undermanager

At the last Interesting I threatened to come up with a plan to do 'other things'. I love the feeling at Interesting and it'd be nice to have it happen at other times and places, I've never quite worked out how to do this BUT I'm now ready to do some experiments.My thinking is this:Interesting itself is probably 90% Short Talks About Interesting Things and 10% Hanging Out And Chatting. And people always tell me that, while they love the STAIT they'd love there to be more HOAC.So, how about we…

Arthur's written a play. And it's being performed. And it's quite short. You should come!

The always stimulating Tom Whitwell was kind enough to put up with me asking him for some recommendations...

Cycling corner: @jbillinson if you’re watching the tour de france this year, keep an eye out for a very funny form of cheating: the sticky bottle #cycling #TourDeFrance #sports #bike #sportstiktokcontest ♬ C.B.Rhumba by Sage Guyton and Jeremy Wakefield - SpongeRadio @blakeoftoday

Here's an explanation for why nothing gets done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredkin%27s_paradox

I've had a couple of really nice notes in the last couple of months. People getting in touch to say they liked something I'd written.This is an incredibly pleasant feeling and it doesn't happen very often.And every time it happens I'm reminded that I should do it more myself. Most authors/writers have tiny audiences. They get very little feedback. And I know, from my own experience, and from talking to other people, a little bit of positive feedback goes a very long way. So yesterday, very…

I did a presentation for the good people of GDS the other week. I really enjoyed it. The presenting and the questions and all that but also, just the craft and the opportunity to think about an argument and to make some new slides.Neil is right. I want to Make More Slides. They're a great way to think things through. I'm doing a thing for Test, Learn and Grow in a few weeks, and something for AHO in September, and I'm loving the 'thinking through slides' that it's causing.

Let me get the three piece and a biscuit @gracespelman the songs aren’t ranked except for #1 which is ABSOLUTELY MY FAVORITE #musicdiscovery #musicrecommendations #playlist ♬ original sound - grace 🎧 | music discovery

A story I've told a thousand times, but still useful, I suspect.

I had a phase of making little videos about the things in the Do book, and then I forgot.So here we go again:

"Consulting giant Accenture is trying to figure out how to stop non-technical workers from blowing through companies’ AI token budget on trivial tasks like converting PDFs to presentation slides"The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AILeaked audio from Accenture says a big source of AI token ‘chewing’ is people just converting PDFs to presentation slides.Softbank are back back back

I've embarked on another pointless, slow and unmonetisable project. I call it Walking Slow although that is a bad name.I always find that the most poignant things on YouTube are those street scenes from 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, NOT THAT LONG ago. Especially if it's somewhere you know. Very often it's accidentally captured, someting intended for one purpose but now swept up as social history. Or just nostalgia. Having lived, now, in the same place for 25 years I feel it round…

Findings(may not work)

Actually, that's not true. This is what I actually learned:Find a topic, 'a niche', you'll probably have to experiment a lot to find the one that works. Then - only post about that topic. Experiment a lot to find the style/tone/approach that works. Then - only use that approach.Do it a lot. Multiple times a day. Keep it exactly the same but keep experimenting with ways to change it.Be incredibly lucky.That is incredibly hard work. And most of the people who work really hard at it don't get…

"On the pitch, much was amateurish: penalty spots were painted in the wrong place, some games finished ahead of time, and the identity of some of the goalscorers remains unknown. Argentina’s captain, Manuel Ferreira, left halfway through to sit his law exams, and the US midfielder Andy Auld was temporarily blinded when a physio spilled a bottle of chloroform while treating his split lip. Some teams played in an assortment of colours, and Juan Evaristo, Argentina’s right-half, in a beret. The…

I try to keep my eye out for examples of the general absorption of 'presentations' into culture. PowerPoint parties were my previous favourite example. This is now the best one:Date My MateThe global movement bringing real-life connection back to dating. Friends pitch their single friends using slides & presentations.

I've been experimenting with early morning streaming on YouTube. Just a camera pointing at my desk and a soundtrack of 6am appropriate tunes. At some point I'll work out how to integrate a microphone and then I'll also annoy you with news and sport. But, for now, you can join the chat, if you'd like to. (Apologies to Jacqui who did just that and I missed it)Past ones are here. New ones will be on my YouTube between 6ish and 7ish. Most days. (I will get more precise about this)

Is this true?: "attention-harvesting advertising is the only software business model that works at scale for consumer services"From: "This reality about the consumer market is a lesson that Silicon Valley has to re-learn every decade or so. Consider Dropbox, whose founder, Drew Houston, is in the process of stepping down. Dropbox was a category-defining product that had a viral hook — if someone signed up with your referral code, you got more storage — and grew extremely fast amongst consumers;…

@beachboyz2men The incredible photo archive that was nearly sent to a landfill. Special thanks to Gary Leonard for access and help digitizing the slides, and to the Huntington Library for assistance with research. ♬ original sound - beachboyz2men Constraints! @bifa_film Low budget, big ideas. Peter Capaldi talks creativity and constraint on Doctor Who. Head to the link in our bio to watch the full episode now! Hosted by @karischloe and Joy Hunter Produced by the BIFA Team Recorded at @bleatpost…

(From about 10 minutes in)

This is my blog. It sits on a platform called Ghost and, in my head, you're all reading it via RSS, in your newsreaders, and it's the early 2010s.This, of course, is wrong. In fact many of you are reading it via email, especially since Interesting. And that means that, once a week, you get a long, slightly broken email with missing images. It's supposed to be a compilation of all the posts from the week but it might not always work properly. Sorry about that. I'm going to try and fix it.In the…

I was asked for some tips on how to start a marketing/advertising project. Here are three:With maximum forceDon't say brandThe first problem you'll find is that marketing is full of impenetrable jargon. That's not a bad thing in itself, jargon can be a useful shorthand, a handy shared language. The problem with marketing jargon is that it's escaped into the world and everyone uses it all the time - it's just that there's very little agreement about what any of it means.For instance, I always…

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: Posh Grandpa is fashion’s new main characterThe latest character dressing trend may be a little silly but there’s an off-kilter pleasure in its mellow, vintage vibeThe GuardianJess Cartner-Morley

Fantastic 30 mins from Radio 3"At the crest of Japan's economic bubble, in the spring of 1991, a radio station unlike any other began broadcasting from satellite into homes across the country. St.GIGA carried no news, no commercials, no DJs. Instead, it offered an unbroken flow of music, field recordings from around the world, commissioned poetry, and the quiet announcement of tides. Its programming was not built around schedules or programme titles, it was built around the sea.Conceived by…

This is a saying stolen and adapted from the splendid Paynter people. I talk about it in the Do Interesting book. And I've been thinking of it because I've been reading Inside The Box by David Epstein. It's about the fact that freedom doesn't make you more creative etc, constraints do. Relatively well-trodden territory but he has some good accompanying stories and he tells them well.I was trying to think what constraints I use to make things interesting and I came up with these three examples.…

I've started waking up unaccountably early. 5am most days. Not deliberately, I just wake up. And it's not a bad thing, I enjoy the mornings so I get up. But then I find myself at a loose end. It doesn't feel like reading time, it's too soon for work, I'd like to go out for a coffee but nowhere's open, so I've tried to find a thing to do that fits the moment. So I've decided to try playing some music and sharing it. I've become a huge fan of all these YouTubers who film themselves doing mixes.…

I miss doing presentations.Standing up and presenting stuff to people I don't know.Pre-COVID I did them a lot and I used to really enjoy it. It was an opportunity to think about things, to craft an argument and to see how it landed with real people in a room. And it paid quite well.So I'd like to try again. And if you'd like me to come and talk to your pod, department, team, company, organisation, institute, cabal or nation I would very much like to. I won't charge you anything unless there's…