Music, Art & Engineering
Vacations In Color is an ongoing solo project I’ve been working on since 2012. Automatic Ecstasy was recorded during the summer of 2012 as an ode to electronic instruments and the Electropop/Synthpop singles that I loved during the early 2000s. True to the tradition, it was composed using simple soft synths and drum machines in … Continue reading New Track: Automatic Ecstasy
Brian Shulman is a business colleague and friend who’s been a profound influence in my life both professionally, as a software innovator and businessman, and personally, as a mentor of tremendous character. Brian is not involved in the music industry himself, but I was fascinated to learn about his late father, Stan Shulman, who was … Continue reading Interview: Brian Shulman on music pioneer and businessman, Stan Shulman
A colleague recently told me about an interesting interview he read with Ed Catmull, who just published a book on Pixar. One of the key insights was that he observed how poor management allows organization to smother the creative genius of important company talent. I’ve been fortunate, and intentional enough to avoid traditional organizational structures … Continue reading Zen Business & Creativity (Or six ways to die as a creative)
Moore’s law is a curse. In 2005 I built yet another computer in a long line of homebrew PCs. I don’t recall the exact specs, but it was a single core Pentium4 with about 1GB of initial RAM. The computer ran an optimized XP operating system, surfed the web at light speed using Firefox with … Continue reading Trimming the Bloat: A Dearth of Elegant Code
After years of research and development my teammates and I at LTS Education Systems are proud to launch the all new tablet-compatible learning platform, Stride Academy. Built on the latest HTML5 technology, Stride Academy is a giant leap forward in terms of user experience and front-end flexibility from the previous flagship product, Kid’s College. With … Continue reading Stride Academy Adaptive Online Learning Software
About eight years ago, I started to notice a bizarre phenomenon. I was paid by people to make things look “professional,” yet I repeatedly noticed that consumers were suspicious or oblivious to much of the visual language that was established by the past century of professional ad design. I looked around for some theorist to … Continue reading Professional Advertising Is Dead. Long Live Advertising.
Jumping off of bridges, wearing your pants below your underwear, investing in any stock with a .com in the name, credit default swaps, the atkins diet, asking people to follow their business on facebook out of nowhere — there are a lot of things that people do in great numbers because everyone else is doing … Continue reading Social Media Marketing Genius In Ten Minutes
I was never much of an athlete. I recall an episode around 1982 where dad bought me a glove, took me out to toss the ball around in the big backyard where all the neighbors could see. It didn’t go very well. The glove was heavy for my diminutive frame and the ball ended up making more … Continue reading Coaching As Service
As an on-again off-again meditator for years, I’ve often suggested the ancient art of “sitting still and doing nothing” to my friends and associates. The most common reply is that either they don’t know where to start, or have tried it and found it difficult or pointless. Recent scientific research has laid to rest any … Continue reading Meditation Makes You Better
Email is one of the most attractive methods of modern marketing because of its low cost and relative ease of deployment. However, for the average professional it is one of the least understood and potentially perilous ways of connecting with your customers. Email blasts seem too good to be true. Many times they are. Like … Continue reading Email Blasts: Like A Machine Gun In A Post Office
Lawrence looked Jenny straight in the eye and said, “One of the big advantages of using our company is that we perform Search Engine Optimization on our websites.” “What is that?” Jenny asked. “It’s a process of optimizing your website’s code so that it performs better on search and ranks higher,” says Lawrence. “Oh that … Continue reading The Revenge Of Scientific Marketing
The biggest challenge for businesses of all types these days is greater competition for dwindling market share. Unless you have a completely exclusive product or service that has an uncontested monopoly, you probably find yourself having to take less for what you sell. As a friend said during lunch the other day, “people just aren’t … Continue reading To The Maverick Go The Spoils
Determining the value that people place on what you do or sell isn’t easy. Setting a price that is too high helps your competition, yet setting your price too low leaves money on the table and possibly a LOT of money — a 5% increase in price can be huge in many businesses. Recent research … Continue reading Is Your Pricing Leaving Money On The Table?
Email marketing is still king of the hill: The USA’s Direct Marketing Association conducts an annual review of the ROI (Return on Investment) delivered by all forms of direct marketing. Email marketing is a consistent chart topper. For 2009, they predict an ROI for email of US$43.52. That’s over $43 returned for each dollar invested … Continue reading Email & Social Marketing for Brands: Why Most Get It Wrong
My friend Steve Ferussi and I are debuting what we hope will be a groundbreaking new product tomorrow at the Nashville Music City Marathon. Ladies & Gentlemen, I present to you the SpinDesk