The Importance of Abandoning Crap

This American Life’s Ira Glass talks about the challenge of finding a good story and the importance of abandoning crap:

The entire video deserves a massive amen.

In a way, it also reminds me of a recent episode of Mad Men, where the new Brit whip-cracker is getting on Don’s case about the waste and inefficiency in the creative department. To which Don replies “my team needs to be unproductive so they can be productive”.

There’s more than a grain of truth here. Whether writing a novel or a few lines of feature copy, storyboarding a video, developing a content plan, or even putting together a solid presentation, it takes time to figure out the best approach and coax out the best story. And often, the mediocre stories, or the ones that just aren’t clicking, have to be killed. Which is exactly why I’ve jumped from topic to topic trying to determine the best course for the next novel. Better to kill things off at the outset than when you’ve already fought yourself halfway down that road.

Up to Speed…

With everything that’s been going on in the last week (and, being honest, since the beginning of the year), I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to sit down and crank out posts. With that in mind, I wanted to give everyone a quick update as to the goings on here in Austin.

Work - I started my new job last week, and after a day getting the lay of the land turned around and shipped out to Las Vegas for Sony’s Open House event. This is similar to CES, though much more contained and far less crowded. It was nice being able to spend a lot of one-on-one time with the new products, and really get a sense for all the whiz-bang technologies Sony builds into its TVs, cameras, and whatnot. It was also a great opportunity to meet the client and ramp up on the account in general.

Since returning to Austin, I’ve been getting my hands dirty on a variety of assignments, and so far I’m loving it. The work is definitely different from what I was doing at GSD&M, but different in a good way. And I find a certain satisfaction knowing the documents I write and revise will actually help make people smarter consumers, rather than get lost among some internal team.

Nolan -  Jamie is now in her 35th week, and we’re both anxious to welcome Nolan into the world. I think the sheer terror at being a father has mostly subsided. There’s a selfish part of me (and it’s a big part) that is still worried about the loss of personal time, but for the most part, I’m excited about the prospect of this new adventure. This last weekend we put the (almost) final touches on the Baby Containment Unit. It’s really happening.

Writing - I think I’ve cleared another hurdle. Whatever weird mind games retarded my progress throughout February evaporated the moment I started the new job, and ever since I’ve been off to the races. This past weekend I blew through the remaining sections of Chapter VI and managed to break into Chapter VII, and this morning I knocked out an additional two sections. If I can keep this pace going, I may manage to get through Chapters VII and VIII before Nolan arrives. Better still – my original target for the first eight chapters was 95,000 words. As of this morning, I’m down to 92,335, for a grand total of just over 211,000.

One Journey Ends, Another Begins…

I know I have been making vague references to the tension and anxiety of these past few weeks, but I have been reluctant to go into any sort of detail while things were still up in the air. Part of that reluctance stems from the public nature of this or any blog, and part from my desire to not jinx what was in motion. Now that things have progressed from what might be to what will be, however, I feel free to talk about them at last.

I have been with GSD&M for a little over seven years now, counting my time as an intern. Seven years! I’ve been with the agency longer than I was in elementary school, much less high school or college. In other words, I’ve been affiliated with the place longer than I’ve been affiliated with any other institution, ever. I’ve met some fantastic people, I’ve worked on many great (and some not so great) accounts, and I’ve probably learned more than I ever did in all my years in academia. I’ve been there in good times and, more recently, in bad.

When I started at GSD&M, it was as an intern on the Land Rover account. Upon my graduation from UT, I signed on with account service. It was never a great fit, especially at twenty-two, when I only had the slightest idea of what I was doing. There was, however, one area I excelled at – research and strategic analysis. Somehow, word got around, and in June 2003 I transitioned into the newly-created IDEAIntelligence. Freed from the shackles of opening print jobs and arguing with the client over the font size of advertorials, I thrived. As the years progressed, I came to know several industries, the key players, and the trends impacting them very well. Before I knew it, I was bringing insights to the table that expensive outside analysts missed or dismissed. A few of these were blown off, until they invariably proved themselves true six to twelve months later.

Then, maybe a year ago, something began to change. The agency seemed to lose focus. New business faltered. We began losing clients and failing to replace them. Good people began to leave in droves, among them my boss and good friend, Sage. Then we lost the AT&T media account. The layoffs that followed brought with them some of the darkest days of my professional career. Good friends and good coworkers were let go seemingly at random, and, somewhere deep within, the sense of community the agency had fostered in me broke irrevocably.

In the days that followed, I held to the hope that some good might come of the crisis, and it did, not from within the agency, but from without. In early January, another good friend – the guy who had first brought me into research and who was subsequently laid off – contacted me about an opportunity at another company here in town. I was intrigued. The opportunity – working with CE clients and translating product features and techno-babble into language your average consumer can not only understand, but embrace – seemed an even better fit than my position at GSD&M.

I told myself not to get my hopes up, but as the weeks progressed, things grew more and more promising. Last week, I spent a morning interviewing with this company, and Monday I received an offer. The opportunity, the job, the salary, were all too good to pass up. So yesterday, once I received the formal, written offer, I gave my notice. Next Thursday will be my last day at GSD&M.

It feels strange to be leaving. I have spent my entire professional career within the halls of Idea City. I’ve made a lot of good friends, and a part of me feels guilty that I am leaving them in a lurch. Another part of me, however, knows it is time to go, time to do something different, time to go somewhere where I can affect change, rather than wait and hope for someone else to do it for me. And that part of me is elated at what the future holds…

You Know What’s Cool?

CES, that’s what. From the South Hall to a panel on sci-fi’s influence on technology to dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant in the Venetian (P-something) to a nightcap at the Wynn, Day 1 was a whirlwind.

A few highlights.

Holy crap! A life-size Bumblebee!

This! Is! Blu-Ray!

The ultimate panel. The panelists were Dean Kagen (inventor of the Segway), Lucy Lawless (of Xena and Battlestar Galactica fame), Neal Stephenson (wrote Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, et al), and Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal’s tech columnist and one of the most influential guys in the industry). Absolutely fantastic. The highlights were Lucy calling her fellow panelists “chickenshits”, Mossberg calling Kagen a “chickenshit”, and Mossberg’s quip, when talking about technology being used for evil, that “I think it can be a lot more subtle than Armageddon”.

CES-ta

Last January, I had the privilege of attending the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The experience was beyond description. For anyone interested in technology and its role in people’s lives, there is no better event to attend. The entire show takes up a whopping 1.7 million square feet of floor space, and nearly every inch of it is filled with HDTVs, digital cameras, computers, projectors, and bleeding edge technology that’s only just now on the horizon.

Last year, I was just a participant. This year, I’m leading the charge, organizing the agency’s presence at the show. It promises to be an eventful CES on a number of fronts. BMW will have a track – yes, a track – set up in the convention center parking lot. HD-DVD will be reeling from Warner Bros’ announcement that it is going Blu-Ray exclusive. WiMAX and Wireless USB will make incremental steps forward, and everyone will be scrambling to convince the press, analysts, and retail representatives that they have the answer to Apple’s iPhone.

Check back often for pictures and thoughts.

The Work PC

In recent weeks, my attitude toward my work PC has gone from grudging acceptance to frustration, general disdain, loathing and, today, hatred.

That’s right. Hatred.

What is it about that silver Dell that brings out such an intensity of emotion? Where to begin?

It…is…very…sloooooow – Want to jump from Word to Outlook to check out that new e-mail that just came in? Be prepared to wait fifteen seconds while the Dell “thinks” about it. And be prepared to wait another fifteen seconds when you Alt-Tab back to Word. Want to switch between the tabs you’ve got open in Firefox? That’ll be five seconds. Want to click on that link? Be ready for two or three seconds of lag…browsing the friggin’ internet! If my Mac is a Corvette, and the four-year-old HP I keep around for writing purposes is, I don’t know, a pickup truck, then my work PC is a golf cart. Or a unicycle.

Battery life of a champion – 45 minutes. Seriously. And with all its speediness, that translates to maybe 35-40 minutes of actually getting stuff done.

It’s awesome at wireless – There’s nothing like being deep in thought, finally working out how to word something, only to have your computer FREAK OUT as it loses the VPN connection and goes absolutely haywire. Even better is how it will randomly lose connection to the Wi-Fi network when it is less than ten feet from the router. None of the other computers in our house have this problem. But the work PC…it’s a drama queen.

If it weren’t for that VPN connection, I swear I’d just use my Mac instead. And you know what? I’d probably be 10-20% more productive.

Five Years Gone

Today marks my fifth anniversary with my place of employment.  Or full-time employment, rather.  If you want to count intern time, it’s more like six and a half years.  Good lord.

And speaking of time, the upshot of reaching five years is what amounts to an extra five days’ vacation time every year.  I imagine that will come in pretty handy come January.

Then again, so would a raise…

Twitch

Maybe it’s because it’s Monday.  Or because there’s rain in the forecast.  Whatever the case, my right eyelid seems to have developed a twitch of some kind today.  Annoyed by this, I decided to investigate.

My searching revealed that this eyelid twitch actually has a medical term – blepharospasm – which for some reason reminds me of the Greek myth of Belarophon and Pegasus.

After snickering over the term for a moment or two, I scrolled down to the causes.  Lo and behold:

The most common things that make the muscle in your eyelid twitch are fatigue, stress, and caffeine.

Sweet!  I score the trifecta!  So what should I do now?  The advice is absolutely stellar.  Obviously compiled from the brightest minds in modern medicine:

• Get more sleep.
  
• Drink less caffeine.

Okay.  I’ll get right on that. 

Detroit in a Nutshell

After the epic chaos that was CES, I have to admit that the North American International Auto Show (and you wonder why everyone shorthands it to the Detroit Auto Show…) was something of a disappointment, even to a car nut like myself.  This disappointment wasn’t merely a function of Detroit being the smaller of the two shows.  It also had its roots in the lack of accessiblity to the newest, coolest models (which were roped off, eyes only), and the lack of surprise and discovery.  Where CES had thousands of new product launches, Detroit managed around thirty, half of those being concept cars that will never see a dealer lot.  And of those thirty or so new cars, not one of them was a surprise.  I and anybody else browsing Autoblog, Left Lane News, or any other auto-slanting website had seen every new model and every concept car before the first press conference on the first press day.

In my opinion, the rise of the internet has crippled the auto show model as we know it.  You no longer have to go to the show to see the latest models.  Instead, you can browse through dozens of high-resolution images from the comfort of your home.  And, to be honest, doing so delivers about 85% of the experience, without the crowds. 

Even so, I did find the show experience to be worthwhile, and it was something of a blast to have such an assortment of cars under one roof.  Read on for my impressions.

the New Office, Better Than the Old Office

Yesterday afternoon, I had to attend a mandatory, hour and a half "Introduction to Microsoft Office 2007".  I was, suffice to say, less than enthusiastic.  After using Office on a near daily basis for the last, oh, twelve years, I felt I was pretty well acquainted with the software.  The last thing I needed was to waste an hour and a half having someone show me how to open files and put text into italics.

How wrong I was.

Office 2007 isn’t another minor upgrade, a la Office 2003.  It is a ground up redesign, on the level of the changeover from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, or from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.

What’s more, it kicks ass.

As amazing as it seems, you can tell within five seconds that Microsoft actually put thought into the user interface.  It doesn’t even look like a Microsoft product, but rather something you’d expect to see coming out of Apple.  Nor is it mere glitz.  The new interface is 5,000% more intuitive, even when it comes to handling more advanced functions.

But the craziest thing?  Somehow, Office 2007 has managed to make using Powerpoint a fun, entertaining experience.  I didn’t think such a thing was even possible.  But, well, you learn something new every day.