Author: Scott Berkun

Why I hate Prezi

Posted on in Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

One of the many jokes about Powerpoint is how much time people who use it spend picking transitions between slides. They spend more time picking out animations and fonts than what their audience needs to learn and how best to convey those lessons. It’s like wanting to make a movie and spending all your budget just on costumes. It’s backwards and broken.

Because of how Powerpoint, and Keynote, are constructed, common habits for creating presentations are often poor. The tools are slide centric, not presentation centric, and people instinctively follow the metaphor built in to their tools. While I do believe you can make a good presentation with any tool, and a bad one too, the emphasis of the tool influences choices.

Popular presentation tools focus on slides, which should not be the focus at all. No one comes to listen to a lecture in hope of great slides. They want good ideas, expressed well, especially ideas that answer the questions that motivated them to attend the lecture in the first place. Most people I know, when informed they need to give a presentation, immediately begin making slides, and they may as well tie a noose around their own necks. There is no point in making a single slide until you know some of what you want to say, and how best to say it. If you make slides first, you become a slide slave. You will spend all your time perfecting your slides, instead of perfecting your thoughts. You will likely talk to your slides when you present, and not your audience, as you will have spent more time on the slides than you did practicing giving the talk itself. Sadly, I don’t know of any tool that guides their users properly towards how good speakers prepare.

In Chapter 5 of Confessions of a Public Speaker, I explain the best way to prepare for a presentation. You start by thinking about the audience:

  • Why are they coming to the talk instead of doing something else more fun?
  • What questions are they hoping you will answer about the topic?
  • What are your well thought out answers?
  • What is the best way to express those answers?

Only after some hard thinking on these questions is there any hope a presentation will turn out well, and it’s only then that a speaker should start thinking about slides. And even then, slides should be a tool for drafting. Make the quickest and dirtiest slides possible, and then start practicing the talk. After each practice, improve how well the slides support what you want to say. Only then will the slides have the proper role as a prop, rather being the star and making you the prop.

I first saw a demo of Prezi years ago, and it seemed interesting. I liked the idea of a fully 2D space to work from. But as I used it I realized it had taken the things I hated most about Powerpoint, and emphasized them. Prezi bills itself on the ability to ZOOM, to MOVE, to TRANSITION. All the most distracting elements for would-be speakers, elements that distract them away from the quality thinking required to speak well.  Instead of thinking “I’m so proud of how I worked hard to explain this important idea so that my audience can understand it” they think “Here comes my favorite transition! Look at how the entire screen is going to rotate!” I can see how, in the hands of a skilled communicator, Prezi makes some things easier to do, but a skilled communicator would do just fine with any tool.

I’ve experimented with many different ways to present. If I want to have more control over how to represent things in 2D, I use a WHITEBOARD. Hooking up an iPad with a drawing app works wonderfully well as a virtual one. And it’s easy to switch between it and Keynote if I want to follow the basic structure of a slide deck.  I was deeply inspired by watching Bill Verplank speak at UIE years ago, where he simply drew as he talked. It was more dynamic than any software, and more personal too, since we all could watch him work with his hands. He’s not a dynamic speaker, but he doesn’t need to be, as the clarity and value of his ideas are strong enough on their own. I can’t draw like Bill can, but I’ve found working with a whiteboard, virtual or not, invites an audience’s attention in a way software can never do. And as a speaker if I work at a whiteboard, I can’t hide behind slides. It forces me to properly prepare too.

The people most drawn to use Prezi are those who are more enchanted by the pretense of style, rather than substance. To this day I have yet to see a Prezi presentation that would not have been better had the speaker used something else, including nothing at all. Many presentations would be better if the speaker just spoke, sans slides or any props at all. If they just spoke, they’d be forced to think hard about what they wanted to say, and not expect to hide behind whizzy transitions or obfuscated slides.

If anyone has seen a great talk done with Prezi, please leave a comment.

[Updated Note 2-3-15]: here is an excellent post on the problems with misusing transitions in Prezi and how to fix them. I still don’t recommend the tool, but this may help those who choose to use it anyway]

[Minor edits 1-12-2016]

The culture of the scapegoat

Posted on in Philosophyby Scott Berkun

How do we choose who we blame? And why?

In our own experience we know there are complicated reasons why bad things happen. It’s rarely one thing or one person. But yet when we blame others, we’re very happy to dump all the responsibility on a single person and rarely take time to investigate if they deserve it, which they almost never do. We pick an easy, defenseless target, and all the responsibility collapses on them. The rest of the story fades from memory.

I recently watched a fantastic documentary called Catching Hell: The Steve Bateman story.  It’s the story of the Chicago Cubs fan who interfered with a foul ball in the the 2003 playoffs.

And it’s fantastic.

It explores the story of both Bill Buckner and Steve Bartman. In both cases there were many mistakes made by their respective teams on the infamous nights that they lost, yet only these two small events, and two individuals, have had the entire responsibility for what went wrong dumped on them.

Even if you are not a sports fan, it’s a fascinating investigation into our how our culture, history, and memory work (or don’t work).

You can watch it on youtube (in ten parts). Or as one experience on Netflix Streaming. It was made as part of EPSN’s fantastic 30 for 30 series.

Commutapult: the great commute of the future

Posted on in Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

I’m often baffled by which things online are popular, as it has little to do with what’s good. The most popular ignite talk seems to be How to Buy a Used Car, which is a good topic, but the talk itself disappoints. It’s not delivered well enough, nor the content good enough, to be worthy of its popularity.

On the other end of the spectrum is this wonderful talk by Mark Selander on a crazy idea for public transportation: The Commutapult. He’s an illustrator, and his talents shine in the Ignite format, where you have to show a slide every 15 seconds. But so far, few folks have seen it.

Take 5 minutes to watch: you’ll be charmed, entertained, and delighted. Is he serious? Is he not? You figure it out.

Jonah Lehrer and the facts

Posted on in Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

Recently Jonah Lehrer, a rising star science writer, resigned his post at the New Yorker. A journalist named Michael Moynihan identified fabricated quotes falsely attributed to Bob Dylan in Lehrer’s book Imagine. The book has been pulled from amazon.com and other bookstores. If you want a detailed account of what happened and what the passages were, Poynter has an excellent summary.

Months ago I critiqued an excerpt of Lehrer’s book in my popular article In Defense of Brainstorming. My opinion was, and is, he made claims the studies he referred to did not support.

I’ve read most of the major coverage about Lehrer and here are my thoughts:

  • It’s a sad story. He’s a talented writer. He resigned and apologized for the fabrication. We should be grateful this was dealt with quickly and publicly. It frees readers and scholars to examine his other work carefully and identify other fabrications, if any, in his other writings.
  • There is no excuse for fabrication. Writing is hard. Doing research is hard. But one hopes journalists have some sense of the truth and respect for other people who they are writing about and resist the urge for shortcuts of any kind.
  • But all journalists manipulate truth. When a journalist interviews you for 20 minutes on a subject, and then uses merely one sentence you said, they are choosing how to represent the truth. They are likely choosing the truth you said that fits the story they are already building. Is it true you said what you said? Yes. But will it be true in the context of the article? Maybe, maybe not. Every quote you read from every expert in every article is chosen in roughly this fashion. A 1500 word piece can not encompass the entirety of anything which means every fact offered is only a partial rendering of that fact, quote, person or event. Journalists have to decide what angle to take, what slivers of facts to use, and how to fit the pieces together. We hope they keep everyone’s integrity intact, but that is often wishful thinking. (Also see the use and misuse of quoting people)
  • Mistakes are everywhere. We assume writers are magicians. Fact checking, in rare instances where it is done seriously, is not a perfect process. If a popular book written in 1975 unintentionally misquoted a famous person, it’s entirely possible the mis-quote will become more popular than the real one no matter what anyone does. Dozens of new books and articles will continue to propagate that misquote. And in 2012 an author might find the same misquote reused by three different sources, which is enough for most people to assume that quote is valid to reuse. Any writer has to put some faith in his sources in order to write, and there are too many facts to check or origins to verify in any article to achieve certainty. Writing and history are imperfect even when we are all at our best.
  • We all suffer from Confirmation Bias. Everyone tends to choose an opinion and then look for facts. Writers are not immune. My critique of Lehrer in In Defense of Brainstorming was not about ethics, it was about standards. I don’t think he gave fair coverage of the specific research he cited, which is problematic if that research is the basis for making big claims. I was disappointed he did this, but many writers do. And few readers are diligent enough to read the studies to check writers assumptions. I made a made a similar critique of Susan Cain’s NY Times piece in The Problem with the New Groupthink. It’s not unethical to have confirmation bias. Most writing has many biases, both obvious and hidden. However it should reduce your credibility as a writer and thinker, as good writers and thinkers should proactively disclose or work against their own biases.
  • I’m upset about lying more than the mistakes. Given that mistakes are common and hard to avoid, writers should be committed to finding mistakes in their own work and correcting them. It’s important the writer themselves facilitates that process. The most disturbing thing in Lehrer’s story so far is his lying over the span of weeks about his fabrication. That’s where, as a writer, Lehrer is out of rope. I wish more writers would invite review and lead the process. For the Myths of Innovation, I made a commitment to research accuracy and continue to invite readers to help improve future editions of the book by checking my facts.
  • Self-plagiarism is a stupid term. In unrelated incidents, Lehrer apparently reused portions from articles he had written for Wired magazine in articles submitted to The New Yorker. The term that has been coined for this, self-plagarism, is misleading. Plagarism is theft. The problem here is not theft, as the words he reused were his own. For a reader, there might not be a problem at all as they don’t care where the paragraph came from if it works well in the article. Publishers have a right to original material if they wish, so the primary issue is between the writer and the publisher, not the reader. As Gladwell has apparently stated about this: “By the way, if I run across the same absurd allegation anywhere else, I intend to reproduce my comment verbatim. Why? Because I thought about what I wanted to say, I’m comfortable with the way I said it, and I see no reason to tinker with my own language for the sake of tinkering with my own language.” (source)

Update: A study of Lehrer’s posts for Wired found numerous issues. They’ve terminated their relationship with him.

The hard way is the easy way

Posted on in Philosophy, Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

Sometimes the hard way to do something is the easy way.

I am a bad guitar player. But I’m also a very happy one. A friend told me long ago it was good to have something you suck at, but enjoy anyway. It’s a healthy reminder that fun doesn’t require skill.

I play guitar nearly every day, usually as a brief escape from writing. When I get stuck with a writing project I pick up the guitar and sing and play for a few minutes. It always feels good. Soon I feel inspired again to get back to work. But my skill level has remained in exactly the same place for years. I’m an advanced beginner, maybe.

Recently I learned how to play a proper F chord. I’d been doing a hacky version of an F chord for years, mainly because to do it right required more practice than I was willing to do.

I finally just decided I was fed up playing it the hacky way. I tried the hard way a week ago.

It turned out that trying to play it the hard way was actually much easier than the hacky way. It did take more attempts to learn play it the right way, but when I got it working, it felt and sounded much better than the hacky way. Plus playing it the right way makes it easier to learn other chords that use the same shape. Whereas the hacky way has no reuse at all. It’s just a hack.

The hard way required maybe 35% more upfront effort, but for its payoff it was easier to learn than the hacky way, which never really worked well.

Sometimes the hard way to do something is the easy way.

Does dedicated innovation time work?

Posted on in Business, Innovationby Scott Berkun

I wrote a popular post awhile ago with an analysis on the Google’s 20% time concept. Howard Baldwin from Computerworld interviewed me about this. Sadly, none of my comments made it into his article. The good news is here are the questions he asked with my answers.

HB: Please characterize the importance of creativity and innovation in the context of the working environment?

SB: All work is problem solving. Creativity is simply another word for the process of solving problems. If you give me a tough problem and I solve it for you, you may tell me “wow you are so creative” but really what I did was solve a set of problems. I may have used some old ideas, or some new ones, but to you it’s all the same since your problem was solved. Obsessing about how innovative you are is a mistake because it distracts from the real goal of solving important problems. The more ambitious the goals of a team, the more problem solving skills they will need to be successful and they better they need to be at identifying the real problems to solve.

Assuming you have a great idea you still need a good project team to execute it. Success for that hinges on 3 factors:

  1. Is there a small creative team driving the project? IT groups are often dominated by committees, and suffer from too many cooks. It’s harder for good ideas to thrive if there are dozens of people who have the power to veto them while they are still young. You need a small (3-5) team of people who have power over the creative process.
  2. Trust. Most teams are dysfunctional. They are competing for promotion and resources. If the VP of the group isn’t successful at creating a culture of trust, the most brilliant ideas in the world will be destroyed by infighting.
  3. Leaders willing to make change happen. All good ideas demand change. The bigger the idea, the more change that’s required. Change makes people who like the status-quo very uncomfortable. If the leader isn’t willing to take on the risk of change, no progress can happen no matter how brilliant the team or the ideas they produce are.

HB: How many of these innovation/creativity programs are you aware of?

Many. It’s very trendy now for executives to create innovation programs. Most of them fail. They fail because new ideas are the easy part. What happens when the VP gets 10 good new ideas – is he willing to fund them? Bet the division on them? Cut an old project loved by another VP to make room for one single new idea? The real challenge is on the leader’s willingness to change and take on the risks of change. No method can do that for them – they have to do that for themselves as leaders.

HB: Is there something that keeps these programs from being more popular?

Shallowness and hubris. The most common practice is taking a small slice of a culture from a successful company (Apple, Google, etc.) without studying the larger context, and trying to jam it into their own culture. It’s organ transplantation surgery done with a butter knife. There is great hubris in assuming that making a poor copy of something that is not well understood will have instant positive effects. Typically the thing being poorly copied is then blamed as ‘not working’ and the cycle continues with the next fad.

It takes a long time to change a culture and IT departments are generally very conservative, risk-averse and focused on the short term. Often it’s not their fault as those characteristics are defined for them by the CEO. But the end result is the same regardless of who is the cause.

HB: What’s the coolest program you’ve seen?

The coolest programs I’ve seen are IT groups that are led by people who have experience making new products, rather than only working in IT departments. They’re more willing to embrace change, they understand how to sequester risk on new ideas, and they are better at learning new lessons.

HB: What advice would you give a CIO considering implementing such a program?

Start small. Pick one project team. Pick a good leader who is good at new projects. Let them work with a different set of rules (e.g. 20% time). Agree on the goals (small) for the project but then mostly stay out of their way and focus on protecting them from annoying people and roadblocks. When they finish, ask them to evaluate the results. Did those new rules afford better results? Ask why or why not? Ask the team ‘what did we learn? what should we do differently next time?” then share those results with the rest of the company, and repeat. If the ‘new rules’ result in progress, the VP should encourage other teams to use them. If they didn’t, the CIO should repeat the experiment with a similar team, but with new rules, fueled by the team’s own opinion for what to change.

The tyranny of category

Posted on in Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

Most of the world is curved. Other than some man made things, everything bends. Rivers, streams, trees, and coastlines are all less than straight. Even the paths we make when we find shortcuts through cities have arcing angles, and rarely run in straight lines.

Putting things in order has value and right angles have their place. Order can give clarity and simplicity. The city grid ensures neighboring streets are in parallel and not curved away from each other, which is a blessing when in a foreign place with a poor map. But organizing requires conformity, and conformity creates a tyranny over perception. While our universities divide the world into academic subjects,  the world itself is not divided at all. The world has an infinite number of ways to be looked at. A bridge is not just engineering, it’s physics, commerce and aesthetics too. A person is not merely a name, they are biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, and metaphysics all at once. They can be a neighbor, a brother, a friend, a nemesis, simultaneously. We are multitudes and we, and everything in the universe, posses elements we may never define and that defy categorization.

The tyranny of category is when we think a thing is only what we have labeled it to be. A master of taxonomy and judgement has the illusion of expertise, since they choose what label an idea, or a person, is given. But like an olympic judge for gymnastics, the ability to score a performance on a scale from 1 to 10 is not the same as the ability to perform gymnastics itself. If you show me a soufflé, I can tell you what category of food it is, and judge it on how it compares to others I’ve eaten, but that does not give me the skill to make one. A film critic can harshly criticize a movie, but not possess any of the abilities required to make any film at all. The ability to categorize and critique has the pretense of superiority to creation, but not the substance.

In some cultures there is a tyranny of taxonomy. Nothing can be done without being categorized first. And that categorization limits the potential of the idea or the person since in a rigidly taxonomic environment, moving between categories is not allowed. The categories are primary, and the reality is secondary. It’s no surprise that these cultures produce square and lifeless things. Their obsession with order is contrary to the nature of ideas, and the world. Without constant reminders that categories are malleable inventions of convenience and not manifest in the world itself, the possibility of free thinking and progress is denied.

In Alan Watt’s The book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, he offers a visual example of this problem. Compare this:

To this:

As Watts wrote:

[in the second drawing] order has been imposed on chaos. We can now say that the wiggle goes so many squares to the left, so many to the right, so many up, or so many down, and at last we have a number… However much we divide, count, sort or classify this wiggling into particular things and events, this is no more than a way of thinking about the world: it is never actually divided.

I will mark this post intentionally as uncategorized.

 

How To Be Creative – The Short Honest Truth

Posted on in Creative Thinkingby Scott Berkun

After a decade studying how creatives do what they do the answer is simple: they work. No one wants to hear this, but creativity is best thought of as a kind of effort, not an abstract thing – it’s what goes on when you are trying to solve a problem. The problem could be writing a poem, making a song, designing a website, anything. But no creative person in history was creative in a practical sense without applying effort to some kind of project.

The biggest difference between you and Picasso, or Beyoncé, or whoever your creative heroes are is that they out work(ed) you. They spend more time in front of a canvas, or guitar, or computer, working away at applying their minds and souls to specific things. Even if that thing is just trying to get what is in their head out into rough sketches or handwritten ramblings.  

Want to be more creative? Pick a problem you care about and get to work. If you don’t care about anything, your problem isn’t creativity, it’s apathy. If you start things and give up, your problem isn’t creativity, it’s dedication. Can’t focus for long? Then learn the skill of concentration. Find yourself blocked? Learn about incubation and stepping away to let your subconscious do the work. Are you waiting for an epiphany? Study how they really work. 

Few people in history that we call creatives today read books or took courses on creativity. Instead they apprenticed with masters in a craft and worked with them. They did the grunt work until they had the skills needed to do more sophisticated work. They learned how to develop ideas and deliver finished work by working. Often doing work that was not very good until their skill caught up with their ambition. There is no other way.

Don’t believe me? Pick any creative hero, and any creative work they’re famous for, and investigate how many sketches, or drafts, or attempts they had to make to get it right. They may have had flashes of insight here and there, but those came while they were working hard. Ideas are cheap, it’s the commitment to make ideas real that’s rare.

 

Related:

(Note: originally posted on Quora)

Best posts of the month

Posted on in best ofby Scott Berkun

You might be surprised to learn I send out a monthly newsletter covering any big news, tour dates, new magic spells, as well as a nice beefy listing of my best posts of the month.  About 15k people subscribe, but I know more people read the blog directly. As an obvious experiment, I’m posting the best of here too.

Maybe this will encourage you to subscribe? Maybe you’ll dance in delight? Or perhaps you’ll curse my soul to an endless pit of despair for putting yet another annoying “best of” monstrosity into our nice little universe. Who knows? It’s an experiment! There is only one way to find out – here goes.

My best posts of the month:

You can of course subscribe to the newsletter, free and awesome, right here.

The future of outsourcing

Posted on in Business, Mindfireby Scott Berkun

Dave Rodenbaugh, from How to buy a website, was one of my kickstarter supporters for my latest book Mindfire, a collection of my best essays.  He had this request for a blog post: Where do I see outsourcing heading in the U.S. and the world for the next 5 years?

I avoid thinking about macro-trends. Even if on average all corporations are doing 10% more outsourcing, there can be many specific industries where the trend is exactly the opposite. The macro-trend matters less than what’s going on inside the particular industry, or company, you care about.

The short answer is outsourcing will continue to grow. And to shrink. I don’t see anything in the next 5 years that dramatically changes anything.

Outsourcing will grow because there are always businesses looking to reduce costs. By moving a job from inside to outside a company, the price paid for the work drops. Any large established company will eventually see slower growth, and will look for ways to make up the difference by saving money. There will always be companies looking to outsource and technology makes it easier every day.

Outsourcing will shrink because as soon as you outsource a job, you limit that worker’s ability to bring you new ideas. By making the job a commodity, the worker can no longer easily suggest ways to improve how the work is done. They will never, ever, offer a proposal that is better for the overall business but that eliminates the specific tasks they are being hired to do. For example, when you hire someone to mow your lawn, they are never going to suggest you get rid of your lawn. Whereas if you have a landscaper on staff, they will continually look for ways to improve your yard, including designs that have no grass at all.  For companies or projects aimed at the equivalent of rethinking the yard, it’s natural to do as much work in-house as possible.

The rub is this: the more you outsource, the more compartmentalized and specialized your organization becomes. This can make you less flexible and less likely to develop new ways of working. Optimization demands inflexibility. A heavily outsourced company will have a hard time competing against a smaller, younger company that has found a new way to work. That younger company can afford to be inefficient since they are small, and inefficiencies can lead to discoveries. If they successfully take market share from the market leader, the market leader may never recover, as they’ve become less than the sum of their parts.

In larger organizations, the move to outsource or not swings on a pendulum. At times when competition wanes, or the economy stalls,  there is a push to save costs and simplify, and more work moves outside. At other times when competition increases, or the market expands, more work moves inside to accelerate growth and take advantage of new opportunities. But as a rule, you never want to outsource work that is strategic. Your core business and core roles should always be done inside your company. Only a fool would outsource their heart or lungs by choice.

Trinity: a graphic history of the Atomic bomb (review)

Posted on in Booksby Scott Berkun

I’m a fan of graphic novels on non-fiction topics. By putting techniques from comics and illustration at the forefront of the book, there is a power to convey complex ideas in salient ways that transcends written language. Books like LogicComix and The Book of Genesis by Crumb take on ambitious topics with grace, style, potency and charm.

The book Trinity, by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm of Two Fine Chaps, takes on the development of the first atomic bomb. He describes the planning, the personalities, and, with great style, the science involved in how they developed the ideas behind the bomb. It’s a short book, as most graphic novels are, but the illustrations will last long in my mind.

If you’ve been intimidated by Rhodes classic The Making of the Atomic Bomb and want a gentler introduction into the central history, issues, science and drama, this book is a great place to start. It’s also appropriate for young adults (the illustrations of the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end are moving more than graphic).

You can buy Trinity: a graphic novel history of the atomic bomb here.

 

Top Gun in Hecklevision: review

Posted on in moviesby Scott Berkun

Weeks ago I saw the movie Johnny Mnemonic in a clever format called Hecklevision. In Hecklevision anyone in the audience can send text messages that appear on the screen. In my review I mentioned how the concept is interesting, but the particular movie and crowd didn’t live up to the idea. I decided to give it another try, and last night I saw Top Gun, in Hecklevision at Central Cinema in Seattle. It was the killer movie for the Hecklevision concept.

This time it was a packed house, even though it was a Monday night. And since everyone was very familiar with the movie, the heckling was much better. A high percentage of people participated rather than just watching which changed the vibe in the theater for the better. At times there were so many jokes appearing on the screen, they scrolled off while I was still laughing at them. As you’d expect the humor was often crude, but often clever too. I was impressed by how fast some people could generate funny comments. It seems the bigger the star, and the bigger the clichés, the better the heckling will be. In this regard, Tom Cruise at Val Kilmer turn out to be superior heckling material, compared to Keannu Reeves and Dolph Lundgren.

I’d definitely recommend Hecklevision if you can go with a large group of friends, or can find a showing of a popular film that will draw a big crowd.

For more about how Hecklevision works, read this.

 

Quote of the month

Posted on in quote of the xby Scott Berkun

I begin my novels knowing what happens. I write endings first. I write last sentences, sometimes last paragraphs first. I write collision course stories. There is always something coming that the reader anticipates.  What you can’t know is when and who the casualties and survivors will be, but you see the what. You know what’s coming…

Many of my wrestling friends find it odd that I’m a writer. Just as many of friends in the writing world find it odd that for so many years I was a wrestler and a wrestling coach. But they seem very similar to me. In both cases, you have to be devoted to tireless repetition and small details for many more hours than you will be in competition. You will be with a nameless workout partner, a sparring partner, drilling the same outside single leg dive, inside collar tie, hundreds upon thousands of times. Well, how many times as a writer should you rewrite the same sentence? The same paragraph? The same chapter? If you’re good you never tire of that.

I don’t intend to stop. Dropping dead at my desk sounds pretty good to me.

– John Irving, from interview on NPR

News: I’m independent again

Posted on in Newsby Scott Berkun

A few weeks ago I let Matt, my boss, know I was stepping down from my role at WordPress.com.  It might be a surprise to some of you that I’d taken a job at all, but I’ve been there for nearly 2 years as the lead of Team Social, a team of developers and designers working on WordPress.com (We made things like Jetpack, Publicize, and dozens of features on WordPress.com). My experience there was amazing, but as my deepest passion is writing books and speaking it was time to return to what I do best. I’d planned to stay for just a year, but it was harder than I expected to leave.

The good news: Until this change I’d been dividing my time since August 2010, when I took the job, between two different careers. Its been a relief these last weeks to return to having just one set of ambitions to chase. And more importantly, have some time to do almost nothing at all. You’ll see more output from me here on the blog and in the world in general, as I’m now again focused on one goal: filling that bookshelf.

The next book I’m working on will be about my experience working at Automattic on WordPress.com. It’s a great company whose unusual culture (everyone works remotely) asks many important questions about not only how software should be made, but how all work should be done. I’ll have more for you soon about this project so stay tuned.

I hope you’ll wish me well on my return to independence.

 

The three piles of life

Posted on in Philosophyby Scott Berkun

Here’s an oversimplified theory to play with for today: there are only three piles in life.

  1. Things that are important
  2. Things that are unimportant
  3. Things that are unimportant but distract you from what is important

The dangerous pile is #3: as it’s the pile of misplaced energy. And it’s a hidden pile, one we often don’t realize we’re keeping. 

Marketers go to great lengths to add to the 3rd pile in our lives. Our impulses and desires contribute to it too. We’re told dozens of times a day that what’s missing is a quick fix, or something we can buy. But expensive sneakers won’t make you healthier. A fancy car or necklace won’t make you a wiser, more fulfilled person. A deep need can’t be satisfied by a sequence of temporary distractions, as tempting and exhilarating as they might be.

The important things in life rarely come to us fast or depend on what we own. Yet it’s natural in society today that those forces drive our decisions. The result is we live lives tending to the wrong piles.

Unless you define the primary piles (#1 and #2) yourself, you inherit a value system someone else decided. You might be inheriting it from people who were failed by that very framework, but are unaware. Or you are using piles from a younger version of yourself who’s priorities are out of date.  Why assume their system works now? Why not ask how it can be redesigned? Or study how people you trust and admire have shaped their piles? Make your own system and ask for feedback from those closest to you. Only they can guide you in shaping the piles most likely to shape your life into the experience you desire.

We all need other people to tell us what they think of the piles we’ve chosen and how well we are tending to them. Our habits often work against our own goals and we need help to close that gap. We’re all victim to our whims, weaknesses and egos. But if our friends know our piles, they can help us know when too much of our lives are invested in the wrong ones if we ask for their feedback. And if you don’t have a friend, be a friend to yourself. Keep a journal of where your energy goes and review it now and again so you’re honest about your piles instead of waiting for a mythical quick fix to come along someday. 

Johnny Mnemonic in Hecklevision: review

Posted on in moviesby Scott Berkun

Last night I finally made it to Hecklevision at Central Cinema in Seattle. They show bad movies and allow the audience to heckle in real time using their cell phones. Anyone in the audience can participate and it instantly appears on the screen. It’s an idea likely originated at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin.

The movie of the night was 1995’s Johnny Mnemonic, staring Keanu Reeves. An awful movie that seems worse when you consider it’d be followed by The Matrix just 4 years later.

Hecklevision is a clever concept. It adds a layer of interaction on top of  unintentionally bad films. Like watching bad TV with friends, you can revel in mockery and have a great time at the film’s expense. Central Cinema serves beer and real food (as all theaters should), adding to the communal vibe of film watching.

The problem is unless you are familiar with the movie, watching in Hecklevision requires split attention. You’re trying to follow the movie so that the heckling makes sense, but also giving attention to the comments as they appear. It’s like subtitles, but worse. Unlike subtitles, the presentation of heckles isn’t synced to anything, making it tricky to follow along, especially during action sequences. A film like Star Wars or Top Gun, that many people have seen many times, might make for better Hecklevision as everyone knows what’s coming next.

The other challenge is for hecklers. It takes time to type in a sentence on a cell phone, and by the time many funny snarky things are typed in, the movie is 15 or 20 seconds further along. The joke doesn’t work as well anymore. Unlike real heckling, which is in real time, Hecklevision trails behind. I got halfway through typing some funny comments, but gave up half-way through as by that time they weren’t funny anymore. You need to be fast to participate.

The last observation is the crowd. Since real heckling isn’t allowed, the audience is quiet. Since attention is split between the movie and the comments even when someone laughs its hard to know what is being laughed at. It’s not uncomfortable, but it was disorienting. On several occasions I wanted to say something out loud in response to a heckle, realized I should type it in instead, but gave up as the spirit of the moment was gone. The overall vibe was a calm Monday night in a half-empty theater and few had been drinking. A late Friday crowd likely provides superior results.

I loved the idea and was glad I went. The entertainment value depends heavily on the mockability of the movie, and the quality of hecklers you have in a particular crowd.  YMMV. If you’re interested in user experience and interaction design it’s worth it for its novelty alone. For me, if could type on a laptop keyboard my ability to participate would have improved dramatically.

Related: My review of Willy Wonka in Smell-O-Vision.

Prometheus review

Posted on in moviesby Scott Berkun
  • It is a beautiful looking film.
  • There is some intrigue and mystery about sci-fi ideas.
  • Many stupid things are done by many characters at many points.
  • The plotting undermines everything else several times. If you expect much, you will be frustrated.

Summary: it’s worth watching. Don’t expect much for your brain, and you’ll be pleased.

It can be entertaining to discuss plot holes and connections to the rest of the series if you watch it with friends.

 

Triple inspired by a film: Girl Walk All Day

Posted on in Creative Thinking, moviesby Scott Berkun

I’ve said before we live in the best age in history to be a creative. It has never been easier to manifest ideas in the world. The tools, the sources of funding and the means to promote work are easier to access than ever.

I recently watched a film called Girl Walk All Day. It’s a simple movie. A young woman and several other characters dance their way through NYC. It feels like an extended music video. The surprise is I enjoyed it more than The Avengers, which I saw the day before. The Avengers, despite its spectacles, was simply boring, whereas there were dozens of interesting things about Girl Walk All Day.

Girl Walk All Day, directed by Jacob Krupnick, strikes at the challenge of indifference. Much of the film is shot improvisation style, and you can watch how everyone around the actors responds to them dancing in various unusual places. I often feel like we sleep through our days, living life as an endless routine, bored for no good reason with own lives. The film was a poke in the eye for people not to take everything so seriously and to do something. At least something fun.

The soundtrack for the film is a marvel in itself. Created by Gregg Gillis, it is comprised of a continuous remix of hundreds of famous songs from the last 20 years. Combined with the improvisational nature of the film, it’s a perfect mix of surprise and familiarity.

I was thrice inspired:

It begs the question: what can I do with $25k and 50 days? It should beg that question of anyone who daydreams about ‘what they could do if they got a chance’ while bored out of their minds at work – it proves how easily you can make your own opportunity. If you don’t invest in your own ideas, how can you expect someone else to?

You can download the soundtrack for free.  And the movie is online too (divided into chapters, which kills some of the power of the experience).

Here’s the preview: