The Internet: It's Getting Bigger and Bigger

Today Show, circa 1994

"That little mark, with the ring around it."

"It's a giant computer network"

"It's getting bigger and bigger all the time"

Defining Expectations = Defining Success

Close to tying a bow on a project and declaring it done.

So, how will we know we succeeded?

This time, teams on all sides defined expectations well. We didn't know exactly where we were going, but we had a compass to guide us, and we carved markers along the way.

Now, we're there -- and we know it was successful.

-- Expectations met and exceeded.
-- Agreed on standard #UX deliverables, which were reviewed and tested along the way, tweaked, signed and sealed.
-- Unpredicted deliverables were added and approved, as needed and as time allowed.

Handshakes and smiles: Phase 2 to come.

It should always go like this.

It's Pretty Much a Self Proving Theory

Stop Internet Censorship

I've censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet--a bill that could pass THIS WEEK.

To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/11034/uncensor

the ████ ████████ the ████████; don't let the ████ █████ it

Content Strategy: Editing, with Mods and Patches

Editors edit.

• Editors of words also do write-thrus that magically make sentences fit together better with smoother sequences, sharper points and rounder edges.
  
• Editors of images apply magic to colors, narratives, and action of pictures that are still or moving.

But editors who put words and images together online -- planning, shaping, structuring, linking -- in enterprise, intranet, e-commerce and news/entertainment sites; in apps; in email campaigns -- well, those editors have the upgraded mods, add-ons and patches of content strategists.

Compass > Map

Compasses are better than maps: so goes the current paradigm of starting from where you are to get to where you're going.

"... it is now usually cheaper to just try something than to sit around and try to figure out whether to try something. The product map is now often more complex and more expensive to create than trying to figure it out as you go. The compass has replaced the map, and “rough consensus and running code” has become the fundamental philosophy for the so-called lean start-up movement." -- Joichi Ito, director of the M.I.T. Media Lab.

Making things up as you go, failing fast, iterating iteratively: these ideas are spreading.

This is a big deal.

Writing is a totally iterative process -- some first drafts are better than others, and things get better with polish.

The change we're living with now is that you have the power to show things to the world, after however many drafts you think you need, whether it's a blog post, a Kickstarter project, an iOS app or a 3D-printer project.

It's a flavor of change that old versions of the future utterly failed to predict, and it's better than jetpacks and flying cars.