discovered: just a minute

Imagine the following - you need to speak for 60 seconds straight without repeating yourself, pausing, or going off-topic.

Now imagine there are three smart people next to you who will interrupt you the second you screw up because they want to prove that they are better at this trick than you are, and they're keeping score.

Now imaging doing this for a live radio audience.

And finally, imagine that this has been going on for 40 years.

I discovered Just a Minute (a.k.a. JAM) this weekend. JAM is a (mostly) weekly BBC radio "programme" hosted by Nicholas Parsons featuring four witty, competitive panelists in the best British radio tradition. If you're the sort of person who values the skill of speaking extemporaneously, it'll definitely ring your bell.

Nearly all of the shows aired over the last 40 years are archived in MP3 files that you can access via a dedicated Yahoo group. There are also numerous fan sites and blogs dedicated to the show. The gnomes of Wikipedia have done a nice job of summarizing the show and its history.

It's very difficult to speak for any length of time "without repetition, hesitation or deviation". But it's very funny to listen to what happens when people try.

Visit the Yahoo group and listen to a random episode, or if you prefer, let me know and I'll see if I can make an episode available here. It's brilliant.

list: 20 materials not to use when making toys

To help our product management colleagues in the toy business, I've prepared this handy list that can be dropped into any design specification or requirements document destined for use by an overseas manufacturing subsidiary, partner or contractor:

Unless enumerated explicitly elsewhere in this document and accompanied by a separate waiver, the specified toy shall not under any circumstance include undocumented use of the following materials or coatings :

1. Lead
2. Kerosene
3. Kryptonite
4. Gypsy Tears
5. "Mammalian excreta"
6. Radium
7. AIDS
8. Ant venom
9. Blue ice
10. Plutonium
11. Organs (fresh or dried)
12. Formica
13. White Zinfandel
14. Asbestos
15. Red Dye #3
16. Love Potion #9
17. Sizzlean
18. Tree Brain Fungus
19. Cicadas, Live
20. Roundup^®

(If you have some items you'd add to this list, by all means, let me know. You'll be helping our toy-making friends from certain future harm.)

cigar: tatuaje havana iv angeles

Beautiful Saturdays in autumn cry out for lighting things on fire. And what better to burn than a lovely cigar, wot wot?

Exactly.

My local Binny's has a terrific walk-in humidor staffed by an equally terrific guy who really knows his cigars. He tells me what's new, what's good, what's selling well and what to avoid.

Today's discovery was Tatuaje Cigars. I picked up one of these:


This little corona just feels well-made, with a triple-cap that you don't usually see on non-Cuban cigars. It certainly smells great, a dark, leathery scent that bodes well for an evening smoke after dinner.

I'll update you later on what it's like. I paid less than $5 for it, which is about right for me for a "special" cigar. Like wine, I don't splurge, which is probably another way of saying "I don't know what good really is". As a rule I try not to blindly associate price with quality.

We'll see. Enjoy your Saturday. And if you're an occasional cigar smoker, let me know what you like.

mattel: product management at fault (updated)

(Update: Holy Fong, it looks like a Mattel product manager commented on this post - see below)

The New York Times is reporting that "U.S.-based toy giant Mattel Inc. issued an extraordinary apology to China on Friday over the recall of Chinese-made toys, taking the blame for design flaws and saying it had recalled more lead-tainted toys than justified."

BBC News adds that "Thomas Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, said on Friday that the firm should shoulder the burden of responsibility for the safety breaches."

When I wrote about kerosene-filled eyeball toys back in June, I mentioned I wanted to meet the product manager who got approval for the decision to specify kerosene for the product. The point of that little bit of flippant irony was that the so-called "decision" to use kerosene was a sin of omission on the part of the product manager, not a sin of commission. The same for the use of lead. My bet is that they didn't specify not using kerosene or lead in those toys, or at least they didn't do it with an enforcement clause. The rest is, sadly, history.

Sad because Mattel has now confirmed what I had only joked about - that they left key requirements out of their toy designs and review processes that would have (perhaps) prevented this incident from ballooning into what it has become.

Want proof? We can't get it, because we can't get access to the Mattel product requirements. But if we could, we'd start by looking through them to find something like "the system shall not employ toxic materials for any coating or other user-accessible interface where those toxic materials are present at a level known to present a health risk to the user as defined by the following US Government safety specifications." Then we'd look for some sort of proof that the supplier/contractor whose job it was to execute these designs had a) read and b) agreed to them in their final state.

Hmm.

Essentially Mattel has admitted today that the toys that were recalled met their design specifications. A massive international incident between global powers, a spike in holiday toy prices and the lives of individuals can (in a sad reductum ad absurdum exercise) be boiled down to a product management failure.

More generically, it can be boiled down to bad requirements.

Product managers, beware.

UPDATE 1 - Not surprisingly, the Chinese agree, as do some Canadians:

According to a survey conducted by Canadian experts released early this month, up to 76 percent of the total 550 recall incidents since 1988 were due to the design flaws.

However, the inappropriate and one-sided expression of some news stories, such as "Mattel recalls Chinese-made toys," apparently caused the misunderstanding of the incident and blemished the image of Chinese-made products.

Although some of the toys with potential safety problems were made in China, design flaws rather than manufacturing errors have been the root cause of the problems. And the corresponding brand owners are thus to blame.

wondering: on wreath-laying (updated)

CNN is reporting that "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that he won't push to visit the site of the destroyed World Trade Center during his visit to the United Nations next week."

Digg is "reporting" that the Iranian President will in fact visit the site of the destroyed World Trade Center. FYI, as of 10:45pm CST, this story has 801 Diggs and 394 comments, some of which make for very interesting reading.

It makes me wonder. Because I think laying a wreath is an act of honor. The act honors those whose memory is being invoked as well as those who invoke that memory.

If the Iranian President visits Ground Zero, what will it mean to him?

Will he learn something of the magnitude of our loss? Of our resilience? Of our goodness?

Or will he be greeted by jeers and curses that will blind him to learning anything?

Is he even open to learning something about us? For that matter, are we?

As I said, it makes me wonder. I know I honor the memory of my friend who died six years ago in lower Manhattan. Am I comfortable with this man honoring my friend?

I'd like to be convinced, I really would.

The tears of the world are a constant quality. --- Samuel Beckett

UPDATE1: Hizzoner won't listen to Ahmadinejad (NYT)

UPDATE2: Read the transcript of the Sept. 20, 2007 interview by 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran, Iran.

A Digg reader called out this particular exchange - read it and tell me what you think.

PELLEY: What trait do you admire in President Bush?

AHMADINEJAD: Again, I have a very frank tone. I think that President Bush needs to correct his ways.

PELLEY: What do you admire about him?

AHMADEINEJAD: He should respect the American people.

PELLEY: Is there anything? Any trait?

AHMADINEJAD: As an American citizen, tell me what trait do you admire?

PELLEY: Well, Mr. Bush is, without question, a very religious man, for example, as you are. I wonder if there's anything that you've seen in President Bush that you admire.

AHMADEINEJAD: Well, is Mr. Bush a religious man?

PELLEY: Very much so. As you are.

AHMADEINEJAD: What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people? Please tell me. Does Christianity tell its followers to do that? Judaism, for that matter? Islam, for that matter? What prophet tells you to send 160,000 troops to another country, kill men, women, and children? You just can't wear your religion on your sleeve or just go to church. You should be truthfully religious. Religion tells us all that you should respect the property, the life of different people. Respect human rights. Love your fellow man. And once you hear that a person has been killed, you should be saddened. You shouldn't sit in a room, a dark room, and hatch plots. And because of your plots, many thousands of people are killed. Having said that, we respect the American people. And because of our respect for the American people, we respectfully talk with President Bush. We have a respectful tone. But having said that, I don't think that that is a good definition of religion. Religion is love for your fellow man, brotherhood, telling the truth.

subtitle: self-referential pomo haiku fun

I've changed the "subtitle" to ack/nak. If you've got a better idea, let me know.

on-again, off-again

SYLLABICATION: on-a·gain, off-a·gain

ADJECTIVE: Informal - Existing or continuing sporadically; intermittent or occasional: an on-again, off-again correspondence.

news: new bc voice-over available

I'm always happy to voice a demo, I'm even happier when it comes out well. So please have a look at the new Emmi Solutions demo (found here) and enjoy my VO stylings in the process. Voice-over career, here I come! Soon I shall do all my best work in my slippers.

transcription: a cautionary example

Consider this:

Q: Please explain cognitive therapy in 2 sentences

A: (Judith Beck) Cognitive therapy, as developed by my father Aaron Beck, is a comprehensive system of psychotherapy, based on the idea that the way people perceive their experience influences their emotional, behavioral, and physiological responses. Part of what we do is to help people solve the problems they are facing today. We also teach them cognitive and behavioral skills to modify their dysfunctional thinking and actions.

After counting sentences I realize that while Dr. Beck's failure to explain cognitive therapy in 2 sentences does not produce the very sort of dysfunctional thinking that cognitive therapy seeks to address, the fact that someone failed to either edit the response to 2 sentences or revise the question to ask for 3 sentences does create dysfunctional thinking. My addled brain screams for justice.

Either the individual being interviewed a) can't follow instructions, b) elected not to follow instructions, c) failed to edit the final transcription or d) wasn't given the chance to edit the final transcription and suffered from an editor who didn't care if she looked bad.

In any of the above cases the reader is at worst left with a Bad Impression of the individual being interviewed. At best, the reader senses sloppy editing.

When I go back and read some of the execrable spew I've had the misfortune to have spoken and the even greater misfortune to have had transcribed, I realized it might help to offer the following:

If you plan to transcribe and later publish what you're saying, for G-d's sake keep your sentences short, follow instructions, and if you're doing it internally, go over the transcript with a fine-toothed comb to pick out the sort of nits I discovered above. If a third party is doing the heavy lifting, only do the interview on the condition that you can review the transcript for "clear errors".

review: spaceman blues

Brian Francis Slattery's debut novel Spaceman Blues is a love letter to the New York I always dreamed of but which always seemed just out of reach.

Enjoy this terrific August 11 interview of Mr. Slattery by WNYC's Leonard Lopate:



The Amazon.com link above will lead you to an unusually breathless collection of pithy reviews, to which I'll add mine here:

Spaceman Blues is the sort of book that echoes inside of you and leaves you feeling both empty and exhilarated, wishing you could go back to the you who existed before you read the book so you could have the singular pleasure of reading it for the first time again and again.

Brian's page dedicated to Spaceman Blues can be found here, where you can read the first chapter, many of the same assorted breathless short reviews, and listen to the writer "rocking the book", ahem.

UPDATE1: Does anyone know why Harlan Ellison registered his name as a trademark, resulting in the requirement to display the small circled 'R' next to it? Just curious.



UPDATE2: Here is a longer and yet still breathless review. I'm not kidding, is it possible to write a non-breathless review of this book that you can still say in one breath? Let me try.

"This is a cool book about aliens and immigrants and people who love each other and science-fictiony stuff and a cult and two cops named Salmon and Trout and an underground city and some musicians and lots of death and even more life."

dylan: the ack/nak remix

Click here to enjoy.

hello: visitors from gfeller casemakers

I want to say thank you to Steve Derricott and all the nice people at Gfeller Casemakers for the ack/nak link they've graciously included on their page announcing their Moleskine covers.

Just as soon as my cover arrives I'll be sure to write up a review and post it here.

In advance of that, I invite my new visitors (and there are a gawd-awful lot of you) to poke around, enjoy, and feel free to drop me a line via the "Contact Me" link over in the middle column.

writing: 5 rules

Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint is one of many volumes in the Writers Digest "Elements of Fiction Writing" series. It's a hoot.

I mention it here because I know you - the world-weary journeyman product manager - secretly wish you were a writer.

Not just a "the system shall remove hair" and "the system shall not cause sudden onsets of itching where sudden is defined as an unexpected event with a rapid onset" kind of writer.

I mean. . . a real writer. Someone who imagines characters and writes of them and their viewpoints.

Of all the advice I've been given and/or heard on writing, the most frequent is to imagine your characters as well as you can and let them go.

In all fairness, I've also been told that:

1. The first draft of anything is s__t. (attributed to Hemmingway)
2. 90% of everything is crap. (attributed to Sturgeon)
3. You write like an addled radio announcer with ADD and Tourette's. (attributed to my wife)

All probably true.

To this I add the following 5 rules, because I am too damned lazy to come up with 10:

1. If you're going to be a writer, write. Do so every day like it is your job.

2. Set a word count deadline. The nanowrimo people taught me this and it really works.

3. Don't spend more time reading/talking/thinking about writing than you do actually writing.

4. Dare to suck. Put another way, dare to really, truly suck. You only get better by being truly awful first, and intermittently awful as well.

5. Don't talk about what you're writing about. Write it and then let people read it. Letting your creativity out away from the written page is a bit like letting the hot air out of your balloon before you take off.

I'll spare you a description of how I write (the pencil I use, the book I write in, the fez I wear, etc.)

I'll also spare you any sense that I know what I'm talking about - I've not sold a damn thing, but I sure as heck plan on selling something.

When I start my "50k in 30" clock, I'll probably have more to say. Refer to the nanowrimo link above for what that means.

Until then, start writing. It's good for you. And it keeps you fresh for your next round of "the system shall produce a hum with a frequency between 33 and 80 Hertz".

results: book quiz

You're Watership Down!

by Richard Adams

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you're actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You'd be recognized as such if you weren't always talking about talking rabbits.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

black art: funnel analysis

Do you know what the Sunshine Pump is? Sure you do, because you've had a conversation like this:

You: "How is your quarter going?"

Rep: (SET SUNSHINE_PUMP_STATUS=ON) "Great! I've got five big deals in the proposal phase, any one of which will make my quarter, and I can see a clear path to closing all five. Thanks for asking!" (SET SUNSHINE_PUMP_STATUS=OFF)

Thankfully, I don't get this these days. But in Years Past. . . I was on the receiving end of the Sunshine Pump on many an occasion.

It's one thing for sales to turn the Pump on for product management. It's entirely another for them to use it with sales. And something else entirely for sales management.

What do you do when you sense a Sunshine Pump in full operation?

On one hand, you may not know "how high the sunshine goes" in the organization, so challenging it may really threaten people, depending on who you talk to. On the other hand, if you don't challenge it, you become complicit in what amounts to professional negligence.

And no, I won't be happy with an answer of "it depends".

One sure-fire "cure" for the Pump is to engage in the black art of funnel analysis. When you have an understanding of how individual deals are flowing through the sales cycle you feel OK - but when you can talk about how Deals (with a big D) move from the earliest "identified" phase to the final "closed" or "lost" phase, you feel in control.

More on this later. I wonder how many PMs are expected to understand funnel math, much less participate in analysis of how and why deals move from phase to phase. It's pretty interesting actually.



UPDATE - In retrospect, when you ask a salesperson a glib question, odds are you'll get a glib answer. When I talk about the Sunshine Pump, what I'm referring to is a habit of individuals to only transmit good news whether that good news is truly good, only mildly good, of spurious goodness or actually non-good.

Currently playing in iTunes: Lizard Point by Brian Eno

triumph: first on google for. . .

Google "innovation man". Go ahead. I'll wait.

Today I had a few visitors here who did just that. And what did Our Alien Overlords present to them as the top reply, the primus inter pares of search results?

This little ditty on man-eating badgers in Basra.

Me auld mum would be so proud if she knew. Or cared.

settling in: my widget mix

Unless you're a neo-Luddite who refuses to modify any aspect of your computing environment beyond stock, you've got your favorite set of what I call "must-have widgets".

On the PC, my set includes things like Startdock's Objectdock, Grisoft's AVG and Catfood Software's Fortune Cookie program.

On the Mac, my set. . .

Well, I don't have much of a set. Yet.

I'm toying with things like Inquisitor, MarsEdit (which I'm using to write this post, thank you ack/nak reader for recommending it) and VLC.

Dashboard widgets don't count - even though I really like the Oblique Strategies widget.

What I'm looking for from all of you Mac-heads are recommendations for useful and/or essential utilities, widgets, Automator scripts, whatever you've found essential to kitting-out your Mac to make it truly yours.

And thanks.

segmentation: the iphone/ipod touch trap

As a product manager and a newly-converted Apple user, I'd like to complain about the shabby job Apple is doing segmenting their iPod product line at the high end - where the iPhone and iPod Touch overlap.

I Remember Way Back in June when Apple announced that the iPhone was the "best iPod ever". Hoo doggie, were they right. The iPhone towered over the then-current iPod line, which we could all agree was looking a wee bit long in the tooth.

Now zip merrily ahead to the early September launch of the latest iPod lineup and the following segmentation map:

• iPod Shuffle - makes sense for users who don't need/want any sort of visual UI and who don't need/want to carry around a large music library.
• iPod Nano - makes sense for users who need/want a visual UI and who don't need/want to carry around a large music library.
• iPod Classic - makes sense for users who need/want a visual UI and who need/want to carry around a large music library.

So far, so good. Note I've kept "want to watch videos" off the segmentation map so far. End the iPod line at this point and you're doing OK, even with the iPhone in the mix.

But here is where it starts to break down. If the high-end mix looked like the following, everything would be swell:

• iPod Touch - makes sense for users who need/want a visual UI and who need/want don't need/want to carry around a large music/video library.
• iPhone - makes sense for users who need/want a visual UI, who don't need/want to carry around a large music/video library and who need/want a phone.

Arranged like this the segmentation map would be OK.

But when you begin to mix and match any of the following to these devices:

1. Browser
2. YouTube
3. Calendar
4. Mail
5. Bluetooth
6. Wi-Fi
7. Remote access to iTunes Music Store
8. Clock
9. Calculator
10. Contacts

Everything starts to get messy, especially when you add the same feature to both devices at different (and hard to justify) levels of functionality (see below re: calendar).

In the end, you're faced with the following choices at the high-end:

• What makes the iPhone interesting is that it is a convergence device - but it only comes with AT&T service.
• What makes the iPod Touch interesting is that it is almost a convergence device - but it only comes with Wi-Fi, that all reasonable consumers realize could support a VOIP phone.

Both devices could reasonably be positioned as productivity devices. . . if both had equal support for Contacts, Calendar, Calculator, Clock, Mail and Browser.

But they don't have even support. You can't enter a new Calendar entry on the iPod Touch - even though you feel like you should. Over time other support differences will emerge.

By adding a few desirable features into iPod Touch, Apple is saying you need to choose between near identical devices - one which is a higher-priced device with a so-so phone plus productivity features and the other a lower-priced device with no phone and crippled productivity features.

Good segmentation would lead the buyer to a clear decision - a decision that Apple isn't helping them make. A muddy collection of features in near-identical devices makes for disgruntled consumers - especially when the feature set of the iPod Touch seems to be deteriorating day after day leading up to its availability.

In the end Apple is trapped - add too many features to the iPod Touch and it cuts into the iPhone. Leave some but not all features out of the iPod Touch and lose the buyer who has a phone but who wants an effective convergence device.

BTW - don't lecture me on market segmentation by crippling features - I know how that game works. Versioning is a decent thing, done correctly. My argument is that Apple hasn't versioned the iPod Touch and the iPhone correctly, and that's going to translate into unhappy customers.

Or worse, confused potential customers. Because confused potential consumers wait to purchase.

sigh: the crappy mac blogger post editor

I've got to admit, for all I'm enjoying my new Mac, there are a few things I'm not real keen on:

You can't find a good fortune cookie program that runs at startup.

You can't count on the Software Update feature to find applications that you've organized into sub-folders under the top-level Applications Folder.

iDVD won't start.  Yes, it's a known issue.

But the issue that bothers me most is the utterly crappy post editor that shows up when I access Blogger with Safari.

For G-d's sake, it won't even let you edit HTML.  No formatting beyond bold and italic.

It's enough to make me install Firefox just to test whether or not Google hates Safarai specifically, or Macs in general.

Stay tuned.  

hero: tim gunn

I'm 90% through the debut episode of Bravo's "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style" and all I can say is. . . is. . .

Well done.

As a fan of Project Runway and all things Vincent Libretti, I already knew a little about Mr. Gunn. I had a sense for his particular and occasionally peculiar take on fashion. I had seen him in "action", to the extent that the Project Runway editors allowed me to.

But I never got a full and unfiltered view of what I feel is his most compelling quality, the single quality that makes this show more "watchable" than similar shows (e.g. "What Not to Wear") and frankly even vaguely related shows (e.g. "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"). I never sensed the quality that makes me want to meet him.

Even filtered through the lens of television and hours of rigorous editing, there is no debating that this is a kind man.

Kindness is a trait that is hard as all hell to cultivate and even harder to emulate. Yes, this is a TV show. And yes, this is obviously a well-coached and clearly experienced individual.

But the kindness comes through. His essential compassion for his "subjects" is on display, and it illuminates the entire experience.

Being kind does not mean being soft, or disingenuous, or compromising. Honesty without judgment, without rancour or dissimilation, is hard if not impossible to simulate.

That said, it is a TV show. Perhaps it is the editors I have to thank. But I don't think so.

And so I say, well done, Mr. Gunn. You've captured my imagination, and in the best of all possible ways.