Ishmael's Corner

Apple Dumps Macworld

Lou Hoffman — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:35:51 +0000

Apple’s decision to pull out of Macworld is a little like Simon Cowell taking a pass on “American Idol.” Sure, the show will go on, but in what form?

Naturally, the news caused a stir in the blogosphere, with one of the better posts coming from Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Fortune.

Although unlike Elmer-DeWitt, I don’t view Apple’s rationalization as “plausible”:

“Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week …”

Let me get this straight.

Macworld was nothing more than a vehicle for Apple to hand out sales literature and up-sell Apple Nation?

C’mon.

Macworld was never about “reaching more people.”

Macworld was the one time each year that Apple bonded with its customers with enough emotion to upstage Dr. Phil.

And the thrust of this emotion came from the master of storytelling himself, Mr. Jobs. Look at any of his performances from the Macworld pulpit on YouTube, such as the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. (Has anyone got more mileage out of the black mock turtleneck look?)

This man knows how to sit around the campfire and tell a story. By the time the curtain came down at Macworld, Steve Jobs had rekindled the audience’s care for all things Apple for another year and pushed their bad thoughts about premium pricing to the background.

While I’ve never jumped on the Apple bandwagon - I used to have an iPod but my son’s iPod broke, he snagged mine, and before I knew it my 8 gigs was filled with the likes of NOFX, Dirty Little Monkey and Dropkick Murphys - I do periodically check out their retail stores. A few of the salespeople have got the religion, but the venue doesn’t exactly lend itself to storytelling.

Furthermore, Apple has decided to roll out senior VP Philip Schiller to handle the company’s last keynote at Macworld ‘09. Now there’s a fun assignment. Talk about drawing the short straw.

It could be that Schiller is a fine speaker. It could be that he even has stage presence.

But he isn’t Steve Jobs and that perhaps is the message from the Apple.

For whatever reason, Steve Jobs won’t be performing a Macworld keynote again. And without the brimstone and hellfire, there’s no point in Apple taking measurements for another booth in 2010.

The Engima of Business Journalism, The Economist

Lou Hoffman — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:10:41 +0000

Cloaked with a veneer of secrecy that leaves readers to wonder “Who the hell wrote that article?” The Economist takes pride in baffling the garden-variety PR person.

Its editorial decisions can at times seem quirky for the sake of being quirky. I mean, do we really need 499 words devoted to ornithology and a bio-acoustic monitor that can distinguish the chirps from 110,000 species of birds from the hiss of a snake?

Yet, contrary to popular belief, this is not some niche publication only serving the British intellectualazzi. Its readership tips 1.3 million with about half of those copies ending up on American doorsteps.

For this very reason, when we supported the announcement of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk a few years ago, we zeroed in on The Economist to tell the in-depth story. It didn’t hurt that our homework revealed that Economist technology editor Tom Standage had penned a book that also took liberties with the same topic, “The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine.”

But more than serendipity, our continued success with The Economist comes down to building the right content that aligns with the book’s approach to storytelling. I touched on the importance of anecdotes using one example from The Economist back in July.

Taking this a step further, we analyzed the tech-related articles (list of articles included at the end of this post) in The Economist, covering the April through November 2008 issues.

Seventeen percent of the content fell under the anecdotal umbrella.

It just goes to show that even high-brow business journalism depends on the amusing, provocative or downright weird to keep the reader’s interest.

Economist Articles Analyzed:

Green iron

November 14, 2008

Moving images into the future

November 5, 2008

A stitch whose time has come

October 29, 2008

A really secret ballot

October 22, 2008

Spinning a good tale

October 15, 2008

Bug-busting

October 8, 2008

An order for disorder

October 1, 2008

Silence, please

September 24, 2008

Spot prices

September 17, 2008

Thanks for the memory

September 10, 2008

September 2, 2008

August 27, 2008

August 20, 2008

August 12, 2008

August 5, 2008

July 30, 2008

July 23, 2008

July 16, 2008

July 9, 2008

July 2, 2008

June 18, 2008

June 11, 2008

June 4, 2008

The FAST track to better health

May 28, 2008

Enlightenment at last

May 21, 2008

Cores of the problem

May 14, 2008

Blowing at sea

May 7, 2008

Detecting T-rays

April 30, 2008

When Competing News Helps Your Story

Lou Hoffman — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:49:33 +0000

Everyone recognizes the benefit of steering clear of major media events when making an announcement.

It’s safe to say that January 20 is not the time to roll out a new line of laptop computers.

But there are scenarios when news relevant to your story hitting in roughly the same timeframe works to your advantage.

Take the well-crafted story by BusinessWeek’s Steve Hamm, titled “Making Computers Based on the Human Brain.” The story kicks off with the classic BW anecdote:

When Lloyd Watts was growing up in Kingston, Ont., in the 1970s he had a knack for listening to songs by Billy Joel and Elton John and plunking out the melodies on the family piano. But he wondered, wouldn’t it be great to have a machine that could “listen” to songs and immediately transcribe them into musical notation? Watts never built the gizmo, but his decades-long quest to engineer such a machine has finally resulted in one of the first commercial technologies based on the biology of the brain.

Hamm goes on to explain that a startup venture called Audience has created a chip that’s somewhat sensory.

Here’s the rub: The story also features the Pentagon’s DARPA passing $4.9 mil IBM’s way to fund research on building intelligence into computers and Jeff Hawkins of Palm Pilot fame striving for software that takes on the characteristics of the cerebral cortex.

I’m sure Audience wasn’t thrilled at sharing the stage.

Yet, the serendipity that landed all three vignettes on Hamm’s desk at roughly the same time provided the collective heft that enabled the piece to run in the print edition.

Otherwise, the piece maybe makes the online version.

MIT Takes on Quantum Physics, RFID … and Storytelling

Lou Hoffman — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:56:04 +0000

The brainiacs behind electronic paper, the $99 computer and making money at blackjack have decided to take on new terrain: Storytelling.

The MIT Media Laboratory recently created what they’re calling the Center for Future Storytelling.

Demonstrating the science behind the power of storytelling can only advance the cause, even if it’s from a technical bent:

By applying leading-edge technologies to make stories more interactive, improvisational and social, researchers will seek to transform audiences into active participants in the storytelling process, bridging the real and virtual worlds, and allowing everyone to make their own unique stories with user-generated content on the Web. Center research will also focus on ways to revolutionize imaging and display technologies, including developing next-generation cameras and programmable studios, making movie production more versatile and economic.

While I’m dubious of the concept of transforming user-generated content into stories, one can’t argue with the meshing of storytelling and the Web 2.0 world.

Frank Moss, the Media Lab director who will spearhead the effort, states in the official MIT announcement that “storytelling is at the very root of what makes us uniquely human.”

Good stuff, but Frank goes on pontificating:

But how we tell our stories depends on another uniquely human characteristic — our ability to invent and harness technology. From the printing press to the Internet, technology has given people new ways to tell their stories, allowing them to reach new levels of creativity and personal fulfillment.

Huh?

Technology provides terrific vehicles to package and deliver stories. But calling the ability to invent and harness technology as “another uniquely human characteristic” is like saying the dialog on Captain Kangaroo paid homage to Shakespeare.

I suppose you can’t blame MIT for plugging its sponsor, Plymouth Rock Studios, which threw $25 mil into the kitty.

Still, it’s tough to be optimistic about an undertaking that believes technology will reinvent the movies (their words not mine).

Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization

Lou Hoffman — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:24:11 +0000

The Media Management Center at Northwestern University recently came out with a report called “Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organizations“.

The introduction scopes the report’s objective:

Advances in technology continue to spur great innovation in media — especially in the news industry. At the same time, these rapid-fire innovations have upended the ways in which news is gathered and distributed and threaten the financial core of the news business. This study seeks to identify technology trends that will have an important impact on the future of news reporting and delivery in the near term. Like a scout surveying the frontier ahead, this report also explores technologies to come and recommends ways news organizations can prepare themselves for ongoing and impending change.

While I can’t say the 92-page tomb is an easy read the recommendations around six capabilities that news organizations must build or strengthen to compete in the changing media landscape did catch my attention.

Lo and behold one of the six capabilities captured is “The Complete Storyteller.”

I think we can all agree that the ”Incomplete Storyteller” is not the way to go.

When Business Leaders Show Humanity

Lou Hoffman — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:26:09 +0000

The recent BusinessWeek piece titled “BitTorrent’s Bram Coen Isn’t Limited by Asperger’s” got my attention.

The inventor of the technology that brought digital movie sharing into the mainstream let the world know he suffers from Asperger’s syndrome.

The painfully honest profile intersperses good, bad and not-so-pretty elements:

“For Cohen, this has been a fraught journey into the sometimes bewildering world of the office. The social conventions that ease everyday interactions can still elude him. He doesn’t like to shake hands or wear shoes or make small talk. He often plays with a Rubik’s Cube. Sometimes when he is outraged, or more often when he is fatigued, he bursts forth with unwelcome candor. He can be oblivious, lecturing on solar cells or economic theory or euphemisms until someone stops him.”

Obviously, this vignette does not come from Cohen’s official bio, but he calls the overall story a “fairly reasonable portrayal” on his blog - albeit with too much emphasis on the Asperger’s angle.

I give credit to BitTorrent for providing BusinessWeek with no-rules access to Cohen, knowing that unflattering elements would inevitably surface (although the fact that the fired brother didn’t return the reporter’s calls was probably a good thing).

The payoff comes in the form of an honest look at the founder which ultimately humanizes the company.

Would BusinessWeek have devoted so many column inches to retell the story of yet another youngster gifted in mathematics challenging the establishment a la Napster?

There’s no way. But by setting the stage with Asperger’s as well as gaining perspective from those around him, BW gains the type of fodder that makes for good storytelling:

Then there was Bram himself. He could be disruptive. He likes to talk and play with his puzzles. “We have to keep him contained so others can work,” says Navin. “New employees didn’t know they could tell him they had to get back to work.” And his overly blunt but rarely ill-intentioned comments didn’t always go over well. Ivy Hsu, the office manager, was the first person Cohen and Navin hired. One day Cohen said to her: “I don’t understand the point of being detail-oriented. Only the dumb people in this world focus on small details.” Hsu has since learned how to deal with him. “You have to communicate according to the rules he understands,” she says. “You can cut him off, you can walk away. There is no point in sugarcoating things, because if you do, he may miss the whole point.

Obviously, the BusinessWeek reporter also sniffed out some discord between Cohen and the CEO at the time:

The executive BitTorrent hired is Doug Walker, who had led graphics software company Alias Technology in Toronto. He is circumspect when it comes to Cohen but does say: “You’re always going to have an honest conversation with Bram. To me that’s fair, even if you may not always like it.”

I say “CEO at the time,” since the company just named Erick Klinker as the new CEO.

Obama’s Infomercial Offers Lesson in Storytelling

Lou Hoffman — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:08:12 +0000

I tend to associate infomercials with Ginsu knives and historical videos on World War II.

Obviously, the Barack Obama infomercial that aired last month was not in the order-now-and-get-free-shipping genre.

Putting politics aside, the video comes across as a powerful communications vehicle.

How can you go wrong with world-class production quality, panoramic views of “amber waves of grain” and Mr. Obama’s gift for oratory?

Yet, the element that creates the drama and a true sense of storytelling comes from the people vignettes. That’s what really pulls the viewer through the 30 minutes to hear Mr. Obama explain “why me.”

As a quick aside, B&O Railroad should especially resonate with baby boomers from their Monopoly-playing days.

What politicians know both intuitively and from reams of hard data continues to elude technology companies: The most compelling stories revolve around people.

Before Wall Street Journal reporter Vauhini Vara returned to campus life at the University of Iowa, she shared the following insight during an SWMS interview:

“There is a tendency here and elsewhere to focus on companies that have consumer implications. Pitch stories about interesting approaches in management, or changes that took place in the industry that had an impact how the organization has to move. That allows us to write about people, rather than just sort of writing dryly about technology.”

As even business publications such as The Wall Street Journal strive to bring an entertainment quality to their content, they’ve figured out that the quest for drama starts with people.

Oprah: Heartfelt Storyteller or Paid Shill?

Lou Hoffman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:07:43 +0000

Oprah is a good storyteller who’s even better at facilitating a story.

More than any single element, Oprah has turned tapping into the emotional reservoir of her viewing audience into an art form.

That’s why when Oprah came forward on Friday and proclaimed Amazon’s Kindle (e-reader) as life-changing people paid attention.

In fact, Oprah’s revelation created more noise in the blogosphere than any activity orchestrated by Amazon’s marketing department over the past three months.

Yet, this was hardly a heartfelt moment. Amazon paid for the product placement on Oprah’s show. It’s really no different than BMW cutting a check for one of its cars to appear in a chase scene in a 007 movie, only in this case Amazon got two for the price of one (Kindle + Bezos show appearance).

Last month I addressed whether a good story by definition needs to be authentic, making the observation that you need to be who you say you are (Stephen Hawking I’m not). Oprah certainly passes this test. That was definitely Oprah touting the Kindle.

Giving Oprah the benefit of the doubt, the story starts out authentic and heartfelt. She received a Kindle as a gift and it changed her life. Wonderful. Everyone should be so lucky as to have their lives changed by an e-reader in these economic times.

But why is it that Oprah didn’t go public with her revelation until Oct. 24?

In a word, money - nicely timed to build momentum into the holiday buying season.

Does the fact that Amazon put a few dollars - OK, more than few - into Oprah’s wallet lessen the power of the story?

If the tears from the audience when they got word that the grab bag would be a Kindle are any indication, the answer is no.

Warren Buffet Tells a Good Story

Lou Hoffman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:12:54 +0000

It’s not enough that Warren Buffet has generated a net worth of around $62 billion, making him one of the richest men in the world.

He’s also a world-class storyteller. (If it makes you feel any better, at least he’s not handsome.)

With Warren Buffet in the spotlight for rescuing Goldman Sachs with a $5 billion infusion, lending his wisdom on the economic turmoil, and talk of landing the Secretary of the Treasury gig, I thought the timing was right to revisit his other gift.

No question, Warren - I’m adopting his propensity for down-home casual - knows how to turn a phrase. Referring to derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction” serves as exhibit A.

But to say that Warren has honed the art of a sound bite sells him short.

This is a guy who knows how to tell a story and effectively apply the technique to the business world as illustrated in his annual letter to shareholders. Yes, the letters contain the facts and figures behind Berkshire Hathaway’s financial performance, but they also bring an element of levity to the equation.

One of my favorite passages appeared in his 2006 shareholders letter:

To add to the Sunday fun Ariel Hsing will play table tennis (ping pong to the uninitiated) from 1 pm to 4 pm against anyone brave enough to take her on. Ariel, though only 11, is ranked number one among girls under 16 in the U.S. I played Ariel, then 9, thinking I would take it easy on her so as not to crush her young spirit. Instead she crushed me …

Self deprecation plays in Peoria.

That same 2006 document shows off Warren’s gift for narrative as he pays homage to friend and fellow investor Walter Schloss:

Let me end this section by telling you about one of the good guys of Wall Street, my long-time friend Walter Schloss, who last year turned 90. From 1956 to 2002, Walter managed a remarkably successful investment partnership, from which he took not a dime unless his investors made money. My admiration for Walter, it should be noted, is not based on hindsight. A full fifty years ago, Walter was my sole recommendation to a St. Louis family who wanted an honest and able investment manager.

Walter did not go to business school, or for that matter, college. His office contained one file cabinet in 1956; the number mushroomed to four by 2002. Walter worked without a secretary, clerk or bookkeeper, his only associate being his son, Edwin, a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts. Walter and Edwin never came within a mile of inside information. Indeed, they used “outside” information only sparingly, generally selecting securities by certain simple statistical methods Walter learned while working for Ben Graham. When Walter and Edwin were asked in 1989 by Outstanding Investors Digest, “How would you summarize your approach?” Edwin replied, “We try to buy stocks cheap.” So much for Modern Portfolio Theory, technical analysis, macroeconomic thoughts and complex algorithms.

Following a strategy that involved no real risk – defined as permanent loss of capital – Walter produced results over his 47 partnership years that dramatically surpassed those of the S&P 500. It’s particularly noteworthy that he built this record by investing in about 1,000 securities, mostly of a lackluster type. A few big winners did not account for his success. It’s safe to say that had millions of investment managers made trades by a) drawing stock names from a hat; b) purchasing these stocks in comparable amounts when Walter made a purchase; and then c) selling when Walter sold his pick, the luckiest of them would not have come close to equaling his record. There is simply no possibility that what Walter achieved over 47 years was due to chance.

I first publicly discussed Walter’s remarkable record in 1984. At that time “efficient market theory” (EMT) was the centerpiece of investment instruction at most major business schools. This theory, as then most commonly taught, held that the price of any stock at any moment is not demonstrably mispriced, which means that no investor can be expected to overperform the stock market averages using only publicly-available information (though some will do so by luck). When I talked about Walter 23 years ago, his record forcefully contradicted this dogma.

And what did members of the academic community do when they were exposed to this new and important evidence? Unfortunately, they reacted in all-too-human fashion: Rather than opening their minds, they closed their eyes. To my knowledge no business school teaching EMT made any attempt to study Walter’s performance and what it meant for the school’s cherished theory.

Instead, the faculties of the schools went merrily on their way presenting EMT as having the certainty of scripture. Typically, a finance instructor who had the nerve to question EMT had about as much chance of major promotion as Galileo had of being named Pope.

Tens of thousands of students were therefore sent out into life believing that on every day the price of every stock was “right” (or, more accurately, not demonstrably wrong) and that attempts to evaluate businesses – that is, stocks – were useless. Walter meanwhile went on overperforming, his job made easier by the misguided instructions that had been given to those young minds. After all, if you are in the shipping business, it’s helpful to have all of your potential competitors be taught that the earth is flat.

Maybe it was a good thing for his investors that Walter didn’t go to college.

Classic storytelling.

He builds both context and empathy for the main character. The drama comes in academia refusing to consider that there might be “life” beyond efficient market theory (EMT). Humor is woven throughout the story. And you don’t need to be a numbers jockey to appreciate the benefits of an open mind.

The same mentality comes out when Warren verbally articulated his views in a recent interview on the “Charlie Rose” show. (Thanks to my college fraternity buddy Jim Engle for passing that along.)

He’s definitely figured out a conversational tone trumps striving for the smartest-kid-in-the-class crown.

The Evolution Of The Tiny Story

Lou Hoffman — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:17:51 +0000

If you ask people what’s the one digital device they absolutely can’t live without, the mobile phone comes out as the clear leader.

That’s why you have industry heavyweights like Google’s Eric Schmidt calling mobile advertising the single most exciting opportunity for the do-no-evil guys as far back as 2006 (The Wall Street Journal).

It also explains the strategic importance of the Android platform for Google. Mobile search and the ads that come along for the ride will be a massive market.

While predicting the size of such an embryonic market is a little like Mrs. Magellan asking how many lunches to pack, this hasn’t stopped the prognosticators from taking a shot. Industry analyst firm Informa, for example, forecasts annual expenditure on mobile advertising reaching the $11.4 billion mark by 2011.

Whether you buy this number or not, the point is that people are increasingly turning to the phone for content … which brings us storytelling on the “small screen.”

Rudy De Waele’s blog called Mobile Media Lifestyle looks at this very topic. In fact, De Waele delivered a presentation called Mobile Digital Storytelling in Seoul last week (appreciate Kathrin Eiben in Spain flagging it) that even touches on the tools emerging for packaging a story for display on mobile phones.

Obviously, a tiny screen puts a premium on the visual element.

You can check out the early days of visual storytelling on Flickr via its “tell a story in five frames” initiative, which offers the following guidance:

Guidelines are not rules, but a formula that can be used to suit your creative imagination. Several avenues exist for story telling, such as journalistic reporting, sequential photos that reveal a moment, photographic poetry, and narrative. The following guidelines are for narrative.

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. Fortunately a lot of information can be given in a single photograph, enhancing the limitations of five photographs for your story. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination. Keep standards of pictorial beauty, but pack as many storytelling elements in one photograph as possible to develop an action.

1st photo: establish characters and location.

2nd photo: create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.

3rd photo: involve the characters in the situation.

4th photo: build to probable outcomes

5th photo: have a logical, but surprising, end.

Like any form of storytelling, drama keeps an audience engaged.