May 21, 2012 Leave a comment
Sarah Klein and Tom Mason created this touching film about Ken Burns and his take on what makes a good story. The Burns recipe is 1+1=3. The things that matter most, in his opinion, are the immeasurables – love, reason, faith, irony, conflict, paradox, etc. These are the things that help stories to connect with us on a deeper level, making the whole, greater than the sum of it’s parts.
[via Brain Pickings]
May 14, 2012 Leave a comment
Entrepreneur, CEO and computer scientist Andy Hickl wrote a great piece for Tech Crunch yesterday about the rise of this notion of personal assistants as a means for helping us to make the most out of our lives. I love the piece because Andy blows the doors off of our conventional understanding of what duties a digital personal assistant might perform.
One school of thought says that assistants should be all about delegation. I pass tasks downstream, and in doing so, I reclaim my time and energy. I think that several companies will achieve big things doing just that.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. What about an assistant that doesn’t take things off my plate — but rather, wants to put things on it? What about an assistant that guides me down paths less traveled? What about an assistant that aspires to help me be a better version of myself? What about having a colleague instead of a secretary? A mentor instead of a student?
What would it mean to have a rewarding, mutual relationship with a computer — not in a GTD sense, per se — but rather in my private life? A relationship that was based on mutual admiration, a high level of trust, and a secret handshake? We need a corollary to the notion of an assistant. I like having an assistant. But I want a companion too.
With a companion, you’ll have to give more to get more, too. It’s more of a partnership, and a true love. A companion is an emotionally evolved species. Better put, a companion actually aspires to help me be a better human, and lead a better human life. A companion is about more than just finding me an ATM, conducting a web search, or deleting a calendar entry. It’s about achieving goals, and revealing truths.
Andy says we’re seeing the convergence of three major trends that are making this technologically possible and socially desirable.
The Transparent Self
First, these apps will require a lot of data about us to become effective and useful in our lives. We need to let them in and then be convinced that continuing to share personal information with them is providing us with tangible value. Andy points out that location-based apps may have the best headstart in this area, as they ask for a type of data that we’re freely willing to give up, and that can be used to make a ton of accurate predictions about who we are, what we do, and (ultimately) what we’ll want/need.
The Aspirational Self
The next step is about creating enough value to garner continued use. A lot of this begins with the idea of The Quantified Self, the act of being able to measure habits and behaviors as a means of self-improvement and discovery. The Feltron Report, Jambone Up and Nike’s recently launched Fuel Band are all great examples. But, Andy points out that they rely (to varying degrees) on game mechanics. Whereas, when you receive a recommendation from a trusted source, you don’t have to be “gamed” because there’s a sense of established trust and mutual understanding. It’s what we have with our significant others and close friends. And this is where the opportunity lies: in creating trusted “companions” that make our limited time on earth richer.
The Clued-In Self
Staying with this idea of the companion, the difference they have from assistants is that companions (or think of them as good friends) say “Hey. I saw this awesome new thing. You gotta go try it with me now!”. Whereas assistants (think: Siri) are reactive. They do what you tell them to do, but operate exclusively within the purview of your own awareness and knowledge. The second piece to this goes back to the always-on mentality. The idea that our desires, interests and needs are always changing, requires a companion that is always listening, re-evaluating and adapting.
Overall, an awesome series of trends and an even better framework for thinking about the future of brands as utilities…and eventually companions. Rock on, Andy.
May 8, 2012 2 Comments
To gain a better understanding of American consumers’ relationship with their automobiles, DIY market research firm AYTM, surveyed 2000 U.S. car, truck and SUV owners. Questions pertained to age, make, model, sentiment, psychological motivators and more.
A fantastic snippet of research that I wanted to share because of how diametrically opposed the responses of males are from females. I mean, they could not be more opposite in how they feel about their vehicles, what characteristics are most important, and the emotional benefits they’re looking to receive. Check out the infographic after the break.
April 9, 2012 1 Comment
In case you missed it, Instagram was just purchased by Facebook for a billion dollars (yes, billion). This says one of two things to me. A) the valuation of this tech start-up (which currently has no revenue model) is incredibly inflated or B) the values of Americans are rapidly shifting to prioritize the preservation and sharing of experiences over that of being informed on local, national and global issues. What am I missing here?
January 19, 2012 1 Comment
Last night I watched, PressPausePlay, a documentary that addresses how technology is impacting our culture and it’s art forms. The film primarily focuses on music, arguing that greater access to better technology is making it easy for anyone to create art. But, at what cost?
They interview a variety of thought-leaders and artists, including Seth Godin, Andrew Keen, Moby, Bill Drummond and a bunch more.
I have to say, author, Andrew Keen, as always, makes some startling but compelling points about the cultural dark age he believes we’re heading towards. Keen postulates that technology and social media are leading everyone to believe that they’re an artist of some sort. The result is a sea of mediocrity that obscures the ability of the limited number of truly talented individuals in this world to shine through, ultimately destroying our beloved art forms when the world eventually becomes accustomed to sub-part art. Pretty ominous stuff.
However, I don’t agree with this. My first thought is, how can more people creating, building and making things possibly have a negative outcome on our society? Art, when practiced diligently, can lead to self-actualization, a greater appreciation of life and an overall sense of purpose.
Furthermore, and perhaps more compelling, is that the democratization of art and culture should be more effective at bringing the high quality work to the surface, not less, as Keen argues in the film. Allow me to explain. No more than 15 years ago, record studios and the radio stations determined what music you got to hear. If you had adequate buying power, you could drop 15 bucks on a band’s CD. Now with sites like iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and countless others, you can listen to tons of music for free without having to make a financial commitment of any kind.
January 16, 2012 Leave a comment
I talked about Todd Henry’s, Accidental Creative in a post about defining your work style not that long ago. Having completed the book, I am now going back to indentify the areas in my own creative, strategic and on-going learning process that need the most work.
A section that I found to be particularly useful was Henry’s chapter on “Stimuli”. It goes about the way you’d expect. You are what you consume. If you read and watch garbage, your mind will be filled with the same.
So, given the overwhelming flow of fantastic books, articles, blog posts and research studies baiting the curious mind, how do we sift through it all to ensure optimal inspiration and benefit across a variety of disciplines, relevant both to our professional and personal interests? Furthermore, how do knowledge workers consume the material that will benefit them the most at solving the critical problems they’re faced with everyday?
Ultimately we’re looking to expand the mental framework with which we use to understand and interpret the world. So, as Henry points out, make the box bigger, and you’ll be more likely to synthesize information from disparate reaches of our world in your own problem solving.
Henry offers some helpful recommendations which I’ll supplement with some of what I’ve come across during my own research and personal experience.
First, what’s the basic blocking and tackling you need to do to stay up to date in your field? Henry refers to this as the mental vegetables in your content diet. These are the websites, magazines and writers that you need to be following weekly or even daily to ensure you’ve got all the information you need. For me, being a strategist in marketing, these are sites like PSFK, Harvard Business Review, Ad Age, Mashable, etc. This should account for around 25% of your reading.
December 13, 2011 Leave a comment
The NY Times had a piece last Friday about how social media and frequent sharing has seeped into the world of climbing. The article was entitled, On Ledge and Online: Solitary Sport Turns Social. It used, world-renowned climber Tommy Caldwell as an example of how climbers are using social media and always-improving mobile technology to keep their followers abreast to the details of their conquests.
As an avid climber myself, I have been captivated by Caldwell’s multi-year quest to climb the Dawn Wall on Yosemite’s El Cap, 20-some pitches of 5.13-5.14 climbing on a nearly featureless wall.
But, I’ll resist the urge to geek out and get on to my point. The article focuses on the potential effect that freqeuent sharing through social media has on the mindset of the climber. The crux of the article (no pun intended) is this:
“In the last six years, more climbers have started engaging in almost-live updates from the mountains,” said Katie Ives, the editor of Alpinist magazine. She says she worries that “instead of actually having the experience be the important part, it’s the representation of the experience that becomes the important part — something is lost.” David Roberts, a writer and climber, said from-the-route media “introduces a fatal self-consciousness” to a climb. It removes the “blissful sense of being alone out there.”
This is great stuff. When climbers are interacting with their fans through Facebook and other channels they’re removing their focus from the present moment, and into, as Ives says, a more representational state of consciousness. [Note: we should probably give Tommy a break, he was, after all, sleeping on the side of a 3,000 foot wall for 16 days.]
But, what’s really important here, is that this state of existence is real for everyone who chooses to live a digital life. Whether we’re at a concert, out to dinner, or catching a ball game, we’re tempted to capture that experience and/or provide some commentary about it. No matter how you look at it, we are removing ourselves from living fully in the present moment.
The question though becomes, what effect, if any will it have on us as humans over time? Since the invention of the camera, man has been stepping out of the present in an effort to preserve special moments. Furthermore, research has shown that preserving memories through keep sakes like pictures tends to increase the strength and positive affectations that we associate with them, which in turn adds meaning to our lives.
So, could our incessant documenting and sharing be somehow beneficial? Since the invention of Twitter, I’ve certainly noticed that after reading or watching some piece of content, I’m much quicker to explore my mind for unique thoughts, insights or perspectives to pair with the link I’m sharing. Not necessarily living in the present, but I doubt this sort of critical inquiry could be harmful.
I certainly don’t have an answer for this. But, would love to see some longitudinal research that tracks the emotional states and overall quality of living for heavy social media users versus non-users.
Thanks for reading. Any thoughts?
[image courtesy of Brett Lowell/Big UP Productions] 
September 22, 2011 1 Comment
So, I’m reading Todd Henry’s, The Accidental Creative, which is a book for anyone who must come up with creative and novel solutions to problems in their field on a never-ending basis. The challenge we face in this position is the need to constantly be inventive and brilliant, amidst an increasingly distracting and chaotic world. Henry, in his book identifies many of the problems holding us back from reaching our maximum potential and then proposes a series of principles to live by that will allow us to create effectively amidst the turmoil.
The piece I stumbled upon yesterday, pertains to identifying how you tend to operate or work at you job. Henry breaks these tendencies into 3 main types, which I’ll describe:
Drifter: this individual goes with the wind, working on whatever they feel like in a given moment. Easily distracted and operating often in very shallow levels of thought, due to their distraction. Finishing projects is challenging and are often put off until the last possible moment. The scattered nature of this type’s work can lack purpose because they are missing a systematic and organized approach. This isn’t to say these people aren’t productive, it just means there missing some critical components to be maximally effective.
Driver: this person is almost the opposite of the Drifter, as they are overly focused on outcomes. They naturally break projects down into their smallest component parts, in order to complete the work as effectively as possible. These individuals are propelled by checking off their to-do lists. While they are incredibly skilled at reaching their objectives efficiently, their rigid systems for accomplishing work, narrow their focus to a point that causes them to miss key opportunities. Henry says it best that Drivers “are too microscopically focused on the objective and are often reluctant to redirect their energy when new opportunities emerge in the course of their work.”
Developer: this type contains the best of both the driver and the drifter and represents what we strive for in our creative processes. The developer is extremely clear on the objectives before undertaking a project, but is capable of pulling back and refining their course as new information and insights become available. They are able to become hyper-focused at the ground level when it’s time to complete the real ‘work’, but periodically zoom out to higher altitudes to look for new opportunities, insights and areas of synthesis. Because of their flexibility, Developers, are most likely to experience moments of creative insight.
I found this to be extremely helpful as I often find myself bordering on the Drifter type, checking my Twitter feed, reading blogs, jumping back into actual work, checking my phone. I very frequently move from one task to the next without any rhyme or reason to the progression. That being said, it would be reductionistic to say that we are only one type. Obviously different tasks, challenges and environments will elicit different behaviors, but being aware of these types can help you to become more aware of how your behaviors may be helping or hurting you.
Image via Simple Square blog
