There was an explosion in midtown Manhattan yesterday, about 4 blocks from where I was working…
The New York Times reported today that New Yorkers were “unnerved” which was certainly the case on the street when it happened. With the constant reminders of terrorism the government scares the shit out of everyone (and gains support for the war in Iraq?) instead of reminding us how incredibly resilient we are when needed.
The first SmartEx class was taught this week and went off without a hitch. While it’s a real working course from the students’ point of view, behind the scenes I’m using it as a prototype to quickly learn better ways of doing everything schools do. I was even planning to take a hit financially in the interest of testing, but enough people signed up to make it profitable too.
Incidentally, I love the local retail stores that proudly display the first cash they made, posting bills on the walls. Here’s my digital equivalent of that, a screen shot after the first students signed up…
Moore’s Law is alive and well I confirmed recently while shopping for an external hard drive. You can now buy a name brand 1TB (terabyte, or 1000 gigabytes) drive for about $400. That’s 40 cents per gig. I can remember when under $10/MB was pretty good.
Ezra Dyer puts Ferrari’s brand-production decisions in perspective:
Ferrari had 1,000 orders for the $650,000 Enzo after the car was unveiled in 2002, but the company stuck to its decision to build only 399 cars (plus one for the pope). By my math, that means it left $390,000,000 on the table in the name of exclusivity and almighty demand. With those 600 never-built Enzos, Ferrari essentially invested $390 million in its own legend.
Because nothing whips rich people into a frenzy quite like telling them they can’t have something.
Alex Kirtland interviewed me for his blog UsableMarkets about my work on Smart Experience. Here’s a highlight of me in a young turk mood…
…Smart Experience students tend to be younger, technically-savvy, and willing to experiment, so we don’t have to adhere to tradition when we think another way is better. If we want to run a “class†about field research that meets in private homes watching how people use their home computers, we can do that. We don’t have a binder full of stifling policies to keep us from innovating.
I posted the slides from my Getting Good Designs Built talk at the New York IxDA meeting earlier this week. Of course you won’t get the full experience from a deck, but there’s some useful references in there.
I’ve spent the Winter and a better part of the Spring planning and scheming, and I’m ready to get back into the fray in a public way. Here’s where you can catch me in the next few weeks:
I ventured up to “cottage country” north of Toronto this past weekend for Overlap 07, now in its second year of exploring the overlap of design and business in a small event format out in a beautiful, woodsy setting. Again, it was inspiring and useful, perhaps more so as the mix of design, business, media, and scientific perspectives was more even. Thanks go to the folks from Torch for making it a success.
There’s a lot to say about it. But one of the big topics of conversation was our growing discomfort with field’s myopia with innovation: discomfort with the word as well as the focus on the high-risk/high-return sort of innovation. We talked and heard research about organic growth and risk profiles that allowed companies to thrive in the long term with less risk and pretty good returns. The highlight IMHO was Jeanne Liedtke‘s overview of their research in this area and the profile of individuals who tend to succeed, which I summarized:
Along the way she mentioned the work of Carol Dweck who I need to read up on.
There’s some Overlap07 photos on Flickr.
My friend Austin wrote me, “I’m putting together a list of recommended books for designers interested in strategy, the business side, and jumping into entrepreneurship. Can you recommend 3-5 books you think are indispensable?”
I don’t think there’s a single book that fits that description well, and I’ve wondered if a ‘business for designers’ book would be popular or not. But pressed for an answer, here’s the 3-5 I pointed to:
What the CEO Wants You to Know — what I use as a textbook in my ‘Business & Design’ class at Pratt. A simple primer.
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days — reading it now, very interesting as history and very reassuring for me during the initial, difficult stage of building a business to know everyone goes through the same pain.
Strategy Safari is probably the best primer on strategy. Innovator’s Dilemma is important these days, as is Blue Ocean Strategy. Though they’re all so long I don’t have time to actually read any of them; they’re reference.
Want more? John Hagel (whose writing is excellent) has a great list of tech-influenced strategy references.
If you don’t have severe symptoms, use the RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation) method to relieve pain, reduce swelling, and speed healing…
Strength training is associated with muscle heads, but it’s smart for everyone. We know that muscle tissue burns calories, so strength training not only makes you stronger and look better, it helps you avoid weight gain when you’re not exercising.
In general:
A sample routine you can do anywhere without equipment:
Too easy? Make it harder:
Aside: Why, at age 37, am I just learning all this now? I realize the physical education classes in American schools are mostly intended to give the students exercise, but don’t necessarily teach them how to continue that exercise themselves beyond school. I’d like to see gym teachers teach kids a basic 15 minute routine they could continue their entire lives.
The four-step process for delegation:
Danke to Ulrike for this one.
One thing blogging has given me is a place to put summaries of good stuff. I find books increasingly too long and boring to read through, I crave the gist.
Much of what we know about fitness can be boiled down into relatively simple processes. Here’s the common formula for increasing your running endurance:
I recently finished my first three-week session at Stacy’s Boot Camp, a calisthenics-based workout class held for one hour, three times a week, for three weeks. Sometime during the class when I was trying to avoid thinking about the pain I was in, it occured to me this is a wonderful example of a Blue Ocean strategy on a small scale.
The kicker is that this doesn’t have to be a small business; Stacy could expand to parks all over the world, much faster than a gym chain could.