I generally begin working on a story in total ignorance, which I think is the ideal starting point for me, because only if you are truly ignorant can you ask the truly ignorant question. But I have only the foggiest idea of what the story is when I get started on it. And in fact, every story that I write, when I’m doing my reporting, I always come upon some information that completely destroys my concept for the story. I think I know what the story is, and then I interview one more person, or I come across a document, or I see a video, or something, some piece of information that tells me, you know what, I’m wrong, I don’t get this. The initial response that I have when that happens is “Oh god, I’m screwed now. I’ve just wasted my time. I don’t get this all. The story’s gone all to hell.” But on a few moments of reflection or sometimes waking up the next morning, inevitably, the realization is, “Wait a minute. No, this story just got better.” Because my understanding of it has deepened. I have a much broader and different take on what happened than I had before.
“
| — | Mark Bowden on discovering narrative and the value of beginner’s mind, Nieman Storyboard |
Bonjour Tumblr! I miss you! I’ve been having the loveliest hols in Barcelona and the south of France.
But in two days I’ll be hard at work at Cannes Lions, the “world’s biggest get-together of people interested in creative communications.”
I will be liveblogging the whole festival for STW Group, epic mothership of 70 Australian advertising/marketing/comms companies, including the one where I work.
I promise if we tweet anything like “<Advertising bigwig>: social media is a revolution in the way we produce and consume information #CannesLions” you have permission to unfollow me personally on any and every channel.
Delicious food photography via here.
The participatory nature of Twitter and Facebook also makes them excellent tools for supercharging creativity. Users finely craft their bons mots to grab people’s attention and perhaps earn a retweet or two. As football coaches have long preached, you should practice like you play. Twitter and Facebook give knowledge workers the chance to turn downtime into a game where creativity and insight are rewarded, if only with digital pats on the back.
“
| — | “How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive,” Wired |
One of the most influential propositions in marketing is that customer satisfaction begets loyalty, and loyalty begets profits. Why, then, do so many companies infuriate their customers by binding them with contracts, bleeding them with fees, confounding them with fine print, and otherwise penalizing them for their business? Because, unfortunately, it pays. Companies have found that confused and ill-informed customers, who often end up making poor purchasing decisions, can be highly profitable indeed.
“
| — | Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them Harvard Business Review |
It’s important to get away from technology and experience the world. You’ve got to see your world, see your community, see what’s not being said what needs to be said. That’s probably the best way to figure out what you’re going to say. For me at least, it’s impossible to have any good ideas while sitting behind a computer. Ideas come from life. As Hemingway said, “I have to live to work.
“
| — |
Jonathan Harris, Beyond Flash link via Amanda Mooney |
When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you
“
| — | Pablo Picasso quoted by Gertrude Stein in Jonah Lehrer’s “Proust was a Neuroscientist.” |
