I read a piece last month about how to facilitate insights. I saved it in my Evernote notebook, and then it sat there.
Better late than never, right?
It’s a short read, and provides some good insight. (har har!)
Archive for the 'Random thoughts' Category
How to Facilitate Insights
Published October 6, 2010 Random thoughts Leave a CommentTags: brainstorming, calm, ideas, insight, thinking
How I use Evernote
Published September 7, 2010 Random thoughts , Reviews , Technology Leave a CommentTags: archiving, evernote, ideas, organization, saving, Social Media, web
There was a little discussion I had with @GaryEdgar on Twitter spurred by @davefleet about effective uses of Evernote. The web-based service with the simple mantra “Remember Everything”.
I love Evernote and thought I’d briefly share a breakdown of how I’ve been using the exceptional note management program.
If you’ve never used Evernote, it’s a freemium service that allows you to write notes in a variety of formats – text, photo and voice. You’ll probably do fine with a free account if you only use text, as it comes with a monthly upload limit similar in concept to Flickr’s free service.
You can share notes with yourself using a smartphone app for BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, WinMo and probably a few other mobile operating systems. There are also desktop applications for Windows and Mac OS. It also has a pretty good web interface. You can even upload text and pictures through e-mail from your non-smartphone.
Evernote boasts the ability to let you access your notes from anywhere you have a web connection, and syncs your notes with your various devices so you can access them offline too.
Here’s a graphical breakdown of my Evernote usage. And I’m being brutally honest, if not 100% numerically accurate. 
Love the ads, won’t buy the product
Published July 20, 2010 Random thoughts , Social Media Leave a CommentOld Spice got a lot of talk on the social web when they organized an amazing online ad campaign last week.
If you didn’t catch it, find information here, here and here! And here.
Or just watch this.
I’ve got to hand it to them. It’s one heck of a campaign, one of the best uses of social media in advertising, in fact. It really makes me want to support the brand.
But there’s one reason I won’t give them my money if I can help it. I’ve got a bit of a “hippy side”.
I try to vote with my wallet and refrain from giving my own money to brands that are tested on animals. Just a personal position.
I’ll stick with the refreshing mint scented body wash from Alba Botanica. If you’ve ever woken up to the smell of mint, it’s amazing. Plus, Alba Botanica doesn’t test on animals, their products are hypo-allergenic, made from natural ingredients. They’re typically found at health food stores and specialty shops, like The Big Carrot on Danforth, in Toronto.
Kudos to Old Spice and their ad agency for putting together an amazing campaign. They really do make me want to buy the product, but I likely won’t.
Sometimes experience is everything
Published July 11, 2010 Random thoughts , video games Leave a CommentTags: Eidos, experience, Just Cause 2, Square-Enix, video, video games
It’s been ages since I’ve posted anything about video games, and I really miss it…
A few months ago I bought a new video game called Just Cause 2. It’s an Eidos game released under Square-Enix (Square acquired Eidos in spring ’09). The game stars a secret CIA operative, code named Scorpio, tasked with destabilizing a small island dictatorship. You cause chaos by destroying government property and embarrassing the military.
The story is compelling, but short, and not very robust. The voice acting is laughable, but adds value through comedy. The character you play is absurd in his super-human capabilities. I’ve played games that had all of these features before, and they suck.
But Just Cause 2 is amazing! I’ve found it’s the ultimate game for wasting a couple of minutes here and there at home. It’s also incredibly fun to sit down with a buddy or two and pass the controller around while laughing hysterically.
What did the game do right? It’s a fantastic game experience. The physics engine is so well made that it allows you to experiment in totally ridiculous ways. As I mentioned, the story and voice acting are poor, but make the game quite funny. I’m glad they didn’t make it too serious, because it wouldn’t have been as much fun to play.
There’s so many things you can do in this game, and almost all of them end in you shouting “I can’t beleive this game lets me do this!” It’s a huge virtual playground. A physics laboratory.
And the experience is amazing if you like to muck around with physics in a game. Or if you like to share a few absurd laughs with friends.
Here’s a “Race Mission” where you have to pilot a vehicle through a series of check points. In this race, you don’t use a vehicle, but rather base jump from a skyscraper. What other game lets you do that!
I finished of the video with a little highway chaos, and then shooting some bubbles using an easter egg “weapon”.
Anyways, experience is important when making games, designing apps, writing stories, organizing events, and so much more. Have you played any games that had little going for them apart from a fantastic gaming experience? Have you used any applications that you’ve used over a similar app simply based on the UI and user experience?
TED talk: Rory Sutherland on Sweating the Small Stuff
Published June 22, 2010 Cool links , Random thoughts Leave a CommentTags: creativity, ideas, marketing, TED
Watch this. It’s good.
Rory Sutherland talks about the disproportionality of the relationship between size of a project/money spent and the impact it has on people.
Things like the biggest merger of all time – AOL/Time Warner – mean almost nothing to the average citizen.
But printing “Stolen from Virgin Airlines” on the bottom of their clever salt/pepper shakers is enough to reduce theft of them.
“The problem is, the person who has the power to do anything about an issue also have very very large budgets. What we need is a class of people with immense power, but control over only small amounts of money.”
It’s this reason that a social media based PR or marketing campaign done well (a collection of very small things) can actually create a very large ripple effect by touching a lot of people in small but profound ways.
What’s with the App(le) Web?
Published May 23, 2010 Random thoughts , Social Media , Technology Leave a CommentTags: Android, Apple, applications, apps, iPad, iPhone, open, web
I just read the NY Times article The Death of the Open Web after it popped up in my Facebook feed from Mitch Joel. The article draws a close comparison between Apple’s app store and the romanticization of the suburb during the 20th century. It’s a good comparison too, I really see where they’re coming from.
However I think the app store is more like the rise of the urban condominium.
Like the suburban development, they have an air of exclusivity. They’re (in theory) kept in pristine order. There’s a friendly security guard at the front desk to keep out the rabble. Clean carpets to pad your stroll to the elevator. After you ascend to your 16th floor luxury condo unit, you’re isolated from the unclean city with a clear window to look down upon it. Of course, management tells you what colour drapes you need to hang in that window.
Condo neighbourhoods, like those along Toronto’s lakeshore, are another type of urbanism, just like apps are another type of web access. Apps are tailored in every way to bring the best experience possible to your iPhone or iPad. They save time, they maintain your device’s look and feel, and optimize the content of the web for your user interface.
Apps are made to be convenient. A swipe or two of your finger, a tap of the screen and you get the content you want.
I really doubt people are upset with the experience of the open web. They see the benefits of an application. While people moved to suburbs to escape from the city and the crowds, it wasn’t really more convenient (especially before the strip malls and box stores followed).
But I agree, there’s the potential for the “Open Web” to become ignored as users migrate away from accessing the web through their browser to using a variety of apps.
With the App Store, Android Market, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, etc, people are becoming accustomed to making micro-transactions. We’re being trained to accept these $1 or $2 payments for the content, or access to the content, that we want. And that used to be available for free.
On the other hand, while free, it used to only be available through our desktop PC at home or at work.
If I seem like I’m flip-flopping on my argument, I guess I am. I not for nor against applications. I don’t want to lose the freedom of the open web, but I like the service provided by apps. It hasn’t become a one-or-the-other issue to me yet. I’m far more concerned with issues like government censoring, what ISPs can get away with, and Copyright law. This “Open Web” argument around applications seem like a bit of a distraction from bigger issues, really.
Are you ready to boycott the app store to protect the web? Do you like the Android platform, with it’s open door policy for apps and their distribution better than Apple’s?
I’m currently reading Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs. A line in the book really struck a chord with me. It read “Q: If there were two of you, which one would win?”
It’s a goofy little question. There’s no real answer to it, but at the same time the question struck me as profound.
Am I doing as much as I could to benefit myself and those in my life? I’m proud of nearly everything I do. But if I had a doppelganger, could he figure out how to do more? And do it better, faster and stronger? It gets me thinking…
How about you? Have you read Microserfs? Did this question stand out for you too?
Setting and timeline
Published February 4, 2010 Random thoughts , video games 2 CommentsTags: Blizzard, Starcraft 2, video games
If you’ve read my blog for a while, you may know that I’ve been anxiously awaiting the launch of StarCraft II since the game was announced in May 2007.
Now, I just read on Wikipedia that StarCraft II is being set four years after the events of the first StarCraft installments. Why would Blizzard set it four years after when releasing the sequel 12 years after the first?
Anyone else find this odd? Why not set the new story 12 years later, and have some correlation with the time that’s passed? I’m 12 years older than when I planted my first Spawning Pool on a field of creep. Why has Jim Raynor gotten away with growing only four years older? How are we supposed to relate to him? (joking)
I am curious to know what you think of this. I like when game and movie sequels are set the same number of years in the future as it’s been since the original was released (in real-world years). It’s a nice touch.
Trust and Senior Management
Published January 13, 2010 Random thoughts Leave a CommentTags: behavior, executive, management, senior, trust
I think this is a tricky subject, and a really important one for an organization.
Senior and executive management have a huge effect on the culture of the organization, especially one that is built on a highly hierarchical structure.
When it comes up that staff have lost (or never had) faith in their leadership, what can those leaders do to change it?
These are four behaviors that I think can lead to situations like this:
- Lack of honesty in staffing changes (internal hiring, promotions, temporary assignments, etc)
- Exhibiting a cynical attitude during meetings, presentations and staff interactions.
- Back-handed comments about their colleagues in front of staff.
- Being disconnected from middle-management, not recognizing a manager’s job well done (this trickles down to staff level).
The damage caused by these types of behavior can be hard to undo. It takes time, but these behaviors need to stop before trust can be rebuilt.
I asked on Twitter earlier today, “What are some things Sr. Managers / Directors can do to gain trust from their staff?”
One response I received from @brianjbradley was:
@RickWeiss honesty, knowing their names, empathy, being genuine
I think these are definitely a few things Senior Managers can do to start down the road towards trust.
Now the hard question is; what can an organization do if Senior Managers are genuinely cynical, unhappy, backstabbing people?
Keep It Simple, Silly!
I had a discussion the other day that was far more complicated than it should have been. The person I was talking to was over-complicating the idea they were trying to convey and seemed to like it that way.
Remember word-problems from math class? I bet he hated them – I should ask next chance I get. How were you at word problems? I remember being one of the few in my classes who actually liked them.
Word-problems are all about taking information, simplifying it down to the core data, pushing all the unimportant details aside and crunching the facts to reach a conclusion.
It’s a useful life skill that can serve well in any profession; communications included. Brothers Chip and Dan Heath say in their book “Made to Stick”, that simplifying ideas is an important way of making them sticky. Just not over-simplifying to the point of being below your audience.
How do you practice developing this skill? Should we all go back to grade 9 math for a week? 
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