The great cat burglar

I wonder if I could get away with wearing this at work…I really like the idea of organising a string of meetings and wearing this.

Turns out I’m not the only person who had a minidisc player, Radiohead front man Thom Yorke did too and now his secret is out…as well as 18 previously unreleased minidiscs’s worth of demo music. A hacker found the stash in radioheads archives (somehow) and threatened to release them…so Radiohead released it themselves and are donating profits to a direct action environmental charity. It reminds me of the publicity they got when In Rainbows came out and was a “pay what you want” model.

Started Reading : American Gods by Neil Gaiman 📚

Micro blog needs a guinea pig logo eh… @macgenie @manton

It’s hot on krakow

Anything that’s good can be made better with emoji 😜 - @macgenie

It holds up.

Ummm delicious.

More convinced that being creative mean accepting occasionally (or frequently) looking foolish. Doing something that might not work sometimes means it doesn’t work…but occasionally magic happens.

Just updated my Reading log page. Not sure what next to go for…to many good books.

Finished Reading : How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds 📚

Humour is an essential part of the creativity we need to solve problems, no matter how serious they may be. - John Cleese

Aliens in the office?

Trying some new desk layout. My main aim, get more drawing space.

Ikea place is probably the only AR app I’ve opened more than once.

I decided to send my newsletter on Saturdays and not Fridays (as some friends had theirs on the same day). Next one is scheduled for tomorrow. Sign up to get it hot off the pixel press.

That’s no plectrum…

I’m SO glad an Indian restaurant opened in Wieliczka. In other news I’m completely full of wonderful wonderful curry.

I suffer from FOMODN…fear of missing out on domain names.

One of those things I’m wondering about. The balance between having confidence in your convictions and remaining teachable to new ideas. I think the concept of > “Have strong beliefs, held loosely.”

Applies here. You make your case as best you can but you listen to the opposing case and look for the weaknesses in your own idea.

Of course, it’s very easy to say and very hard to live out.

My theme word for the week is play…today I played with Procreate.

My favourite “debate ending phrase” at work is “this is too marketing-ish”. A phrase which is used to say “I don’t like this” and then is often followed by a suggestion which is also very marketing language.

When you set up brand words in TextExpander so you get the capitalisations right every time and only have to type three letters for a long name. 😎

In my experience, your stock is best made by collecting, organising and expanding upon your flow. Social media sites function a lot like public notebooks …but the thing about keeping notebooks is that you have to revisit them in order to make the most out of them… once you make sharing part of your daily routine, you’ll notice themes and trends emerge in what you share. You’ll find patterns in your flow. - Show Your Work by Austin Kleon

I like Austin’s approach to stock and flow media. Flow is like the little ideas we chuck out and see how it feels when they’re published.

Maybe nothing happens. Maybe something sticks.

There might be an opportunity to expand upon this idea and turn it into stock or it may inspire more flow.

Related, I saw this LinkedIn post from Gary Vaynerchuk (I’ve probably lost some people already but it is worth watching what he is doing) which at first looks like he has the opposite model – He starts with long content (a podcast or vlog?) and then turns it into smaller content. But he is actually doing the same.

His longer content is flow, just ideas from meetings. Then it is refined into more solid content and ideas by his team.

I’ve often heard people (well marketers) say that the difference between persuasion and manipulation is if the end result is good. Sometimes it’s a variant of this and might focus on the motivation rather than the end result but I really question these statements.

After all, I might believe that this product/service/course will help someone but what if they spend money which they shouldn’t on it? Does that mean they were manipulated or does it mean they are bad financial planners?

Most dictionaries seem to focus on who benefits from the change. Do I, the one talking/writing, benefit? Then it’s manipulation. Do they, the one listening, benefit? It’s persuasion.

That makes sense but is tricky in marketing.

In marketing, the one talking always benefits and they may even convince themselves the customer or client is benefiting (when they aren’t).

I still don’t think I have a clear answer, or one that I’m completely happy with, but I’m happy to continue wrestling with these questions and raise a questioning eyebrow whenever a marketer dismisses claims of manipulation.