Category Archives: Lessons Learned

Wear Sunscreen

0
Posted by admin on June 11, 2010 – 2:00 pm
Filed under Lessons Learned

I’m not certain if it’s because of the great weather today, or something else, but while speaking with a couple of smart entrepreneurs, I found myself twice referencing the oft e-mailed pre-web 2.0 meme Wear Sunscreen, as a part of an otherwise cogent new venture discussion.

I’ve you’re not among the 4 million who have already watched it, or are but want to see it again:


The full-text version’s here.

The words belong to Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune (who I just learned is a fellow Pomona College grad). This is despite frequent attribution to Kurt Vonnegut, and supposedly delivered to high school graduating classes ranging from 1997-1999.

The quotes that presented themselves this morning, somewhat against logic and free will were:

“Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.”

I’ve followed the former and ignored the latter. If you take it as a testament to to the different demeanor of people on each coast, it seems a bit stark and unfair.  Having grown up in the east with no intent of moving back, I attribute the choice a lot to the weather.  I see no good reason to integrate windshield scraping into my winter commute.  The trouble is that periodic weather adversity does gives you a certain preparation for unusual circumstance.  With the exception ski-season pilgrimages to Tahoe, living in NorCal doesn’t present you with many of these development opportunities.

“Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.”

For an advisor, this point seems a little self-defeating to present to an advisee (and my paraphrased recollection of it was certainly kinder),  but it gets to the same point.  Advice often is given as much for the benefit of the giver as the receiver.  Whether it it is helps them relive a past success, or to have a chance to correct a past mistake by preventing someone else from making it themselves, it’s not simply what it seems on the surface.

“But trust me on the sunscreen.”

The first word

0
Posted by admin on March 1, 2010 – 4:38 pm
Filed under Design, Dragonfly, Lessons Learned, Uncategorized

So much going on. So much to say, but where to start?

Let’s start with progress on the book.

It’s going well. We’re on track for our March 15 final manuscript submission.

Today saw the completion of the 99designs contest that generated a visual language to help us articulate the major concepts and processes in the book.

This was the second contest we ran there.  A few months back, we ran one for the main logo design of the dragonfly that you see here and there already.  We’re exceptionally happy with the result, but it was an adventure getting there.  As the Mayor says at the beginning of the New Year’s party in Thailand “Thank you for coming. We learned a lot at Christmas!” So did we too learn a lot running our first design contest.

It might come as a surprise to the uninitiated that it’s not always a good thing to have over 900 entries in your logo contest.  Why,you might reasonably ask? Well first of all, each entry represents some thoughtful work on the part of a designer, and it’s quite reasonable that they would want some feedback on their work, so they might improve upon it and thus get selected and win the contest (and I might add here: only the winner gets paid — at all).

So to make a long story short, when you’re one person, without a design background, calling all sorts of qualitative shots (and inadvertently being both vague in the initial design brief and arguably confusing in post-launch feedback) trying to guide a few hundred designers from around the world, with widely ranging ability to interpret direction from an untrained client, and in some cases, English, you’re in for quite a week.

I learned a lot at Christmas….

The icon contest fared distinctly better (try, fail, learn, try again).  This time no designers resigned or suggested that I was running somethign that qualified as “worst _____ ever.”  In addition to having escaped with my soul intact, we now have some amazing icons that add power and clarity to our work.