My “Two Minute Mentor” video interview with the fellas from Via Network, in which I give my two cents on UX Design to entrepreneurs. Cool concepts, smart guys. Unfortunately though, my best piece of advice was cut from the frame. Again, smart guys.

First piece of startup advice

It seems to have worked in a way I couldn’t have predicted. One of the kids I ran with in the fall has decided to set his sights even higher and run the marathon. I’ve been asked to train him up and run it with him, which is, in itself, a huge honor. But to understand why I’m really as excited as I am, you have to know where this guy comes from.

This young dude immigrated from Puerto Rico as a kid, and became involved in a gang at the age of 16. He watched his best friend get killed, and he ultimately ended up in detention services. When I met him last summer, and he was running with us accompanied by his police officer, he still wore his gang’s tattoo on his arm. Since then, he’s decided to turn his life around. He got out of detention about three weeks ago. He inked over his gang tattoo and moved away from his home town. He’s looking for a job, and taking classes. As he told me himself, “GED? Nah, I want the diploma.” And he’s really going for it, at Roxbury CC.

Cady also happens to be unusually talented. Last week was his first run in months. And he kept up an impressive pace (it felt like roughly 7:20/mile) for 7 miles without a break. In my life, I’ve encountered nothing as powerful as watching a kid discover a talent he didn’t know he had. Especially when the rest of his world is so difficult for him, and his talent is his solace. When I asked him to explain why he wanted to run the full marathon, he told me that when he was running those last two miles of the half, he felt so excited, he was close to tears. Of course, he followed up by assuring me that he absolutely did NOT cry. But, y’know… he was close.

A lot of folks generously donated in the fall. So I wanted to let you know what you guys have been a part of by contributing to Sole Train, and invite you to help get this young athlete over the finish. Part of my job is to raise $5k for Sole Train’s parent organization, the Trinity Boston Foundation. I just started up a crowdrise page. You’ve heard the expression “Give until it hurts.” But I’d challenge that, and say “Give until it feels good.” Anything you can give goes to help this Comeback Kid, and the next ones to come.

Thank you all

(1) Minimal or no power structure, though there may be specialization.
(2) Everyone working for something bigger than themselves and their personal gains.
(3) No closed doors. No one has any reason to steal or hide anything.
(4) It’s a coordination of distinct and individual passions.
(5) The tribe is keenly aware of their “why;” often more than their “what” and “how.” The members of a rock band may not be able to tell you exactly what their goal is, or how to get there. But they all know why they do what they do.
(6) None of these criteria have to be enforced. In these organizations, it’s just the natural state of things.

In the beginning, there were tribes
Tribalism is the stuff of dreams when we’re kids. We get our friends together and play at tribal fantasies, though we don’t call it that. We’ve been circus performers. We’ve been victims of shipwreck, alone on an island. We’ve been astronauts, and pirates. We’ve built forts together and slept in them. We’ve formed bands of heroes, with unique and complimentary superpowers, to solve crimes that always seem to require the deployment of every one of our collective powers. These are the fantasies that are close to our hearts, and teach us to behave with each other as might a tribe. I’d say they reflect our most basic, natural social instinct. Years later we join sports teams. If you’ve ever been a part of one, you know that the bond that your form with your teammates is different from the one you have with other friends. They say a good team plays for the name on the front of the jersey, not the one on the back. And it’s the name on the front of the jersey that gives us a sense of purpose, of fulfillment, and of belonging. Not even the athlete who scored a personal best will celebrate after a loss. Why is that?

Submission to conquest
Inevitably, we grow up. We abandon our pirate ships, we quit our teams, and we play our parts in a civilized, globalized economy, whether we want to or not. I don’t believe this is what you’d call “natural.” I don’t believe that this is the social construct that complies with our evolutionary development. We wouldn’t try to force another species to adopt an unnatural social construct, because we know it wouldn’t work. Are we as a species so advanced that we don’t play by the same rules, and can build a productive social construct that defies our nature? And more importantly: What happens when we DO choose to play by the rules, and “revert” to a social culture that is natural to us?

Resurgence
Where Quinn’s vision for The New Tribalism falls short is in its commercial viability, which makes it a thing of bohemian utopia; not something most of us would realistically quit our jobs for. And as long as most of us wouldn’t quit our jobs for it, it doesn’t represent a feasible alternative culture, as it aims to do. His examples include a small, independent newspaper, a traveling circus, and certain functioning homeless communities.

But since the time of his writing, there has emerged a class of New Tribalism with commercial significance. And commercial significance, in our culture, represents the tipping point.

I’d argue that it’s possible to make a livelihood within a tribe, and that millions already do. I’d submit that their members enjoy a sense of fulfillment and purpose, and that they produce better work than they would do otherwise. These people don’t need to be told why they do the work that they do, any more than a fish needs to be told why it swims. These people don’t need to bother with things like team building, synergizing, or incentivizing. These people don’t know what to make of the term “work/life balance,” because to them, work and life are not mutually exclusive. Daniel Quinn suggests that the emergence of a tribal class is possible within a globalized economy. I would argue that the tribal class is the globalized economy’s driving impulse.

Let’s say I invite myself over to your house every day for a beer, since I know you stock up on that nonsense with the blueberries that I enjoy when no one’s looking. And you’re cool and never charge me, nor do you sell out my secret to our other friends (as far as I know). Now let’s suppose I head over one day, and as you pop the cap, you pull the bottle away from me and say this: “Are you considering leasing a used car? Because I simply CANNOT give you this beer until I tell you absolutely everything there is to know about this shitty dealership my cousin owns.”

Nope. I’m not interested in leasing a car. I’m interested in drinking like a sorority girl on your dime. And this experience is just getting in my way.

You don’t care. You spend the next 30 seconds giving me every inane detail about a car I’ll never buy, while I sit there and run through multiplication tables in order to consciously forget absolutely everything you say. And by the time I get my beer, I’ve become annoyed with you (the publisher), and your cousin (the advertiser). You’re both responsible for a negative experience that could cost you both my loyalty. If I can get my beer anywhere else, I will.

“Settle down,” you say. “It’s not THAT bad.”
Well, advertising is an extension of the advertiser’s brand, and of the publisher’s experience. Whatever I think of the ad experience I think of the brand. When you run an interstitial, the most likely scenario is that I find the ad (and thus the brand) to be extremely annoying. In a slightly better scenario, I completely ignore that ad, and thus my opinion of the brand is left untarnished. And by the way — In this scenario, the advertiser has only wasted his money, which is better than using his money to trash my opinion of his brand. Now let’s consider the absolute best case scenario, and suppose I’m on ecstasy when the ad loads. And let’s also suppose that your ad was written and directed by Shakespeare. I might find your ad (and thus your brand) pretty good… the first two or three times I sit through it. These are pretty low marks, considering the money being exchanged.

Let’s say I invite myself over to your house for a beer. And you immediately hand me exactly what I came for. Then let’s consider what you know about me at that particular moment: You know that I’m bored but pretty social, and you know I live nearby. So while I’m sitting there drinking my fruity mess, you mention that you can sell me tickets to local events, at a discount. All I have to do is tell you what I’m into… whenever I want.

I like you again.

…except I have the sinking feeling now that the Navaho didn’t wear feathers. Damnit. The line is from the song “Matador,” by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. It means “wind of freedom, combative blood.”

I wanted to put together a mobile web drawing app that uses the canvas API available in HTML5 and also responds to touch events. I also wanted to draw mustaches on hipsters.

I found an awesome boilerplate for a touch-driven drawing app here. And from there I tweaked it a bit, added some simple javascript for the buttons, a nice slick web font, and a handful of choice hipsters from LATFH. For the time being, you can direct your smartphone here to start ‘staching hipsters.

]]> http://delmarsenties.com/blog/2012/03/simple-html5-canvas-drawing-app-stache-the-hipster/feed/ 0 http://delmarsenties.com/blog/2012/02/the-one-about-tall-heights/ http://delmarsenties.com/blog/2012/02/the-one-about-tall-heights/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:42:07 +0000 David http://delmarsenties.com/blog/?p=126

Tall Heights gig poster. Check them out.

Tall Heights gig poster. Check them out.

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Tláloc, Teotihuacan god of rain and water.

DailyBOS from the talented @kbonami

These last four years at the Phoenix…

• I’ve seen at least a dozen Photoshoppings of Mayor Menino. I fully expect to see a dozen more.
• I’ve maintained a list of some of the most hilarious comments overheard from our classifieds Customer Service Reps. (“Sir, are you looking for a relationship? Or just a wild sexy time?”)
• I’ve built the same site, three times, on three different CMS’s. And it was porn.
• I’ve had a beer or two with some of the most compelling voices in alt journalism.
• I never actually learned the proper naming convention and folder structure for our shared graphics files.
• I’ve found an empty bottle of Grey Goose in my desk drawer.
• Almost every font I use is downloaded and imported, which I’ve been made to understand can make the entire network explode, the roof collapse, the gates of hell swing open, and the reckoning commence.
• I’ve saved a copy of Clif Garboden’s “Off the Press” in my email draftbox, and have memorized pieces of it.
• I’ve found myself in awe of my colleagues; not just for what they do, but why they do it.
• I established the DS Rejection Collection. And filled it out quite nicely, pretty quickly.
• I’ve made a cameo in at least a thousand tourists’ photos of Fenway Park. I’m huge in Japan.
• I got (almost) free coffee at Il Giardino’s for a while, when they thought that I was Italian.
• I’ve been Hoovered up to the Heavens on the day of Rapture.
• I’ve gone to the NENPA awards to watch my colleagues kick ass.
• I still can’t hear a difference between Passion Pit and Naked and Famous.

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