How To Suck Much Less

Posted by on May 30, 2007 in Podcasting | 8 comments

For anyone who listens to Podshow podcasts, like Accident Hash, In Over Your Head, the ReMARKable Palate, and others, and is tired of hearing the 59 second pre-roll ad for their Suck Less campaign, I just posted directions for skipping right past it or any other pre-roll ad using iTunes on a Mac. No idea how to do this on Windows – if you know, post it in the comments at Marketing Over Coffee!

In a World of Warcraft, I Script Tetris

Posted by on May 30, 2007 in Me | 6 comments

It’s funny, being a weird blend of developer, manager, and marketer, how people perceive your abilities. I was reflecting on this when I was looking over both the Facebook Development Platform and some of my work at the Student Loan Network. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a snack coder, a snack developer. In a world where video games are Hollywood-style productions with casting, special effects, and workforces greater than some investment firms, I’m the guy who can whip out Pong in an afternoon – but not much beyond that. Tetris, probably.

The thing is, for a lot of what I do – prototyping, idea generation and early implementation, experimentation – snack coding is exactly what’s called for. Create a wireframe, create a simple implementation as a proof of concept so we can decide to see if pouring scarce resources into a technology is a worthwhile investment or not. I’m the guy you want writing up that widget or wireframing the new web site, but I’m definitely not the guy to build you World of Warcraft or Second Life.

I used to think that I was an amateur compared to professional developers, but realized that I’m a snack builder, not a buffet chef. Both have their place in the ecosystem of development and marketing, and both can create a TON of value – just ask PopCap Games, developers of casual games like Zuma, Bejeweled, Heavy Weapon, and more. Sometimes you want to sit down for a major campaign battle, and sometimes, you just want to shoot at things for five minutes.

What’s your niche? Where do you operate best? Do you know? If you do, how did you find out?

What is Podshow doing with your kids?

Posted by on May 29, 2007 in Privacy, Rant | 8 comments

This is a serious question. After hearing their promos for the Suck Less program, which appears to be listener demographics, I decided, what the heck, I’ll fill out the survey just for fun. So far, standard stuff – where do you live, what do you do for work, how much money do you make, all things you’d want to do to target marketing to someone. Then we get to the odd questions:

  • Are you of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino origin?
  • Please indicate your racial/ethnic background (select one or more)
  • How many children do you have: [insert number]
  • Please enter the following information for each of your children:
  • Child #1 Year of birth: [input] This child lives with me [ ]
  • How many children live with you other than the above:
  • Child #1 Year of birth: [input]

A couple of things. Why not put Hispanic/Latino in the racial background instead of splitting it out? Probably just survey design.

But this is the big one: Why do you need to know the date of a survey respondents’ childrens birth, and why do you need to know whether they live with you or not?

If I were a parent, that’s not information I’d willingly divulge to even casual acquaintances, mainly for security reasons. God knows the headlines are full of stories about kids being abducted. Certainly, it’s not information that a security-minded parent would want to divulge on a faceless survey (privacy policy be damned), especially after being asked where you live.

Even stranger, if I had kids living with me who were not mine, as a responsible custodian, why would I reveal both their presence AND their age?

What -is- Podshow doing with this information, and who gets access to it?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Updated: Download a printout of the survey here.

A Quick Sketch Biography of Christopher Penn

Posted by on May 28, 2007 in Ninjutsu | 0 comments

Based on Chris Brogan’s masterful template.

The thing most people know me for depends on how you know me. As Stephen K. Hayes says, we all wear different titles to different people. You might be Mom to some, but Daughter to another. Chances are you probably know me in a few forms:

- As the producer of the Financial Aid Podcast and Chief Technology Officer of Edvisors, Inc./Student Loan Network.

- As the co-founder of the PodCamp UnConference movement along with the aforementioned brilliant Chris Brogan, and now Executive Director of the PodCamp Foundation along with co-Executive Director Brogan. Also organizer of PodCamp Europe, speaker at Podcamp Toronto, PodCamp Boston, PodCamp NYC, the PESC conference, and more.

- As a New Marketing guy involved in a lot of projects, from Marketing Over Coffee with John Wall of The M Show to a regular at Coffee with Crayon to the producer of Virtual Hot Wings with Michelle Wolverton and C.C. Chapman.

- As this guy who leaves odd comments on your blog or podcast, or makes comments on Twitter directed at you, or adds you as a friend on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Virb, and other social media sites du jour.

- As a 14 year practitioner of ninjutsu at the Boston Martial Arts Center.

Which is the real me? All of them. None of them. It depends on who you are and the context in which we interact. If any of them are a surprise to you, then welcome to context switch.

The people I associate the most with includes you. Because if you’re reading this, you associate with me.

People who have influenced my life are countless. There’s an expression in my martial art – shikin haramitsu daikomyo – that is recited before and after every class. Loosely translated, it means every experience contains the potential for the enlightenment we seek. This could be it. Everyone has something to teach (even if it’s how NOT to do something) if only we’re paying attention.

My early years, before you probably got to know me were unremarkable.

You might not know this, but I used to be terrified of public speaking, and was TERRIBLE at networking. A few things along the way changed that – necessity, along with the rush of speaking onstage. My junior year of high school was the turning point, when I found that I could influence people reasonably well with my words, and ended up being voted Senior Class President, which was hilarious. Ever since then, being onstage has become a love hate relationship which has evolved to love over the years.

I’m passionate about new media and martial arts. Actually, I’m passionate about a lot of things. I love good music – I wouldn’t have played so much of it on a financial aid radio show if I didn’t love it. I love good food – occasionally, too much. I love the power and reach that new media and the Internet give us that a generation ago would have been impossible to even fathom, much less take advantage of. It’s the project closest to mind right now but it’s also an important one – can you imagine a decade ago a bunch of fans of a musician not only bootlegging concerts, but reselling them on behalf of the musician and directing every dime to the musician?

I love the martial arts because it’s so grounding. In a lot of other areas, your ego can run away on you, get out of check, but when you step into the training hall, if your skills can’t back up your words, you end up getting the crap kicked out of you, and that’s an absolute necessity to stay focused, stay on the path, wherever it leads you. The martial art I practice focuses on winning under nearly impossible conditions, beating the odds so you can get home happy and healthy.

In the next year or two, I hope to meet you.

Book Review: The Dip, by Seth Godin

Posted by on May 28, 2007 in Books, Marketing | 4 comments

Some thoughts after reading a copy sent to me by superhero Whitney Hoffman. The Dip is an interesting book, but a lot of the ways it’s been marketed don’t really work with the subject matter, at least not for me. It’s marketed… well, poorly. Every review, every interview I’d heard prior to receiving the book had convinced me this was one to definitely skip, and buy something else instead.

Had the marketing said, “In addition to all the feel good motivational stuff, you’ll also learn how the Dip relates to the Long Tail, and which strategy makes sense for you” I think I would have been in line the day the book went on the market.

The Long Tail, if you haven’t read it, by Chris Anderson, is a book about power law curves. We know them primarily through cliches – 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers, 1% of the world’s population has 99% of the wealth, etc. The Long Tail proposes different thinking in a digital marketplace – in a realm where you have infinite shelf space, you can offer infinite products and do very well – better, in fact, than a brick and mortar shop that can only serve the short head. The Long Tail is about the power of aggregation.

The Dip is about the short head. It’s about the top of the powerlaw curve, because being #1, even if the tail is really long, is more profitable as an individual because you cannot aggregate some things. Can you be #34 – #447 in your job? Not really, unless you can clone yourself. The Dip is about scarcity, while the Long Tail is about abundance. Be #1, because #2 experiences drastically fewer benefits than #1, and #3 – #infinity are pretty much screwed.

The Dip is also a strategic warfare book. The phenomenon known as the Dip, the barrier between top performer and dabbler, between #1 and everything else, is a filter – it’s the barrier that ensures that whoever is #1 in any given niche is there for a reason. Because we’re talking an economoy of scarcity, it’s also zero sum – if you are #1, no one else can be, and vice versa. In the book are a number of tips which will allow you to make the Dip a deadly quagmire for your opponents and competitors – ways to distract them, divert them, so that while they’re tilting at windmills, you’re going to the bank. I’d recommend combining the strategic aspects of the Dip with a more warfare-oriented book like the Art of War for best results.

Finally, the Dip and the Long Tail plug into each other. Take the Long Tail of careers, for example, and figure out which careers pay the income you want to earn (red line on graph 1). Even the best, top of the food chain career in some fields will still not pay out like it will in other fields; for example, you may be the best poo pet crafter in the world, but if the #1 position in poo pet manufacturing doesn’t fall above the baseline income you want to make, then that’s not the niche for you. Ideally, pick a career or field in which there’s a decent amount of cushion between what you want to earn and what the #1 person in that niche earns.

Then, if you’re #2 or #3, you’re still making what you want to make while clawing your way to the top. That little slice of the short head is where you want to live.

Overall, I’d recommend The Dip. It’s a good read with marketing that didn’t touch me at all.