Scott Berkun's Blog, page 77

Can high quality be cheap?

Great post about redefining the idea of quality, using some recent music videos and TV ads as examples.

The common thread that runs through all of their videos is that they seem to be willing to forgo fast in favor of making something that is both cheap and good. OK Go videos tend to look low-budget, but in a good way. They have a homemade appeal. But while they didn't invest a lot of money (relative to the quality of the output), they did invest a lot of time in planning, preparing, practicing, and shooting the videos.

Unexpected Experts: OK Go and Project Management.

2011 Predictions: mind blowing and amazing

My big secret project this year was  extensive research into what will happen in 2011 and it hasn't been easy.

My daily routine included reading a big bag of tea leaves every morning (the bag is called 'the web' by some), extensive alcohol abuse followed by extreme power napping, intense daily consultations with Nostradamus (I renamed my dog for this project), and of course a third mortgage on my soul for the necessary project funds.

It's been a rough ride, but well worth it. I finished it this morning – here we go:

2011 will be mostly like 2010! The sun will not explode. Aliens will not land. You will look mostly like you did last year, and your time will be mostly spent doing the same things you did the previous 12 months. Your fears, dreams and complaints at the end of 2011 will be similiar to those at the end of this year.
Some smart people will make insightful guesses about 2011, but be wrong and ignored!  We are disasters at predicting the future, but some predictions are based on better thinking that other predictions. The problem is we we judge predictions in binary form, which is foolish.
Some morons will make lucky guesses and be 'right' and be famous! You can always find someone who predicted something correctly, but this doesn't mean they are wise, it likely means they were lucky. Some predicted the sub-prime crisis, but they may have been predicting a sub-prime crisis every year since the day they were born. It's a big enough planet to always find someone who predicted whatever happens. This doesn't mean much on its own. We should ask "what can we learn from this prediction" whether it's right or wrong. Truly good predictions teach us something, even if wrong, but someone can have guessed right and teach us nothing.
I will repost this for 2012 and not have to change a thing (other than the numbers).

Why do essay collection books suck?

Looking for some insights.

As work is underway for a collected works book of sorts, we're trying hard to avoid the obvious traps. Most books that are collections of blog posts or articles don't work very well. They're under-loved, under-designed, and don't make for very good reads.

If you've ever purchased a collected works type book, what are some of your frustrations? Or what things did you wish the author/editor/designer did that they didn't do?

We have our list but want to hear yours. Thanks.

Quote of the Week

All artists are psychologically and emotionally driven to tell their stories. I'm not so sure we choose the stories – they choose you. We don't ever completely understand the things that drive us, but I do believe that a good deal of the thrust of the direction of the choices I made, when I had a choice I made, when I had a choice about where my life was going to go, was back in deep pursuit of the mysteries of the past in order to find out 'who am I, who am I going to be, where's my future?"

- Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stone 11/25/2010

All my books 60% off – today only

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Postmortem: Seattle and Snowpocolypse

About once a year Seattle gets snow, and invariably we do not handle it well. The shock is how, year after year, an entire city seems stunned by how fragile our transportation system is.  And then, during the failure, some people complain that the city didn't do enough to fix or prevent the problem.

Here's a postmortem on what happened:

Our geography sucks. We have hills. It doesn't take much ice to make hills dangerous. There isn't much a plow or salt can do in a large city with lots of hills. And many Seattle-ites have limited first hand experience with cars losing control on hills: they becomes unguided missiles (see videos below).
All our transportation is surface level. Due to our geography, we have no true subway. Buses run on surface roads and are not immune to surface level problems. I didn't hear any reports of light-rail issues yesterday, likely because it's an independent system.
We have inexperienced drivers. Since it snows once a year, whatever lessons people learn about how ineffective ABS brakes and fancy cars are in bad conditions, they're forgotten 8 to 10 months later. And as driving home is a (understandably) selfish activity on normal days, people don't realize the risks they're taking in aggressively trying to beat the weather to get home.
Issues have compounding effects. Traffic is comprised of non-linear relationships, meaning it can accelerate faster through the traffic system than people expect. An accident here, can lead to a backed up exit there, and soon there is the equivalent of gridlock on arterials or even highways.
Plows, police and emergency crews can't magically teleport through traffic. Once nothing is moving, there is no magic way for buses, tow trucks, or ambulances to get anywhere. We so rarely have bad weather it doesn't make budgetary sense to maintain a large staff of plows and salt trucks that will sit dormant 95% of the season.
Thanksgiving/Holiday week's amplify issues. More people are out and rushing to get things done.

The net lesson is it's not the amount of snow that matters. It's recognition of how:

Easily traffic flow can fall apart
The prime danger isn't the roads but the other drivers on the road
Using a vacation day to avoid the whole thing might be a brilliant move

Yes, many people had no choice yesterday and I empathize. But many of you reading this probably did.

It's interesting to read through this list of stories shared to the Seattle times – there's a persistent sense of shock and surprise. I'd love to know how long these people have lived here. And what, if anything, they'll do differently next time they hear a report of snow in the winter in Seattle.

Here are two videos from last night:

How you know there's snow in Seattle

There's barely a half-inch on the ground and look at the highways at 9:15am.

Book review: The checklist manifesto

Gawande's first effort, Complications is a great book. He's honest about the limitations of surgeons in a way few doctors are: it's fantastic, doubly so if you deal with doctors on a regular basis. His second book, Better, was ironically not as strong, but a worthy read on how a thoughtful surgeon (Gawande) thinks about proficiency and skill development.

This book, the Checklist Manifesto, is harder to recommend. First, it's not a manifesto, it's too thin, long and even-tempered to hit that mark. Second, it falls into the Dan Airley (Predictably Irrational) trap of insisting on telling the author's personal stories of learning, even when they're repetitive and predictable: it's clear through all 100 pages of Atwande's conversion to the wonders of checklists in the first half of the book that he will, in fact, be converted.

The prize in the crackerjack box that is this book, the part that made the book worthwhile, is Gawande's interview with Dan Boorman, an expert at Boeing on the checklists pilots use in emergencies. He makes clear why most checklists in our lives earn a bad reputation:

"There are good checklists and bad… bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use, and they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people's brains off rather than turn them on."

But Boorman continues and offers a design minded view of what a good checklist is:

"Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything.  – a checklist cannot fly a plane . Instead they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps – the ones that even the highly skilled professionals could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical."

It made me long for a book about Boorman and his experiences in the world trying to teach people who tend to make the former, to make the later. There's a short interview with Boorman here (PDF).

Gawande is an excellent writer in every sense of the word. I enjoy his pieces in The New Yorker and elsewhere. But this book would have been better suited at actual manifesto length (50-100 pages) or structured less on Gawande and more on his subject. Unlike medicine where his insider observations fascinate, here on more ordinary subjects his personal narrative isn't sufficient to power an entire book.

How much to charge for speaking?

Question from the mail-bag:

I'm an excellent speaker but there isn't high demand for my talks yet. I've been speaking for free to attract clients, but now I'm being offered money. I don't know how much to charge, especially when the truth is, I will speak for free if I have availability and room for new clients. I don't want to undercut myself. I also don't want to charge too much and be turned down. Last year I quoted 1500 for a half-day seminar and they said their entire budget for the day was 500. I told them I'd be wiling to negotiate, and never heard back from them.

As I explained in Why Speakers earn $30,000 an hour, speaking is a free market activity.  There is no single reference to use for how much to charge. This works against you if you only speak once in awhile, since you can't triangulate to find out what people think you are worth, and have fewer chances to get drunk with other speakers and organizers to get them to dish on what they charge or pay (I list the ultra high end of known fees here).

Being an excellent speaker isn't of primary importance when it comes to fees, unfortunately. Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber might be horrible speakers, but they'll fill a stadium of paying customers just for showing up. Fame and expertise draw people first, not speaking ability.

In some circles a $500 fee is significant, as paying someone to speak at all seems exorbitant to most normal people on this planet. In other circles, $5k for a lecture is small change. Study your profession and seek out high profile events. You'll find they charge people $1000 or more to attend for a day, which implies they have sizable budgets for paying speakers. However these budgets come with higher expectations of the profile or fame you need to get that gig.

I wouldn't worry about undercutting yourself – if your primary income is something else, it's wise to see speaking as a funnel for that business until there's enough demand to think otherwise. If you are good, each gig you do will lead to more gigs, and soon you'll have too many requests than you can handle, which gives you leverage in explaining higher rates. Same goes for most freelance type careers.

On your lost client: clients can be flaky. The fact they disappeared may have nothing to do with your rates (ask them). They likely contacted a few people, and possibly got lost in all the email, or the agenda changed and the workshop was cut. All freelance work has a high inquiry to engagement ratio and speaking is no different.

If you want more insider speaking advice, you want my bestseller, Confessions of a Public Speaker.

We are just like ants: the proof

As I kid I spent hours playing with ants. I'd move stuff around their nests, watching how they responded to whatever I did, amazed at how dedicated they were to whatever they were doing and would completely ignore whatever I did.

Turns out we're not so much different. This little experiment in sidewalk design proves it (Via @Rbanks).

People Watching Plus from Rune Madsen on Vimeo.