#weekend-read

I usually post a weekend read about tech or product. So I get really excited when I get to change it up and talk about a book I just finished reading and want to recommend.

I finished Dave Eggers (new?) book Your Fathers, Where Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

For the record, the title is a pain to ass while writing from my iPhone.

I couldn't believe how quickly I finished the book. I had such a fun time reading it. I didn't know what to expect, because the only other book I read from Eggers was The Circle. This was different and read more like a play.

There are six characters and one setting and the novel is all dialogue. The writing might not be brilliant but it's fun and I went from liking and disliking every character throughout the book. The book focuses on a lot of current issues and the characters all have very different perspectives. Needless to say, it keeps things interesting.

Everyone has an idea, and most people who have an idea are scared to share it with other people. They’re scared that someone else will steal their idea.

The thing is, there’s not much truth to that. Chances are if you have an idea, someone else also has had that idea, what’s different is whether or not they’ve acted on it yet. And once you act on your idea, you’ve exposed it to the world, and anyone can “steal” your idea and make it better. 

I just read a blog post from the creator of Candy Japan - a subscription Japanese candy box service - about this and was nodding my head while I read it. You can read it here. 

I came across this post in the NY Times thanks to Katherine Reece. It’s a piece about how “things” in our world come to be based on our attention, based on Martin Heidegger’s work. 

The post reads like an academic cognitive science or philosophy essay, but don’t let that turn you away. The subject of this post is applicable to everyone. Here’s a great excerpt that captures the general idea of the post. 

...not only are we in direct contact with the people and things of this world, but also that our presence matters for how they are made manifest — how they come into presence — in the full potential that is associated with the sort of beings that they are. This is not our presence in a physical sense, but rather in the sense of how we are engaged as living, experiencing human beings — what Heidegger famously refers to as our “being in the world.” 

Today, our attention, our focus isn’t what it was 10, 50, or 100 years ago. We have access to a level of distraction that we’ve never been exposed to before. 

A few years ago I went through a Dieter Rams phase. I watched every documentary that had him in it and savored every second of it. This past week I came across a Fast Co. article that had several excerpts of Rams from various films. 

They are great excerpts that everyone and anyone who has or will build something should read. 

Here’s one of my favorite excerpts that I shared on Twitter this past week. 

In industrial design, everything for the production has to be clarified in advance with models and prototypes, all the details, for multiple parts. Otherwise you don’t proceed to the production stage. You have to think carefully in advance about what you’re making and how you will make it, because for both architecture and industrial design, the cost of changing things afterward is much higher than the cost of better preparation.

I read and re-read the New Yorker's profile on Jony Ive several times this week. I admin, I am perhaps too much of an Ive fan, but this profile was also (in my opinion) really good. It's a long read, but there are some great points made.

Here are a few of my favorites. 

On Jobs' influence and desire for direct feedback

Jobs replied, “Why would you be vague?,” arguing that ambiguity was a form of selfishness: “You don’t care about how they feel! You’re being vain, you want them to like you.”

Ive: “It’s really demeaning to think that, in this deep desire to be liked, you’ve compromised giving clear, unambiguous feedback,”

The quotes speak for themselves. 

On dealing with newness 

“Often you’re reacting, by definition, to newness, or difference.” The new has to be given time to annoy, or disappoint. 

So often when we're building new products we don't give ourselves enough time to react. It takes time to build something new, and it also takes time to react to it. 

On how nothing is perfect and having a positive outlook on it

“Everything we make I could describe as being partially wrong, because it’s not perfect,” he said, and he described the wave of public complaint that accompanies every release. He went on, “We get to do it again. That’s one of the things Steve and I used to talk about: ‘Isn’t this fantastic? Everything we aren’t happy about, with this, we can try and fix.’ ”

It's easy to think nothing is perfect. But, to think that and have a positive outlook on it and inspire others to have that same outlook is hard. 

As soon as I finished reading Andy's post on The Chaos Theory of Startups, I knew I wanted to share it. Andy starts out talking about what a startup is, but then gets into something deeper than the simple definition of what a startup is or isn't. He gets into the process of starting up, and completely fucking nails it. 

Seriously, it's everything I wish I could write. He gets into the difficulty of starting up and how to succeed at the process of starting up. Here's my favorite part of the post. 

In short, the difficulty is how to decide what to do. If one believes this, it probably follows then that the decision making process itself that goes into startups is primary: it's less about the actual decisions themselves then it is about the process used to make those decisions.

Most people in product development roles have to present their work. If you haven't had to, don't worry, your time will come. While a presentation isn't necessary to present your work, it sure does help. 

A good presentation is also a good story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Telling a good story isn't easy, but there are techniques you can follow to help you along the way. Lara Hogan (a performance engineer at Etsy) has a great guide on her presentation workflow. I especially like it because it revolves around telling a good story. 

My good friend Ed Davis taught me how to write a presentation that tells a story. The first time I wrote what I thought was a solid deck, he very sweetly explained to me that it was missing a narrative. It wouldn’t have as big of an impact on my audience as I was hoping. Ed recommended I follow this pattern: Landscape > Analysis > Problem > Options > Solution > Reason/Why it works > Bigger Idea

This week's weekend read is a double header. Both posts are on the same topic, deep web marketplaces. 

The first read is a post by Joel Monegro on (obviously) Deep Web Marketplaces. Over the past few weeks Joel has been frequently deep web marketplaces. In his post he describes what he's found across these marketplaces. It's an interesting read, even if you're not attracted to the mystery and allure of something called the deep web (which I'm not sure how you couldn't be).

The second read is a follow-up to Joel's post by Brad Burnham, How the Deep Web could inform tomorrow's online marketplaces. It expands on Joel's post and talks about what we can take away from these "illegal" marketplaces.

When what you're selling is illegal, and unregulated it creates a need for something different, something that's based on existing standards but will work for, well something that's illegal. It calls for innovation.