biastoact

An old idea I’d love to see come back would be the mashup. There was a moment where it appeared possible that all the ‘next big things’ would be built using a mix of services. Gmail mixed with Facebook chat mixed with RSS feeds all overlayed on a Yahoo Map with contextual YouTube pops. In the end all we really got were Google Maps next to physical addresses on websites, social share buttons, and Facebook Logins. (I know there are more but wide adoption is scant).

It would be killer to see a collection of micro-mashable services emerge to expose data, manipulation, visualization, sharing and interactivity (and probably billing).

It should, for example, take a day to build a page that lets you analyze real estate deals based on proximity to McDonalds locations, crime events, R v D political donations, and mentions (or lack of mentions) of Kanye West by local Social Media users.

By the way, I’m not saying this is a good idea, it is probably a bad idea. I’m just saying ideas like this should be almost as easy to hack together as a formatted blog post.

It is not unlike Prime Video and Prime Music (among others). When you run a membership program you create offers that increase the perceived value of the membership and engagement with your ecosystem. Similar is Costco gas, people wouldn’t drive out of their way for the discount if they didn’t already pay the membership. And while you are there you might as well pick up four times the bread you need, more milk than you consume in a week, a new camera (that was probably cheaper online), and a hot dog on your way out. Getting the value out of that $100 membership leads people to consume far more than they normally would.

Without dates and metrics you can’t measure progress. Like mile markers along the road (back before GPS / Smartphones). But without continuous, high trust, collaborative conversation you can’t actually make progress. That’s the gasoline powering you down the road. The goal should be Disneyland (shouldn’t it always be Disneyland?), not the next mile marker.

I more take some time to roam each day and if people aren’t deep in activity or meetings check in at that point. Afternoons are great as folks tend to be low blood sugar and more opt to be pushed back from their desks, etc.

As far as I can tell they like it. If it is a topic area we've previously discussed or tried to reason the best way forward they will now often proactively reach out when they need help or want someone to tell them how awesome they just were.

I find that as long as it isn't every day and I show up to ask about their public deadlines, compliment them on progress, and offer to help where they are stuck that people don't react like it is a disruption.

I set a goal of using my feet to walk around and engage team members in 5 work conversations (unscheduled) each day. The change in culture and the identification of problems, road blocks, oppertunities has been eye opening. As a natural introvert who’d rather be heads down it has made me much more effective in the team.

Insured by the book Brunch is Hell I’ve started a soup in game night for friends and should-be-friends forvthis very reason: create a platform where we can put in the time to build closer friendships.

I once created a similar problem. I built a tracking and split testing system designed around a list of features activated during a page load. So a single page load might be described like:

root,signin,bluebutton

Where bluebutton was a design we were testing for our signin page. Of course once bluebutton worked and had run for a while everyone was afraid to change it in case there was a dependency of some kind. So the Facebook login that replaced the old signin would look like:

root,signin,bluebutton,fbookredirect

Even though no sign in page was shown let alone a bluebutton.

Late last year I started getting up at 5:05, driving to the gym while listening to scripture, swimming, showering, driving back, and then starting coffee for the wife, breakfast for the family, and lunches for the kids. The exercise and alone time really feel like they slow time down and let me get a lot more done for the rest of the day. But it is hard to get up that early.