All Soup, All The Time

Rory Sutherland's TED Talk

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:50:00 +0000

Funny and insightful--just want you want from a TED talk. Rory Sutherland keeps the audience inthroughed while he explains his life lessons learned as an ad man.

Blogger supports pubsubhubbub?

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Wonder if it works with self hosted sites?

Dan Pink on Motivation

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:31:00 +0000

Dan Pink, whose manga career guide "The Adventure of Johnny Bunko" is fun, insightful and short, give a great TED talk on motivation 2.0--the new form that motivation must take to align itself with a workforce that is moving from industrial to intellectual.

Top Five Favorite DVD Commentaries

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Go--Director Doug Liman and editor Stephen Mirrione demonstrate the give and take between their discipline.

Sideways--Actors Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church provide a commentary almost as funny as the movie.

Any Steven Soderberg Commentary (The Limey, Out Of Sight, Solaris)--Famous for the tension between writer Lem Dobbs during The Limey commentary, Soderberg provides a great glimpse of the artiste process during commentaries.

Gangs of New York--Martin Scorsese creates a commentary that I enjoyed more than the movie.

Any Wolfgang Petersen Commentary (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm)--Takes the cake for humor and humility.

Hud Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:18:00 +0000

As long as I can remember Paul Newman has been a star mainly due to movies that I've never seen. I recently netflix'd Hud-Newnan plays the titular Texas cowboy. By the time Newman made Hud (1963) he was on hitting on all cylinders, following up Oscar noms in Cat of a Hot Tin Roof and The Hustler.

Newman got another Oscar nom for Hud, not surprisingly. Newman commands both the movie and the role of Hud with an actor's craftsmanship and a moviestar's panache. Newman is clearly in antihero territory here--a scene of sexual assault is jarring in it's depiction, especially since attitudes have changed greatly in some 50 years.

Director Martin Ritt and cinematographer James Wong Howe mixed both classic western and film noir imagery to capture the Texascape and the darker tone of Hud's world. The black-and-white film show the best that can be done with lighting and negative space--a good example of how less (color) can be more.

After watching Hud it's easy to understand how Newman because a star. And as a preview of things to come, Newman's Hud remarks "Oil should only be used on salads!"

Free as in Free Beer?

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:42:00 +0000

There's quite a little intra-Conde Naste battle-of-words between Wired's Chris Anderson and the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell over Anderson's recent book Free. Both are smart guys, plugged-in and articulate. Both arguments have merits but I believe Anderson slightly misses the point and Gladwell only touches on the real issue.

As Gladwell states, Anderson's book 'is essentially an extended elaboration of Stewart Brand’s famous declaration that “information wants to be free."' Gladwell circles around the truth but doesn't state it with pith--which I will kindly do for you:

Information wants to be FRICTION free.

People will pick the most convenient method of obtaining information using price as only one factor. Why did a massive number of music consumers switch from buying CDs to using Napster? Because downloading a song from Napster was easier than going out and buying a CD. When Napster disappeared why did a large audience start paying to download music from the iTunes Store? Because it was the easiest way to get music on the most popular music device.

Why the move from newspapers to internet news sites? More convenient, less friction.

Broadcast TV to Tivo? More convenient, less friction.

Video Store to Netflix? More convenient, less friction.

So if it isn't just the price but the convenience/friction, why is so much information free? Because delivering content free is pretty much the least amount of friction possible and there is no alternative to collect payments with low-friction.

Recently when Adam Carolla (of LoveLine and The Man Show fame) was a guest on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show Adam joked about the possibility of charging for his popular podcast (paraphrased)

They tell me that we have a million downloads a day. I ask "could we charge a nickle for each download?" They told me "What are you crazy? No way will people pay a nickle for a podcast."

As a fan of Adam's podcast, of course I would pay a nickel for his podcast...if paying for it was friction free.

You have information? You want people to consume and pay for it? Figure out a way to reduce the friction and make a sale.

The Complete Cast of Characters in Literature

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:04:00 +0000

I picked up the book The Complete Cast of Characters in Literature, a War and Peace sized tome that has short biographies of, you guessed it, literary characters. From the greek tragedies to Shakespeare to Harry Potter, they're all here.

On the ride home from the bookstore, Madison had fun reading me one of the bios (with some more telling clues 'blanked' out) and I tired to guess the book or the character, such as

She is a beautiful and intellectual heiress who appreciates BLANK's wit and courage and has a soft spot for poetry. Though she initially falls in love with BLANK for his good looks, she later comes to love him because of the soul expressed in his letters--which she thinks are BLANK's, but are actually written by BLANK.

On the back cover, the book suggest that a good use is for cocktail party chit-chat. I guess I'm ready for my next gathering.

TED TALK: Happiness

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:52:00 +0000

Interesting and dense TED talk on Happiness by Nancy Etcoff.

Zombie Nixon

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Sun, 03 May 2009 11:15:00 +0000

At the end of Frost/Nixon, a title card reads...

[Nixon] remained largely absent from official state functions until his death, of a stroke, in 1994.

Did he started attending official state functions after that?

Exciting New Direction

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:11:00 +0000

Although produced during the 2000 dot com crash, New Deal's Exciting New Direction is wonderfully relevant for this time.

And to make it even better, the voicemail played in the song is authentic, according to an interview with the band.

Garageband noodling

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:15:00 +0000

Lately I've been wanting to try out recording some stuff in garageband and my first instinct, as a gearhead, is to go buy some cool hardware. Well, I decided that I should try recording with what I have first, my trusty acoustic guitar recording with my MacBook's built-in mics.

Using a garageband drum loop and a shaker sound, I added some guitar with surprisingly not terrible results. I guess add a little chorus on anything and it will sound okay.

Book Report: Sway

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:56:00 +0000

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, like Blink, The Paradox of Choice and others, takes a behavioral psychology look at factors that can influence our decisions. Sway focuses on influences that may cause one to make poor decisions and provides some strategies to avoid them.

If you're a beginning chess player, one of the fastest ways to improve your game is to learn tactics. Tactics are moves you make that allow you to have more control over the game--and they have great names that sounds like wrestlers--"The Pin", "The Skewer", "The Fork", "The SuperFly." (The Superfly is a little known tactic where you attack with your Queen from the corner of the board.) The tricky part of tactics isn't their formation but recognizing when a particular tactic is in play.

There are a number of explanations for being swayed--loss aversion, authoritative influence, labeling and cultural biases just to name a few. To avoid irrational decisions, "Sway" posits that one must recognize the possibility of influence and learn to gut check opinions to discover and curtail misplaced influences.

"Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior" is an easy, Gladwellian read. (Gladwellian not used pejoratively, in this case.) "Sway" doesn't provide much new information but distills the subject nicely keeping the reader interested with fun anecdotes and explanation. Repetition is probably required to avoid these behavioral pitfalls and "Sway" provides good material for a refresher course.

Book Report: Rebels On The Backlot

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:58:00 +0000

Sharon Waxman's Rebels On The Backlot chronicles the rise of the independent film (and independent director) during the 1990s culminating in 1999 producing some of the "first films of the new millennium". Rebels is definitely inside baseball of the film industry--as much talk is about agents, managers and studio executive as the more familiar actors and directors. Primarily focused on the rebel directors--Tarintino, Spike Jonez, David O. Russell, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson and Soderbergh--the text is well researched and balanced with both praise of their genius and revelations of their less-than-stellar behaviors.

Rebels On The Backlot gives one a good glimpse into how the film industry operates, illustrating the tension between artistic vision and business discipline. It documents the importance of relationships in any endeavor and how, ultimately, through commitment to vision and hard work one can achieve success.

Stephen Glass Redux

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:37:00 +0000

Although, not exactly timely, someone did a nice post about Stephen Glass on metafilter.com. I heard about Glass' demise when the story broke but only became familiar to the details after watching the movie "Shattered Glass", which seems to get quite a bit of praise in the metafiter comments even tho it stars seemingly universally despised Hayden Christensen.

And one of the things I love about metafilter, is when someone involved with the story pops in to give a bit of behind the scenes--such as this.

Book Report: Outliners

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:30:00 +0000

To know me is to know that I like Malcolm Galdwell. And you probably don't have to guess that it didn't take long for me to pick up his new book Outliners. Galdwell is know for mixing science, anecdote and profile into an interesting blend that I find engaging, readable and rememberable.

Outliners starts with an examination of why the best hockey players in Canada are born during the first part of the year. This illustrates what Galdwell does best: revealing the hidden. Most all entertainment is seeing a hidden world--how many shows are truly about exposing inner workings of hospitals, police stations, law firms, etc. Galdwell's forte is exploring possible explanations for things we are familiar. His first book, The Tipping Point, posits a theory of why things catch on. Blink, Gladwell's second, examined the basis for everyday decisions. Outliner examines theories of success, that in the end, suggests timing and luck to be as an important parameter as talent, intelligence and practice.

Outliners is good, but not great. There are probably many things on Gladwell's New Yorker archive that I've liked better.

A personal takeaway is I'm probably more likely to ask, "what don't we know about what we know." Many time, things aren't as first they seem. I'll try to take time to discover alternate explanations, try to challenge the assumptions I'm likely to make, stay off the jump to conclusions map.

But I'm also left wondering, being born in January, did I squandered a professional hockey career?

iPhone vs G1: Follow the Money

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:28:00 +0000

This week TWIT participants discuss how the mobile wars are shaping up for 2009. One thought is that the iPhone vs G1 skirmish would be the one to watch, with Apple and Google's mobile proxy* going head-to-head. Who will win? We only have to take Watergate's Deep Throat's advice: follow the money.

iPhone users buy apps in a much great manner than other mobile phone users**. And when a simple app like iFart nets some serious cash, developers will regard the iPhone platform as having real revenue potential. Mix in the quality of apps, the easy of purchasing apps, the free development tools available and it looks to be a compelling ecosystem. Developers are going to follow the money to the iPhone platform and that may leave the G1 left with a minority of developers to catch-up.

As the end of the T-Mobile contract comes to an end, I'll probably choose between the G1 (deep discounted for me since I'm such a good customer) and the iPhone. It will be a hard sell for the G1 due to the iPhone's usability and quality/quantity of apps. the biggest thing that the G1 has going for itself is probably the iPhone non-replaceable battery.

I'm glad that the G1 is out there mixing up the market but, man, wouldn't it be great to make a fart noises from my phone right now.

*Google's success on the iPhone suggests to me that they probably don't view Apple a threat but a partner.
**I'm guessing they do but I can't find data to back that up.

Who got it right in 2008: Hulu.com

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:15:00 +0000

Hulu.com comes to mind as one of the web sites that got it right in 2008. And this should be a bit surprising.

For the most part, the shinny things of the internet-ecosystem rise via a natural selection process--internet users choose the one from many that has the best feature-fit. It seems like you can't engineer (via money or smarts) a internet success.

That's what makes hulu.com, formed from a partnership of old, established companies News Corp (which owns Fox) and General Electric (which owns NBC Universal), an outliner on the internet success map. Hulu got it right, to paraphrase Roger Martin, "by holding two conflicting ideas in constructive tension." Hulu's target demographic was Gen-Y, the most technical savvy generation yet--but a demographic that appreciates simplicity. Hulu's clean design, beholden to those factors, delivers on both.

Of course, having great content from Fox (eg The Family Guy) and NBC (eg The Office) didn't hurt. But you need both great content and a great content delivery system--and Hulu hit that mark.

What would I like to see from Hulu in 2009? Hulu on Roku's popular player would rock, for sure.

A Pixar Story

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:43:00 +0000

I'm familiar with the source material (having read much about Pixar and a Steve Jobs biography) but I still found A Pixar Story engaging and informative.

One piece of information surprised me. Here's a familiar story:

company hires genius

company doesn't understand genius

company fires genius

genius start new company

new company eats old company's lunch

old company buys new company to get back lunch and puts genius in charge

That's the basic story of John Lasseter (the genius), Disney Animation Studio (the old company) and Pixar (the new company). Initially, I chalked this up to your basic disruptive technology pattern. But Pixar is similar to Disney--similar value prop (people like good movies), profit equation (people pay to see good movies), resources (creative types) and processes (animation). I'm not sure the disruptive technology pattern can explain Pixar's rise in toto.

But John Lasseter could still be the explanation for Pixar's success. In the same way that the center of Microsoft's success was Bill Gates' vision of a computer on everyone's desk, Lasseter held the vision of a full-length computer animated feature. At the start of Pixar, that vision seemed impossible--computers were slow, the animation tools primitive. But Lasseter persevered and with the cha-ching help of Steve Jobs, executed his vision tremendously.

So how come Disney didn't embrace Lasseter's vision when Lasseter was working for them? It may have come down to Disney's lack of abductive reasoning. Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, defines abductive reasoning as "the logic of what might be." Disney examined the animation market using deductive and inductive reasoning and determined the future was what worked for them in the past--animation of the hand-drawn variety. They had no need for computer animation. But Lasseter foresaw the creative potential of computer animation. Disney, the studio that was build on animation, opened the door and the new animation powerhouse, Pixar, strolled right through.

Game changers, such as Gates and Lasseter, require both abductive reasoning to construct the vision and the commitment to execute the vision to its conclusion. Luckily, I work with a number of people with those skills.

Daring Fireball on iPhone Design

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:28:00 +0000

John Gruber, AKA Daring Fireball, concludes this to be the central principle for iPhone design: Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience.

I disagree slightly--that should be the central principle for ALL platforms, not just the iPhone.

Scrum: Scope Creep Protection

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:11:00 +0000

One advantage of being up in years is that I’ve been an eye-wittiness to many of the changes that have shaped the software industry. One area of interest to me is the history of software development methodologies. From no-method to waterfall to spiral to iterative to agile-- I’ve lived them all.

At one point I rotated back from agile (scrum) to iterative and realized that scrum has built-in guards against a very high-risk activity: scope creep.

When you hear the term scope creep, one might think of the bombastic product manager that thrusts new requirements during the development cycle. But I think it’s natural to discover real requirements during the development cycle--often times requirements that the development team have overlooked. (And thus, the development team feels compelled to deliver.)

When your development timeline is long--three-to-six months (or more)--and requirements are discovered mid-cycle, there is pressure to deliver the new requirement at the end of the current development cycle-- schedule be damned. Product managers often can’t agree to wait six months for a feature. Development teams now are distracted, spending valuable development time dealing with the new requirement. Unless you’ve build-in 20-30-40% slack into your schedule, you are now overloaded and at risk of not delivering on time.

Since scrum promotes shorter development cycles, usually one month, this negates the pressure to add any single feature into middle of a cycle. Product managers can usually handle waiting a month for any one requirement. The requirement is quickly (and quietly) put into the product backlog and will be address during sprint planning. The disruption is usually localized to the product manager and the scum master--distraction to the development team is minimized. Scope creep crisis adverted.

Shorter development cycles should be an organizational goal and development teams should strive to develop the skills and behaviors to support this goal. The developers will be happier and the product managers will be happier. Clearly a win-win.

Lots of pain, no productivity gain

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:12:00 +0000

I have a rule about my health: don't worry too much about stuff you do every once in a while (e.g eat sushi) but things you do everyday (e.g. drink coffee). Sure, those once in a while things can have impact but those daily things add up. Big time.

Productivity-wise, one should have a similar rule--worry more about daily activities. Improve the efficiency of something you do every day, or multiple times a day, and you achieve efficiency multiples.

If you are a software developer (like me), you probably build and deploy software multiple times throughout your day. Noel, from Power of Two Games, talks about one's Pain Threshold--the amount of time a build/unit-test/deploy takes before it start to negatively effect efficiency. Noel's pain threshold is pretty low, 2 seconds, but Noel's rundown of 'the pain zones' resonate with me:

0 to 2 seconds. Programmer stays in the flow. Productivity is way high.

2 to 8 seconds. Flow is broken. Definite feel of things being a bit painful and sluggish.

8 to 30 seconds. Attention wanders to other parts of the code, email, etc. Multitasking kicks in and overall productivity plummets.

30+ seconds. Builds seen as batch processing. After each build is started, some other action is started. Maybe even physically get up, get a drink, start a conversation. Full brain reboot between coding tasks.

5+ minutes. Programmers bang their heads against the desk, actively consider the merits of different forms of suicide, or at the very least start polishing their resumes.

If your build/unit-test/deploy step is in the 30 seconds or above zone, it probably adds more cost to your development process than anything else. And as Noel implies, the cost is exponential--a two minute build can turn into ten minute distraction. Build 20 times a day and the cost is around 3 and a third hours of developer time a day, or 16 hours a week--costing (at a $50 load) $800 a week. For a team of 10 developers, that's $8000 a week, over $400K a year. That's some serious cha-ching.

Have long build times? Put your best guy on it. Don't buy products that increase the build time. You want me to buy your app server/process engine/web server? You better support hot deploys. You don't. Sales call over.

Minimize your build/unit-test/deploy time and you'll not only save a bunch of money but you'll keep your developers happier. And we all know it's all about keeping those developers happy.

Bad News...

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:36:00 +0000

I usually watch CNBC in the morning to get a nice dose of business news. But it's been a bit depressing lately. I started watching the Today show instead but as the financial crisis grew, the Today Show coverage also increase. More depression.

So now I watch Dora the Explorer in the morning figuring that was safe. But I'm not so sure. On Dora the Explorer this morning, I learned the Spanish word for 'bailout'.

Bit Gravity Talk

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:26:00 +0000

I enjoyed listening to Scoble's talk with the brains behind Bit Gravity. Beyond the usual overview of what Bit Gravity does, Barrett Lyon talks about issues with powering the Bit Gravity network. Over the last year I've realized how power (electricity) is THE key component to application delivery. For years, I've only thought of the bandwidth, cpu and storage aspects but as you hear in the video, power to deliver to the internet masses can be significant. And I love the thought of trying to return the excess heat created by cpus back into usable energy.

Thanks for being honest!

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 11:08:00 +0000

At Rockwell Automation, it was called 'the Rockwell Nod'--a response to a situation or issue where you mask your true opinions in favor of compliant corporate decorum--that is usually accompanied by a sweet nod and smile. Yesterday, a colleague at the current gig mentioned the term "Corporate Nice"--the perception that people act nice--by not making waves--when frankness would be more beneficial. The company president implored people to be less nice, 'be more real".

As luck would have it, I arrived at the door this morning at the same time as the manager of my manager. (Or as my father would say, my "big boss".) Quickly dispensing morning platitudes, he asked how the project was doing. "It's software, there's always room for lots of surprises."

He moved on. "How about you, are you enjoying the work, finding it challenging, learning new things?"

"No. Not really." Pregnant pause. "But you know, it's work and I'm happy to do it."

"Well, we should get together in the next few weeks and talk about it."

As a group of us were talking about "Corporate Nice" I mentioned that I felt my frankness at Rockwell did no good to my career. (I felt it was appreciated by my peers just not by the corporate structure above me.) I guess I'll get to see if "being real" means getting into "real" trouble at the current gig.

The MIT Three and The Pentagon Papers

noreply@blogger.com (J.T. Campbell, Jr.) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:08:00 +0000

Part of the ACLU's defense of the MIT Three includes citing precedence set by the SCOTUS decision allowing the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. (Information in the papers was though to be much more damning than what is contain in the MIT Three's security critique of Boston Transit's fare card system.) As the Pentagon Paper's controversy raged, a young senator entered over 4,000 pages of the Pentagon Paper into the public record, an end around on publishing restrictions. That young senator, you ask? The wonderfully weird Mike Gravel.