sippey.com

helping the kids think about infinity

The "all the grains of sand on all the beaches" metaphor is played out. What we need are some new ways to help kids think about infinity. Here are a few that I might use with mine.

• Every pixel in every billboard, television, computer monitor, checkout terminal, tablet and smartphone.
• Every JPG, PNG or GIF (static or animated) image shared on Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram. Including the automatically cropped versions, resized versions and cached copies (whether at a CDN, ISP or in your browser). And all the pixels in those images.
• Every beep after which you are supposed to leave a message. Every time you’ve pressed pound to continue. Every breath taken while waiting on hold.
• Every email, instant message, text message, private message or direct message sent from one loved one to another. Or from one colleague to another. Or from a loved one to a colleague.
• Every spam that’s been caught by filters. Or not.
• Every bit of every stream or download delivered by iTunes, Netflix and Spotify.
• Every event written to a log. Every click, keypress or browser event captured by Google Analytics. Every purchase signal captured by Amazon. Every like, friend request, comment or poke on Facebook. Every display ad impression.
• Every keyboard press, screen tap and mouse click made by people. Or pets, accidentally. And every processor cycle spent waiting for that input.

Ever.

the silence of mike daisey

Reading the transcript of the Retraction episode of This American Life is one thing; listening to it is another. The most interesting bits were the silences, not only because Daisey is so clearly uncomfortable answering the questions, but also because we’ve been trained as radio listeners to abhor silence — it makes us incredibly uncomfortable.

So here is my edit of the most relevant moments of Retraction.

competing v. fulfilling expectations

I was listening to an episode of The Talk Show (I know, I know…) with Chairman Gruber and John Siracusa on the way to work this morning, the one where they talk about Mountain Lion. A good part of the discussion was about just who Apple is competing with on the PC operating system front. The general consensus that it wasn’t Microsoft any longer, but instead Google. That Mountain Lion + iCloud competes with Google (w/apps) + Android.

I have a slightly different take. I’m sure Apple thinks about the customer experience of Mountain Lion + iCloud v. Google + Android or Windows 8 + Skydrive. But I don’t think that competition is what’s driving them. Instead, I have a feeling they’re working with Mountain Lion to fulfill user expectations that they’re setting with their mobile platform. More and more people are coming to the Mac because of iPhone and iPad, so what Apple’s doing on the Mac + iCloud is developing features that fulfill on the user expectations that are being set by their other products. Even though you’re using a laptop (which is a very different device from a phone), of course it should be as easy to use. And of course your calendar syncs. And your contacts and mail and reminders. And your photos, videos and media. And of course you’ll be able to trust the applications they help you discover and install on your Mac, just like you’re able to trust the applications they help you discover and install on your iPhone and iPad.

This does build a competitive product, of course. But what they’re doing is using each part of their platform — mobile device, Mac, iCloud — to ratchet up the quality of the customer experience, piece by piece. And then bringing the other pieces in line, fulfilling user expectations. “Of course it should work like this.”

status updates

It's my last day at SAY Media. Proud to have been part of such an incredible team here and at Six Apart.

— Michael Sippey (@sippey) January 20, 2012

It's time for new challenges: very excited to join the product team at Twitter in a couple weeks. Onward!

— Michael Sippey (@sippey) January 20, 2012

notes on pandodaily

I've been enjoying PandoDaily this week; kudos to Sarah Lacy. (Disclosure: I've enjoyed her chicken[1].) I am seriously impressed with how much great content they've produced in these first few days, and it only goes to prove just how wrong Jeremiah Owyang was three weeks ago when he declared the golden age of tech blogging over.

Here's what I think is working for Pando:

• Simple site, simple launch. Yep, it's a blog. Reverse chron, nice author pics, comments, simple sections with simple nav. There was no need to go all Verge-y with v1: get the voice out there, start producing content, see what works, adjust.

• Smart, fast commentary. In tech blogging, fast used to be a differentiator; it isn't anymore. And smart usually takes enough time to render the opinion moot[2]. But Sarah's delivering smart stuff, fast. If she can keep it up, she'll start to set the context for the broader conversation..

• The ticker. Not only is it smart to mix short form and long form, but the old school blogger in me loves the sidebar linkblog format. And it's refreshing to see links! To other sites! With credit!

• The editorial philosophy. The name may be awkward ("But wait, where's the cute panda logo?? Oh, PandOOOO..."), but it means something. "What really matters is what happens below," Sarah writes in her intro blog post. Couldn't agree more, and even in the saturated land of tech media that kind of coverage will fill a hole and find an audience.

PandoMedia angel investor[3] and board member Andrew Anker (disclosure: I've enjoyed his Giants tickets and other forms of largesse, professional and otherwise[1]) writes in his blog post about the Pando launch:

Media sites make for inherently cyclical, constantly transforming businesses where you’re only as good as the last story you pushed out. The people who contribute are the ultimate product — the media are just the messages.

Emphasis mine. We watch The Daily Show for Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report for Colbert, the Late Show for Letterman, etc. We're watching Pando because it's Sarah. And to take it all the way around, we're really watching Pando because it's Sarah watching us.

[1] Yes, you can consider these awkward jokes on the constant PandDisclosure-ing.

[2] Ahem.

[3] Speaking of investment, for those keeping score at home the $2.5 million Pando raised is equal to 50 Classicals.

everything and nothing

When I visit the beach I come back with pictures of the kids and sand in my shoes. When Kevin Kelly visits the beach he comes back with blog posts like this one, A Whole Lot of Nothing:

Water is made of oxygen and hydrogen. What is a oxygen atom made of? Not oxygen, but of smaller particles, like protons and electrons. And what are they made of? Mostly space. ... I know the monks on the tops of mountains have been saying the real world is immaterial for eons, but the difference is that now we say can it precisely, and in such a scientific way that we can predict what else we should see if this view is correct. So far we can't use ordinary words to describe what this fundamental intangible is.

I'm enjoying Kevin's blog immensely lately; see also his previous post We Are Stardust.

here's to cognitive dissonance

I like what Jason has to say in reaction to Matt's post about his bad Kickstarter experience. Worth quoting at length...

Shipping a product or app is hard. It requires experience, hard work, and a little luck. But providing effective and genuine customer service might be even harder because you just have sit there, take it, and react well under pressure over and over and over. The entrepreneur side of your brain is saying "this is a great product and I am proud of it and anyone who says otherwise is wrong and I will show them and succeed" and sometimes customer service is acknowledging publicly and repeatedly the exact opposite thing...that the product isn't meeting needs, you are right, we will fix it, and thank you sir may I have another? That's a lot of potential cognitive dissonance!

If one were to dramatically over simplify the two extreme approaches to managing products, one would be "have a vision and stick to it," the other would be "listen to the market and react quickly." As always, the real world is made somewhere in the middle, but not always at the same point in the middle. Not only are different approaches required for different types of products, but also at different points in a product's life cycle. But more often than not, product people* live in that land of cognitive dissonance. As Jason points out, if you can find the place where pride and humility not only balance each other but work together to move the product forward...that's magic.

* Defined expansively here to include product managers, designers, engineers, marketers, support people, bus dev, sales people...the entire team that it takes to deliver on a product's potential.

 

on kickstarter's 2nd anniversary

Huge congrats to Kickstarter on their 2nd anniversary, and I love that they published so much interesting data about the funded projects in the past year. But I wasn't really a fan of their pie chart (where all the slices were equal), since we know (from their own commentary!) that some slices are more equal than others. So I took the liberty of shuttling all the data they shared about projects in the past year into a Google Doc, and calculated some averages and made some better graphs. I've published the spreadsheet and charts.

Some interesting things...

• Cultcha! Film & Video + Music = 55.7% of funds raised.
• Design and Tech = bigger budgets. Average raise / funded project for those two were much higher than other categories. Were there outliers that screwed the averages?
• Tech backers spend the most. Average kick per backer was $119 for tech projects.

Kickstarter's sitting on some really interesting data...especially about project funding patterns and pricing tiers. Averages only tell you a little tiny, tiny slice of the story; would love to see some time series data that looks at the psychology of funding behavior. For example, is there a "best time" for big backers to show up on the board to drive volume of smaller pledges? What's the optimal pricing curve for pledge tiers by category? Etc., etc.

still not journalists

I can't believe we're still having this argument...and losing. Headline on Time.com: Oregon Court Rules Blogging Isn't Journalism (tastefully illustrated with a Getty Images stock photo of the words "blog blog" coming out of an antique typewriter).

See also this afternoon's stream of tweets from Gothamist's Jake Dobkin. Presented in chronological order...

Today's update: I filed the official appeal on my (2nd!) denied application. And Norm is also going to talk w/the city's attorneys. #

At this rate, I'm almost certain to have a press pass before @gothamist's 15th anniversay in 2018! #

I don't understand how @MikeBloomberg can claim NYC is friendly to startups, when @gothamist still can't get a press pass after 7 years. #

We're a NYC born and bred media startup that employs more than twenty-five people. We work hard to deliver original content every day. #

Last month we had 2.5MM unique readers in New York City. But the @nypdnews tells me we're not a real news organization. That's just wrong. #

But how can we be expected to deliver more original content if we're denied the same access mainstream news organizations take for granted? #

I just can't believe that it's going to take a lawsuit to get us the same basic treatment newspapers, radio, and TV stations get every day. #

So next time someone accuses a blog of aggregating- ask yourself, how can they avoid aggr without all the tools to produce original posts? #

We've democratized the tools of content production, distribution and monetization to the point where Jake can build a sustainable media business that employs 25 people and reaches millions of readers. But as Jake rightly points out, the set of "tools" he needs to run his business go beyond a CMS, a CDN and some SEO. It also includes tools that give his contributors access.

a life's work in toothpicks and ping pong balls

Via things, Scott Weaver's 35 year project to build this kinetic sculpture of San Francisco out of toothpicks and pingpong balls.

Weaver writes on his site:

I have used different brands of toothpicks depending on what I am building. I also have many friends and family members that collect toothpicks in their travels for me. For example, some of the trees in Golden Gate Park are made from toothpicks from Kenya, Morocco, Spain, West Germany and Italy. The heart inside the Palace of Fine Arts is made out of toothpicks people threw at our wedding.

If you just skimmed his quote, go read it again. Especially that last bit.