An essay called ‘Share Something Greater’ I wrote on the social impact possibilities of consumer technology was published in the Asteroid Belt Almanac, an anthology from the Head and the Hand Press, a small publisher based in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. I was fortunate enough to also be included in their Rust Belt Almanac as well.
Month: May 2014
“Having a Plan B can muddy up your Plan A”: Charlie Day
This commencement address from “Always Sunny” actor Charlie Day gets really good, including: “I’ve always had this half-baked philosophy that having a Plan B can muddy up your Plan A.”
Fail in the place where you would want to fail.
How print will remain relevant: the solution is in the problem
Printed media are inflexible, expensive and in-viral, and that’s why its utility will last. That’s what I told nearly 100 mostly older, more established attendees of the annual American Association of Independent News Distributors conference inside the Times Square Crowne Plaza May 1. Looking on it now, having not been given my context, my words were likely a little surprising and surely unusual.
Continue reading How print will remain relevant: the solution is in the problem
My testimony to Philadelphia City Council on tech business growth
To set up a Philadelphia City Council hearing on tech business that Technical.ly Philly organized with Councilman David Oh for Philly Tech Week, I gave a short testimony to committee.
Watch the full 90-minute hearing, including mine below. The goal was to better familiarize council with tech business. We organized something similar in Baltimore.
Continue reading My testimony to Philadelphia City Council on tech business growth
I put people first, then technology: Biz Stone
To promote his new book ‘Things a Little Bird Told Me,’ Twitter cofounder Biz Stone was at the Free Library of Philadelphia for a ticketed, breakfast event for which I interviewed him on stage for a half-hour before audience questions finished the morning.
My line of questions can be seen here. I tried to to steer the conversation away from what has already been said by Stone, a well-covered tech entrepreneur who is in the midst of a popular book tour, but we still hit upon some of what has already been covered: the designer by trade has focused on bringing the human touch to software.
That helps explain how decidedly simple Twitter is and how Stone’s new startup Jelly, a network-driven answer app, has stayed focused on getting social responses.
Continue reading I put people first, then technology: Biz Stone
Facebook anonymous login [my KYW interview]
Whether Facebook anonymous login will matter or not will be determined if enough sites and apps see enough benefit in the frictionless vetting of users by Facebook that they’ll forgo trying to collect user data themselves. Find snippets of my interview with KYW in their quick-hit here.