The earliest instance that I can find of my relationship with technology was when I was 2 or 3 years old. My family was living in a small Spartanette trailer and I had done something to make my mother angry with me. She placed me on the bed and set a round kitchen timer and placed it on the bed with me. "When this goes off you can get off the bed."
After about twenty minutes he realized that she hadn't heard the timer go off. She came to the bed to find me still there with pieces of the timer all around me. In her absence I had apparently decided I needed to take apart the timer perhaps to see how it worked.
This story is a portent of what my relationship with technology would be like as well as an early indication of the fascination I would develop for technology over the rest of my life.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011 - My Example Of Excellence For Over 13 Years.
> We all lost a shining example of excellence today.
On the Apple website announcing Steve Job's passing was the following: If you would like to share your thoughts, memories, and condolences, please email rememberingsteve@apple.com.
Below is what I wrote to Steve.
Steve,
I came to really know and love Apple right after you had come back to the company. The iMac was so much more than any other computer I'd seen in my life. It was just "right". Since then you continued to build product after product that inspired my and changed my life.
More than anything you showed that excellence is possible if only you believe and are dedicated to making the absolute best product you can.
My life will forever be changed by your example and I hope to live up to that example.
You will be missed but not forgotten Steve.
With gratitude,
-Jim Younkin
While the ache I feel in my heart for the loss of Steve will take a while to pass the fact that even right up until the end he was leading by example will be something I will remember for the rest of my life.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Cutting Through Marketing Speak and Fluff
When I read the post "Yahoo! vagues up leadership reorganization PR with cutting edge gobbledygook" over at WebInkNow I had to chuckle. This type of "marketing speak" always makes me facepalm. Do the people writing this stuff really believe they are being effective communicators or are their hands so tied that they can only turn out something so vague as to not be help accountable or be able to be pinned down to anything specific all?
Having worked in marketing and public relations I can understand how phrases that "sound good" but essentially mean nothing in the end can be tempting. Often you are writing press releases with very un-solid information. I worked in video games and if there is one thing I learned is that people will hold you to every concrete detail (such as a release date or published feature) down to the "t".
If you don't deliver each and every exact detail you give they are bound to hound you until you die. That said, I think there is a fine line that can be drawn where you give enough relevant information as to get the idea you need to across while leaving you enough "wiggle room" to allow for changes and/or delays etc.
I became very expert at using phrases such as "seems" and "appears to" and "all signs point to". These phrases give the illusion of certainty while leaving you a much needed "out" if not everything goes according to plan.
An example might be if there was a bug in a game and the developers told me that the bug was fixed in the new patch. If I was writing the patch notes (notes that goes out with game patches explaining changes/bug fixes/etc.) I would say "The bug that was making helmets sit on character's heads sideways appears to be fixed." rather than "The bug that was making helmets sit on character's heads sideways is fixed." While it may seem like a small thing in the end it makes a big difference if, for example, the bog really wasn't fixed but still showed up.
I'm getting of a bit of a tangent. What I really wanted to do in this post was quote the Yahoo press release and then "boil it down" to see what (if anything) is is actually saying. Here is an excerpt from the recent Yahoo press release with the amazingly original title "Yahoo! Announces Leadership Reorganization".
Whaaaat? It reads like a joke paragraph that some sort of "marketing speak" auto-generating machine would spit out. Now lets take this paragraph and cut out all the cliche, overused, and/or worthless "fluff" we can.
OK. So lets see what we come up with without all the "empty calories".
While this is a start some of the marketing speak is so embedded in the way these people talk that to take it out will make it difficult to understand what they are talking about.
Here is my final distillation of the edited paragraph above:
From this:
To this:
That is quite a bit of "fluff". One thing I realized while evaluating this is that they use the phrase "deliver value to shareholders". Can anyone out there tell me exactly what is means to "deliver value"? Seems like a very loose term that can be interpreted many different ways.
Does "deliver value" mean increasing the value of the stock? Increasing the value of the company assets? Delivering dividends? Who knows. And that is the real danger of "marketing speak" it gives the illusion of concrete details without delivering on anything that you can actually hold them accountable for.
If you ever end up writing a press release like the one excerpted above stop for one second and think. "Am I delivering any actual information? If not why not? Are there people in the company stopping me from giving any "real" information and if so why? What may they have to hide?
Having worked in marketing and public relations I can understand how phrases that "sound good" but essentially mean nothing in the end can be tempting. Often you are writing press releases with very un-solid information. I worked in video games and if there is one thing I learned is that people will hold you to every concrete detail (such as a release date or published feature) down to the "t".
If you don't deliver each and every exact detail you give they are bound to hound you until you die. That said, I think there is a fine line that can be drawn where you give enough relevant information as to get the idea you need to across while leaving you enough "wiggle room" to allow for changes and/or delays etc.
I became very expert at using phrases such as "seems" and "appears to" and "all signs point to". These phrases give the illusion of certainty while leaving you a much needed "out" if not everything goes according to plan.
An example might be if there was a bug in a game and the developers told me that the bug was fixed in the new patch. If I was writing the patch notes (notes that goes out with game patches explaining changes/bug fixes/etc.) I would say "The bug that was making helmets sit on character's heads sideways appears to be fixed." rather than "The bug that was making helmets sit on character's heads sideways is fixed." While it may seem like a small thing in the end it makes a big difference if, for example, the bog really wasn't fixed but still showed up.
I'm getting of a bit of a tangent. What I really wanted to do in this post was quote the Yahoo press release and then "boil it down" to see what (if anything) is is actually saying. Here is an excerpt from the recent Yahoo press release with the amazingly original title "Yahoo! Announces Leadership Reorganization".
Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board, said, "The Board sees enormous growth opportunities on which Yahoo! can capitalize, and our primary objective is to leverage the Company's leadership and current business assets and platforms to execute against these opportunities. We have talented teams and tremendous resources behind them and intend to return the Company to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation. We are committed to exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will put Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation and deliver value to shareholders."
Whaaaat? It reads like a joke paragraph that some sort of "marketing speak" auto-generating machine would spit out. Now lets take this paragraph and cut out all the cliche, overused, and/or worthless "fluff" we can.
Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board, said, "The Board sees enormous growth opportunities on which Yahoo! can capitalize, andourprimaryobjective is to leverage the Company's leadership and current business assets and platforms toexecute against these opportunities.We have talented teams and tremendous resources behind them and intendto return the Company toa path of robustgrowthand industry-leading innovation. We arecommitted toexploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that willput Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation anddeliver value to shareholders."
OK. So lets see what we come up with without all the "empty calories".
Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board, said, "our objective ...is to leverage...the Company's leadership and current business assets and platforms... to return the Company to...growth.... We are...exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will...deliver value to shareholders."
While this is a start some of the marketing speak is so embedded in the way these people talk that to take it out will make it difficult to understand what they are talking about.
Here is my final distillation of the edited paragraph above:
Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board, said, "[we want to] ...[use]...the Company's [employees] and [assets]... to return the Company to...growth.... We are...[trying to figure out] [things] that will...deliver value to shareholders."
From this:
Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board, said, "The Board sees enormous growth opportunities on which Yahoo! can capitalize, and our primary objective is to leverage the Company's leadership and current business assets and platforms to execute against these opportunities. We have talented teams and tremendous resources behind them and intend to return the Company to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation. We are committed to exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will put Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation and deliver value to shareholders."
To this:
"We want to use the Company's employees and assets to return the Company to growth. We are trying to figure out things that will deliver value to shareholders.
That is quite a bit of "fluff". One thing I realized while evaluating this is that they use the phrase "deliver value to shareholders". Can anyone out there tell me exactly what is means to "deliver value"? Seems like a very loose term that can be interpreted many different ways.
Does "deliver value" mean increasing the value of the stock? Increasing the value of the company assets? Delivering dividends? Who knows. And that is the real danger of "marketing speak" it gives the illusion of concrete details without delivering on anything that you can actually hold them accountable for.
If you ever end up writing a press release like the one excerpted above stop for one second and think. "Am I delivering any actual information? If not why not? Are there people in the company stopping me from giving any "real" information and if so why? What may they have to hide?
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