Posts - Page 2

  • Monthly Recap: Apple's Future, Costa Rica, and The Whingers

    Nov 1st, 2016 - Category: Communication

    We just returned from a two week Spanish Immersion school in Costa Rica. Speaking Spanish for 8+ hours a day was an intense experience to say the least, not to mention the culture shock involved in living with a Costa Rican family. To summarize, the school was outstanding, but the capital of Costa Rica is nothing like the beach areas tourists typically visit, but this post is not meant to be a travelogue. Maybe the biggest cultural difference we found is that nobody complains in Costa Rica. They don’t complain about the horrendous traffic, dirty streets with huge holes and no sidewalks, the poor quality of food, the rain that falls everyday in October (and doesn’t fall at all in the summer), or the steel bars protecting every home and business. They just don’t complain. In fact, they are proud of their country and often boast about the biodiversity, the temperate climate, universal healthcare and education, and political stability. There is certainly a bit of denial going on, but the message is so consistent, it’s impossible not to be charmed by their “Pura Vida” attitude.

  • Monthly Recap: Insanely Great Products

    Sep 1st, 2016 - Category: Communication

    The title of this post comes from a 1985 Steve Jobs quote in Playboy magazine, “Making an insanely great product has a lot to do with the process of making the product, how you learn things and adopt new ideas and throw out old ideas.” He said this only a year after the release of the first Macintosh. Fast forward 21 years and you can find a similar quote in the recent Washington Post interview of Tim Cook, “Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’.” Cook commented, ”The North Star has always been the same, which for us, is about making insanely great products that really change the world in some way - enrich people’s lives.” The similarity is exciting because it highlights a concept that has withstood the test of time and has resulted in products that have truly changed the world.

  • What Cameron Learned From 10 Years of Doing PR for Apple

    Aug 14th, 2016 - Category: Communication

    A recent post about the Cloud Computing company, Digital Ocean, got me thinking about what makes certain corporations superstars in their industry. It seems to be an elusive combination of outstanding products that add value to peoples’ lives and great communication about those products. Cameron Craig highlights his five most important communication lessons in the Harvard Business Review article, “What I Learned From 10 Years of Doing PR for Apple.”

  • Monthly Recap: The Hard Work (and Love) Behind An Instant Success

    Aug 1st, 2016 - Category: Communication

    This month’s posts covered a wide range of topics.

  • Monthly Recap: Geniuses Yesterday and Today

    Jul 1st, 2016 - Category: Communication

    With Apple flying high these days, many people do not realize that they have changed the world more than once. Apple was my first computer so when it’s 39th anniversary was celebrated last month, it inspired me to write the post, “39 Years Later Retro Hackers Still Honor the Apple II.” I remember hanging out in the library with a friend trying to decipher Apple’s floppy disk drive controller code. Even back then, the towering genius of software developers was apparent. That post is both a tribute to Apple’s first computer designed for the masses and the modern hackers who preserve its historically important software.

  • Monthly Recap: Storytelling and Making Up True Stories

    May 28th, 2016 - Category: Communication

    All of May’s posts featured the word ‘Storytelling’ in the title and I’m beginning to dislike the choice. It rarely sounds good in a corporate environment so it gets translated as “silver bullets, talking points, key takeaways, core competencies” and many other corporate-speak phrases. My primary goal when creating and delivering training programs is providing the right type and amount of information to maximize learning and understanding. What happens next is a bit of magic where people translate that information into an internal story about the product. There are many fancy names for this including Cognitivism, Constructivism, and Transformative learning theories, but at its core, it is storytelling. Salespeople are especially good at this. When there is a good fit between their product and a customer’s problem, they spontaneously create compelling stories illustrating the connection in real time. Of course, this is a gross simplification, great salespeople are great listeners and questioners first, but the result of this process is still a story.

  • Part 3 - Apple and Google are Not Doomed - The Dangers of Negative Storytelling

    May 25th, 2016 - Category: Communication

    Part 2 ended with the “Confusement” surrounding Google’s new product names. ”Allo, Duo, Fi, Fiber, Hangouts, etc.” all seem to be part of a bizarre parallel universe that sometimes works together and sometimes does not. Despite the similarities in name, mobile phone service from Google Fi doesn’t work with home phone service from Google Fiber. On the positive side, AI is the darling at Google these days and why not? AI’s application to self driving cars, less inbox spam, and better web search leads to great articles like, “A Lesson from Sundar Pichai on Leading the Way into the Future.” They go a long way to bolstering Google’s image between actual product releases. It’s just important to keep in mind that all of these efforts are focused on insuring that Google does not lose control of that all important link (pun intended) to advertising revenue generated by people using Google to search the web.

  • Part 2 - Google Is Doomed - The Dangers of Negative Storytelling

    May 24th, 2016 - Category: Communication

    Part 1 ended with the comment that “the truth does not make great, clicky sticky, headlines.” After writing this post, even more articles were published relating to Arment’s post. Here’s a fun comic strip on the topic: “Comic: Doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t.” John Gruber chimed in with his comments in “Marco Arment on Apple and AI” by simply stating “But I’m not sure I accept the premise that the rise of AI assistants will decrease in any way our desire for devices with screens.” I agree. I use Siri constantly, but look at a screen for the response. Who wants an AI to read them an entire Wikipedia article? Finally, Mac Observer commented on one of the leading Apple fear mongers with his post, “Rob Enderle Calls Apple Desperate.” He rightfully observes that “Firstly, desperate companies seldom make big, bold bets… Desperate companies do things like cut back hours, lay off employees, reduce wages and benefits, raise prices…” This is clearly the exact opposite of what Apple is doing.

  • Part 1 - Apple Is Doomed - The Dangers of Negative Storytelling

    May 23rd, 2016 - Category: Communication

    Boy Who Cried Wolf Wasn’t it temping to click on this headline to hear yet another reason why? It’s also why there are so many negative articles about Apple these days. It gets people to click, which displays ads, which publishers sell, which people click on, which companies track, which results in mountains of money for Google, and more ads. The advertising equivalent of the circle of life. Yes, it gets people to look, but as Aesop pointed out in his fable 2,500 years ago, there is a danger to crying wolf. Do it enough and people will eventually ignore you.

  • Storytelling: Pixar and International Science Fairs

    May 12th, 2016 - Category: Communication

    “These are stories for everyone. Fathers, mothers, teenagers, children, anyone with a beating heart and a hunger for great storytelling.” This quote comes from a video shared by Jason Kottke in the post “Pixar’s approach to storytelling.” The video itself was created by the video essayist, Captain Kristian who explores one of Pixar’s 22 rules for storytelling: ”Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.” It beautifully illustrates the point that great storytelling is at the heart of the human experience. From technology to friendship to compassion, telling a story is an art worth developing.