You’re reading Signal v. Noise, a publication about the web by Basecamp since 1999. Happy !
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.
Memo sent by “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” director of animation Richard Williams to his animation department. “Even now (an unbelievable 22 years later) the most hardened critic would have difficulty finding fault with the near-seamless interactions between [Roger Rabbit’s] live-action and animated characters.” [thx JH]
Reader Daniel Nitsche suggests checking out this lecture by Don Watson (MP4 file: 139MB / 41 minutes) on the absurdity of corporate speak.
There are some great points in there, sprinkled with humour.
Powerpoint is the ultimate in the depletion of English. It just doesn’t approve of sentences. It makes them into dot points. On politicians: we’re now more interested in the questions being asked by the interviewer because we know the interviewee won’t answer the questions anyway. On private organisation speak: “Dear Valued Customer”—would you write to your mother that way? (Dear Valued Mother). The invention of a mission statement is too late. The worst companies in the world are using mission statements.
Fun example from the lecture: Someone wrote a letter to Watson’s 90 year old mother that began “Dear Applicant.” Unclear what it was all about, she passed the letter to him. He wound up responding with a letter that started “Dear Bureaucrat.”
Here’s an interview with Watson.
The language I think is poisoned, generally. And it’s poisoned in the name of efficiency for some strange reason. It’s as if the whole culture has been corporatised in one way or another. Does it really matter? Well I think it does. I think language is how we know each other. Speak that I may see thee.
Therefore … I mean, If you talk like this to your friend down the pub you won’t see him there next week.
Watson’s Weasel Words site collects awful yet funny examples of managerial language. Why Weasel Words?
‘In 1916 Theodore Roosevelt declared that the ‘tendency to use what have been called weasel words was “one of the defects of our nation”.’ ‘You can have universal training or you can have voluntary training, but when you use the word “voluntary” to qualify the word “universal”, you are using a weasel word,’ he said: ‘it has sucked all the meaning out of “universal”.’
Words that suck all the meaning out. Good way to put it.
It’s all a reminder to give anything you write a decent bullshit test before sending it out. Would you ever talk to your mother or your friend that way? If not, why is it ok to talk to a customer that way?
We’ve updated our collection of 37signals presentations, keynotes, and interviews. Watch Ryan at Windy City Rails 2009, Jeremy at Ruby en Rails 2009, Jason at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Mark at the Erlang Factory Conference, and lots more.
Fixed-scheduled productivity: “Fix your ideal schedule, then work backwards to make everything fit — ruthlessly culling obligations, turning people down, becoming hard to reach, and shedding marginally useful tasks along the way.”
A big part of this: saying no. The author gives Jim Collins as an example:
Even though Collins demands over $60,000 per speech, for example, he gives fewer than 18 per year, and a third of these are donated for free to non-profit groups. He doesn’t do book tours. His web site is mediocre. He keeps his living expenses in check so that he’s not dependent on drumming up income (he and his wife have lived in the same California bungalow for the past 14 years), and he keeps only a small staff, preferring to bring on volunteers as needed.
Also shows the freedom you get from having low overhead. The less you owe, the less you have to do things you don’t want to do.
Interesting: When you copy text from a New Yorker article and paste it somewhere else, it automatically includes a “Read more: URL” at end of paste.
Copied this:
Then pasted it into an email and it showed up like this (with “Read more” link):
NY Post (and others?) also doing this.
Update: Tynt is what these sites are using. “Measuring reader engagement by how often they copy and paste” talks more about how sites use the data generated by Tynt. [thx ZS]
We’ve added “Newer posts | Older posts” links to Signal vs. Noise so you can page through posts without using the archives. (Scroll down to the end of 37signals.com/svn to find link for the next page of posts.) This allows visitors to read the backlog with minimal clicking as opposed to having to select individual posts in the archives.
You know that old saw about a plane flying from California to Hawaii being off course 99% of the time—but constantly correcting? The same is true of successful startups—except they may start out heading toward Alaska. Many dot-com bubble companies that died could have eventually been successful had they been able to adjust and change their plans instead of running as fast as they could until they burned out, based on their initial assumptions. Pyra was started to build a project-management app, not Blogger. Flickr’s company was building a game. Ebay was going to sell auction software. Initial assumptions are almost always wrong.
The official REWORK book site is now up at 37signals.com/rework. There you’ll find the full list of essays included in the book, a look at the front and back covers, six of Mike Rohde’s illustrations from the book, pre-order links at major retailers, and early reviews from folks like Tony Hsieh, Tom Peters, Chris Anderson, and Kathy Sierra. The book comes out on March 9, 2010.
Time: 26:36 | Download MP3
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David’s 2008 Startup School talk
Another trip to the archives. This time we listen to one of David’s most popular talks. At a conference largely dedicated to talk of venture capitalism, he discusses how you can grow a company without looking for funding. Along the way, he explains the story of Basecamp and how 37signals has grown as a company. (We’ll be back with brand new content on the next episode.)
See related links for this episode. Previous episodes available at 37signals.com/podcast. Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS.