One of the main reasons I wanted to hit up The 99% was to see Seth Godin speak in person.Seth is the author of many great books on marketing including Purple Cow and most recently – Tribes.He also has one of the most successful blogs on the web and I’d highly recommend that you subscribe to it or at least give it a visit.He’s a source of constant inspiration.
What Seth wanted to talk about was our Lizard Brain and how that makes us reluctant to ship.He argued that we are all creative – we all have big ideas. That’s not the problem.The problem is that we need to execute.We need to SHIP.
It happens to all of us right?We’re working on a project for weeks or months with a go live date or a deadline that we have to hit.And the closer we get to release (our Ship Date) – somehow magically more people want to have influence in the final product.More people (including ourselves) want to change the product.And the closer we get to the ship date, it seems like the more we want to make last minute revisions and tweaks.We call this ‘Thrashing.’
So why do we thrash, particularly at the last minute?Seth says its our Lizard Brains speaking up.See, in evolutionary terms we all have a lizard brain to a certain extent.It’s the cortexes that evolved around the lizard brain that makes us reason, create, etc.But the lizard brain – that’s the part that is reactionary.It doesn’t have the ability to reason because its preoccupied with threats (animals are pretty much always hungry, scared, horny, or reacting to something).
The threat is that as we get closer to the Ship Date, we start to get scared.Other people want to put in there .02 before the final product goes out.Afterall, we want to please as many people as we can…We want it to be a hit.But that rarely happens with we thrash at the last minute.It s what prevents us from shipping on time, under budget, and with the best quality we can muster.
The answer?Two things.First, Thrash Early.In the planning stages of the ideas, make some ground rules that everyone from the top down has to follow.Everyone.For instance, if you don’t show up to the thrashing meetings to voice your ideas – you don’t count.If you don’t have the confidence to speak up early on, to make your opinions heard – you don’t count.Because its by thrashing early that we’re able to set goals, set priorities, and bring the project to its full potential.
The 2nd lesson is to know when to ship.Often late in the process, more and more ideas and hands get put into the pot and the cause of that is cost overruns, and delays.Don’t.Keep to the plan.When do we ship?We ship when we run out of time, or run out of budget. Period.
In the end, the products and ideas that are rewarded are the ones that are tangible.They are the ones that are executed.They arethe ideas that have shipped.
Over the weekend I was in NYC to attend The 99% - a conference that focuses not on the 1% inspiration, but rather the 99% perspiration that it takes to make an idea happen. The 300 + crowd got to chill at the Times Center and hear from a pretty incredible lineup of speakers on the first ‘content day’, then engaged in different activities that were going on around Manhattan.
Though everyone’s talk were great (except Jill Greenberg unfortunately - she gave one of the most awkward talks I’ve ever heard, but did show photographs of monkeys and crying babies), I want to take a few posts and highlight the best of the best, as well as some key points which were generously donated to me via @rararararachel.
I want to start with Scott Thomas, who was the Design Director of New Media for the Obama presidential campaign. Scott was incredibly articulate and I got the sense that he was still overwhelmed by what he and his team accomplished over the campaign. Essentially, they created what was the most effective online political campaign and outreach effort in history.
He likened working for the campaign to ‘building an airplane while you were having to fly it.’ There was no learning curve for their project, and though there were many many good ideas, it was important for them to realize that not all ideas need to come to fruition.
The Message - There were a couple of main themes when Scott talked about executing their brand and their message. The first was that they wanted to convey both the historic nature of Obama’s campaign as well as show a message of Hope, They blended traditional imagery of campaigns with what he called ‘instant vintage’ (like placing some of Obama’s remarks on paper that looked old and important (think Declaration of Indepedence). This style would be present throughout Obama’s online (and offline) collateral. It was this visual discipline across messages and mediums that allowed the campaign to combat the accusations of inexperience which were thrown their way. As Scott put it ‘through consistency of design can you show experience and a sense of balance.’
Yes We Can -One of Obama’s huge strengths during the campaign was his engagement of his supporters nationwide. His eloquence in oratory combined with the excitement of his candidacy and the message of community allowed for a perfect storm of engagement that the campaign took full advantage of. Scott talked about how there was a conscious effort to make the message ‘We, not He.’ For instance, there was a large asset page that contained branded artwork which was accessible to anyone with a web connection. It allowed the community to take initiative and control of the message while still keeping a consistent visual. The campaign could ‘triage’ ideas within the community in real time to see what people thought worked and what didn’t. Local campaigns could adapt official artwork and blend it with a custom and effective message and use it on the ground in their own communities.
One huge takeaway for the group was an example of how to know your community when designing their online brand. In short, they found that people HATE long ass forms. They also hate giving away all sorts of their personal information. Thing about how many times you have left a site because of the length of the form you were required to fill out, or the information they wanted to collect from you.
Instead, the campaign would make all of their forms and data collection pages simple. Step by step. They asked only one question at a time. Only after completing that one question were you able to go on. This did a couple of things. It didn’t reveal the whole form at once, which may have stopped some people from leaving their info. But more importantly, by using step by step forms, the campaign could see where people abandoned the forms or had trouble with providing an answer to a particular question. They could then go back and tweak their data collection to where it was an exceptionally user friendly and not-too-invasive experience for the user.
It certainly was evident to me that Scott was a remakable individual, working with other remarkable individuals, to pull off something completely remarkable. His passion for engaging people and executing was infectious. And I think that this kind of a Web 2.0 campaign was a natural fit for Barack Obama. It just wouldn’t have fit with anyone else. The historic nature of his campaign as well as his ability to connect with people, needed a campaign that was run in a new way, and that could connect individuals and groups on a massive scale. I just coulnd’t see this kind of energy generated by John McCain, no matter how good of an online team he may have had.
I had a great week at The 99% Conference in NYC and will have a full report of the best content from the workshops, but its important right now for me to digest things a little bit. But in addition to a kick ass conference I got to meet some truly innovative individuals.
One of those was Mr. R. Justin Stewart who is a sculptor out of NYC. During the after party for the conference we got to chatting about his work and I was amazed at the blending of data and art that he uses to produce his installations.
I was particularly impressed with one of his installations in particular which was 3D space-time map of the Twin Cities Metro System between 2a.m. and 2p.m. Its constructed using 5,000 wooden spheres which are connected using over a half mile of copper tubing. During the party I asked him to explain the piece and he does it better than I ever could. Definitely check out his website by clicking here as there are many more photos and additional pieces. Here’s a quick video:
I was truly amazed at the talents and backgrounds of the conference attendees. The sheer amount of talent and innovation is breathtaking and I’m sure that I’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg. Seeing how people are able to bring their ideas to fruition, bucking mediocrity, and most importantly, sharing their talent and information makes me think that on the whole, we’re going to be OK.
Big Big ups to Justin for sharing his work and I’ll be posting more insights from The 99% throughout the coming week.
One of the main reasons I wanted to hit up The 99% was to see Seth Godin speak in person. Seth is the author of many great books on marketing including Purple Cow and most recently – Tribes. He also has one of the most successful blogs on the web and I’d highly recommend that you subscribe to it or at least give it a visit. He’s a source of constant inspiration.
