Quickthink

This quote caught my eye today in a NYT piece about Kickstarter

“This year marks the year that we’ve seen Kickstarter enter the real world in a number of ways,” said Perry Chen, one of its founders. “At Tribeca Film Fest, there are a dozen different Kickstarter-backed films, there’s an installation at the Whitney Biennial that was a Kickstarter project and we just had our birthday party at a Kickstarter-funded restaurant.”

In the old days, you could only get access to serious capital by first getting access to money people - bankers, angel investors, VC’s or better yet family (if you were lucky). But as the above article points out, crowdsourcing to raise funds is starting to change that. If, for example, Pebble can raise $7 million in a few weeks via Kickstarter to make wrist watches, well … you get the idea.

Where is this headed? Bypassing formal investment channels is a big deal and no one is quite sure how well this will work out in the long run. Fred Wilson wrote about this the other day. There are new opportunities via Kickstarter and sites like it to give people a chance to get projects going faster and easier, and on the other side to join in for a good cause. But there are risks too. So there is reason for some caution. BTW, if you would like to read a great tale about what can go wrong, check out Andre Gide’s  The Vatican Cellars.

But we might take a step back for a moment and ask the broader question — why is this type of crowdsourcing working so well as a web platform?  Here is my take. There are two elements to making crowdsouring platforms explode with engagement.  The first is to generate “wow”. Something that gets people’s attention.  In days of old, this could be achieved by delivering content (like movies). But we can now get a lot more wow from giving people opportunities to do stuff. EBay first started generating this kind of “wow” by giving anyone the possibility to sell anything to anybody. Wow! Etsy is another.  Kickstarter is the first (as far as I know) to generate “wow” from creating project investment opportunities. The bottom line - we have learned by now that allowing people to participate in things that enhances their lives generates more “wow” than just asking people to share information to solve problems or even more ho hum, just consume content.

But while this is better than just watching TV, just generating “wow” still has its limits. And here I think we can begin to see some next steps for web platforming. There is still no learning curve so that the crowd can easily track where new value can be found (finding the next wow preferably before your neighbor does).  In the world of investing, this sort of tracking tool is something rich folks have had more or less exclusive access to. They got high quality tracking services when they hired money managers. Not for the rest of us! But now we all have tracking tools on the web. Plenty of them. For example, Motley Fool tracks investment opportunities. Similarly, Fast Company writes about all sorts of cooky innovation projects. I could go on and on. But here is the catch. These types of platforms do not  give you that exciting opportunity to “jump in” and “try something new” (the wow). To get to the wow, you are on your own. So in a nutshell, here is the problem - we have great new tools like kickstarter that get crowds excited, but we still have a disconnect between taking advantage of wow opportunities and tracking opportunities.

Over time, I think that we will see these two elements merge in web platforms. You will get wow and tracking at the same place.  That may be investing in a project. It may be joining a start up group. It may be getting a contract to advise people. But it will often have a money component (because finding and making money are by definition “wow” opportunities).  So keep an eye out for platforms that combine opportunities to get “wow” and that track learning to help you connect to the next “wow”.

That was a great line from the movie “Roxanne” made back in 1987. It is a charming  comic re-mix of the old Cyrano de Bergerac tale with Steve Martin in the lead. Cyrano is the greatest swordsman and rhetorician of his day who lives by a rigid code of honor. But he also has a terrible temper and … an enormous nose.  Cyrano finds himself in the impossible situation of having to give his friend the words to woo the heart of the lady that Cyrano loves. This image gives you the basic idea

From Theage.com.au

In Roxanne, Steve Martin updates Cyrano to play a charismatic fire chief in a small Colorado town.  Here he is

 From The Ballroom

Hiding behind a bush in the dark, Steve Martin coaches his idiot friend on what to say to win the  heart of his love interest, played by Daryl Hannah. She comes to her bedroom window and asks why he didn’t talk to her. Steve whispers “Tell her that you are afraid of words.”

Oops.

But this may be more true than we think. How much attention do we give to how we express ourselves? In his book, “Words Like Loaded Pistols”, Sam Leith argues that it is too little. Laura Miller gives the book a rather glowing review for Salon.

Think of it this way. A love of words flows from a love of conversation. Not just demonstrations of high feeling (speech making) but a love of exchange, dialogue. A love of dialogue needs respect for introspection.  And how much is introspection valued these days? Well …  Susan Cain thinks not enough.

There was something very odd about the Watergate break in.  With such high stakes, you would expect that the break in was done for urgent reasons. But just what were the burglars looking for? And who ordered them to do it? As Ron Rosenbaum points out for Salon, despite all the investigations we still don’t know.  He thinks that Nixon ordered the break in (a controversial claim) and he thinks he knows why. Interesting stuff.

It was many years ago when I first read In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki. I was in those days, a rather typical university student, spending most of my energy to connect with other kids. Tanizaki opened my eyes to a different sort of pleasure. Of serenity that one can only achieve on his or her own.

Among all of the self-help writing that you see these days, you don’t see much about the value of being on your own. So I was pleased to see Susan Cain speak up for the creative value in being introverted and alone. Susan did a TED talk on this as well — and I am sure it was not easy for her. Here she is

Appreciating great craftsmanship is one of the  pleasures of life.  So I loved this review of a new movie from Aardman Animations. It is a great story about great craftsmanship. And here is a quote that might whet you appetite

Much is often made of the handmade attractions of Aardman’s work, of the signature imperfections and literal fingerprints on its creations. These tiny dents and fingerprint whorls are reminders that these movies were made by people who molded clay with their hands instead of only manipulating symbols on computers. But these human touches also give the movies an extraordinary haptic quality — you watch them, but you almost feel them in your fingers too — that can transport you back to childhood pleasures, like squishing Play-Doh and making crooked clay pots for your parents. That’s partly why the movies seem more personal than many computer animations and why, for all its digital flourishes, “The Pirates! Band of Misfits,” like other Aardman films, is a wonderful time machine.

Enjoy!

I had an unpleasant surprise this morning. My site was down and I could not access it. So there is a short interruption in my posting. Sorry!

Palm invented the idea of synching between a mobile device and a PC a long time ago. But with smart phones and tablets, we are only now beginning to see interesting models for fully integrating the mobile and the desktop experience. Two quick articles give some perspective in an area that is rapidly changing.

Fred Wilson writes that based on his own experience as well as other data

… the web 2.0 era is in decline and mobile has arrived as the dominant user interface to the Internet. That’s a big deal.

Kevin Tofel writes for Giga how Apple and Microsoft may have an edge on Google on getting the people into an integrated OS environment.

It is mildly ironic that Fred writes about his use of Android to access Google docs — while Kevin writes that Android and Google are at risk because Apple and Microsoft systems are ahead of the game.

This is another post in a rather long thread about how to improve education for our kids. I collect these in the “education” tag (see below9 and as a category.

The latest is an editorial by Gail Collins on the involvement of big corporations in providing education services - like testing. As Gail points out, this is big business. But does it lead to better results?

Opening the door to a new and strange dimension

Japanese cuisine is fun, at least in part because it is so odd. Tomago Toji? This is the Japanese name for noodles in soup. See what I mean?

But in fact, tomago toji is not just noodles in soup. To appreciate tomago toji, first you need to understand soba. Harris Salat explains the intricacies.  And you need the technique for making quality dashi. Mark Bittman (a New Yorker) admits that he knows nothing about it (which is why is tomago toji was probably pathetic). But you have to admire Mark’s spirit. After getting some expert advice, he dives into the adventure of making almost ok dashi. And he does not use the “two-step ichiban/niban process“.  Sacrilege! But fun. And how to get the right texture for the eggs? Well that requires serious ingenuity.

Way to go Mark!

Some Saturday Fun

I just watched the trailer for the Avengers and for some added fun, took in the accompanying fluff piece about the grave challenges the director faced in making the film. It is not really morning reading (too noisy). I much preferred A.A. Gill’s article on London.  But whether I like it or not, the Avengers message has resonated more than Gill’s stroll around the great city. It was supposed to be just fun, but it kept my attention. That got me thinking why.

The first word that comes to mind is ego — supersized ego. In the bad old days, this was expected from aristocrats (or plutocrats in the states). Indeed, it was their role in society to embody and express something better and higher than the rabble (the rest of us) could or did.  So up when the great estates and to work went the armies of tailors, furniture makers and so on. By now, we have forgotten how powerful was the appeal of their life style. The grand houses are far too expensive to maintain. Well, not completely. Now movie actors and actresses have inherited the job of making the rest of us seem small and stupid. And what better way to allow actors and actresses to seem even larger and smarter than by giving them fake “super hero” qualities? Brilliant! The message to the rest of us is that supersized ego is cool.  A rather quaint remnant of the bad old days. Especially if we consider how little actors and actresses actually do to earn the entitlement. Never mind! They wield the keys to the secret pleasure palace. The stuff of dreams. And they are not overweight!

The second word that comes to mind from the trailer is rage — explosive rage.  The trailer is full of it. And not just from the super empowered bad guy. Our super heroes relish the opportunity to go on rampages themselves. The Hulk seems especially prone to this. A visitor from outer space watching the trailer might conclude that humans nurture a secret desire to trash cities, cars, whatever.  Rage as a form of artistic (higher) expression? Rage as art? This is not cool. Why? Because psychologists tell us that expressions of rage make us stupid. And rage is a sticky emotion. It doesn’t go away so easily. And being stupid conflicts with our ego building project.  Not cool dude.

That’s it! It was this odd internal and self-defeating contradiction in the message that stuck in my mind.  Well, what does one expect from a comic book? So if you are entranced by the challenges of managing supersized egos and explosive rage, the Avengers is for you. Go for it dude! Otherwise, enjoy a thoughtful stroll through London.