About twenty years ago, I met a guy named Byron Preiss. I was 24 and just starting out at Spinnaker Software and he was the supremely talented, very smart packager that my boss had just purchased several million dollars worth of software from.
Turns out that Byron was only seven years older than me.
We worked closely together for two years, arguing nearly every day about the products we ended up creating together. We worked with Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury and artists and writers and programmers. In 1985, it was a very new deal to be a packager of content, to work with brands and carve out new rights, to imagine new forms of media. Byron was doing all of those things.
One day, Byron said to me, "You should go out on your own. I’ll help you. I’ll introduce you to people." Byron not only demonstrated to me that the new media enabled the individual to make stuff, but he gave me permission to try.
Byron Preiss, 52, Digital Publishing Pioneer, Dies – New York Times.
July 12, 2005
From the ninth of July, a review of a weird conceptual restaurant called Chair,
"There are plenty of decent 30 pound a head restaurants in London. The trouble is that most of them charge 60 pounds a head to eat there. … When you leave a restaurant chatting mostly about how nobody could be bothered… you’re going to have to need a pretty good reason to eat there again.
What do you you suppose that could be? That you found yourself hungry in Notting Hill and didn’t have the energy to walk 20 yards to any of the dozens of other restaurants in the vicinity?
There may be nothing particularly disastrous about Chair, but you wonder what the point of it is."
July 10, 2005
Apparently, the folks who run one of the big airports in Europe became famous because of a clever idea they installed in the airport men’s room (click on picture for details… this is a family friendly blog).
Apparently, the tiny silk screened image dramatically increases the quality of aim and thus the cleanliness of the bathroom.
What amazed me is that I saw this very same urinal in three or four different restaurants and public places over just three days in Amsterdam.
What is it that makes this sort of innovation feel safe?
Yes, it’s little tiny things that make people take action. Look at these pictures from Neil’s Yard dairy and the local coffee purveyor. They fit a certain worldview and they tell a story that earns them three or four times what others are paying at the supermarket. Sure, it’s better, but how much better?
I think that begs the question. The real question is "better at what?" They are better at making you feel special.
Taken at Harrod’s. It’s butter. No it’s not for sale. At least that’s what they told me.
Every person I’ve met on this trip is brave, unflappable and open-minded. But they have very weird taste in centerpieces still.
Joey Smith pointed me to a site, which pointed me to: splorp . critique . spirals. Worth a read, especially if you get dizzy easily (or if you make logos).
July 7, 2005
Several hundred years ago, a huge piece of the economy of the Netherlands was based on whale oil. This oil painting gives you a small glimpse of what an industry this was.
No question, those in charge believed that whale oil would never run out, and that if some sort of legislation or new world order came along that threatened the supply of dead whales, they would fight it–the very survival of their families were at stake.
Whale oil, of course, is long gone. And the Netherlands are still here, better than ever.
Some of the whale oil magnates and whale oil processors and whale oil catering guys in the silver trucks (okay, maybe they didn’t have silver trucks) got while the getting was good. They learned how to do something else once they saw the industry begin to decay. They took their assets–their capital, their leverage, their training–and used it to get a headstart doing some other mercantile activity. And they thrived as a result.
We’re in the middle of the biggest shift(s) of the last century–whole industries are disappearing, worldviews are changing and the rules are being rewritten. One thing I’ve noticed in Amsterdam (I spoke to about 400 entrepreneurs yesterday, not all of them young, not all of them independent, not all of them homogeneous) is that there’s a real bias for action here. People here are itching to get on to the next thing. That and I couldn’t find any whale oil for sale. Not one drop.
Two years ago this month in Fast Company, I wrote:
We don’t expect a pigeon to wise up and change its behavior. But what about your boss? Have you ever had a boss who said, "I’ve looked at all the best thinking on [insert issue here: factory expansion, layoffs, global warming, stem-cell research, foreign trade], and I’m going to change my mind; my old position was wrong, and this is what we should do instead"? Or is your boss, well, more like a pigeon?
[click below for the article]
The Threat of Pigeons and Other Fundamentalists.
Not too much has changed, I’m afraid.
Chris Houchens (Shotgun Marketing BLOG) submits this quote from an arctic explorer:
"What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public."
Vilhjalmur Stefansson, "Discovery", 1964
July 6, 2005
For some reason, it seems like I pick on Red Lobster. It’s not a personal thing, it just happens.
Gordie Meyer sent this over (from Restaurant News):
Red Lobster Says It’s From Maine
ORLANDO, FL — Nearly four decades after it was launched in Florida, Red Lobster has decided it hails from the state of Maine–despite there not being a single unit in the Pine Tree State.
“We’ve given consumers a lot of clues over the years we’re from Maine,” president Kim Lopdrup told a group of analysts. “If you look at our menu, it’s the only state identified on the menu. That is where consumers are convinced we’re from.
“We’re from Maine,” Lopdrup stressed.
That may come as a surprise to Maine residents, who have to venture well out of state just to enjoy a meal at Red Lobster; the nearest unit is in Wethersfield, CT–some 137 miles away.
Maine restaurateurs weren’t buying it either. “They were from Maine and they pulled out,” said Scott Belanger, manager of the Sea Basket Restaurant in Wiscasset, ME. “Why aren’t they here serving the great people of Maine?”
“If the company would like to claim their roots, like ours, are on the shores of New England,” added Susan Paquete of the Weathervane Seafood Restaurants chain, “then perhaps they should try living with and serving the fine people of Maine.”
July 5, 2005
