Jan. 30 2010

Dunbar's number

…a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.  These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.  Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group.  No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.

furthermore.  you’ve got thousands of people who follow you on twitter?  here’s a sticker.

i used to hate math as a kid but i like it a lot more in the business world because i can count on one hand the people who understand the connection between behavior and action.

crying that no one clicked on your link?  well, literally, no one gives a shit.

Jan. 28 2010

The wrong business model?

Delivering immediate effect might not be the best business model for designing long-term valuable marketing initiatives.
…

There is a need for long term marketing initiatives; digital concepts and ideas need to carry the longevity of product relationships. Which also implies a different way of measuring value. (What are the metrics identifying the value of a relationship? Are they the same as used for our ability to traffic people back and forth from, and around in, cyberspace?)

Jan. 19 2010

You never master it, I don’t care how many lifetimes, and that’s the beauty of it. You see, that’s the slippery slope, where people say “master this”—there’s no master; you’re in a relationship with something. That’s what’s really beautiful about it, it’s always bigger than you. It needs you, you need it. There’s no difference in any relationship. There’s no mastering of it—you engage. You engage with it on a daily level. Take pizza, we have our objective, our intention, our medium. Our cooking medium, what we’re able to work with: flour, water, condition, time, audience and what their expectations are, and what’s our intention—and really being clear with that intention—and serving that intention and staying focused on it. It’s very similar to music or sports in that way, where you stay focused on your mission and know that you might get better at something, but the minute you believe you’ve mastered it, it’ll show you who’s boss. I’ve had a beautiful relationship with flour, water, yeast, salt and the human experience.
Chris Bianco

Feb. 19 2009

News as a hook for context

I’m not arguing that news organizations should create repositories of useless topics in the hope that one day some calamity will make those topics relevant. I’m saying journalists should ask themselves what’s most important for their communities to know, and cover it diligently. Not with the expectation that the coverage will draw an instant wave of traffic, but with the understanding that if it’s truly important, it will spark enough relevant news to draw a significant audience over time. And the more of that context we lay out, the more relevant we can be at any given moment. This is how we’ll begin to build relationships that matter with our communities.

preach it, brother.

Jan. 08 2009

The optimal relational field is one that has the potential to foster enduring authentic relationships. It is defined by clarity and a balance between a control and freedom dialectic. Clarity implies that the rules of the field are understandable and contingent. That is, the participants get the rules and sense that there is an internal fairness to them.
Phil Pearlman - Twitter and the Relational Field (via fred-wilson)

5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss

The idea of time management only matters in relation to how important the stuff is that’s competing for your time.
interesting point-of-view.