learned was that young girl + webcam = lots of perverted men. A lot of the people watching had nothing better to do with their time than to watch me in front of a webcam typing away. Wow. Welcome to America! I also noticed that people who were watching me early in the morning also came back for more in the afternoon and evening. I guess I do have a catch and keep model!

Early this morning, I discovered a nice little quote on valleywag referring to my ustream:

On Jessica Mah's Ustream.tv live chat, PodTech spokesblogger Robert Scoble breaks his recent vow of silence to observe, "Yeah. Well, it's a tough life to write everyday. Eventually you end up demonstrating you're human and looking stupid." Proving the adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Now how did valleywag get ahold of my ustream? Figures. One of you blog readers started following my live feed, saw Scoble in the chatroom, and just had to tell valleywag about it. Fantastic.

Getting webcam fame in under 24 hours was easy. It's easy marketing. Way too easy! Know your audience and give them what they want. In my case, my audience included a lot of geeky perverted men. I gave them some eye candy, and they'd just watch me all day long. Isn't it amazing how we can apply business and marketing to pretty much everything I do?