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This isn't a book to open the mind of designers or people with an artistic school of thought. They know this ideas since forever. This one is for people that don't know how to stop analyzing things. In other words, all the rest of us. So, here are two important things you can questions about yourself: Could mom and dad have been wrong by telling us to become accountants, lawyers, engineers or physicians? Having good grades, going to ... | |
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| The place you live needs desperately to be more connected. We are living days where more connection is the new medicine. TEDx is a remarkable context to connect your people and your town to the world. Why?
Because:
- TED is a bunch of ideas worth spreading.
- TED sells ideas that creates businesses, movements and leaders.
- TED is playing "the music the world is dancing" these days.
- TED is secular so it's lacking of any commercial, religious or political agenda.
- TEDx are the accessible version of the real TED's and it can be organized by you plus a bunch of friends.
- if you and your pals ...
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| DefinitionIf there is a natural subsystem that supports it, there is value on it. The biological systems corollary If any species has a biological subsystem that supports it, there is value on it.
The biological opposite corollary If it establishes an opposite force to a supported biological subsystem, there is value on it.
The group corollary If it creates a force that is convenient for a group of individuals, there is value on it.
The movement corollary If it creates continuous repetitive stimuli well received by a group of individuals, they will integrate their sense of identification with it, so there is value on it.
Plausibility arguments Instead of demonstrate this, I'll merely do ... | |
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| What are people really trying to say when they say "thank you for your time"?
Beside the particular details of the meeting, what is exactly you are giving thanks for?
In the business world people use cliches so much, that they forget what they really meant. Is not by chance it ends up feeling shallow.
Give it a thought: why say thank you for you time? Is it like time is money and people was giving you some?
Time isn't money. Banks and financial institutions created that illusion confusing everybody. Time looks like if it were money sometimes and under some economic models but ... | |
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| Not that I'm pissed off when event organizers miss the obvious but... yes, I am... really do they still need feedback for this?
Let me think... hmm...
Here is the thing: as long as they are affected by geekism, yes they do. But I can't explain a diagnosis and be pissed off at the same time so I will start by ranting.
Any event, or forum, or symposium, or whatever activity that involves people, is either connection-centered or forgotten. Or it helps to improve society or is just stuff.
Which is not enough even if it's good stuff.
Of course it can always be worst. ... | |
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If you name me, I know that I exist. Thanks to Gabriel Bojórquez for such an illustrative image.
I think in this land you'll perceive everything clearer, easier, honest and better for your work. Here is why. Johan Sebastian Bach, yes... that Bach; was invisible in its own time. He died in 1750 and his work was being forgotten even when Frederick Chopin, yes... that Chopin; was among his greatest admirers (which included Beethoven and Mozart). Chopin recommended playing Bach's work to anyone that wanted to master playing the clavichord. But he ... | |
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| People tend to use stereotypes because models are easy to use "little machines". From those you can extract some knowledge, some predictions. When this little machines work well, they are accurate. When they don't, they make mistakes.
When you use those things, you are the one in control, so you are the one that gets credit when the experimentation's results tells it's working fine. Of course that also means that you are the one to blame when sh*t happens.
This also means that when you chose not to use it, you aren't going to be a protagonist. Your visibility will remain exactly the same.
For movements of people, ... | |
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| When you install a program, you have to make the computer to process the installation. When it completes properly, the program is ready to use. You are on command, you use it. In the other hand uninstalling a program is a different process that mostly depend on the vendor's good will and care about leaving things clean. I say that because some software doesn't want to be uninstalled; think of virus, worms and all kind of malware. To remove programs, you are on command only when the program is friendly to uninstall. When is not, you have to fight hard ... | |
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|  It took may years and many dogs until Vivien Thomas figured out the impossible. No doctors, at the time, thought that anybody can make a surgery in human's heart and make the patient survive the process. But he did it. He developed the process that allowed to make heart's surgery. He safely not for those dogs used trial and error to get into the proper technique. Refining, again and again with more perseverance than others doctors (by the way he wasn't one at the time). He had the amount of perseverance ... | |
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| There are times to make fancy definitions and times to cut the crap. I'm dedicating this entire tag called in two words to the hard job of simplification. For BS lovers I should have said: maximizing synthesis. But all that is the boring part. The fun part is when you expand those definitions using your view of the world. It is relevant because you refined it with every year of your experience. Here is how I put branding in two words: Branding: building reputation. ... | |
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| A common problem we often face is to ask the right questions. When you are developing something, you want to know if you are really going where you want to go.
Here are some examples of people asking the wrong questions:
- what do I have to do to increase my cash flow?
- why I don't get more service requests?
- how can I make more sales of this product?
- how will I stop being invisible?
- how can I have more visitors to this site?
- how we can have more users?
- why there isn't more volunteers joining this movement?
- why I can't get more votes?
- what do I have to do in ...
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| There are two ways to read (or write): 1. to be informed of something and 2. to see something differently For the former you need stuff and for the later space. Stuff to understand what and how and space to have a good perspective of the new-old-thing. That's why I'm making this post short, plenty of space, and here is how I put what design is in two words: Design: ultimate language. ... | |
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| The other day I was in a deliberation and after concluding some ideas I've reached to a term: business therapy. For an instant I've though I was being original but 2 seconds later I've searched internet to see what others wrote about this term. Here is what google says for today (December 13, 2009) in: English62,900 links for "couple therapist" 52,500 links for "pet therapist" 13,100 links for "business therapist" Portuguese57,600 links for "terapia de casal" 48,600 links for "terapeuta de animais" 1 link (wow!) for "terapeuta de negocios" Spanish491,00 links for "terapia de pareja" 19,600 links ... | |
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| Here is something you can do with any idea that doesn't work:
get rid of it.
At once.
They already proved to you that they won't work so, seriously. Do it soon, before they do more harm to your budgets: moral, political, social or monetary.
Hey.. if this doesn't sound like a revelation is because it shouldn't.
Right? ... | |
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| Ignoring when to stop being creative ensures compromise of value.
Corollary 1: Usefulness over innovation.Corollary 2: Usability over engineering.
Corollary 3: Oversupression of selective creativity builds status quo.
Applicability: it can be used to induce an interesting value seeking behavior: selective unconditioning. ... | |
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| The problem of strategy is that it becomes obsolete in the very moment you finished your best version. In '80s having a strategy for a business was logical. The problem is we are not moving at the pace of '80s anymore. We have lifestyles that got accelerated.. How much? I don't know.. about 10? 100 times? maybe more. So.. we are in a context that's moving far faster than '80s. If you make a strategy now, you'll make a plan to implement it, and all the context around you will be changed and you'll be pissed off about it. A radical way ... | |
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| Very few people seems to find natural to think zooming all things in and out. You'll find familiar the zoom in and out concept in two ways: 1. passive: you watch a TV show, a documentary or movie and you see a scene getting more and more panoramic. 2. active: you use tools like google maps or the iPhone touch screen to navigate visually. What happens when we need a zoom out to get the point about the architecture of an idea? We need ways to perceive the birds eye view. ... | |
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| The problem of meetings is to feel progress after them. Well, the best is when it depends on what you did about those before they occur.
In order to feel progress after meetings here is what I think you can do:
Value only this two kinds of meetings:
1. the meetings with the "I can buy from you" person
2. the meetings to show
Manage to make them happen. And seriously don't work for other kind of meetings.
The meeting with the "I can buy from you" person could be more difficult to appoint but is the only relevant for the decision taking process. If ... | |
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| FundationOur eyes are separated about 2.7 inches (7 cm). They are setup to point at the front of the cranial box.
We look forward by design. Birds for instance have a great lateral view. They even see what is coming from behind. We don't. We can't look back. Humans, as many other mammals, are weak to a predator attacking from behind. So we used something a lot of mammals use: cover my back and I'll cover yours.
While some are feeding or caring for the little ones, there are others watching for them. They provide security for the ... | |
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| I love eolic energy, but this is not about it. It's about what do you need to transform your context. A transformation of context only occurs when a leader helps a group to process something. Like when everybody was expecting the same result as any other day but your intervention made a difference for the better. What do you think has more sense? to ask if {guyNameHere} is a leader? or what {guyNameHere} is leading? Being a leader is about leading leaders. Unless you need wool you don't lead sheeps. You take full advantage of the homo sapiens and build a ... | |
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| What happens if you set this as your goal? An explicit goal. Sure you'll have strategies and plans but those will came as derivatives of that goal. Context will change but not that goal. Your audience may notice or not that you want to achieve that, but it's something clear you set to achieve. Why? What will make this to have sense? ProfoundBy being profound people will talk about your brand under more points of view. They will start to tell their own stories about that. Their own versions in their own words. That means they'll talk about your ... | |
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| A woman goes to this cute lingerie shop of a friend of mine and stops to say thank you to the owners because something good happen with her daughter. Again, she was the mother. Do you know a better word of mouth than that? How do that happen? Days before that, the shop owners had organized a lingerie parade. In the end this woman's daughter won the parade's price. It was a unique cute piece. Turns out the owners didn't know this girl was having a personal difficult time and this made her to feel better about herself. So, while the ... | |
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| When you trust your content is when you can forget it. At that point you get that Context is King.
"...to make a Leonardo you need more than his innate ability. You also need Florence in 1450." Paul Graham.
Yes I know... we are not da Vinci, we don't have Florence in 1450 nor we have a Medici patron for our talent.
Florence in 1450 is context. The problem is that without an appropriate context talent is useless. That's why knowing how to build appropriated contexts will open you more doors than working on the content. The good part: today is simpler and ... | |
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| Your community is broken.
How?
Talk to a honest neighbor or a member of your community for ten
minutes and you'll be able to take notes. Soon you'll figure out that you have
a lot of examples of your own. Detection of broken things is easy. You hear
other's complains all the time. But can something be done about it?
Richard Avazino chose to fix the adoption of saved cats and
dogs in San Francisco
bringing down the animal euthanasia rates. We are talking of millions of cats and dogs per year. He not only lowered the rates. He's influence lowered those to the lowest in the ... | |
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| Why so much is being said about social media? You'll even see it being called web 2.0 because of the focus on the reinvention of the Internet. But what is it?
Is about AJAX or cool effects in our internet browsers?
Yes. But no. Let me explain you with a recent story. More than 80 thousand users "dumped" more than 230 thousand "friends" in a non traditional advertising campaign. This campaign lasted only ten days and then was shut down. It is a fact, so the question is how can be possible that so ... | |
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| That's my definition of blogs. Is the conversation in written words. So I thought for a while about different ways to start my blog and I've decided we have two ears. Yep. And one mouth... so maybe someone can tell me why we like to talk the double of what we hear??!! I think it's because is in our nature to try to get attention is amazing the feeling of having an audience. And a blog is a wonderful vehicle to drive your messages to your audience. One have to think big but ofen you have no option ... | |
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