Stanching Greatness

This month's issue of Men's Journal (October 2008, p. 30) has an interview with Thom Beers, creator of such television staples as Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers.  Think what you wish about the quality of his shows, there is little denying that he is a superstar amongst film-makers.  He is talented and driven, to be sure.

There were a number of things in the article that indicate Thom may be of questionable moral character.  Having found myself glued to many of his shows, it did not surprise me to discover that he is a "colorful" personality.  He did, however, mention something that really resonated.

"Thank God Ritalin wasn't big when I was a kid or it would have calmed me down and I'd be a middle manager at a car lot."

His statement makes me wonder how many great people we have lost to the complacency afforded by legal modern drugs.

"Magician's Next Stunt Could Leave Him Blind"

The above headline on CNN.Com reminded me that I need to call my Grandmother. 

A Great Product for Anyone Who Cuts Paper

Several years ago, my wife and I visited my brother in New Mexico. His neighbor had the coolest thing I had seen in quite a while. It was a vector printer, alternatively called a vector cutter. He used it to cut out vinyl masks. He would then put the mask on a piece of glass or wood and sand blast it.

The device was intriguing. After checking on the price of such a device, I decided that perhaps they weren't for me. For years I kept checking back on the price, itching to buy one. Then something odd happened while I was slumming around Michael's or Hobby Lobby. I found the Cricut.

The Cricut is a vector cutter aimed at people who probably don't care much for computers. People who make scrap books, cards, etc. It seemed like a good birthday gift for Aimee, so I got her one. It is amazing. In fact, the only complaint I have about it is that the ladies featured in the "getting started" DVD are scary. Real scary.

Normally paper cutting would be done with a die. Dies are expensive, and they only let you cut one size. The Cricut lets you scale any pattern in its library. Unlike most vector cutters, the Cricut lets you use a normal piece of paper instead of a roll. Just stick the paper onto a sticky cutting board, feed the machine, position the cutter, and press "Go".

The machine is daunting at first, but after a few minutes its use becomes second nature. The designs that you can cut are stored on cartridges that must be bought separately. They are expensive, but as I noted before, they replace very expensive dies. It is surprising what a great value an $80 cartridge really is.

Vector cutters can do a lot. They can cut paper, vinyl, pictures, etc. These materials can then be used on a myriad of projects. For example, you could make screen cutting masks using only construction paper and fiberglass window screen. You could use vinyl and create stickers or masks for sand blasting.

The best thing about this product is that it's portable. No computer to fuss with, no boxes of dies. Just one machine and some small cartridges. It's right at home on the craft table. It isn't often that we find a product that was thought out so carefully. I'd buy another one without a second thought...and I might even let Aimee use it.

Making Great Products

Have you ever wondered how great products get created?  If you have ever worked with a marketing department, I'll bet that you've cursed them at least once.  Marketers are forever promising the impossible...but more often than not, it seems that the impossible is what gets delivered.

A couple weeks ago, Fawaz Gruosi of Grisogono was featured in Men's Journal (June, 2008).  In the article, he describes a new idea for a watch.  This watch is a mechanical digital watch.  It requires regular winding, but has digits on the face instead of analog hands.  You can imagine the meeting when he dropped this idea on his engineers.  First, of course, they laughed.

He was serious, though, and he wanted his watch.  "My strength is not having a notion of the difficulties behind the ideas", he remarked for the interview.

Sometimes greatness requires ignorance.

Changing The Guard

Changing of the Guard

The first applications of Information Technology involved highly numeric calculations. The original guards of I.T. were scientists. As business accepted the new tools offered by technology, these tools were often applied to accounting related tasks. Today, we still abide by the incorrect notion that I.T. employees should be computer scientists. Take a look at a few job descriptions and you’ll note that many employers think that they want I.T. employees with computer science degrees.

They are dead wrong. While technically minded people are often hired into I.T. positions because of their knowledge, it is an aptitude of another sort that can change from Old Guard Information Technology into Integrated Technology. Technology staff should have excellent communications and business skills. Most technology skills can be acquired, but it seems as though technically gifted staff often lack either the interest or the capacity for communications.

Perhaps because of its mysterious, highly technical beginnings, Information Technology commands tight control over its subjects yet often fails to deliver exactly what its customers need. Internal customers are faced with a conundrum. They are required to use their computers, yet they are often severely disciplined for misusing them. This leads to a communications schism between I.T. and its internal customers. Staff who are afraid of misusing a tool have little chance of mastering it.

When I was in college for my programming degree, a systems analysis text declared that Information Technology should hold a place in the corporation which acts at an executive level. Of course, that text was written by an I.T. professional. In a perfect world, perhaps I.T. would hold such a position. Reality, though, requires something a little different.

Since highly technical staff are usually hired into I.T. departments, their business acumen is typically inversely related to their technical skills. These people are frequently the last people that a company may wish to introduce to a customer. The detrimental effect of this situation is that technology is often explicitly avoided by executives, despite the fact that they stand to benefit from its use. Perhaps the situation is such that using technology is more difficult than not using it. Not because of technical problems, but people problems.

It is time for a new perspective on technical staff. Why should businesses hire technically trained people, if they need business people? They shouldn’t. Perhaps every I.T. department will require some highly technical staff, however those staff who interact with internal customers should be selected specifically because they have more empathy than technical expertise.

The Road to Happiness

Seth Godin wrote recently about the job of marketers.

What you have doesn't make you unhappy. What you want does.
And want is created by us, the marketers.

Someone must want (or need) a product in order to buy it.  It is the job of the marketer to create the desire (want or need) for the product. 

Toaism tells us that one may experience peace (happiness) in the absence of desire.  Does it then follow that we can increase our happiness by cutting off the barrage of marketing messages we're exposed to on a daily basis?

Aimee and I watch almost no television.  Perhaps three hours per week.  We live relatively modestly, but we're hardly free from desire.  I subscribe to a number of electronic magazines, and (of course) they are choc full of advertisements.

While avoiding marketing messages might lead to greater happiness, is it really practical?  When we think about the products we purchase and our overall happiness, I think it becomes clear that most purchases do not increase happiness.  We still keep making purchases though, as if transfixed by the never-materializing promise of happiness.

Jacked!

The other morning I got in my car and immediately thought "Gee, why is my radio bezel on the floor?"  The answer, of course, is that my radio was stolen.  Again.  This routine is getting old.  This time I didn't have my doors locked, but I'm not sure if that cost me a radio or saved me another broken window.

As I sat at my office desk, fuming, I finally concocted a plan to defeat radio thievery once and for all!  Wasting no time, I went to the Bazaar and found something better than a radio.  It was a small, 12 volt amplifier with volume, bass, and treble knobs.  It was $14 plus shipping.  Of course, it was in China, so shipping was $15.  Perfect.  It isn't a radio, but it can play my satellite radio and Aimee's iPod.  The best part?  Even a low life thief won't want to steal this thing!  A person would have to be crazy to want it! (Erm, don't take that literally)

When my new toy arrived, I was giddy.  Aimee picked up a radio harness for me, and I set about wiring up my new "radio".  When I finally got out to the car, humming "Into the Wild Blue Yonder" under my breath, my happiness was short lived.  Despite the label on the wiring harness, it did not in fact fit a Kia Rio.

Today I exchanged the harness (naturally the guys at the store didn't believe that it was the wrong harness until they had also stymied themselves on my car).  This evening I got my car amplifier installed at last.

Now, in case you are uninitiated...Chinese style seems to favor loud.  Gaudy, I mean.  When I first unpacked this thing, I noticed a clear bezel around the volume knob.  "Great", I thought, "probably a calming green LED is behind that."  When I turned on the amplifier and hooked it up to my Sirius receiver, my initial reaction was not "Hey, that sounds ok"....it was "Is this thing going to give me seizures?"

In case there was a danger of it getting stolen, I'm pretty sure the flashing light will put the kibosh on that.