Brain Food Week 2: Organizing, Getting Rich, and Three Reasons to Laugh
The feedback is in and it was overwhelming positive, so here's another week of quotes and stories.
Avoid going in two directions at once by wildphotons via Flickr Creative Commons license
1. Organizing with out Organizations
I've been reading Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody, and thinking about how the Internet has flattened some of the costs involved in organizing. Here's a couple of ideas to mull over:
The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming 'gather, then share' into 'share, then gather.' p.35
The groups of photographers were all latent groups, which is to say groups that existed only in potentia, and too much effort would have been required to turn those latent groups into real ones by conventional means. p.38
2. I happened to read and listen to some ideas for new start up companies.
Do whatever best for your users. You can hold onto this like a rope in a hurricane, and it will save you if anything can. Follow it and it will take you through everything you need to do. - Paul Graham, Be Good
Having a price is really cool for getting profits. You have customers. They pay you money for the product or service, and you get profit. It's such a weird notion. It's almost too simple to work, but I've heard over time, hundreds of years actually, that has been how most businesses have made their money.- David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of Ruby on Rails,The Secret to Making Money Online at Startup School '08
3. For those moments, when you feel discouraged, humor always helps and restores your perspective.
Sometimes I get the feeling the whole world is against me, but deep down I know that's not true. Some of the smaller countries are neutral. - Robert Orben, magician and comedy writer)
I envy paranoids: they actually feel people are paying attention to them. - Susan Sontag
This article is hands-down the funniest article that I've read this year about an scientific experiment gone awry. Enjoy!
University of Iowa neuroscientists studying spatial learning and the effects of stress on memory announced Tuesday that a little son-of-a-bitch mouse ruined an experiment on cognitive performance by effortlessly navigating a maze that researchers spent nearly a year designing and constructing. - The Onion (US-based "fake news" organization)
Tags: discouraged | get rich | humor | organization | quotation | quote | startups
