I’m embarrassed to say that since college… I’ve been so busy speechwriting for Kerry and then Barack that I haven’t been reading all the good literary stuff I used to read…
Quotes
Big ideas often demand a marketing strategy that is a lot more difficult than marketing gravity…. When in doubt, market gravity.
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, ‘Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.’
Tom Peters
New media is not just digital media, it embraces ALL media. Books. Merchandise. Live Performances. Your show is not a show, it’s a brand that connects with consumers in different ways at different times and on various different media.
Tilzy.TV » Next New Networks’ Designer Posters via jeremy (via nikography) (via somethingchanged)
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
C.S. Lewis (via katelyns-otherleft) (via scumblr)
For both PC and mobile video, over 70 percent of respondents prefer advertising-supported models as opposed to consumer-paid models…
But whatever else you do, don’t get too much in the way of their content… respondents from all six countries polled protested traditional television models such as interruption advertisements during the video or the use of product placements within programs.
Close to 60 percent of total respondents were willing to provide information about themselves – such as age, gender, lifestyle, or communications preferences – in exchange for something of value.
Todd Watson: IBM’s ‘Beyond Advertising’ Study: Going Digital (via somethingchanged)
What the audience hears:
“Blah, blah, blah… interesting tidbit… blah, blah, blah… exciting insight… blah, blah, blah, etc.”
Seth Godin
Surrealist, and therefore comic, but with a specific gravity in his imagining that manages to avoid the surrealist penalty of weightlessness.
Seamus Heaney, Lannan Podcasts
it may be that blogs will become the new (acceptable) “personal” genre for Poets who Think
In essence, [blogging/blog platforms are] a straightforward content-management system that posts updates in reverse-chronological order and allows comments and other social interactions.
Viewed as such, blogging may “die” in much the same way that personal-digital assistants (PDAs) have died. A decade ago, PDAs were the preserve of digerati who liked using electronic address books and calendars. Now they are gone, but they are also ubiquitous, as features of almost every mobile phone.
It’s not a great year
Doubleday Publishing Lays Off 10% of Its Employees – NYTimes.com (via fluffynotes)
It is true that the arts keep us sane, but a larger bias for this perception is surely the fact that the arts keep us civilised. Once a poem is written, it belongs to the world, and its greatest destiny is its usefulness to the tribe.
I would like to think the purpose of poetry is to teach.
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
Eleanor Roosevelt (via hrrrthrrr)
Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.
43 Folders
It seems to me that in any company, large or small, you can divide the people into three broad categories…. The “Changers”…. people who use their work as a platform to “Change The World”…. The “Contributors”…. people who want to do their jobs, do it well, and get handsomely rewarded for it…. [and] The “Coasters
Hugh McLeod
In today’s world, I’m guessing today’s addiction of choice- the Internet- means not even being able to go to the bathroom without bringing along your laptop. They call it “Crackberry” for a reason.
Hugh McLeod
Not much psychological knowledge is needed to realize that emotive words can very easily be used to cause the unformed intellect to suspend independent judgment, if not forever, at least until there is some rude awakening. When judgment drops the reains, the harnessed instinct runs away with the cart.”
“The average man of small leisure parrots opinions continuously drilled into him by every possible power of persuasion.”
“The belief that what is evil becomes good if only enough people want it is one of the most terrifying abberations of our age.
Johan Huizinga
(via the constructive curmudgeon) Link
Most people don’t realize that when you have to look within yourself for answers, it is like seeing your reflection in a spoon; upside down and backwards. These are you truest moments. These are the moments in which you need to be the most receptive to your own voice.
found scribbled in my journal from about a year ago (via hrrrthrrr)
That is so true.
You hear a lot of talk about “The Cloud” nowadays…. But nobody seems to be talking about Power Laws.
Hugh MacLeod
Link.
I don’t watch TV and I don’t go to meetings. You’d be amazed at the difference it makes…. I would imagine we’re going to see a rapid acceleration in the quality and meaning of things we manage to create with our new-found time. At least I hope so.
Seth Godin.
Coffeehouse Junkie 