Input/Output: How to Succeed as an Introvert.
“On the other hand, introverts have to find the places where they are comfortable stretching themselves and pushing themselves a little bit, while giving themselves the recharge time that they need. If you know you’re going to be leading a company meeting for three hours, you make sure you don’t schedule something else for the three hours after it. Honoring your temperament enough to do that will go a long way towards preventing burnout and enable you to really stretch when you need to.” Some great advice within. I don’t agree with all, but it’s generally too good to miss.
Deliberatism: The Single Sentence Email Project.
CodingBetter: Mythical man month - 10 lines [of code] per developer day.
Interesting discussion.
Harvard Business Review: Make Your Cubicle a Better Place to Work.
Unmentioned is the fact that this is mostly straight Feng Shui. Of course, now that *environmental psychology* has approved it, it’s not considered nutty. I started making sure I faced doorways and entries decades ago, and my productivity and overall calmness skyrocketed.
The .net strip #12: No! That’s spec work!
Visual Science Lab/Kirk Tuck: My upbeat assessment of the potential for creative business.
SF New Mexican: Plan cuts taxes for business, veterans.
“Martinez proposed lifting the gross-receipts tax on 40,000 small businesses, those with a tax liability of less than $200 a month.” That would directly benefit many small businesses. Question is, at what cost to the state budget.
Project M.
Note to self …
When carrying a Gitzo (metal) tripod that’s been hand-tightened in a warm home environment, beware the contraction of cold metal. I was hauling it to a shoot downtown, and all the legs let loose at the same time while I was crossing a street.
The one thing photographers hate ... looking like idiots with tripod legs flapping all over the place. ESPECIALLY in public.
Someone should have had a video camera ...
When eating lunch while wearing a headset.
Push the mic up over your head. Shoving a peanut butter sandwich towards your mouth with a forgotten microphone between said sandwich and expectant mouth makes for a very ugly cleaning job.
The 99 Percent: Productivity Tie-Breaker: How Will You Feel Afterwards?
Another good one. Well-timed, to take advantage of this week.
SF New Mexican: City aims to upgrade Internet access.
“If Qforma had its offices in Albuquerque, he said, the Internet service it needs would cost about $70 a month. Here, it would run nearly $1,400 a month — a price that led the company to choose weekly visits from FedEx instead.” It’s about time this was dealt with. Santa Fe and Santa Feans have been too slow in adapting to the wired/wireless economy. I still occasionally run across people using Netscape 3, or basing their businesses on AOL.
The Atlantic: The Best Way to Kill Your Start-Up - Waiting for 100% Certainty.
“Yes, premature scaling is a cause of start-up death. Yes, you need to get out of the building and test your hypotheses. But, when an opportunity smacks you in the head, for gosh sake grab it with both hands and don’t let go. If you can’t, get out of the start-up game.” Points out the dire need for good mentors and advisors.
NPR: The Deregulation Bill That’s Drawing Crowds.
UX Booth: Design Studios - The Good, the Bad, and the Science.
Now this is a really interesting article.
My experience with creative groups is that the energy of the group gets dragged down by the emotional state of the leader(s). When the decision-maker is cranky, nothing is good. Likewise, you can have fantastic creatives involved, but if those creatives are not in a mood to share their energy, nothing gels.
However - when everyone’s *on*, the experience is amazing. The supply of creative energy is freely shared, and the brainstorm crackles with lightning.
Given this article, a better strategy than forcing everyone groupthinking together when the creative weather is ‘bad’ is to bust everyone off individually and aggregate results after a period of time. Perhaps small more-focused groups would be worth experimenting with also - try teams of two and three who have worked together well in the past.
The Atlantic: The Start-Up Act - Blueprint for an Innovation Recovery.
Oh, please. Tax incentives? Cost-benefit on regulations? Give me a break. Make it easier to add employees, move from garages and home offices to actual office space, and take care of the health care situation.
Mashable: 10 Essential Tips for Planning the Perfect Industry Event.
Ugh. Voice of experience: #1 - have processes in place to poll and listen to your audience. #2 - Be flexible enough to respond to your audience on-site, throughout the event.
Almost nothing’s worse than opening a huge event with a big production piece and finding (usually during the first coffee break) that the overarching theme was a big mistake - except for doggedly continuing down the disastrous theme/marketing strategy through a multi-day event. It’s like lying down and building a coffin around yourself.
FT.com: Women still get a raw deal in business and finance.
“Male entrepreneurs in Europe are 5 per cent more likely to successfully get a loan for their business from banks than women. A 2009 study of 14,108 firms across 34 countries, showed that those women that do gain access to loans are often subjected to higher interest rates – an average 0.5 per cent more on a business loan than men – or must accept more burdensome guarantees and collateral requirements.” When forces align to hold you back, each one that adds a layer of difficulty seems to have exponential effect on the whole.
As an aside, this is what America doesn’t understand about her own working poor. The restrictions on aid that are put into place to prevent cheating by a small percentage of users, too often serve to hold the balance of users permanently down.
NY Times: Tumbleweeds Are Piling Up Across the Plains.
“Years ago, she jokingly set up a Web site for an imaginary Prairie Tumbleweed Farm — advertising the plants for up to $25 each. To her enduring surprise, the orders started pouring in and now she has sold thousands to movie directors, homesick soldiers and home decoration stores.” I could do a comfortable side business, seems like. How much does shipping a 4’ tumbleweed cost, I wonder? The box alone would probably cost $25.
Social Media Examiner: How to Use Secret Facebook Groups to Enhance Your Business.
Handy, if you don’t mind sharing everything with Facebook.
Slate: Do small businesses actually innovate?
The Atlantic: Welcome to Middle-Class Poverty— Does Anybody Know the Way Out?
This starts out great, needs a longer, more specific finish.
NY Times: On Kickstarter, Designers’ Dreams Materialize.
I have so many monetizable ideas, I wouldn’t know where to start.
The Visual Science Lab / Kirk Tuck: Watering dead grass.
“Some of us having been hanging on to the original, profitable paradigm of photography by dint of sheer momentum and will power. Just when we’re ready to hang it all up and get a real job (as opposed to owning a photo business) a project comes in and we move the can forward a few more feet. But it would take a blind and deaf photographer not to realize that someone came in, stomped on our cheese and then scooped it up with a shovel and tossed it away. And, unwilling to believe that markets can change so profoundly, we’ve been watering the dead grass.” Another great one.
Naked Capitalism: Small Business Owners Using Pawnshops to Make Payroll.
I haven’t heard of anyone turning to pawnshops here. That being said, this article underlines what I keep harping over ... that credit cards fuel small business short-term funding. The reckless increases in interest rates and reduction of credit lines are what killed small business entrepreneurship in America.
Problem is, few in Washington are listening. Wouldn’t a survey of small businesses, asking about their current cash flow issues, be a more interesting thing to post than polling to find out America feels politicians behaved like children during the debt ceiling fiasco?
