Scott Berkun's Blog, page 40

Why Do Communities Thrive or Die? Questions wanted

Next week I’m moderating a panel on building online communities as part of WordCamp Seattle, at 1pm Saturday June 8th. I have four experts, either with vibrant communities or with wisdom about how to grow and maintain them. I’m looking for questions and challenges for them during the session.

The panelists are:

Michael Cygar, from isixsigma.com a B2B website that provides research and how-to knowledge for businesses
Ariel M Stallings, from Offbeatempire.com, a niche lifestyle publisher, covering weddings, parenting, and home decor
Laura Scroggins, from Lauramba.com
Steve Roy, from Disqus.com

Most blogs struggle to get comments on posts, much less build an active user base that lead their own discussions. What insights would you want to hear from people who have made it work?

Even if you’re not attending WordCamp Seattle, what would questions would you ask? What situations have you experienced as a blogger that you want an expert’s opinion on? Please leave a comment. I’ll make sure there’s a writeup afterwards so you can read the answers even if you couldn’t attend.

Summary: Best posts on Getting feedback

I’m speaking today at An Event Apart San Diego about Feedback Without Frustration. Here’s a summary of my best related blog posts:

How To Get Better Feedback
How To Run A Design Critique
How To Give and Receive Criticism 
How To Run A Brainstorming Meeting
How To Be Good At Anything
Top Mistakes UX Designers Make
Why Requirements Stink
How To Learn From Your Mistakes

 

Saving Your Creative Soul

I spoke at TEDXDepaul last month, on the invitation of Daniel Gurevich. He gave me free reign to decide what to talk about, a liberty I enjoy, so if you like this talk you can thank him too.

At the event I met Alexis Finch, who was sketchnoting the event at the same time I liveblogged my notes. We made an impromptu press row right up front. Here is her  sketchnote of my talk.

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Why hats and iPads are speaking mistakes

I spoke at TEDXDepaul last month and it was a fantastic event. The organizers Daniel Gurevich and Matt Helbig did a fine job from a speaker’s perspective. They chose a great venue, sold every ticket, paid for good A/V, the stage was well lit, and they had a great roster of other speakers (you can read my notes on all of the talks from the day here).

But there’s only so much organizers can do: speakers have to do the heavy lifting of good material and delivery.

Tactical mistakes are annoyances. If the material and delivery are good, people will overlook these problems. But a good speaker wants as few distractions from their ideas as possible. There were two tactical mistakes speaker’s made at TedXDepaul worth reporting.

If you hold a device, it creates glare that moves.

Marcy  Capron of Polymathic chose to use an iPad for her notes. There’s nothing wrong with notes themselves, or iPads, but in this case the stage lights reflected off her iPad onto the screen and walls behind her. And every time she adjusted the iPad, those glare spots moved around. It’s hard not to be distracted by bright things that move on a large screen.

If you plan to have a device on stage, ask for a run through with the stage lights on to check for anything unusual. If there are glare issues, most venues can provide a lectern to place your device on, eliminating this problem.

Don’t wear a hat.

Doug Zell of Intelligensia Coffee arrived late, and joked about it, which bothered me all on its own. The primary commitment every attendee and speaker have made is their time, and it’s a sign of great disrespect to be late, much less to joke about it (Apparently he was in a bike race earlier in the day, and would have entirely missed his speaking slot if the event wasn’t running late).  He  had a cavalier attitude about the whole thing which rubbed me the wrong way. His talk on branding was good (notes here), but he crossed the line for me on professionalism. You must show your hosts, fellow speakers and audience respect. He was the closing speaker and hadn’t seen a single talk for the entire event.

The specific tactical mistake he made was keeping his biking hat on. As you can see here, wearing a hat on stage puts a speaker’s eyes into shadow. Eyes are the most important part of the face to connect with, and a hat hides them. Good lighting amplifies the problem, as it casts the rest of a person’s body into good primary light.

If you’re looking for a pre-speaking rundown of things to do and avoid, here’s my handy checklist for speakers.

Why I’m not a fan of teams or religions

I don’t root for sports teams for the same reason I’m not religious. The divisions between one group and another are too arbitrary to hold my attention.

If you ask a fan why they root for their particular team, it takes them some time to answer. Being a fan is not a logical choice, it’s emotional and tribal. It’s often an inherited decision, a choice not made but absorbed. Most people are fans of the nearest team, the team of their home. It’s likely their parents, grandparents and childhood friends all rooted for the same team, and the bond they feel for that team is combined with the bonds they feel for their community. It’s the same cultural premise of rallying together as a tribe, and rooting for the warriors to go fight and defend the community, keeping everyone safe. This is a good premise if lives are at stake, as rallying together is what has helped us survive this long. This drive is deep in our biology, explaining why it feels good to stand in a stadium with thousands of people all cheering for the same thing. We are driven to feel connected, explaining the popularity of music concerts, rallies and events of all kinds.

But when you realize how many teams there are it’s harder to find a good answer for the question: why this team and not that team?

I used to be a fan. I grew up in NYC and had Yankees, Giants and Knicks posters on my wall, and wore the jersey’s of my favorite players to school. I was a passionate sports kid, good at basketball and football, and I felt connected to the local teams for that reason: I imagined myself playing professional sports one day. But as a teenager I stopped wearing player jerseys. It struck me as strange to want to be someone else, even someone I admired. I wanted to be me, and since I played basketball for my high school, I had my own jersey with my own number. I still loved my teams and loved cheering them on, but something had already changed.

Then I moved to Pittsburgh for college and was shocked to discover a new tribe rooting for a new set of teams. What was wrong with these people? I wondered. It seemed absurd to root for the Pirates and the Steelers, since they just happened to be nearby. It didn’t dawn on me until I returned to NYC, and saw the my own hometown fans, that I realized I’d done the same thing my entire life. Had I been born in Chicago, I’d have been a Bulls and Bears fan (teams my Knicks and Giants despised). Being a fan wasn’t a choice I’d made, so much as inherited. And I’d inherited hate too. I hated Chicago simply because they rivaled my Knicks and Giants. To root for a team means to root against the other ones.

Moving to Pittsburgh also reminded me of a childhood friend who moved to NYC from Toronto but still rooted for his hometown Blue-Jays. I remember the daily abuse he got from his “friends” about his choice. His Blue-Jays cap was seen as a betrayal of our tribe, but I realize now he was a much tougher fan than we were. He paid a price for that choice every day. It’s not brave in any way to show up to home games and root for the home team, even if you’re wearing face-paint and a wedge of cheese your head. Everyone loves you because, like the team mascot, you embody the tribe they are already rooting for.

The lyrics to “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”, a song sung at nearly every major league baseball game, are telling: Root, root root for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame. But why? What if they’re a bunch of jerks? Or if they’re a lousy team? It’s only a shame if they lost unfairly. The fact that they were home or away should be irrelevant, shouldn’t it? At basketball games it’s now standard for the people sitting behind the hoop to wave objects and scream, hoping to distract players on the opposing team. At football games fans scream as loud as they can when they other team has the ball, hoping to prevent them from talk to each other about what play to run. Somewhere along the way rooting for ones own team has warped into to impacting the play of the game itself. The Seattle Seahawks even calls their fans the 12th man, an extra player helping the team. It’s great to see a team honor their supporters, but it’s also weird for fans to become part of the game.

Today I root only for close games. I don’t care much for any team. Mostly I want to see everyone play well. I want to watch the height of the sport. I want to see a game that will live on in all of the player’s memories for being the greatest game they played, something a blowout win never provides. I like certain players, and occasionally, find connections to certain teams, but it rarely runs deep or lasts long. To fans of teams this makes me a traitor, but I prefer to see my love of competition transcending my interest in any particular team.

Like fans of sports teams, most people adopt the religion of their village and their parents. It’s not a choice, in the same way it wasn’t a choice for me to root for the Knicks. Religions, like sports fans, are blind to how many equivalently well justified alternative views there are in the world. They often rally as much around crushing their rivals as they do honoring their own beliefs, despite there being no championship trophy to compete for. Being a fan of anything makes it easy to lose perspective on what you care about and why, which explains why I will never be a fan in the same way again.

Truths, myths and lies

There are two different uses of the word myth:

A falsehood, as in “the weight loss myth”
A story with metaphorical truth even if not factually accurate

I spend time on this blog debunking factual myths, even for things as boring as mythical numbers in schedule estimates, because I have expertise and believe people who read my blog want to know the truth. While complete ignorance is neutral, faith in a lie is dangerous. I don’t want the suspension bridge I drive across to be built on a pet theory. People with knowledge should be compelled to use what they know to question, poke and prod the darkness, especially the darkness snakes sell as light to fools.

But I do love the metaphorical truths found in mythological stories. The winged story of Icarus and Daedalus isn’t true in aerodynamic fact but contains powerful truths about ambition and trust. Few great works of literature are true in factual sense, but their freedom from facts allows the expression of emotional or philosophical truths in ways factually based stories can’t. Picasso said “Art is the lie that tells the truth” and that’s what he meant. It’s not a justification for lying on your business plan.

Factual myths are very hard to kill. Simple lies are more popular than complex truths.And the most common factual myths have nuggets of truth in them, just enough to get past most people’s BS detection systems. Newton was never hit on the head by an apple. It’s one of the most popular stories in this history of science, yet it’s a fabrication. And science is a community of practice obsessed with factual certainty. How could this survive for so long?

The answer is the people most inspired by a story are the least interested in challenging it, and the most interested in spreading it. Apple Inc. chose its name after Newton’s apple, but never bothered to check the veracity of the tale. Why? Probably because they liked it and the popularity of the tale was part of the attraction. Popular lies grow into legends, and everyone wins in the spreading of a legend, everyone except the people who care about facts. I do like legends for their metaphorical truths, but it’s dangerous to confuse those with factual truths. Marketing and advertising live in the grey between what’s true and what’s a willful lie.

Does the true story of Newton, or anyone, matter? It depends. If you’re a fan and it you simply want to feel good about your fandom, then perhaps truth doesn’t matter. But if you are serious about achieving yourself, truth is essential. To achieve greatness the precise factual truth about what a hero did or didn’t do matters. I’m convinced these truths, if told well, always have more inspirational power than false legends. But not everyone agrees with me. I wrote The Myths of Innovation to sort out the history of ideas for people who want to stand on the true shoulders of giants, not the made up fantasy stories we’ve popularized. But as popular as the book has been, it will never be as popular as books that promise to teach you the magic secrets of geniuses in five minutes.

Falsehoods never go away completely. The ones that last are too fun, and too convenient, to kill. While Snopes.com will always be popular, it will never popular enough to eliminate the need for its existence. It’s too easy to bend legends to the needs of the teller and the listener. Few people are motivated to seek sources to verify what they see, hear or read. This is why legends grow in size with age: there are fewer and fewer people who witnessed the events around to question the tale. But I believe it’s progress to examine these stories anyway. It’s the duty of people with knowledge to use it to shine light on darkness. I know I will never eliminate the lies, but I must use what I know to help as many others find their way as I can.

History reveals itself to be a sloppy garden of truths, myths and lies, and it requires endless tending. Serious writers are the gardeners of ideas and must garden not just for the present, but for the future.

 

Why it’s ok to buy books and not read them

I used to feel guilty about books I own but haven’t read. They’d sit in piles making me feel unworthy as a writer, and reader. And no matter how many books I’d read in a year, I’d always find myself buying more. I couldn’t win. It was a destructive cycle and it drove me mad.

One day I realized there was another way to frame my behavior. The goal should not be efficiency because efficiency makes you conservative. As a writer I need an ambitious curiosity, not a safe one. It’s good to take bets on books at the limits of my comfort zone. That willingness to buy books signals to myself there are new worlds other creators make, and for the price of a meal I can purchase the opportunity to discover them. I can’t penalize myself for trying. If I never read any of the books that might be a problem, but merely not reading some of them is entirely sensible.

Buying books also has these larger effects:

Purchases signal the creator that I’m interested in what they made.
It’s a bestseller list – not a best read list – buying a book signals agents, editors and publishers.
It provisions future curiosity, since in 3 months or years I can easily read that book.
Seeing a good writer’s name and knowing I helped their career feels good.

I feel no guilt now in abandoning books either. They’re not children, they’re invented things. If I don’t like it after 50 pages I owe the author nothing. In fact since I bought the book, I paid for the right to read as much or little as I please. Never finishing books is a different problem, and the solution for that is buying better books.

Not sold yet? How about this: on the day I was born there were already more books published that I could ever read. There was never the potential to read everything. I have to abandon the expectation of perfection in my book purchases, for the same reasons I need to abandon the expectation of perfection in everything. Books are cheap, my literary inefficiencies doesn’t cost much in the long run, especially if those bets and gambles help me find a book or two a year that changes my life.

What I learned from Improv Class

A decade ago I took a class in improvisation on a dare with some friends. I was surprised how much the class helped me experience daily life. It made me a better speaker and teacher too.

Recently I decided to take improv class again, and again I was surprised. I’d forgotten how much forgotten :) My classmates had so much fun together that most of of us have continued on to the 200 level course. But I’ve never written about improv here, and it’s time.

Assumptions that are wrong:

It’s not about being funny. When I mention improv class most people are terrified. They assume you’re thrown on a big dark stage where someone yells at you every few seconds to do something funny. The reality is tame: it’s mostly playing games. Games like saying sentences where you alternate words with someone else. The games get harder as the classes go on, but you’re often told to avoid trying to be funny. Instead the goal is to pay attention and to commit fully to whatever you’re doing. If everyone does a few simple things well the result is comedy, but it’s not a straight line.
You don’t have to be a natural performer. In the class you quickly learn improv (and most drama) depends on the commitment of actors to the scene they’re in. Being ‘good at improv’ is not talent in a conventional sense, but more of a capacity for being fully attentive. Enthusiasm and willingness matter most.
It’s not hard to learn. Both times I’ve taken the course I’ve been amazed at what happens when you get a bunch of ordinary strangers to faithfully follow the rules of the games. The rules are brilliant: they let magic emerge from a story people build together.

What I’ve learned:

I’d forgotten how to play. The games played in improv might bore a typical 8 year old. But for adults they’re wonderful. Someone says “Be an angry fish” and everyone says “I’m an angry fish!” and you have a room full of professional men and women instantly run around acting like a bunch of crazed, happy children. The rules for the game demand you jump in deep. And I’ve rediscovered what children know: when I jump in all the way I’m surprised by what I can do. So much of adult life is doing things by half, or pretending to care when we know we don’t. By rule, there is no half-assing in improv class. Whatever you are supposed to be right now, be it all the way.
Life is less stressful. Now when I’m in challenging situations in life I recall something ridiculous I was forced to do in improv, like miming my way through the world championship of dishwashing, and by comparison the life situation I’m in is easy. I’m more relaxed in general from taking improv class. Fewer things give me stress, as I’ve been in far crazier situations in class last week.
Questions and No’s are deadly. The improv rule of Yes and… is the most well known. The games make clear questioning slows things down and kills energy. It’s a bad habit many of us have in life, asking dozens of questions before we’ll try anything. The rule doesn’t mean you have to do what others tell you, but that you have to find creative ways to build on the energy of whatever they’ve offered, and offer it back to them to build on. It’s a simple principle, but we have many bad habits in how we handle things people offer us. 


Improvisation is everywhere. Every conversation in life is an act of improvisation: no one gives you a script for the day when you wake up. Improv helps me pay attention, proper attention, to all the situations I didn’t realize I could influence, or that were available to me if only I noticed them.  Or more precisely, going to improv class makes me comfortable in dealing with whatever happens in many situations with other people.
Metaphors for Life. The core rules work well as life philosophy: No half-assing. Make the other guy look good. Say Yes, And…, make big offers, it’s better to fail big then fail moderate. In tough decisions and situations I think about improv rules often and they help.
Doing trumps reading. I’ve been recommending improv class to people for years, but even I’d forgotten how much I’d gained from the experience. Life is experience and reading about other people’s experiences, as powerful as it can be if the writer’s good, is a shell of having the experience yourself. Merely reading about improvisation, creativity or anything else of importance robs you of what you’re seeking. Put yourself in the middle of things.

If you know of an improv comedy group near you, most teach introductory classes. Go take one.  Grab a friend if you need to, but go sign up. In Seattle my class is with Unexpected Productions, but a decade ago I took it with Jet City Improv.

On Getting Old(er)

I’m 41 years old today and I never expected to live this long. Although I’ve spent more time in hospitals than I’d have liked, my lifespan expectations were not born from a specific reason. I simply recall as a teenager imagining the totality of my life and somehow those imaginations never got far past 30. There just didn’t seem anything beyond that point as far as I could tell. My horizon ended there and now to reach beyond it is a pleasant surprise.

I don’t know why but as I’ve entered middle age I’m filled with giddiness. This all seems like a bonus round. I have my health and some of my sanity left. I say some, as I find most of adult life comically absurd. Voltaire wrote that “God is a comedian playing to an audience afraid to laugh” and I don’t seem to have much fear in that regard. Here in the first world we are so lost in distraction and pretense that taking most of what goes on at face value is something I’ve long shed from my experience of life.

7 months ago I tore my achilles tendon, but yesterday, after months of physical therapy, I was able to play basketball again for the first time. It’s a miracle of modern medicine I can walk without a cane, but to play is magical. And it’s magic purely for me. No one on the court knew my story. Kids half my age just saw me smiling and had no idea why. And I find myself seeking others who have similar smiles, a smile they don’t need to explain, a smile unhinged from the weather, or a job, or other trivia, a smile from somewhere deep inside that reflects their appreciation for the amazingness of ordinary things. Being alive, compared to the alternative, makes everything extraordinary.

And having lived beneath my means, provided I don’t do anything impressively stupid, I should be able to spend the better part of my remaining years doing what I’ve been doing for the last ten: living the life of a writer. I’ve made many sacrifices to get here, but it has held the deepest meaning for me to try and fill that shelf. I’m doing everything I can to make this dream last as long as I do. And I hope you’ll continue to help that dream simply by reading and following along.

Many people my age or older half-joke about wishing to be younger. Wishing to be young is a coward’s wish. People who wish to be younger would squander that miracle. They’re wasting the time they have now pretending they’d make better use of a different now. My soul fades in these conversations, as the souls of these people are already dead. They’ve buried their dreams under so many copouts they can’t tell the difference. I used to make the arguments, but I’ve learned they don’t want to hear them. They prefer the certainty of a fantasy, to the uncertainty of living fully in the present. The same cowardice that failed them the first time around would only fail them again if they had a second chance. And as I age I wonder: how am I still a coward? What would I do if I had the courage? Getting older makes me more courageous as I have far less to lose. Courage is far scarcer and more important than youth, and the upside is you can always grow more courageous, at any time, at any age.

America has a youth obsessed culture, but I’m slowly taking arms against it. The longer I’m alive the further I’ll be on creakier end of the bell curve of age, and I better get used to it. I’ve learned to be comfortable as the oldest person at the table now. I can learn as much from younger people as they can from someone older. I’m fascinated by young adults, old enough to be on their own but young enough to passionately chase their sky high ambitions.

I don’t envy their age, as they have so much to learn about what they want from life, but I’m drawn to their openness to the present. They  make big bets on life, bets people my age are terrified of making, and maybe always were. But I have many big bets I still want to make. We are social creatures and behave like those we choose to be around, and I’m thinking I don’t want to act my age. I don’t want to hang out with my ‘peer’ group. The peers of my soul are not the peers of my generation. I find my mentality, despite my age, is far younger than my body and I hope it stays that way forever.

On Getting Old

I’m 41 years old today and I never expected to live this long. Although I’ve spent more time in hospitals than I’d have liked, my lifespan expectations were not born from a specific reason. I simply recall as a teenager imagining the totality of my life and somehow those imaginations never got far past 30. There just didn’t seem anything beyond that point as far as I could tell. My horizon ended there and now to reach beyond it is a pleasant surprise.

I don’t know why but as I’ve entered middle age I’m filled with giddiness. This all seems like a bonus round. I have my health and some of my sanity left. I say some, as I find most of adult life comically absurd. Voltaire wrote that “God is a comedian playing to an audience afraid to laugh” and I don’t seem to have much fear in that regard. Here in the first world we are so lost in distraction and pretense that taking most of what goes on at face value is something I’ve long shed from my experience of life.

7 months ago I tore my achilles tendon, but yesterday, after months of physical therapy, I was able to play basketball again for the first time. It’s a miracle of modern medicine I can walk without a cane, but to play is magical. And it’s magic purely for me. No one on the court knew my story. Kids half my age just saw me smiling and had no idea why. And I find myself seeking others who have similar smiles, a smile they don’t need to explain, a smile unhinged from the weather, or a job, or other trivia, a smile from somewhere deep inside that reflects their appreciation for the amazingness of ordinary things. Being alive, compared to the alternative, makes everything extraordinary.

And having lived beneath my means, provided I don’t do anything impressively stupid, I should be able to spend the better part of my remaining years doing what I’ve been doing for the last ten: living the life of a writer. I’ve made many sacrifices to get here, but it has held the deepest meaning for me to try and fill that shelf. I’m doing everything I can to make this dream last as long as I do. And I hope you’ll continue to help that dream simply by reading and following along.

Many people my age or older half-joke about wishing to be younger. Wishing to be young is a coward’s wish. People who wish to be younger would squander that miracle. They’re wasting the time they have now pretending they’d make better use of a different now. My soul fades in these conversations, as the souls of these people are already dead. They’ve buried their dreams under so many copouts they can’t tell the difference. I used to make the arguments, but I’ve learned they don’t want to hear them. They prefer the certainty of a fantasy, to the uncertainty of living fully in the present. The same cowardice that failed them the first time around would only fail them again if they had a second chance. And as I age I wonder: how am I still a coward? What would I do if I had the courage? Getting older makes me more courageous as I have far less to lose. Courage is far scarcer and more important than youth, and the upside is you can always grow more courageous, at any time, at any age.

America has a youth obsessed culture, but I’m slowly taking arms against it. The longer I’m alive the further I’ll be on creakier end of the bell curve of age, and I better get used to it. I’ve learned to be comfortable as the oldest person at the table now. I can learn as much from younger people as they can from someone older. I’m fascinated by young adults, old enough to be on their own but young enough to passionately chase their sky high ambitions.

I don’t envy their age, as they have so much to learn about what they want from life, but I’m drawn to their openness to the present. They  make big bets on life, bets people my age are terrified of making, and maybe always were. But I have many big bets I still want to make. We are social creatures and behave like those we choose to be around, and I’m thinking I don’t want to act my age. I don’t want to hang out with my ‘peer’ group. The peers of my soul are not the peers of my generation. I find my mentality, despite my age, is far younger than my body and I hope it stays that way forever.