Guide to pants off living
April 2005
Streamlining Content Delivery
Wednesday, 20 April 2005
RSS and Podcasting these are great ways to streamline content delivery. It's pretty clear to anyone who's been browsing, using, and preparing content for the web for at least a few of years or so that these are a godsend. They streamline the delivery of information from the 100's of website's, blogs and hell knows what that we glance at everyday - hoping to stay on the cutting edge.
So it is with great frustration, that the industry I work in is so enamored with the idea of 'sexing up' the content delivery process.
As far as I can tell, content is still king. If you focus on ensuring what you're publishing is great, then you'll attract an audience for it. If it's terrible, the people will vote with their virtual feet and give your content (blog, website, podcast) a miss.
A marketing agency though surely should have a better chance at connecting with their audience since, duh, they usually have a good idea of who they're going to be preparing content for. More often than not a marketing / advertising agency are not trying to attract an audience as much as they're trying to sustain and grow and audience.
Ever since I started working online it seems to me that people who are new to the internet experience are excited by the 'discovery' of content and will focus on the delivery / discovery of content as much as (if not more) than the content itself.
Sure, discovery is interesting and fun, but I don't want have to rediscover stuff that I'm going to read every day. It just doesn't make sense. In fact, it annoys me, go away before I stab you in the neck with a pen.
When I first moved to the city, sure - it was exciting taking the train into work. There was graffiti, people's back yards and strange people on the train to look at - huge fun. After a while though it pretty much loses it's excitement factor and you get over it. You just want to get to work to focus on the stuff that's really changing (after a while this doesn't change much either - but that's another post).
So what do you think?
Posted by travo at 6:46:33 PM
Tight
Thursday, 14 April 2005
I love a tight rhythm section. When you're upfront wailing away and all of a sudden you can feel the drummer and bass player lock in; damn it just takes you to another level.
My all-time favourite rhythm section would have to be Rocco Prestia and David Garibaldi from Tower Of Power. God Damn! These guys are good and they just make the horns soar.
Interesting to note that Rocco and David are together again and that many of the original guys from Tower of Power are playing again - at some pretty premium gigs too!
Posted by travo at 11:59:04 AM
Phases
Wednesday, 06 April 2005
So, you may not already know this, but I play guitar. On my earliest and primary influences was Eric Clapton. I can practically hear you gasping in horror!
But wait, it's not that bad.
Eric is an amazing interpreter and digest. And he has gone through some incredible phases, and his most recent "crotchety, angry, yet hopeful old geezer seeking redemption" is fantastic, although we don't really know it, we've been hoping something like it would come along.
His earliest phase, "talented doey eyed git" saw him through the Yardbirds; "bastard genious" gave us the Blues Breakers years; "angsty experimental wasteoid" saw us through the Cream and into Blind Faith; "fucked up hippy, heroin chic, rock god" blessed us with Derek + the Dominoes (and frankly we're it not for the Duane Allman and others prodding Eric with a stick he would have never got up off the couch and recorded Layla); "rambling drunk" gave us 461 and the Slowhand years; "blow nose" squeaked his way through the 80's; "oh-my-god-thank-christ-I-don't-look-like-Ginger-I'm-gonna-wear-Armani" saw Eric scrub of nearly two decades of crust off himself and start looking into the future (it also saw him pairing off on 'dates' with some fine lookin' models, rockstars and movie stars) in the 90's.
So now, after a couple of really soft projects punctuated by the goodness that was "...From the Cradle" we get the blistering and exciting return to form that is "crotchety, angry, yet hopeful old geezer seeking redemption" Eric playing freely, without any trepidation or pretention.
Thank God. Welcome back to my playlist.
Posted by travo at 4:52:01 PM
'Less Mass' = faster moving teams
Friday, 01 April 2005
I think Jason, from 37 Signals is having an epiphany. He is touching on some ideas which are well established in the agile community. And as an observer from the outside of both parties, I like what I hear.
Getting Real: Less Mass is Jasons most recent post on this subject, and he is onto something.
Unfortunately though, coming from a 'lightweight' group of developers, who can move quickly (and are often asked to move very quickly), it is very hard to work with a 'heavyweight' team of developers or organisation whose processes, technology and culture prevent the expediency required to move with trends; it's like trying motivate a stubborn burdened mule with up a hill.
To my mind there is another aspect to this which involves account management / middle management and their ability to understand this problem. Managment from either lightweight or heavyweight teams will need to have a strong understanding of the strengths of their respective teams and exploit their strenghts appropriately.
Is this too cryptic, drop me a line and let me know.
Posted by travo at 11:34:38 AM