Yearly Archives: 2009

“Is it too late to catch up?”

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A few questions from the always brilliant Seth Godin:

“What if your organization or your client has done nothing? What if they’ve just watched the last fourteen years go by? No real website, no social media, no permission assets. What if now they’re ready and they ask your advice?

I think my honest answer might have been, “Too late.” But Mr. Godin comes through with 10 practical suggestions. I encourage you to read them all. Here are my favorites:

  • Start a book group for your top executives and every person who answers the phone, designs a product or interacts with customers. Read a great online media book a week and discuss. It’ll take you about a year to catch up.
  • Offer a small bonus to anyone in the company who starts and runs a blog on any topic. Have them link to your company site, with an explanation that while they work there, they don’t speak for you.
  • Do not approve any project that isn’t run on Basecamp.
  • Don’t have any meetings about your web strategy. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve.

Mr. Godin concludes the problem is no longer budget or access to tools, rather it is the will to get good at operating in our new world. I have to wonder if you haven’t found the will by now, how likely are you to do so

“My news feed on Facebook”

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“Your honor, the defense will stipulate that Senator McCaskill’s Facebook page is in no way an act of journalism and might be self-serving and total horse shit.”

“So noted. The page will be entered as Exhibit F.”

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Something about “my news feed on Facebook” made me stop. Politicians have been grinding out news releases since the dawn of time but same-day video news feeds? My natural instinct is to scoff at the idea of a “news feed” by a politician. But do I trust the senator more or less than Fox News? Hmm.

I’m old enough to remember when just being on TV meant you were honest and trust-worthy. Now whom do we trust?

My point here is that from now on, we’ll get the “news” from lots of people in lots of ways. Trust will trump the medium.

“The Death of Local News”

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LocalNewser: Michael Rosenblum on the Death of Local News from Mark Joyella on Vimeo. “Michael Rosenblum’s been around the local news biz for decades, along the way helping create New York’s all-news NY1 and Al Gore’s Current TV. Rosenblum’s consulted for stations across the country and around the world, and yet he believes the model that’s kept local news alive since the 1950s is broken, and the only way to repair it–drastic changes in the way news stations operate–just won’t happen. Rosenblum tells LocalNewser’s Mark Joyella local news is like GM: sticking with a recipe that put them on top five decades ago, but will drive them to bankruptcy today.”

My favorite line: When Google does news in New York, it aint gonna start in the CBS building with a chopper. Or something to that effect. Video runs about 2 1/2 min.

“The Fall and Rise of Media”

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NYT’s David Carr on The Fall and Rise of Media:

“Those of us who covered media were told for years that the sky was falling, and nothing happened. And then it did. Great big chunks of the sky gave way and magazines tumbled — Gourmet!? — that seemed as if they were as solid as the skyline itself. But to those of us who were here back in September of 2001, we learned that even the edifice of Manhattan itself is subject to perforation and endless loss.”

“Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.

For them, New York is not an island sinking, but one that is rising on a fresh, ferocious wave.”

Hard (for me) to read this not feel a little … wistful… on behalf of the old guard. But Mr. Carr clearly sees the glass as half full.

“Journalism is like skiing in the 50s or 60s”

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An interesting analogy by Dave Winer:

“Previously it had been a sport that very few people enjoyed, and they were all very good. But now the doors are opening to amateurs. The pros have to share the slopes with people who don’t take the sport as seriously as they do. They’re still going to be able to ski, but the rest of us are not just going to admire them for how skilled they are, we’re going to do it too. They can earn a living as ski patrol and ski instructors. Or lift operators or more mundane jobs like people who work in hotels and drive the shuttle bus. There are still jobs in skiing after the arrival of the amateurs. But the exclusivity is gone.”

I think he might have nailed it. Oh, for the days before the lift lines were long and the slopes clogged with morons who didn’t know the right way to come down the hill.

“The Bad Managment Stimulus”

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The always brilliant Scott Adams on entrepreneurship:

“The Dilbert Principle observes that in the modern economy, the least capable people are promoted to management because companies need their smartest people to do the useful work. It’s hard to design software, but relatively easy to run staff meetings. This creates a situation where you have more geniuses reporting to morons than at any time in history. In that sort of environment you’d expect the geniuses to be looking for a way out, even if Plan B has a low chance of success.

Big companies with bad managers are the ideal breeding ground for entrepreneurs. Employees are exposed to a wide variety of business disciplines, and can avail themselves of excellent company-paid training and outside education. When you add broad skill development to the inevitability of eventually getting a moron for a boss, thanks to frequent internal reorganizations, it’s no wonder that big companies spray entrepreneurs into the environment like the fountains at Bellagio.”

Mr. Adams’ book, The Dilbert Principle is the last management book I read and gave me the courage to begin planning my escape from management.

Too much stuff

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This PBS program on design has stuck with me for a couple of days. In one of the segments, a designer said something about removing everything that is not essential until all that remains is the essential. (This MacBook is a very nearly perfect example of that aesthetic.)

The same, I suppose, could be said of the theme I chose for this blog (the theme… not my execution). Thesis is the creation of Chris Pearson. More creative types have done all sorts of wonderful things with Thesis but I like the way it looks “right out of the box.”

I have gone through phases where I thought I could add a little “pizazz” to a site. If you have that designer gene, you can pull it off. If not, more is less. Knowing that –and lacking the gene– I shoot for simple. And let’s face it, nobody comes to a website twice because it looks cool.

I just finished a book by Deepak Chopra in which he says something about simplicity as an element of happiness. I’m paraphrasing here: If you acquire something, give something away. Sort of, “stuff neutral.” I’m going to give that a try because I clearly have too much stuff.

PS: So much for “less is more.” Got to playing with Thesis options and figured I’d play around with a header image for a few days.

Gmail Task applet

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I attended my first “time management” workshop back in the early 70s. I got the bug pretty bad. Read and listened to countless books and cassette tapes (before CDs) on productivity. I think there was a recent resurgence under the GTD (Getting Things Done) banner. Somewhere along the way, my passion waned but in those 35+ years, I’ve tried lots of tools and systems.

To-do lists have always been a challenge for me. I tend to put too load them up with too many items and they stay there too long. I recently came across the notion of identifying three things you really want to accomplish during the day and writing those on a 3×5 card. Portable, focused… might work.

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My current favorite is the Tasks applet in Gmail. Small, simple and available everywhere. Supports multiple lists. About as close to that 3×5 card as I can get.