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Matt Linderman

About Matt Linderman

Now: The creator of Vooza, "the Spinal Tap of startups." Previously: Employee #1 at 37signals and co-author of the books Rework and Getting Real.

Sal Khan talks to 37signals

Matt Linderman
Matt Linderman wrote this on Aug 18 2010 17 comments

Sal Khan of The Khan Academy talking (via Skype) to 37signals at our learning theater yesterday:

sal

It was an hourlong Q&A session. Some of the topics covered:

  • How his videos are being used by schools and teachers
  • How asynchronous learning is changing educational possibilities for the third world
  • How his video format has helped him to be successful (e.g. not seeing his face helps viewers connect to his voice and the lesson)
  • How he prepares for videos
  • His priorities in teaching (e.g. getting people to develop intuition)
  • How the YouTube video length constraint helped him create more digestible content compared to typical lecture lengths (10 minute clips actually match up nicely with typical attention spans)

A couple of interesting counterintuitive ideas: He mentioned that the more money people spend on videos, the worse those videos seem to get. Also, he thinks it makes more sense to have students watch lectures at home and do homework at school as opposed to vice versa.

Thanks Sal!

Related: Sal Khan and the Khan Academy to the rescue [Signal vs. Noise]

Then he gave me some advice about teaching that’s stuck with me for more than three decades: “Just pretend you’re teaching you. How would you do that? What would you want to know? What did you dislike when you were taught? What stories would you tell to make it understandable? What would keep you interested and engaged?”

—
 Steve Blank in Teach Like You’re the Student
Matt Linderman on Aug 16 2010 13 comments

Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope subway art

Matt Linderman
Matt Linderman wrote this on Aug 12 2010 11 comments

I take the Q train from Brooklyn to Manhattan a lot and am always fascinated by this animation that’s viewable from the train slightly after you pass the Dekalb Ave. stop (animation starts :20 in, there’s some NSFW language in the background):



So I finally decided to do some research on it. Turns out it’s Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope and it was installed in the abandoned Myrtle Avenue subway station in September, 1980. It’s made up of 228 hand-painted panels viewed through a series of vertical slits. It works on the principle of the Zoetrope, a 19th century optical toy.

zoe

Below is an old news story about Masstransiscope that interviews Brand. He talks about how being a filmmaker led to the idea: “Instead of having the film go through the projector, you could move the audience past the film.”


Let’s be honest. “Sent from my iPhone” really means “I’m not going to bother to proofread and correct this because it would take me an extra 30 seconds.”

Matt Linderman on Aug 11 2010 47 comments

What questions do you have for the 37signals programming team? We’ll be recording a programmers’ roundtable podcast soon and we’d like to answer your questions. Please leave your name too (anonymous questions won’t get answered).

Matt Linderman on Aug 11 2010 83 answers

[Podcast] Episode #19: A day in the REWORK writing process

Matt Linderman
Matt Linderman wrote this on Aug 10 2010 9 comments

Time: 23:48 | 08/10/2010 | Download MP3



Summary
In March, 2009, Jason, David, and Matt gathered to edit an initial draft of REWORK. The meeting was recorded and this episode features audio clips of the collaboration.

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dropbox_reminder.png

This nice “you’ve been gone” email reminder from Dropbox is a smart attempt to reach out to on-the-fence folks (I signed up a few months ago but haven’t used the product in a while).

At most companies, there’s plenty of emphasis on acquiring new customers — but that means you can easily wind up overlooking folks who signed up for your product but still aren’t 100% on board yet. An email like this offers a good reminder: A customer retained is worth just as much as a customer acquired.

Matt Linderman on Aug 9 2010 15 comments

The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scarce; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below. On the design of a beach vacation home, the limitation may be your ocean-front footage. You have to make sure your whole team understands what scarce resource you’re optimizing.

—
 Fred Brooks, author of The Design of Design.
Matt Linderman on Aug 9 2010 6 comments

The average American watches four hours of television each day. That’s 28 hours per week. Which is almost like having another full-time job. No wonder it’s so tough for people to get things done.

Matt Linderman on Aug 5 2010 31 comments