From the fine folks at Design Observer (where you can read all of the details), words of wisdom from Chris Pullman.
2 Work with people you like and respect.
3 Be nice.
4 Have high standards.
5 Have a sense of humor.
6 Design is not the narrow application of formal skills, it is a way of thinking.
7 Variety is the spice of life.
8 Institutions have a character, just like people do.
9 We’re all in the “understanding business.”
10 You are what you eat.
This the presentation by Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) given at the Web 2.0 Summit last week in San Francisco.
Thanks for passing it along, Tony!
I'm pretty sure, that somewhere down the line, I have been this client. Reminder to self: STOP.
What a great idea. From their Facebook group:
THE STORY
Four friends had an idea to collect gift cards and give them to people in need. They went to a gathering and asked 8 people how much money they had in their wallets of unused Gift Cards and walked away with $50 in Gift Cards to help people in need. GiftCardGiver.com was born.
CARD ME
STEP 1: Use as much of your card as you want.
STEP 2: Write how much is left on your card using a permanent marker.
STEP 3: place the card in an envelope and send it to us at:
Gift Card Giver
490 East Side Ave SE
Atlanta, GA 30316
We collect and distribute the cards to appropriate Non-Profit Organizations that can use those cards to help others. We have never used a card for ourselves and never will. Thanks for contributing.
GIFT CARD INDUSTRY
The Gift Card industry has risen to be a 60 billion dollar industry. Ever wonder how many gift cards are unused? Atleast 10%. That means billions of dollars are waiting to be used on Gift Cards.
How many gift cards do you have sitting in your wallet? We guess you have at least $5 of unused gift cards in your wallet or purse right now. What’s 5 bucks going to buy you?
GIVE YOUR GIFT CARD
Five bucks in Gift Cards will buy you a pair of socks…but 10 people giving 5 bucks will buy a kid a winter coat or 100 people giving $5 from Home Depot will give that same kid a warm bedroom to sleep through the night.
Image from the 1st SEED Conference.
Seed Conference | Chicago | 6 June 2008
I'll be headed to Chicago this Friday for the 3rd SEED Conference. The self-describe conference on "design, entrepreneur and inspiration" is being held on the campus of IIT in IIT in Crown Hall, which was designed by modernist giant Mies van der Rohe.
The 3rd installment of SEED will feature organizers:
...and well as:
Let me know of you are headed that way too. It would be great to meet-up!
At least once every year I hit a period when I have trouble focusing on anything I'm doing. Typically this hits towards the end of Winter, when all I long for is the sight of green grass and crocuses . Perhaps it's a touch of seasonal affective disorder. Who knows. Regardless, every year I react the same way. My focus moves from the substance of my work to its method. Typically this only effects me: I re-categorize projects, re-consider the tools I use and , in recent years, re-read Getting Things Done.
This year is no different. However, the scope of this reflection has effected my team too. Over the next few weeks, we'll be dropping Microsoft Exchange and Entourage in favor of Google Apps and Apple's toolset. Specifically, we are...
- moving our email hosting and Exchange support from 123together.com to Google Apps (which includes mail, calendar sharing and document collaboration)
- dropping Entourage in favor of Apple Mail, Address Book and iCal
- personally giving up my Blackberry for an iPhone
So far, this process has been fairly painless. Even though I have essentially given up a single tool for three, I feel like I have simplified my life. Apple's Mail, iCal and Address Book have been a joy to use. Everything does not, however, work seamlessly with Google. I've had to add a few apps to make it all work:
- Spanning Sync...which takes Address Book's read only access of Google Calendar (gCal) and makes it read/write
- to get my iPhone to play well with IMAP and gmail, I've followed these instructions from 5thirtyone
- and...I've started using Things (as in Getting Things Done) to manage my tasks and projects
The only outliers in this move are finding a better way to sync the address book and using the calendar on my iPhone. As Google does not provide a way to synch contacts beyond an import/export function, I have chosen to manage mine through Address Book. I also manage my calendar through iCal, but with my iPhone I tap into Google's interface instead of using it's native app.
The result of all of this work? I am starting to feel more organized and like I have a handle on my work again. So, it looks like this project has been successful so far (or it could simply be the result of the past two days of sunshine). If anyone has other suggestions on how to best use Google Apps in an Apple environment, please pass them along.
Sometimes I get confused between when my gut is telling me to do something (or make a particular decision) and when it is my head. Case in point: Tuesday evening I was asked to speak at a local entrepreneur group near my home town. Weeks ago, and in preparation, I purchased the book Presentation Zen. Even though it just came out, this book had been on my "gotta read it" list for some time. In it, Garr Reynolds gives some basic, no nonsense advise about preparing for presentations. Things like:
Not rocket science by any means, but certainly stuff it's healthy to be reminded of. The entire book is filled with insights like this, but more so it provides a really great method for thinking about speaking and preparing presentations (so go out and buy this book now!).
Somewhere in the text, or between the lines, Reynolds creates the impression that a great presentation is half method/preparation and half the not-so-simple task of knowing your self. I think he specifically talks about unleashing the creativity we all have, but I equate this to knowing thy self - knowing your abilities and bounds free you to think creatively within those limits.
With that in mind, I certainly didn't listen to my gut nor did I leverage my personal strengths to their fullest extent for this presentation. What was my gut saying? It was telling me to go in with the single slide above. No multi-slide presentation, just a simple one that would leave me with the ability to speak about my passions and riff on a subject. This is what I do best (I think): listen to my audience and tailor my conversation directly to them. No detailed outline and step-by-step dialog to get in the way.
But no...my head told me that I needed more slides by way of introduction of me and Spout to my audience. As a result, I talked more about the details of Spout, had problems following my slide progression and talked less about what I really wanted to discuss. This doesn't mean the presentation wasn't a success. But it certainly wasn't as good as I could have made it. Next time, I'll listen to myself AND my gut.
Anyone need a speaker?
Over the weekend I updated my Office 2004 to the new 2008 for Mac. Some pretty cool features (like My Day), but on the whole, kind of a lackluster product launch. The big complaint I hear from most folk (and what irks me the most) is the lack of Exchange support. Come on now Microsoft, people have been complaining about this for the past 4 years. Weren't you listening?
As a consolation prize, Microsoft teamed up with Mccann Worldgroup to create this spiffy sitelet. Quite frankly, I'm surprised this site is a part of one of their product launches. It is very creative and very...umm...whimsical. Very un-Microsoft.
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