-
Snippets
After thumbing through my Twitter feed for too long, every new thought becomes a tweet. Every observation, every overheard phrase can be twisted into 140 characters of clever. Which makes me wonder, how much is our output affected by our inputs? When we feed ourselves a steady diet of snippets, sound bites, snapshots and tweets,…
-
Complexity
If you’ve found a difficult problem, you can skip it and move on to an easier one, one that you know you’ll get right. One that you can check off the list. That’s what most of us are taught to do. Or, you can dig in and stick with the difficult one. While everyone else…
-
Mess is Poetry
I listened to a speech recently, and it was an absolute disaster. A mother gave a carefully-prepared speech, but she kept getting interrupted. The culprit was none other than her six year-old son who was, in fact, the topic of her speech. While she explained the miracle of her son’s life – six short years…
-
Nothing to Hide
Last night I watched Rob Ford for the first time. I’m not really up with all the Rob Ford buzz, but was finally curious enough to hear the guy speak. I was actually surprised by my own reaction. I felt kinda envious. Yes, envious of Rob Ford. As they paraded Ford around in his bright…
-
Staying Up All Night and Getting Lucky
Are you trying to get lucky? No, not that kind of lucky, I mean, are you trying to get a lucky break? Trying to get on the fast track to success, become an overnight sensation? In The Dip (a short book that’s worth reading twice), Seth Godin shows that there’s no shortcut to success. In…
-
“Creative” Isn’t a Noun, It’s a Challenge
“Creative” is a funny word. We use it to describe people, as if “creative” is trait they possess, as in “she has brown hair, glasses, and she’s really creative“. We even use it to describe a thing, like a script or advertising graphics. “The campaign starts next week, so the creative needs to be ready…
-
Answer “Why”, Win Your Audience
Remember that kid who sat in the back in math class who, in the middle of the teacher’s explanation of some theory, would raise his hand and ask, “Why is this even important?” The teacher, sensing the underlying defiance of this free-thinker, would fumble some answer, trying to avoid the “just because” response. (I, for…
-
Introducing Toastimer
William Morris once said, “If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” Useful and beautiful. It’s this aspiration that drives great web design (and great speeches too). The best web tools are…
-
When the War Wins
When the battle keeps two people from seeing the humanity in the other, the war wins. When a skirmish about the minors overshadows the majors, the war wins. When fighting to uphold the image of God, we hurt those made in his image, the war wins. In Speaking of Jesus, Carl Medearis describes a soccer…
