Tag: work
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Encore Gig : Camperforce
Migrant workers in 2017 now work for Amazon and live out of an RV. The Guardian reports that older workers, unable to afford rising rent and medical expenses, hit the road to work at Amazon distribution centers in exchange for a place to park their RV and water, sewage and electrical hookups. They call them…
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Getting the Band Together Again at SmartNews
Following a month off after my unexpected liberation from Gigaom, I started this week as Director of Media & Technology Partnerships at SmartNews. I feel very fortunate to have discovered this company at a time when I believe I have a lot to offer. First, some recent coverage, While researching the company, I was delighted to…
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I no longer have a role at Gigaom
Last week certainly was interesting. On Wednesday morning I was abruptly informed that, along with my VP and two engineers, that our services were no longer needed at Gigaom. While unravelling my personal social profiles from the various company pages I had set up for Gigaom, it was Facebook’s robotic bit of micro-copy that really brought it…
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Robot underlords
In 15 minutes, CPG Grey’s Humans Need Not Apply paints a bleak picture for anyone who thinks that the coming robot revolution will free everyone up for more creative pursuits. Trouble is, poetry and painting don’t pay the rent. Transportation, driving things & people from point A to point B employs millions of people today.…
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Matt, meet Andy
I love hyperbolic prose. Especially when it’s used to sell something. Better yet when it’s pitching you or something you do. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune is hiring and Matthew Doig penned what is perhaps the all-time best Want Ad ever. It reads more like a call to arms than a job spec. We want to add some…
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Peaks and Valleys
There’s a great post over on TechCrunch about what it’s like to be a startup entrepreneur by Mark Suster with the usual, quick checklist of necessary qualities and caveats of what is in store for anyone that’s thinking of going down such a path. Checklists are good but nothing gives you a sense of what…
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Soylent, the macro made of people
More on this question of crowdsourced writing, (plugging wet-ware into software) comes Soylent, (yes, it’s made of people) a research project which has written a add-in to Microsoft Word. Hooked into Amazon Mechanical Turk, this project offers three services: Shortn – trim document length without changing meaning Crowdproof – distributed human proof-reading The Human Macro –…
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User-Driven Development
It’s one thing to put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers and think about how to solve their pain points but it’s entirely something else to pretend that this product already exists and think about how you would market it. This is the approach at Amazon and I think it’s quite effective. It’s…
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Less Powerpoint, More Prototypes
I’m a big believer in hacking together a working prototype to demonstrate product ideas. Powerpoint mocks basically put a shiny gloss on a paper sketch and because it’s not real, generate endless debate where no one is really speaking on authority because the product doesn’t exist. Once you have a prototype the debate becomes substantive. …