Five years ago I had a mohawk. (I've had a lot of fun hair over the years.) Oh, here's a picture of it: Like it? I did, it was fun. Anyway, not long after I had gotten the mohawk, I was having a ...
Monthly Archives: March 2010
Website heresy: Stop offering to help
I was a first-aid volunteer with St John’s Ambulance for most of my adolescence. I did lots of public duty, and spent my time in uniform: chatting in the first aid room, waiting for someone to approach me and request help wandering in a pair around the stadium, showground or concert, waiting for someone to approach me ...
Website heresy: One article, one idea
When you’re an expert your knowledge on a subject is nuanced, wide-ranging and inclusive. You can combine multiple high-level concepts into even higher concepts; you include knowledge from so many fields and draw so many valid and useful conclusions. You can explain a half-dozen related but different techniques and viewpoints. Resist this temptation. When you write ...
Website heresy: Ignore user feedback
Feedback and collaboration are wonderful, important topics and they have passionate advocates. If you develop your offer with your customers you get better, more satisfying and more profitable products and services. But. There's always a but, isn't there? It's not fair. Yesterday I was writing about how you should collaborate and work with your readers, now ...
Website heresy: Share the spotlight
Collaboration is a wonderful tool. Go read this account of how a gifted musician can make a concert a collaborative experience. (I'm one of the people who will be proud to say "I knew Pamela when...") I don't need to make those points again; I couldn't do better. That kind of collaboration has a ...
Website heresy: Launch a product. Now.
Hello, dearest! Turns out I don't have the flu, just a nasty sinus infection. I spent most of yesterday lying down and I feel much more human today. Thanks for the sympathy and good advice! The last few posts have been about perfectionism and how it's a clever voice your fear uses to stop ...
Website heresy – No excuses!
Darlings, I think maybe I have the flu. My head is fuzzy, every limb is tired, and my head weighs ten tonnes. Writing is like building a ziggurat, with every word laboriously heaved into place. (Grammar and punctuation are still okay though. I have Standards.) I really, really don't want to be writing. I want to ...
Website heresy: Do something uncomfortable
Yesterday's video post about why you should give up perfection and start aiming for awesome got some great comments and emails. Thanks! What I learned from shooting the video I'd been planning to make the video for two months. I wrote a mind-map of the points I wanted to make. I bought a new video camera with my ...
Website heresy: Forget perfect, start being awesome
I love awesome. I hate perfect. Perfect is a creepy abusive boyfriend: he stalks my friends, messes with their creative processes, makes them doubt themselves, trashes their favourite projects and leaves them powerless and afraid. I want to drag perfect out into the parking lot, pick up a aluminium baseball bat, and teach perfect a ...
Website heresy: Make yourself obsolete
As part of the website heresy month, I wanted to talk about a heresy that's related to the workplace, and to how you help your customers. It's the principle that you should never make the job you do obsolete. I suspect (and hope) I'm not alone in thinking that making yourself obsolete - working yourself ...