Teasers

Journalists agonize over the single sentence that makes their article worth reading, and goes at the beginning. Putting children through the Brown Eyes Blue Eyes experiment taught them tolerance for the rest of their lives.

Strangers will steal your kidneys!

In their book Made to Stick, authors Chip and Dan Heath note the Six Parts of a Sticky idea. Using the Clever acronym SUCCESs, the Brothers Heath have laid out what makes an idea persist and survive, even in our world of billions of ideas.

Three of their main concepts are embodied in the Teaser; The blurb at the beginning of a story, a paper or a presentation which draws the reader in and gives them something to hold on to.

These three key concepts are Simplicity, Concreteness, and the Unexpected. The job of a teaser is to give the reader something simple and concrete to hold on to during the entire presentation, and something unexpected to pique the interest.

By making sure your teaser has a simple lesson that strikes to the heart of your topic, is concrete enough for any audience to understand, and unexpected enough to draw in even the most jaded American, you guarantee that they'll not only get the idea, but give you the benefit of the doubt and read on.

Gen Ed-itorial

Why I don’t like our Gen Ed system. – Guest Column in the Daily Nebraskan

First, I’d like to note that I support Liberal Arts wholeheartedly by taking as many weird classes as I can. In fact, this semester I took classes in Marketing, International Studies, and Ed Psych. Which makes me uniquely qualified to… whine, I guess.

I don’t like forced gen eds. Value vanishes as sizes skyrocket and students conscripted into classes stop caring. The facebook group ‘Keep Your (bleeping) Hand Down in Lecture and Shut Up. No One Cares’ has 131,451 members as of this writing.

Unfortunately, in a big university it’s not easy to make sure that students are getting experience outside their major. You make a list of subjects that are important, and higher level courses have more requirements, sticking students in basic classes en masses.

Why Gen Eds Exist
Gen eds are seen as ways for the University to make more money. In the current gen ed system classes often don’t count after a student switches majors, but this image is more tied to the fact that the classes are seen as useless hurdles. And they often trip students, forcing graduation in 5, 6, or more years.

The problem is partly the current system of ES, IS, and BS (like history of rock), but that’s being worked on by the Gen Ed Planning team. Send ideas to John Janovy at jjanovy@unlserve.unl.edu, or search for ‘Review and Revision of General Education at UNL’ on the UNL website to learn more. And note that Educational Psych is useful!

Why Gen Eds Suck
There’s always fighting between professors who want to, you know, teach; administrators who want to, you know, keep student fees low with more people in each class; and students who want to, you know, get a degree on the cheap.

So we make classes huge and use TAs. I don’t like it. It forces students to ‘learn’ from TAs, professors to ignore their students, and administrators to deal with cranky professors, TAs, and students. But it’s kind of a necessary evil. Fees must be low and students must be educated, or at least lectured at and busyworked. Hence… the cranky teaching the bored on the cheap. Welcome to UNL.

The real problem I have with Gen Eds is that nobody cares about them. They’re just a hurdle to jump for everyone. But anyone could fix it. Which makes understanding why it’s not fixed even more…Byzantine. International Studies to the rescue.

Good Classes
I’ll start with Students, because you’re the bored ones reading this in your gen ed classes. Professors are good people. If you sign up for a high level class you’ll probably get in if you show you’re interested. You’ll likely have less work; Gen eds need busywork to make sure every loafer seems to learn.

The work will be harder, but there’ll be less of it. It might actually have a point. Try making a list of cool looking classes and signing up. You’ll be surprised what you get into, and if you can always drop later.

Small Hurdles
Administrators, try to make caring as easy as possible. Ignore complaints about diluting learning. Prereqs aren’t learning; they’re what’s required before you can learn. If you’re forced to pretend a hurdle isn’t something to jump, you resent hurdles and whoever the hell made hurdles so high. If a student is interested, they’ll learn. If not, they won’t. If they’re learning so they can move on, they want to learn fast and focused. Make it easy, and they’ll thank you for it.

If there are requirements for high-level classes that really only consist of a textbook, make it Keller Plan. Make every course you can Keller plan. If you get a reputation for efficiency, it pays off. Cultural Branding. (I was paying attention in Marketing, Prof. Epp. Please don’t fail me.) If you could get up to 490 level (read; cool) classes without years of prereqs more students would be willing to do it.

Keep In Touch
Professors, look at the gen ed requirements. I wonder why students are forced to take gen eds if professors don’t even care enough to know them. Audit a gen ed, see what students are being forced to sit through. Apathy is a conditioned response. Students are expected to complain; If professors whine, changes happen. If you aren’t a whiner, try fitting gen ed concepts into your lectures. If the students see you care, they might start.

Executive Summary
It’s not that students don’t want to work, we just don’t want to work more than we have to. Forcing students to waste time on busywork in huge, cheap classes isn’t what anyone wants, it’s a necessary evil. As long as we let hurdles stand, they will. I, for one, will keep taking crazy classes and ignoring requirements. Even if 131,478 (27 added) of you think I should keep my bleeping hand down.

GCensus, Show Yourself.

I found a very cool project that overlays US Census data onto Google Earth maps. As US census data is notoriously difficult to use, I found it amazing. Only supported by three states, but I've contacted my State Gov about it and hope others do the same.(Form to send a Question to the Nebraska State Governor. Copy and paste this post as you please :))

Here's the link to the website, the link to the app (requires Google Earth), and the link to the Digg article.

http://gecensus.stanford.edu/gcensus/index.html
http://gecensus.stanford.edu/gcensus/ajax/gcensus.php
http://digg.com/software/Making_Sense_of_Census_Data_With_Google_Earth

I also made a couple of changes to the sidebar to the left. I added a neat widget from Show Yourself that displays all of your web 2.0 ids for people to click and stalk you with.

It's a good sign you're not famous if you're okay with people stalking you. Not happy about it... but it's sort of flattering.

On Wordcounts

Minimum wordcount requirements don't make good papers.

Any discerning, unpretentious, and charisma-majoring student can write the same thing using sixty-three words as he could write in a seven word sentence through the use of conjunctions, hyphens, unnecessarily long lists, lengthy descriptions such as 'discerning, unpretentious, and charisma-majoring' and 'unnecessarily long lists,' and fluffy latin phrases which look pretty but have no real effect on meaning. Ecce signum.

Minimum wordcounts and page lengths seem to be poor substitutes for 'good idea' requirements. Imagine if a teacher required a paper with four good ideas. Any class except an honors class would be in an uproar, and even the honors class would be moderately sursurrant! I think that's what they call it when they're mad. How could you be sure that your ideas were 'good' and how could the teacher tell?

Actually, you can't and they couldn't. But who said learning was supposed to be easy? The same people who said that a class of a hundred can be taught by a single professor and five TAs, I suppose. If not easy, at least mass-produced. Good ideas are never mass-produced.

The only way to make sure your ideas were good would be to talk to the teacher about them (gasp!), and the only way the teacher could tell which ideas are the good ones would be to read the paper carefully and know the material. Grades would be challenged and discussed, perhaps even changed! Hmm… doubtful. More likely everyone would get an A. Seems like a win-win to me. Grade inflation at its finest, or at least purest.

A good paper would be famed for its shortness, its concise and clipped writing style. Fitting ten new ideas into a two-page paper would be a feat worthy of the ages!

So I guess I'd better wrap this up. Wordcounts and page lengths are bad replacements for thinking. Instead of forcing students to write a certain number of words or pages, more maximum page lengths without lower bounds should be used. They'd take less time to read, force students to choose their words more carefully, and stop forcing ridiculously pretentious BS into ten-page papers.

A bad paper is a bad paper and a good one always good, whether two pages or twenty. In the words of George Orwell, 'Never use a long word where a short one will do.'

Orwellian rules for Writing

George Orwell's Politics and the English Language should be required reading for every blogger, writer, and especially every marketer.

He blasts sloppy, ambiguous language as a political tool but it applies just as well to marketing and writing in general. English, he argues, is increasingly sloppy just because we don't make it clean. He presents a few rules to solve the problem;

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Spam Filters

Management guru Peter Drucker once said that “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.” I suppose that being a guru entitles you to be, um, ‘deep,’ but if Mr. Drucker were to see the University of Nebraska-Lincoln today, he would have no trouble making his comment fit.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I find the University Spam Filters problematic. I send emails to a lot of professors asking questions about their classes, papers they’ve written, offering bribes, and generally being as… annoying? As vocal as possible.

And yet, every single letter has to be followed up with a phone call or even a visit in person, because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these professors have not received my messages. No matter how short the message, how easily responded to, I must waste my time and theirs hoofing it around campus, risking my life dodging bicycles and that old guy on a skateboard for a simple “No, you can’t have my autograph.” The culprit is none other than the well-meaning spam filters which help our fine teachers and administrators by routing all unknown email, including that of students, right into the trash bin.

Lest you think that I am crazy, I am pro-spam filtering. I just wonder if it would be possible for those fine administrators of ours to allow email addresses other than internal memos and Bigred accounts through the machinery. A system for registering another email address to your student name would do the trick. I like having the Google staring over my shoulder at my letters too much to use Bigred for anything.

The most annoying part of the system is that I don’t even know if professors I’ve spoken to before have suddenly begun to hate me, or haven’t gotten my emails. It’s usually a pretty good question. I shudder to think of emails from outside the university which are left in spam bins to rot because nobody knows about our system. Would an email response letting you know when a letter has been consigned to purgatory be so hard?

I recognize the time saved by spam filters and appreciate that the University is keeping tuition down by saving professors time on their email, but I’d like my professors to hear what is being said. Then they can worry about the rest.

Google's Cell Strategy

Hmm... it looks like CIOs want to see more of Google Apps. Most of them, at least.

The major concern appears to be security; the CIOs know that Google Apps are cheaper than Msoft products and have portability, but are worried that they can't keep their excruciating standards in place for security. Assuming that sooner or later they'll realize that it's cheaper to outsource security (following the lead of cybercrime, and any government in the history of civilization), the real question is; what's the best way for Google to improve security?

The question isn't whether or not Google can provide excellent security, but whether or not the inevitable Google Crack will affect every company using Google Apps. The worst case scenario would be a team of hackers with easy access to every secure document and database from every company in the world, a PR nightmare even for Google. That's really what worries everyone using Google's services; that someday Google's main servers will be hacked and all the information they've got will be up for grabs.

It's a good thing that Google hasn't really got anything useful on their services yet. Now would be a great time for Google to announce (if they have one, or implement if they don't) a cell system of security; layers and parallel systems with different types of security, not just different passwords. Ideally, they'd be able to create a different cell for each business using their system and allow each business to pick and choose from a plethora of security options; a buffet of firewalls and fences suited to each business's wants and needs.

Whether or not these security services would come at a premium is a question of whether Google wants to do evil; it'd be all too easy to charge more and more for increasing security.

But if Google wants to keep its corporate motto safe (well, do as little evil as they can), they'll not only offer a suite of different security systems, but make all of them equal in quality. The point isn't to charge a premium for better security; it's to make sure that CIOs have a hand in managing their risk considering how likely an eventual break-in is.

The facts that Google could add new security options and make them bonuses instead of otherwise unnoticed upgrades and their new appeal for small businesses are icing on the cake compared to the potential business they could gain from Msoft if they upgraded security in a way allowing customization and the comfort of a cell of storage a customer could watch carefully. CIOs want to follow the words of Mark Twain and 'put all of their eggs in one basket, and guard the hell out of that basket!'

Fighting Retention

The key principles of Counterinsurgency are, as noted in Twenty-Eight Articles; Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency,

If you have not studied counterinsurgency theory, here it is in a nutshell: this is a competition with the insurgent for the right and the ability to win the hearts, minds and acquiescence of the population.

You are being sent in because the insurgents, at their strongest, can defeat anything weaker than you.

But you have more combat power than you can or should use in most situations. Injudicious use of firepower creates blood feuds, homeless people and societal disruption that fuels and perpetuates the insurgency. [...]

For your side to win, the people do not have to like you but they must respect you, accept that your actions benefit them, and trust your integrity and ability to deliver on promises, particularly regarding their security.

In this battlefield popular perceptions and rumor are more influential than the facts and more powerful than a hundred tanks.

(Emphases mine.)

Parallels between counterinsurgency and leadership are easy; "the insurgent" is any other motivating factor acting on your people, particularly those managed by competing influences such as marketers, propagandists, and educators.

Leadership is a competition with the world for the rights to use people. Does sound a bit harsh, doesn't it. Credibility puts it well;

"Leadership is a process and a set of practices. As such, leadership is amoral. [...] To our way of thinking, [Charles] Manson, and anyone who would do evil, has no legitimacy as a leader. Such legitimacy is determined not by the leader, but by the society."

The reasons why the Charles Mansons, David Koreshs, and charismatic leaders succeed despite their (in hindsight) often evil intentions is because they know people. By manipulating the expectations and values of their target audiences while isolating them from the general populace, anyone can move a normal person into a position where they act in ways formerly strange to them.

Cialdini's Influence devotes an entire chapter to this process of isolation and escalating commitment.

Cialdini notes that once a person has been shoved across the border of their normal behavior into a foreign land, usually by small pushes, "the man himself uses [his deeds] to decide what he is like. His behavior tells him about himself: it is a primary source of information about his beliefs and values and attributes." (p. 75) Once a person sees themself as the sort of person who acts in this strange, new way, it is no longer strange and new. It's normal.

Think of being thrown into college or a new job. For a while you're offset by the new patterns, but soon enough you catch on and know that this is what college students do, and you are a college student. So it's normal. In fact, not doing it is weird.

Cialdini compares it to Jiu-Jitsu or Judo. The Judo master uses their opponent's own force against them. With nothing but slight pushes, pulls, and expertise a judo master leaves their opponent helplessly laid out on the mat with minimal effort.

Influences such as Manson, Koresh, and Insurgents in general are part of the competition every leadership faces, and they often succeed at wrenching people away simply because of psychological biases and knowing how to keep someone off balance and heading in the 'right' direction once they've taken the first step.

The way our brains work predisposes us toward those dangerous first steps. In Why Hawks Win, authors Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon talk about the psychology which makes it easy for us to change.

Their results are shocking;

when we constructed a list of the biases uncovered in 40 years of psychological research, we were startled by what we found: All the biases in our list favor hawks. These psychological impulses [...] incline national leaders to exaggerate the evil intentions of adversaries, to misjudge how adversaries perceive them, to be overly sanguine when hostilities start, and overly reluctant to make necessary concessions in negotiations. In short, these biases have the effect of making wars more likely to begin and more difficult to end.

If war is seen as "active hostility or contention; [i.e.] a war of words," then all of these biases point toward change, and anyone who can present a rosy picture that involves small changes can hook people into being led.

So the question is,
How can a leader keep their followers against such powerful competition?

The answer is in the definition of Counterinsurgency noted above; "you have more combat power than you can or should use in most situations."

By not abusing the authority given to you by your followers, you let them find out why they want to follow you.

"Injudicious use of firepower [a.k.a Overemphasis on carrots or sticks] creates blood feuds, homeless people, and societal disruption that fuels and perpetuates the insurgency."

Blood feuds, "bitter, continuous hostility, esp. between two families, clans, etc., often lasting for many years or generations," can be seen as any lingering resentment or hostility. Homeless people are unhappy people (they don't like where they live, and want to move into something better), and societal disruption is the annoying factors which make it difficult for normal work to continue.

By giving followers obvious reasons to follow like money or the threat of a lost job you make it easy for your followers to see the benefits of alternate leaders.

Put simply; by pushing or pulling you move the focus of your followers away from the job and onto the forces moving them.

The easiest way for a leader to keep their followers is to leave them alone. All followership is a grant by a follower to allow a leader to give them direction.

By trying to do your job first and foremost and leaving motivation to the follower a leader can guarantee that the people who stay are those who want to help.

People do need a little help and support now and then. The job of a leader isn't to pay people to work, it's to find how people are doing well and encourage it as respectfully as possible. People know this, whether or not they could tell you that they do.

Paying someone to do their job is saying that they wouldn't be doing it without the money, and threatening someone with the loss of their job is telling them that they're only as valuable as what they're doing right now.

The carrot and the stick are better applied to animals than people. People know this. People get their paycheck and ask themselves why they work for so little money, or think that being fired actually... wouldn't be so bad.

Giving people respect when they perform to task and only giving out praise when someone shows initiative shows followers that what matters isn't the job on the table, but the end goal and the people behind the jobs.

Respect for success and praise for initiative shows that you value the qualities a follower uses to help with the goal and the things that make them human. That's all most followers want from a leader. Everything else is icing on the cake.

It shows that a leader values success and values people who work hard toward success. Respect only works on people. People know this. Respect is the only way of showing someone that you value them as a person, not an animal.

A basic strategy of public respect for success and public praise of initiative leads to all the successful parts of counterinsurgency;

The people know that you respect them and are working toward the task which allows them to respect you. Respect requires respect.

They know that you're working as hard as you can to achieve the task for the benefit of all. Leaders helps followers do their best.

Your integrity and honor are proven by your total commitment to the goals of the organization. Bribery is always faster and easier than respect. Only an honorable leader can ignore bribery in favor of respect. Only a leader of integrity can stick to the strategy of public respect for success and public praise of initiative all the time.

And once you achieve your goals as their leader, it's much easier to find goodies for your people.

Craigslist and Communism

Isn't it great how Craigslist keeps getting weird looks from established capitalist institutions? Always makes me laugh.

The idea of a company which doesn't exist to maximize profits, or even make profits, is intriguing because at heart we all want to make our services and just enough to live off of. We learn in finance classes and business that it's essential to maximize shareholder value and issue the largest dividends possible and blah blah, but that's hardly inspirational.

Nobody gets inspired to start a company with 'Someday, i'll issue large dividends to tons of people I don't know.' The point of a business is, first and foremost, to provide a service. Of course, sometimes the service is maximized profits, but our deliberate, well-structured financial system has skewed investing away from the original point.

Business is a test. It's a test of how well your idea scales to the general populace, a test of your ability to capitalize on opportunities, a test of how well you can build a team to build and improve products, and yes, a test of your ability to maximize investment. But before all of these things, Business is a test of whether you want to test your idea.

Craigslist represents the "new" for-profit charity model at its finest; the company exists to fulfill a niche, build a product, and test an idea first and foremost, and revenue only exists to maintain its hardware and equipment. I use the irony (read: quotation) marks because this philosophy is a return to the basics of business, not something new at all.

Non-profit charity is the fundamental process that drives every entrepreneur to invest time and effort into a risky idea. Entrepreneurs succeed when they have a drive to build something useful that they want, and to scale it so that other people can use it too. It's not about maximizing revenue, or it would never get off the ground.

The new environment is great for encouraging entrepreneurship of this sort because frankly, the internet's nothing special anymore. Ut's a big deal, but it's not a magical land where anything's possible. It's a tool, an environment, a part of the real world. There are so many fledgling services and companies out there right now that you can't jump in with both feet hoping to maximize revenue. Even if you can find the motivation to start the company based on that, there are dozens of companies stealing your market share and customers' attention.

From the view of established companies like those looking askance at Craigslist, this makes a bubble because there are too many companies trying to take advantage of too small of a space. But really, it's just the long tail again. Everybody's going out and making their own for-profit charities, offering their services and hoping that if other people like it they'll come and visit. And because of AdWords and other similar services coming out (some of which are really cool), this is actually a viable model without relying on non-profit status and handouts.

Innovation and Speed

Innovation and Speed are two key components of startups in the web 2.0 world as well as any modern industry. A recent Businessweek Article highlighted some of the trends of modern business success. I'll summarize for the ADDled blogosphere.

Common features of successful, innovative and speedy companies like Richard Branson's Virgin group and Google include;
At their Fingertips

"The Internet has become ubiquitous, so companies can connect with talent anywhere in the blink of an eye, inside or outside the company. Open-source software can be plucked off the shelf to become the foundation of new software programs or Web sites. Algorithms can be used to slice and dice market information and spot new trends.

Perhaps most important, today's fleet companies are embracing a management approach that would have been heresy just a decade ago: If you don't fail occasionally, you're not pushing hard enough. Executives tend to try lots of things, expecting a number of them to flop. It doesn't matter as long as you produce a steady stream of hits. Even losers can burnish a company's reputation for innovation if they're seen as exciting experiments. "It's not just O.K. to fail; it's imperative to fail," says Seth Godin, a marketing expert and author of several books, including Unleashing the Ideavirus."

Companies are reaching and stretching out toward increasingly distant and strange opportunities, knowing that failure is inevitable in these new arenas.

Businessweek's strategies for finding quality new opportunities included;

Finding new ways to spot hits

"Electronics retailer Best Buy Co. has begun checking with venture capitalists to find out what their startups are working on. Procter & Gamble Co. uses online networks to get in touch with thousands of experts worldwide."

P&G highlights a particular finding from a little known Italian professor through the internet which allowed it to print jokes onto pringles.

Keeping your Launch Team Agile

This example seems lacking in strong case studies... but the description of Raving Brands and their "SWAT team in chinos and polo shirts" is good for a laugh at least.

Breaking your unwritten Rules

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a list of features of newly successful companies or ancient cliches... Think outside the box, anyone?

Hand off tasks to Specialists

Anyone who needs to be told to outsource should really be trying to invest in speedy companies, not become one.

Once you have it right, repeat

Hm... Apparently Franchising works. Who knew.



Nothing amazing, but some of the case studies bear thought. I'll be keeping my eye on a few of these companies to see what real, new strategies they pick up and whether they thrive or die based on those.

Screw Finals: the 80/20 rule and Simplicity in Design

I've been ignoring my finals (as hard as I can), and found some interesting articles on Design and Simplicity in between my customary perusal of my feel-good websites.

A nice highlight comes from Joel Spolsky, software developer in NYC, who says

"Devotees of simplicity will bring up 37signals and the Apple iPod as anecdotal proof that Simple Sells. I would argue that in both these cases, success is a result of a combination of things: building an audience, evangelism, clean and spare design, emotional appeal, aesthetics, fast response time, direct and instant user feedback, program models which correspond to the user model resulting in high usability, and putting the user in control, all of which are features of one sort, in the sense that they are benefits that customers like and pay for, but none of which can really be described as “simplicity.” For example, the iPod has the feature of being beautiful, which the Creative Zen Ultra Nomad Jukebox doesn't have, so I'll take an iPod, please. In the case of the iPod, the way beauty is provided happens to be through a clean and simple design, but it doesn't have to be. The Hummer is aesthetically appealing precisely because it's ugly and complicated."

An interesting perspective on design. It definitely helps me to grab onto the crux of this question of simplicity and what features are essential to look at Apple's design philosophy, as they've consistently been design trendsetters in electronics, software, and hardware. Steve Jobs says "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." Definitely in agreement with Joel S., they're both saying that the design is everything and the features can't be separated for convenience purposes without losing the entire intent of the project.

But wait, this is in direct disagreement with The Man! Conventional philosophy on product design says that you can separate the items and pick and choose. In fact, Joel's article specifically brings up the 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of users use 20% of features. The conclusion businesspeople draw from that is you only need those 20% of features and your product will do well, hence the argument for simplicity within the product. By picking out those specific features, you make only the product people will use. Brilliant.

An excellent example of how picking a target market can hurt is the Newest Console Wars between the PS3, Xbox360, and Nintendo Wii. The consensus on this round is that the PlayStation3 and Xbox360 are gunning for the hardcore gamers, releasing more powerful systems and hoping to make up for lost profits on peripheral sales. (note; source states that the Xbox 360 is now profitable with each unit sold, last year at initial release they were not.) The Nintendo Wii, on the other hand, has said Screw it, and gone for a system without comparable capabilities to the 360 and Ps3 in favor of an innovative control system based around motion sensor technology.

While the ps3 and xbox360 are focusing on the 20% of features that hardcore gamers care about, the Wii has gone for a more holistic design philosophy and decided that all the features of a great system were there in the last generation of hardware. So they just kept the gamecube, invented a way to make it more accessible to non-hardcore gamers, and are doing quite well.

IMHO, the strategy of Apple and Nintendo has a lot in common and actually does follow the 80/20 rule. The reason why it doesn't look like they're following it is because they have a much larger target market in mind. They're saying screw the arms race, instead of better nukes we'll go into biological warfare. It works because nobody else is prepared to deal with Biological warfare and they'd have to change their entire industry to do so.

While a company might look at MicroSoft(MS) word and say 'Nobody's using this and this and this,' cut them out, and suffer because of it, a better design philosophy would look at MSword and say 'Who isn't using it yet? Why?' or 'How could people use MSword better?' or 'What features is MSword missing and who would use them?'

Once you assuming that the entire world is your target market, it's easier to figure out which features are important and which ones get the axe. Dozens of features within MSword are used by different groups for different reasons, so trying to cut the huge programs that MS puts out into more palatable chunks and market them separately are neglecting the fact that MS doesn't need to be efficient or have certain target features; it's got momentum and a huge company on its side. Trying to get a chunk of MS's market without acknowledging that the market isn't actually built on the strength of specific MSword features anymore is what makes me cringe whenever new companies release an open-source MSword or office killer based on the 80/20 principle.

Companies who try to look at the 20% of features people use in a product and focus on those aren't looking at the Long Tail. The 80/20 focused companies are leaping to cater to a hypothetical ideal customer who doesn't exist. Joel makes the excellent point that different people use different 20%s, so the trick is in

1. You don't need the sheep; Recognizing that you're not trying to take the entire existing market share

2. Finding a real market; Clarifying your end goal and the spectrum of people who would use your product
and
3. Making a real product; Making enough features to give them the utility they need and the diversity they want.

The reason why this strategy is superior to trying to compete on the same market and level of the big boys is that generalization is always cheaper than specification. The Wii is immediately profitable because all the expensive parts have already been made cheap by the last round of console wars, people can make games for it right off the bat, and all they had to do was aim for a totally unaddressed market. Anything they made would be better than what was out there.

To quote Richard Kiyosaki, "anything worth doing is worth doing poorly". Because of this, the 80/20 rule is best applied to the world as a whole. And it's terrible at determining target markets.

Finals...

Blog is on hiatus for Finals week.

We'll be back for regular postings on the 18th.

Microsoft's American Idol

Businessweek's What Entrepreneurs need to know is a decent synopsis covering first, Microsoft's push for the small business market with its Ultimate Challenge, described in the businessweek article as a

nationwide small-business plan contest that's part marketing push, part business-idea roundup, and part American Idol.

Interesting description... it sounds more to me like a Microsoftian (read: Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish") attack on the recent trend in Venture Capitalism from companies. While at least one prominent tech company has managed to deal with the evolving Venture Capitalism climate in an Interesting way, most of the other high-flying tech companies are using the customary strategy of wait, then devour in a hugely expensive manner.

While this decision by Microsoft might be described by Businessweek as nothing more than a marketing scam with the potential to pick up business ideas and get the american audience off their couches for something business related, I think it's a clever way to take advantage of the Web 2.0 trend toward user-generated content.

For a business to get onto a web 2.0 news portal, say, Digg, it has a much better chance if it's cited by a fairly reputable source. But most small companies in the modern investment climate are simply getting lost in the static of all the new startups. If Microsoft uses its ability to make news with every sentence of press release to give these startups the initial eyeballs for the seed money they need to come from Google, they can take advantage of their ability to simply make news to a) fund a new startup with what can be a surprising amount of money, b) develop a good relationship with a new company which has decent funding already and improve their contactability by , c) market their new office suite's ability to work within a small business and d) increase the popularity of their own website as a new web 2.0 news portal.

In other words, this could be one of the opening salvos of Microsoft's new plan to take over the internets. It satisfies their yearning to seem cool, their desire to profit from web 2.0 (not die from it), and does it all without seeming like anything but marketing fluff or spending a lot of money.

A clever innovation on Microsoft's part.

Learning from History

tIP of the iceberg

Lots of interesting things going on in IP these days. If you're an artist of any bent it would do you well to pay attention to some new copyright legislation being presented to congress.

This new legislation is pro-business (read: RIAA&MPAA), as this excerpt from the above-linked article mentions:

"It's disturbing that this business-friendly legislation has the backing of the administration while the consumer-friendly Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act sponsored by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) has remained bottled up in subcommittee for most of its existence. As currently written, the Intellectual Property Protection Act would tilt the balance even more heavily in the favor of content producers at the expense of American consumers."

Check it out, gives a good rundown.

Also on the Intellectual Property front, apparently the Supreme Court is taking a closer look at Patents. This could be good or bad, there's still a lot to be considered before they hand down their decision, but it's definitely good if you're a proponent of the theory that the judiciary is hijacking America.

Latest in Entrepreneurship.

There's been a lot of hooplah about Web 2.0 and what the implications are to Venture Capitalists. And now people are even starting to talk about Web 3.0, internet run mostly by artificial intelligences. Lets look at some of the main perspectives on what Bill Gates called " Nothing like the '99-'00 bubble," and what it means for Entrepreneurs.

1. Web 2.0 is full of easy ways to make money.
There's all sorts of money to be had in Web 2.0. Sources Abound pointing at ways to use these newfangled internets to pump out some quick cash, but perhaps the most interesting ways to make money off web 2.0 is the New Media trend. Youtube went from nothing to 1.65 billion in 18 months, in case you've been in a hole for the past... two years? Not that long, it's possible. More interesting for those of us not interested in starting company after company trying to get hit in that crap shoot, Some people have been making obscene amounts of money off of Google Adwords. Hopefully I'll be joining them shortly.
What you need to know is that there's a ton of money floating around waiting to be grasped, and for once if you just provide a useful service online (like digg, weblogs, inc., or techcrunch.)

Please note that every single one of these sites provides a useful, timely service. Trying to duplicate any of their achievements won't gain you much. If you want to learn how to take advantage of the Web 2.0 your best bet is to go the Digg, Youtube, or Del.icio.us route; Learn some basic programming, spend some time researching useful tools online and how people surf the web, and make it easy for the early adopters to make it easy for other people to do it. That's the essence of the Web 2.0 business model, not blogging or online journalism or online video sharing. And that's how an entrepreneur makes money off of web 2.0.

2. Web 2.0 is easy to get into
As mentioned above, the business model of Web 2.0 success stories is simple: Make an online product that motivated other people can use, and make it good. This is easy to get into because all you need is to learn how to program computers. Which is just learning another language.

Actually, you don't even need that. New services abound which use these same web 2.0 principles to allow anyone to make their ideal program without knowing a lot about programming. For example, Ning allows people to use pre-made templates to create their websites. This means that you can also pick apart their templates, pull out parts that you like, and put them on your blog or website. Ning gives handy tutorials on how to do this. I linked one right there two sentences ago.

This new sort of programming is called a Mashup, and it's really the future of entrepreneurship. Just as entrepreneurs in the physical world have two tactics; doing something someone already does better, or making a synthesis of two disciplines which hasn't been done before, entrepreneurs online are gaining access to the second option. Mashups and similar tools are allowing people to make programs faster and better, and this will probably lead into a lengthy period before web 3.0 becomes real. If it does. If you're interested in making the kind of money that digg, youtube, and del.icio.us are, i suggest you check out those mashup links above. I know I am. :)

Tune in over the next couple of days for more on the Web 2.0 climate...

RSS- Your Computer, anywhere.

I've discovered the wonders of RSS, really simple syndication. It's basically a way for you to collect all of your favorite blogs, webcomics, and internet content in one place for easy viewing.

I spent some time researching various RSS aggregators, software that collects and displays your feeds, and was referred to several services including news is free, which offers not only an aggregator but many many feeds to search (the feed is the link between the website and content you want and the aggregator, the small piece of software that goes and gets your news for you) to find the ones you like.

However, being the lazy bum I am, I just wanted to use my google signin. Wouldn't want them to miss a piece of my information. So I did a little looking around and found my Google Reader, a google based news aggregator. So far it's working out pretty well.

In order to make even more of my computer available online, I went over to Del.icio.us. If you're like me, you'd heard of the danged thing but dismissed it because of the ridiculous name. Del.icio.us allows you to put your bookmarks onto their service for access from anywhere online. Combine this with your google reader and with two tabs you have access to your entire online experience (gmail [or your e-mail provider of choice] and del.icio.us). Anything without an RSS feed (look around on your favorite sites, they're probably on there in some nook.) can be added as a simple bookmark in del.icio.us.

Not a lot of work, considering how much easier it is to peruse all your websites from any computer with those nifty services.

P.S. Now if only someone would make a mashup that lets you use your del.icio.us or google login to save all of your passwords... Sure, it'd let someone else get into your Cloud of Information with a single password, but this isn't access to anything they couldn't find on their own online anyway.

Impromptu Part III- The Main Example

This is the second most important part of your speech. An example that summarizes your entire argument well and can be used for transitions and the conclusion.

Lets look at the 'Greed is good' example again. I'll use Alexander the Great's decision to conquer the world as my intro/main example for this. We'll get into how to choose and refine examples in a moment (it's number 3 in importance). For now, just know that you need a good example here. I usually do the main example last for just this reason.

This example needs to encapsulate your interpretation, your argument, and your main two points, and it needs to do it all in 30 seconds. That's actually a little bit shorter than most examples. So it needs to be well chosen. This is your second priority. I do it last because then I can pick from all the examples I've come up with for the speech.

Think of this as your entire argument in example form. I'm saying that greed, irrational desire, is good (thesis) because it lets you ignore other people and drives you to success (argument). Alexander the great is an awesome example for this because he's not considered greedy, yet was. He was very greedy. I think the word usually used is heroic, or grand, but anybody quoted as saying 'Is it not worthy of tears that, when the number of worlds is infinite, we have not yet become lords of a single one?' is greeeedy. Greed for what, is the point.

Start your intro with a powerful sentence which clearly states what you're talking about, something like 'Alexander the Great was a greedy, greedy man.' Humor is good here but if it's not your thing just be clear. Make your entire point in the first sentence. Then elaborate; 'He wanted to take over the entire world and started out with nothing but a small army, a rebellious peninsula, and a pocket full of dreams.' Then, once you've elaborated a little bit, make your argument. 'Alexander's pocket full of greedy dreams, however, proved to be the key factor in his success; his greed led him to attempt what others said was impossible, and also led him to relentlessly continue until he achieved his goals.'

Mkay, three sentences. That's pretty good. Now you can throw in some filler for a sentence or two, make it funny if you can or play to your unique strengths, but also make it cogent. Talk about his greed, his attempts, his success, his crazy quotations and tendencies, whatever.

Finally, before introducing your quotation, introduce intrigue! Believe it or not, this is one of the most important parts of your speech, and also ridiculously easy. Just give people a reason to consider disagreeing with you. Something like 'But Alexander's greed led him to do such... interesting... things as burn the great city of Thebes to the ground, kill one of his generals for arguing with him, and pick up another wife on his travels.' See, now you're like Hm. Which sentence was his argument? Is he saying greed is good, or greed is bad?

This leads us into today's quotation, from the film Wall Street. You should see how that led into the quotation, and why it's worth thinking about. Then you go into your thesis and argument and preview and that's how your intro ends.

The main example is key for giving your audience something to hold on to, a common thread throughout your speech. You'll come back to it twice more in conventional, NFA impromptu, once when transitioning between your points and once in the conclusion. That's why it's important that it summarize your argument, the controversy, and the ideas in the thesis well. It's your audience's liferaft. Make it good.

Tomorrow we'll look at how to pick examples in general, and my favorite ways of outlining and remembering them.

Impromptu Part IV- Examples in General

Picking, refining, Examples in general.

Examples are a tricky subject. Everyone has their own examples because Impromptu speaking is all about what you're comfortable talking about. People have all sorts of methods to pick examples, because it's the easiest part of impromptu to prepare and codify. I don't like the interpretation that if you just have a million examples you'll win. Like I said, this is only the third most important aspect of impromptu. If you've got a solid interpretation and are looking for a main example, you'll do well even if your entire speech is about Alexander the Great during the Battle of Guagamela.

I tend toward business and history examples and definitely away from pop culture examples, just because it's easy for me to put my interpretations in terms of past events or modern methods of dealing with common problems. And I don't watch a lot of movies or TV, so my pop culture is limited. I do use House, M.D. a lot. Favorite TV show ^_^

Here's how you come up with good examples: Pick three or four general topics, such as History, Theories, Pop Culture, and Literature. This is just so you're guaranteed variety in your examples: three historical examples are boring. Mix it up unless your audience is full of history majors. Even then, they'll appreciate the variety.

I group people in with their main group. For example, my constant Alexander the Great examples fit under History, Steve Jobs goes under Pop Culture (as does all history from the last 20 years), Faust is in Literature, and Thomas Hobbes is in Theories. There are some people who cross fields. One of the reasons I like using Machiavelli and Google are because of this fact: Machiavelli's the Prince works for Literature, has theories in it, and the guy himself has an interesting history. Google is a business/Pop Culture example, a good story (it'll fit in history when it's not pop culture anymore), and their motto and purpose statements show unique theories.

Here's how I sort and record my examples:
History examples: First, make an in-depth timeline. Then note major people involved with each event, then note major cultural clashes or battles. Again, major people on each side of the conflict are useful to give your audience something to latch on to. When using history examples, begin with a brief summary of the times, then mention the important people, before finally stating why it's relevant in the terms of the quotation.

Example (Shortened version of my entry for Rome):
Rome
Summary
Founding- circa 9th century BC (753?)
Romulus/Remus found city. Romulus kills his brother and gives city his own name.

Rule of the Seven Kings of Rome- 753-509
Final king of Rome thrown out by ancestor of Brutus.

Creation of the Republic- 509 BC
Rome takes advantage of pressed Etruscans to rebel and form a republic with other latin city-states.

Gauls invade Rome- 390 BC
Rome Rebuilds city quickly and goes on the offensive, securing northern marches and continuing in conquest until Punic Wars, at which time Rome is foremost city on the Italian peninsula.

Punic Wars- 264-146 BC
Rome V. Carthage for dominance of Mediterranean. Roman Statesman Cato ends every speech with ‘Destroy Carthage,’ no matter the topic. In 146, Carthage and Corinth are razed.

Social and Civil wars, emergence of Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar- 146-44BC
At the time, Rome dominates Mediterranean, largest city in the world until 19th century. Size maintained by subsidies, not trade like Alexandria.

Roman Empire- possibly at Julius Caesar’s claiming of dictatorship(44), battle of Actium (31), or date of granting of Augustus title to Octavian (27).
Roman republic had been weakened by the Gaius Marius v. Sulla, followed by the civil war of Julius Caesar v. Pompey. Caesar wins, takes title of Dictator Perpetuus. Caesar is assassinated by senators fearful that he would take the title of monarch, led by Brutus. War follows between his heir, Octavian, and Marc Antony. Octavian wins and is crowned Augustus, gains no more technical power, but is in essence dictator behind the scenes of the republic.

People:
Romulus/Remus, Kings of Rome, Brutii family, Cato, Gaius Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, Augustus Caesar.

Events:
Founding, Creation of Republic, Gaul Invasion, Punic Wars, Civil Wars, battle of Actium, Creation of Empire.

Culture Clashes:
Roman v. Carthaginian, Barbarian v. Roman, Hellenic V. Roman v. other



Back to Greed is Good. Say my main example is Julius Caesar. I'd start out with

'About 50 years before the birth of Christ, Rome was in the middle of a huge civil war. On one side were Julius Caesar and his forces, and against them were the armies of Pompey. Of course, we all know Julius Caesar won, and the reason why he won was because he was greedy for a new Rome. His greed for what was, essentially, a dictatorship in the place of the republic which had brought about the civil war drove him to ignore his rationality and defeat the forces of Pompey. However, once he had won the war, he spared many of Pompey's generals because he knew that they were just greedy like he was; they were hungry for a better Rome. Julius Caesar's greed in wanting to personally remake all of Rome first drove him to irrationally fight a civil war and then let him empathize with the same attribute in his former enemies and grant them leniency. But it was this same series of events which would later lead to his death in the Senate at the hands of those people he spared. So we wonder... How good for Caesar was his greed? This leads us into today's quotation..."

43 seconds. Too long for an intro unless you've prepped for under 30 seconds, but it's typed out. I'm much more verbose in print. ^_^ and I love my long intros.

That should give you an example of how to use examples. I suggest doing single example preps, where you get a quotation, form your argument, and try out whatever new example you've got as the main example. It will give you a good idea of how useful your example is and how to phrase it in a speech.

Remember, just like any other activity, public speaking requires constant practice. However, it is much easier to practice impromptu and extemp than other events; just talk to people. Try using an impromptu example in normal conversation, a pop culture one if you like. Whip out a 'Well, Google's corporate motto is 'Do no evil.' They've made it work, why can't we?' at your job, or a historical example in the middle of class to illustrate a point. It seems weird, but I guarantee it'll at least give you something else to talk about.

Sidenote: Speech and the Triumvirate

I talk a lot about Speech on this blog because I consider it an excellent way to learn communications skills, same as being a salesperson for years or learning to act.

My philosophy has three parts; Talking, Thinking, and Testing. Talking, again, is about communication and poise (talking through your composure and staying composed). Thinking is about philosophy and planning far into the future based on ideals, and testing is about the numbers and getting out and trying things so you can see how to get better at them.

In my Charisma Major I focus on these three components, and right now I'm working on Talking/Poise. I often get asked why speech? Obviously it helps make me a more charismatic communicator, but so does selling cars really well or being a stellar actor.

It's partially personal, I've done speech, know what to expect, and it's something I'm good at. Much better at than selling cars or acting (though I am getting into Dramatic Interp this year...). But the rational (read: thinking) reason to do Speech is that speech has much more variety than sales or acting. True, you can go out and try to sell all sorts of things, but not at once. Likewise, acting requires a plethora of skills and abilities, but it also requires either contacts or a degree from an established institution. Both of those fields are limited by their established nature, in a way. You need to go through the channels to get the benefits.

I like speech because I can go out and in one weekend (If I'm ridiculously good :)) Give six impromptu speeches, six Extemporaneous speeches (Impromptu based on current events with 1/2 hour prep), six persuasive speeches, six After Dinner speeches (funny persuades), six Dramatic Interpretations and six Informative speeches. The three different types of Speech teach how to talk in the three different languages of my philosophy; Limited prep (impromptu and extemp, as well as Debate in many ways) teach how to test and use what you know, Public Address (informative, persuasive, partially after dinner) teach how to communicate learning, and Interp teaches you how to get feelings across and all the nuances of connecting with your audience.

Now, obviously I won't be doing six events at once, but I will be working on those three different areas at any given time. So in one week of working on my current speeches I'm learning all the aspects of communication if I do one event from each of the three areas. I bet you could do that in Sales or Theatre, but it requires a lot more background work before you can do it. In speech, it's almost a given.

It's pretty much the same thing that motivates me into a lot of my activities; it's the easiest way to achieve all of my goals for the moment at once that I've found. Once I start doing an interpretation event I'll be learning everything there is to know about applied communications every weekend I take my events out, or every time I go in to coach.

That's why I do speech. Shortest distance between me now and more charismatic communicator me.