Late last week, a client and I were discussing a struggling project. The client mentioned his project team regularly works nights and weekends to meet the deadlines he had scheduled. I was stunned. This was months into a years longs project. There are 3 things fatally wrong with this management strategy: It devalues both the …
Author Archives: Garrick van Buren
Not Sold in Stores, Art by an Autistic Boy.
For as long as I can remember, my mom has taught developmentally-disabled children. I’ve always been in awe of her patience with these kids. Each year, the level of functioning can swing from nearly “normal” to extremely trying. A few years back, she told me about a specific autistic kid, functioning on the low side …
Continue reading “Not Sold in Stores, Art by an Autistic Boy.”
All Failures are Boring
The thought for today is brought to you via Seth Godin: “All marketing failures are boring. Most are self-centered.”
Ankle Bracelets for Immigrants Good and Scary
This morning, NPR had a segment on Homeland Security requiring illegal immigrants to wear electronic monitoring ankle bracelets (read the comments). Yes, I’m all for reducing the load on the detention centers and allowing the immigrants to contribute something to America while they prepare an asylum claim. This program needs to be closely watched. Closely. …
Continue reading “Ankle Bracelets for Immigrants Good and Scary”
Circling Vulture Part 2
A couple days back, I wrote a half-formed rant on the current state of department stores (Picky Customer or Circling Vulture). This morning, while skimming my blogroll [opml] in search of a pick-me-up, Hugh McLeod 1) knees me in the groin 2) points and laughs. He did both in his Cheapest or Best post. First, …
Picky Customer or Circling Vulture
Jen and I went to a mall on Saturday. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a mall on a Saturday afternoon. I left buying nothing and feeling extremely uninspired to shop. I now know why Target sold Marshall Field’s last year to May Department Stores and why May Department Stores is praying …
Fact Checking My Own Ass
Google alerted me to MarketWatch’s Bloggers won’t keep a secret article where my mis-quote of Dan Gillmor got a mention. Some bloggers are almost proud of making a mistake. It gives them a chance to make a correction and appear oh, so humble and honest. Garrick Van Buren, who blogged about a showing of “Blogumentary” …
Email Messages you don’t want to get
I think we may have a squirrel in the walls upstairs can I name him squirrely? Jen
Introducing the gFeed
The other morning I was looking for an easy way to test all my feeds. After a few minutes of tracking down the latest magpierss and some lunchtime programming, I’m happy to present the gFeed. The gFeed pulls all my posts at GarrickVanBuren.com, the First Crack Podcast, MNteractive.com, the Work Better Weblog, and my Flickr …
Get Paid to Do What You Love
Jason Kottke is making the biggest decision of his life. He’s testing a hypothesis I’ve had since I started podcasting. I believe the business model of the future is the one public television and public radio have been using for years: If your customers like what you do, they’ll pay you to continue. Dean Allen …