Notes for Jan 27th 2023

Remember those pre-roll ads on DVDs that were there to counter piracy? Despite being on a DVD, which was almost certainly acquired through legal means? Two thoughts:
- The non-skippable ads and trailers really made piracy more attractive, because you could get to the actual movie/show quicker.
- In fairness, you probably would download a car if you could.
The above reminds me of the current internet era we seem to be entering. It's less about "web3" (crypto and the blockchain dominating) and more about a less centralised, open internet curated by people, and not companies.
- Mastodon's rise, IRC's resurgence, and the general malaise around corporate centralisation of things that should be open, like journalism, social media, etc.
- The worrying trend since 2004 to today is a steady decline in search terms around FOSS and related things (open source software). A whole generation of internet users, who are genuinely savvy, have no idea what it is like to contribute to, use or support open source software. I hope Mastodon & the like grow with younger folks to get them into software engineering on FOSS, and to deploy/utilise such things more.
My mail service of choice is Proton, who launched a calendar. Which is a beautiful app. But since it's main focus is security, it doesn't really talk to other calendar systems/softwares. Which kinda defeats the purpose of it, I think. But that could just be my use-case (which for personal use, is sharing calendars with my wife for home).
I was on IRC and noticed people's leaving messages (for the uninitiated, when someone leaves a room or quits entirely they can have a custom message -- usually some default from their app). A lot of them had stuff like "my MacBook has gone asleep ZzZzZ." Which is very cute. Apple seems to have lost all of their "cuteness" with the product line over the last few years. You can have an insanely powerful device in something that feels cutesy. And there's definitely a customer base for it. The MacBook Air line felt like it never had it, but is the best home for it now.
I worked in a sales-lead organisation for years. Product sort-of listened to the GTM org, the navigation and website were geared towards lead generation and everything was a function to feed a sales org to sell the bigger prize. Even the small fry product that was free was ultimately there to encourage upgrades touchlessly, but eventually have those customers graduate up to needing more complexity and thus, sales.
- I now work in something that's not there yet. Mostly because the GTM org is very nacent, but also that the founding of the company was pure engineering-lead. And a lot of the most established leaders in the company are product/eng. Which is a big shift for me, but a big change in ethos compared to my prior company. We generate more revenue from customers who don't talk to sales, because we spin a very different revenue-generating flywheel.
- But I see a very interesting middle-ground where you spin two separate flywheels: one driven by product/eng with GTM leading the direction of where customers flow. Another very complex/enterprisey sales-lead motion. You don't really meet the two modals in the middle, but instead spin two different flywheels entirely. I think that's the right thing to do for the customer, since it's their experience that ultimately matters.
Just flicked Stage Manager on macOS. Not entirely sure I like it. It feels slow because animations are spending a lot of time telling me what they're doing. And a bit clunky, without actually being broken; if that makes sense. I'm not sure what problem it solves, other than demoing well. And if it's really just an admission that Dock needs some TLC.
Thinking through strategy and comms this month as we go into annual kickoff/planning season (which, I am convinced doesn't really end). And after many years of doing this I've been able to advise colleagues on the best approach. It comes down to:
- Simplify your message. Especially on a slide deck, even if the message is complex. Actually, if the message is complex (e.g. how a sales rep might calculate commission based on multiple inputs) then a simple slide deck is vital to articulate the point properly.
  - I did training with Second City improv group, twice. And they have a fun exercise when groups of 3 break out. In our instance, 2 people had to act like they were from the 1700s, before the telephone existed. And I was modern, and had to explain an iPhone to them. Then I had to do it again, but in one paragraph. Then I had to do it again in a single sentence. Then I had to do it again in a hashtag.
  - That exercise really helped train the brain on how to take deep, technical complexity and simplify it. Being I've worked in technical presales engineering for the last decade-plus, that was a valuable lesson to get.
- Give people something to actually do. These kickoff type sessions are usually buffered with 10 other sessions filled with information. But if you have a tactical call-to-action (beyond "go to this URL for more"), the audience will have a better chance of enacting change, or figuring out the new thing, etc. etc. This year, I've attached some swag to the first two people to go do a new action that I expect from them.
- Be funny. I know this sounds stupid, but being a dry shite in one of these types of events is just pointless. People will be on their phone doing something more entertaining otherwise.
- Revise what you covered in a simple single slide. If you can't boil the whole thing down to a hashtag or sentence, no one is going to grok what you expect them to.
I loved this quote from Mandy Brown, "We live in a world full of distractions but short on breaks. The time between activities is consumed by other activities—the scrolling, swiping, tapping of managing a never-ending stream of notifications, of things coming at us that need doing."
Talking to a colleague yesterday, who is a bit younger than me (not an achievement as I careen into my late 30s with the grace of a drunk Labradoor) about RSS. He had just discovered it, which is a bit sad. I explained the basic mechanics, why they're so simple and some great apps to act as readers. His conclusion was they're "like an early, robust version of webhooks."
- But our discussion was actually drawn to the fact that too many sites, especially listings-of-things type sites, do not have RSS. His goal was to great a personal event listings feed based off of ticket and venue sites that would be interesting to him. But we too quickly had to go down the web scraper route.
My wife & I were remarking on just how much we use the Big Green Egg for cooking. When we were looking at it in a local garden centre, having done all the prior research to decide if we wanted one, a couple came past and waxed lyrical about how great it is. And they turned out to be right! Expensive, but so extensively used in this house that it's well paid off it's value.
- - Here it is grilling some quesadillas, with flour tortilla direct from Mexico, courtesy of my SIL
In some icy conditions, I had a fall on my bike. Nothing serious, and I mentioned it in last weeks notes. But on Thursday last, to get to the office I decided to walk just to get some exercise and because traffic is so atrocious in the morning, that it wound up being quicker. 1 hour door-to-door, including a stop in one of my local cafés (shoutout to MacMahons on Botanic avenue). It was a beautiful day for it. Though nothing quite beats the sheer convenience of cycling.
I spoke about building a mechanical keyboard in prior weekly notes, and I'm back researching a new one despite not needing one at all. It's a sickness. But my new one that I love has an issue with the S key chattering (i.e. sometimes when pressed, it double-types). Likely, I just need to fix the solder so it's no big deal. But I realise I never shared a pic!
I note this in my tabs for the week, but Tapbots released Ivory as their Mastodon client this week for general public consumption. Which is a real coming-of-age moment for the platform as the folks, like me, who didn't really use Twitter, but used Tweetbot, have somewhere to call home.

Notes for Jan 27th 2023

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