An open letter to conference organizers. Set of tips from Scott Berkun on how best to help speakers help your conference. Really helpful to read through as I think more about SupConf.
Tag: Scott Berkun
Work vs. Progress
On poorly managed teams conflicting and irrelevant work is allowed to go on because leaders don’t notice, care or take the time to guide people’s efforts in more useful directions. Capable people may work away in their private tasks, believing they’re making progress (and earning bonuses), when in reality they’re doing work that will be thrown away or even hurt the project. When someone puts their head down to work, how fast they’re going doesn’t matter if they’re heading in the wrong direction (or towards a cliff). How a talent is directed can be more important than the size of the talent itself.
Work vs. Progress – Scott Berkun.
The greatest wildcard
But the greatest wild card of all in all the data, and the most precious piece of information for any happiness engineer hoping to solve any ticket, is the customer’s own perception of what is wrong. And the gap between what people think is wrong and what is actually wrong can be quite far indeed.
Scott Berkun – The Year Without Pants.
A different work, not a better one
Much of the criticism and feedback artists hear is really about the wish of the critic to describe a different work, not necessarily a better one.
How Do You Know When You’re Done? by Scott Berkun.
When in Doubt, Make A List. Great advice from Scott. When I’m stuck or doubting the right way to approach something my fallback is always to write a list down in my notebook, think it over, and then add it to OmniFocus. It may feel like a step backward at first but it always gets me moving in the right direction.
How to get better feedback. Good tips from Scott Berkun on how to get better feedback.
The Jobsian fallacy
We are fascinated by our giants and this fascination motivates us to learn. This is good. But we continually forget every story in this world is unique. We can’t cherry pick the convenient elements of one successful life and graft it into our own, expecting the same results. Had da Vinci or Ford been born today, they might have ended up janitors or car salesmen. And a school teacher or gardener from their times, born today, might have transformed the world. We don’t want to see success as fragile or circumstantial, but the slightest touch of chance in the lives of any great man or woman, and we’d never know their names.
Scott Berkun – The Jobsian fallacy.
Scott Berkun on information overload
Scott Berkun theorizes about information overload:
There is a notion the world is polluted with information. And that reckless publishing or creation is bad. This might be true, but that ship has sailed. We won’t be eliminating information from the world. Therefore:
Hypothesis: It doesn’t make the world any worse to add more information to it, since we can’t be/feel more overloaded than we already do.
That’s why everyone deserves the digital equivalent of a printing press. The more information the better, what I’m overloaded with someone else will cherish.
How to write 1000 words
Fascinating video from Scott Berkun on how to write 1000 words.
It’s great to see how an essay changes form over the course of drafts.