Don't be afraid Mr Arrington

"What really scares me?” asks Michael Arrington (techcrunch). "It’s the rise of fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy operations that hand craft their content today.

Indeed, companies like Demand Media and Answers.com have now made it to the list of top 20 properties by creating content on a mass scale and optimizing it based on what's hot on the search engines. With all the fast food content that is being created + optimized for search, how can your brand break through the clutter?

To make things even worse, Bing + Google offer us a lot of this content without even leaving the search engine. How can your site compete with the immediacy and credibility of the content that shows up instantly from the search engine itself?

The reality is that you can optimize + monetize the crap out of it, killing most of the boring, uninspiring players in the process. But the smart, creative players will find a way to survive. Disruption is not just about scale. It’s also about ideas.

Shakespeare used the word "punk" in 1623

*he referred to a prostitute.

Much later, the word became a symbol of the generation gap phenomenon.

A generation gap is what happens when people of one generation can’t keep up with social evolution. Simply put, you grow older while the society “becomes” younger. Then you don’t “understand” younger generations. (punks...)

For the first time in history this is about to change. We have now reached a point where technology has become an organic part of our life. Simply put, technology is finally less technical. My 65 year old dad is using skype. My 5 year old daughter is using RFID tags (Nabaztag) to start computer applications. And I can’t even start thinking about what gaming is going to be like when I retire. Not a virtual reality, augmented reality or other reality that needs to be defined or separated from our life. Just reality. But better.

Which means that it’s going to be equally easy for me, my daughter and her kids to consume + understand the same content. We will be able to participate in culture as equals. And maybe, we will understand eachother better because of that.

The rule of 1,440

Any photographer will tell you that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. For example:
There are 24 hours in a day. We have learned to measure the day in hours and there is a comfortable feeling associated with this practice. There are also 1,440 minutes in a day, but this knowledge sounds difficult to manage or even useless, at first.
1,440 minutes… feels like a lot of time and that’s probably why most minutes in our lives go by without us even realizing it… we feel that they don’t mean a lot and then they end up meaning nothing.
But if you think about it, our most powerful emotions are connected with single moments, not hours or days. That’s how long it takes to create a lasting impression. Memories are imprinted in seconds and last for a lifetime. So every minute counts. Enjoy the low times. But be ready to recognize the moments that make a difference.

Guns don’t kill people. But -powerpoint- bullets kill plenty

This is the sequel to my recent post “if you want to test a man’s character give him power*point", that created a lot of conversation. Here is some additional practical advice, in less than 1 minute:

1. One slide-One Idea: Ideally don’t use bullet points.
2. If you have to use bullets at all, use them sparingly and think of them as newspaper headlines (or twitter posts). “Just do it” is better than “it’s about time that you start doing it because it’s important”
3. Help people SEE what you are SAYING: Communicate your Ideas with strong visual grammar. Engage peoples’ senses, but practice Design, not decoration
4. Take ownership of your content: What would happen if your presentation file got lost just before the meeting? Challenge yourself to Go Powerpoint-less.
5. The number of slides is irrelevant (as long as you do #4): Check Garr Reynolds presentation on SlideShare: its 184 slides but you can read it in 6 minutes.
6. Use Drama: Press B when in slide show and your screen will turn Black, forcing your audience to focus on you. (or W for white)

Last but not least, follow the Golden rule from Slide:ology:

Never deliver a presentation that you wouldn’t want to sit through.