Drop the clichés, forget about what a engineer and a artist are suppose to do and don’t judge based on the university title or gender.
This is the information revolution, where anybody with the will power to learn, can be anything they want. Sure the revolution hasn’t reach everybody on the planet, but is on it way. In the meantime, just remember that you can wear any hat you wish and more importantly, anybody can wear the hat the want, even yours.
So, my proposal is that in those workplaces, companies and startups where project managements: “are managing the resources of a software project”, ditch them (or if you are nice give them a chance to get a new hat).
Management of people kills creativity, instead provide mentorship: guide instead of dictating. Get people that can lead by nurturing the skills of the people around them and help them focus, instead of “try to put off that fire or cure the itch”.
Let the artist write software and the engineer design, it might not be appealing but, it is a start of something different and sometimes different is good.
Universities and corporations develop software with a “hangover” (of classical concepts) from the days of punch cards and mainframes. Today we don’t need to control computer resources, since they are widely available. The access to information about programming is available on the instant and to anybody with access to Internet. However, universities still teach concepts that where design to control scarce resources, when there not scarce anymore. IT departments still try to use these concepts, to manage the projects and comply with internal politics.
There is a belief that everything needs a project plan, progress reports, Testing Procedure Specification (TPS) documents to make sure that everything is on budget. I find it ironic that we spend money on making sure we don’t go over budget. What is the point of writing stuff that nobody is going to read.
Cure for the hangover? Embrace chaos! Give some liberty to people to work without reporting or detailing everything. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how you did it, the point is that you did it right.
Like my mom used to say:
All roads lead to Rome
Just because is different, doesn’t mean is good or bad, the point is to get where we want and on time.
Flattr is a new service for paying or “rewarding” creators of digital content on the internet. Below is a video describing how it works.
I liked the video and I found it appealing to the eye and well produced, still they failed to deliver the message correctly. Which is a shouldn’t be the case when you are trying to change how people pay for content. Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea is awesome and disruptive, however it could have been presented in a better way.
Note the reader: Following are my thoughts on how should the idea been presented and will try to avoid talking about if it will work or not. that will be for another post.
When it starts running the first thing you will se is the following image:
Even if it is only shown for around 2 seconds, this is most important piece of information, due to this two words presented: social micropayments. In my case, the first thing that came to my mind was that this was a service like kiva.org (given it uses similar colors). Then I realized I was wrong when the video mentions content and consumers, the flattr button and the cake.
If the service is about showing appreciation or love to content creators, then they should remove “social micropayments” and replace it with some other message. The problem is that the service is about showing your love and appreciation to the artist or create, while the word payment is related to something more cold such a commercial transaction. Second, micropayments has been widely use hand by hand with microfinance in third world courtiers, which is out of context of where flattr will be used.
Instead of using social micropayment, they could have use something like:
rewarding content creators, flat rate love or flattering creators
In addition I will have change the way the cake analogy with a story, which will be of somebody using the service, while keeping the black graphics used (we don’t want it to look like a “revolutionary” vacuum cleaner commercial ).
Here is an example:
Tom is 29 year old web designer, that spends his day working, reading blogs and posting on twitter.
In the past year or so, Tom has found an interest for mashups of music. Most of the mashups are given for free by the DJs, so he just downloads them. Recently he found a mashup album of Jay -Z and Marvin Gaye called Brooklyn Soul, that he loves. He tells all his friends about it and enjoys to play it while commuting or just walking. So, he decided to show his appreciation to the producers of Brooklyn Soul with a Flattr.
Tom has 2 eruos in his account and in the past 3 weeks he has given a Flattr to Xaphoon Jones for his Mixtape and to a couple of writers for their free ebooks. In total it has been 4 flattrs and the month will end in two days. By then the 2 euros will be split in the four flattrs equally.
Why did Tom decide to give 2 Euros? Well he figured out that if he didn’t drink a latte a month, instead he could use the money to show his appreciation.
Why a story?
Is less abstract and is more down to earth. Also, by mentioning what is the give and get, the audience has a better understanding of the service.
If you want to now little bit more about why using stories to pitch an idea, check my previous post.
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- Tags: Flattr, stories
Got to love the remake of the 1993 McDonald’s Michael Jordan vs. Larry Bird commercial, this time it features Lebron James and Dwight Howard. Although they are not as accomplished as Jordan and Bird, they are representative of the NBA today and are possibly the future, so we have the star power.
The new commercial shows how the game has change, by instead of just going with jumpshots (like in the 93 version), they just go with dunks. As well as some taunting or trash talking.
The interesting thing here is that commercials generally are not remade or remastered as movies. Doesn’t make sense to copy a old idea, sure we have campaigns like Apple’s “I’m a Mac. I’m a PC” or Master Card “priceless”, that keep the same concept, however in this case it works masterfully.
In case you didn’t remember the o1993 commercial or just want to compare you can see it bellow. (By the way, Jordan’s outfit reminds me of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air)
Yeap. things have change a lot in the last 17 years, still athletes eat fast food before a work out.
Stories as a blueprint for presenting
Posted by Geries Handal
2 Feb 2010Next time you are going to make a presentation, consider using a story to warm up things and get your audience involved. You could use two stories: one to start the presentation and another to finish it. With it the audience can focus on you, not your slides and don’t lose interest from the start.
A story is much better that saying “eh. my name is John and this are the points of the presentation”.
So, other than warming up, getting confidence and comfortable with your audience, you should consider using stories for the for the following reasons:
Stories don’t need a script, they have an idea and a message, therefore you don’t have to remember extract phrases and stumble because you forgot what was next.
The are part of our lives, since the very beginning. As kids, the grownups in our families used to tell us stories about their when young. As teenagers we tell stories to show off to our peers or impress a girl/guy. We tell stories about our travels, parties, etc. They are integral part of our lives; our life is a story.
Is easy for your audience to spread the word, when you give them a story they can tell others. This is due to stories being flexible enough for people to grab them and make it their own, while maintaining the core: the main idea or message.
Finally everybody loves a good story, while we listen we imagine what is happening while the narrator speaks, especially when there is a teaching to save from it.
Even if you don’t have great stories, there is a better chance at connecting with your audience and delivering a message with a casual narration, than a cold list of bullet points.
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- Tags: pitching, Presenting, stories
There is rhythm when: it is “recurring at regular intervals” and a flow when it is “moving continuously”.
You can be in rhythm without flow. For example when you are continuously repeating an action, but it feels forced or “not right”. Is like one of those days when you feel like working, but nothing gets done. Think of somebody in a karaoke forcing the lyrics, it just doesn’t sound right and sometimes can be painful. Or writing a blog post but it just feels like crap.
Now, as you can have rhythm without flow, you can have flow without rhythm. This is case when you have the ideas flowing, the energy and all the intentions of doing your work, but you get interrupted, again and again. Following the music example above, is like somebody singing at the same time that little kid plays with a drum set, doesn’t matter how good the singer is, the sound (or noise) generated by the kid will win over you trying to sing.
Finally, rhythm and flow is when you have the ideas – and for long periods of time – work on them. It doesn’t mean you work for a whole day non stop. By long periods I mean that you can work for a couple of hours, stand up, stretch and have some coffee. Then with a small warm up (like reviewing what you have done), you get back to what you where doing.
When in rhythm and flow, it feels natural and things just get done. There is a level of focus that only meditation can surpass.
So how did I got into this topic about rhythm and flow? Well, I wanted to get back to blogging around 8 posts a month. In the past months I been posting less and less, and is not that I don’t have something to say. I just was out of sync.
Although many people see it as a habit, when it is time to create, write or program: I need to “warm up” my mind. Is not enough just to get inspired or get an idea, there is need to a jump start with some energy for things to roll. Most of the time that “warm up” proceeds a lot of junk and might be a waste of time, but is necessary to get rolling. Think of a steam locomotive starting up, see video bellow. At the beginning there is a lot of noise, it looks forced and slow, however when the locomotive gets rolling, it gets rolling to the point that maybe.. and just maybe superman can stop it.
So, this post is my warm up, don’t how much time it will take for me to get into rhythm and flow. Right now is not about the quality, the important thing is to continue doing it and letting it come to you. That is why when a shooter [in basketball] is in a slump, they shoot, writers just write until they get into it, programmers program, people live and when is there.. is there and only yourself can stop it.
[sorry no superman video stopping a locomotive, however roll back into your childhood, if not then just check the Spider Man 2 Train scene here, just awesome.]
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- Tags: Blogging, flow, rhythm, work
Your team faces a problem and somebody says: “let’s be creative.. and find a solution to this problem” or “we need to discuss how to do it, lets do something creative”.
Doesn’t matter what you are doing or what needs to be done, if somebody tells you this, mostly like you will end with some sort of “creative atrophy”. Because at some point you will be stressed thinking if your ideas are creative or not, instead of just coming up with many as possible.
In the past month I heard the create phrase a couple of times. I found it amusing, since even if they meant good and wanted to motivate, taking me into the “creative atrophy” path: the only thing I was thinking of was the word creative and not the problem at hand.
The big issue with using adjectives like creative, awesome, unique, etc. is that they shift the focus in the wrong direction. Rather than focusing on the problem at hand, we try judge or determine: is it a creative idea, a cool solution or it gives you awesome experience. We pressure ourselves, narrowing the possibilities by we starting to throw any idea that we don’t find as creative. Instead of keeping a open mind and giving any idea a chance, without caring how unoriginal or uncreative that it looks. And that is being creative, not caring or judging and trying to see how to materialize or use every idea.
The best way to approach problem solving or coming up with new solutions, is not to use any adjective that will qualify the idea. Instead just let people speak their mind and acknowledge their ideas. Generally this sessions where people speak their mind or brainstorming follows a normal distribution (see the image bellow). 
The session starts very slowly with a couple of ideas. Basically we need sometime to “warm up” and enter in some kind of flow. Once in the flow the number of ideas will increase, almost exponentially. This is due to us getting excited and feeding up from the ideas of others. However the flow, lasts for a limited time and we start to get tired or uninterested and then the number of ideas take a dive. That is why it has a shape of a bell.
Now that we have all these ideas, we weight which are possible with the resource available (we might have unlimited imagination but not resources). Then we decide which we can peruse, we prototype them and test them.
The prototyping and testing becomes “food for thought”, which can lead to complete new ideas or just improvements on current ones. Once in this trail we can be creative, now we are focus on solving a problem, not on judging or limiting the imagination by asking the team to be creative.
Bellow you will is TED talk by Tim Brown, where he “urges designers to think big”, once you watch it you will see where I get influence on the prototyping.
Remember, today is more than just gifts and food, is about the people, the smiles, hugs and kisses. You never know what is coming for you, family and friends. enjoy it as much as possible. Given that in these days is difficult to have everybody on the same page, at we still get this during this time. Don’t hold back, even if you are far from your loved ones.
Merry Christmas to the you and everybody in the web sphere!!!
It was reported on the 7th of December that Apple bought Lala. With this move, Apple enters the streaming business and is getting their feet wet with cloud services. I think this has to do more with the trend toward streaming of music and Spotify coming early 2010 to USA, than any other thing. But what is Lala?
Lala is a music streaming service that lets you play music over your web browser. The only thing you need is an account. Also, you can upload and share your music collection, while having it available from anywhere. How does Lala make money? Well, you can buy unlimited web plays of a song for 10 cents, or just buy a download starting at 79 cents.
Lala is interesting to Apple for technical competence of the team, for the platform, which could be integrated with the iTunes Store (not just for music) and the Google deal. All this helps them prepare is case Spotify is successful, when they come to the USA early 2010.
What is the big deal with Spotify, you may ask, or even what is Spotify?
Spotify is a Swedish company that provide a service of streaming of music for free. You download the client and you have access to millions of songs without paying a cent. In exchange you have to listen to a occasional advertisement. but that is not a problem because, is much much less the an radio and TV. The killer feature of Spotify is the playlists: can create as many as you like and share them. If you don’t to listen to ads you can pay around 10 euros a month and you get to listen to your playlist online. Plus you can listen and download the playlist to a iPhone, Android or selected Nokia phone.
The usability design of the client is very similar to iTunes, so if you switch to Spotify the transition is seamless. Add to this that it looks like the iPhone app rocks.
As you can see Spotify is a threat to Apple music business, because you can have a huge catalog of music at your hands, with the same experience as you have it in your computer. Meaning that Spotify can become the window from which you access music, not iTunes and that is not good for Apple’s business.
Spotify is Awsome, iTunes a commodity and Lala just became the wildcard.
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- Tags: apple, Lala, music, Spotify
. and that is sometimes enough.
This is my first time working in a startup and I can tell you: is fun stuff. I don’t mean that I’m playing around all day or there is no stress. The contrary, in a startup environment, sometimes the pressure is higher than in a establish company. However is fun to be able to contribute to “a cause” or common goal. Even if what you produce is small, as a grain of sand, still is not trivial and will always be welcome, specially when resources are scarce.
Is fun because nobody sticks to their job title, everybody has other tasks (even if it means washing the dishes or buying food for everybody). Is fun because of the uncertainty: not know what the next day will bring us. Is fun because people have a chance to connect, share ideas and go into endless discussions that don’t go know where.
I guess a startup is fun when is built to be fun, where the right person and attitude is more important than the right CV, which leads to a environment where can connect with the others in the company. like pieces of a puzzle coming together by chance.
Sure it might sound romantic or or just me experiencing the honeymoon syndrome (when early on, everything is great), then again this fun: the whole experience.
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- Tags: Entrepreneurship
About this blog
A personal blog where I write about my current projects, work and interests. The posts are a reflection on my current self, varying over time, since change is the only constant.
Welcome to G To The Square, my thoughts on ICT, Business and Life... in a Square.
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- Dan: mike June 24th, 2009 at 9:49 pm Well. to be honest. It worked by just killing wlcomm.ece process, [...]
- Liz: thank you very much your advice was so much simpler and easier to understand than other answers foun [...]
- Flattr a new way of consuming for digital content | G to The Square: [...] you want to now little bit more about why using stories to pitch an idea, check my previous po [...]
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- rr: hey i just saw your post and i think it is helpful..i was having the same problem with my netbook.i [...]
- Ditch the Project Manager, Get a Mentor
- Writing software with a Hangover
- Flattr a new way of consuming for digital content
- Remake of 1993 McDonald’s commercial
- Stories as a blueprint for presenting
- With rhythm and flow, when is there… is there
- “Let’s be creative” is uncreative
- Merry Christmas
- Apple might welcome Spotify with a Lala
- This is fun stuff