Know your Systems
“One of the other boats was filling with smoke and taking on water through an aft cabin. Either of those things is alarming. Both at once is terrifying. “
"They're Coming for Every Second of Your Life"
250 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube every single day, with that time spread across roughly 5 billion videos. That means every second, people consume a combined 2,893 hours of YouTube, or 121 days’ worth.
On Naming Conventions
Your team's naming conventions and nomenclature form a language. How easy have you made that language to learn?
What can you learn from your greatest sporting moment?
What lessons could I extract from that one shining moment into my mediocre sporting life?
Why ‘Oscillations’?
“If you can teach a young sailor how to identify oscillations on the racecourse, you can probably teach them to spot patterns and use them to make good decisions in other areas of their life”
Grief in the workplace
Bereavement leave isn’t a benefit, it’s an enterprise protection measure
‘You are comfortable with ambiguity’
“It dawned on me during the bus ride across the Kenyan/Tanzanian border that I now had no clue what I’d be getting on with. I’d arrive after dark in a strange town in Africa, not sure if anyone would be there to meet me, not sure if I had anywhere to stay that night, not sure if I had a plan for the next two months.”
Don’t Teach Data Journalism Without Teaching Mobile-First Design
“We can extract all the data we want, but if our journalists can’t distil that into something the reader can consume in the palm of their hand, it’s all rather pointless”
Decide for Yourself What Journalism to Trust
“Understanding user behaviour is the key to winning in journalism in the next ten years, so if trust is important, why would we spend valuable time ignoring the user in doing so?”
News needs to go Netflix
“The bundle is king, he says. I'm not so sure. I think matching your content to your customers' behaviours is more important”
For mobile news apps, there’s no place like home
That news folder on page two? It’s where my news apps go to die. So if you’re interested in being a winning news app you need to be getting up on a homescreen and staying up.
Why journalists need to think like fighter pilots
“If you're in the business of making, reacting to or explaining the news, you need to organise the incoming information so you can sift effectively, be agile enough to shift your direction, and free enough to readjust at the same pace as the news.”
The SEC, Twitter, and unknowable 'known knowns'
“Joe Trader was being asked to ignore, or 'unknow', this information until the institutional trader could catch up via a traditional release on a traditional channel. It was, for a short time, an unknowable known.”
Simple stories are what strikes home
“If you have budget, good for you. Spend it wisely, and you have the luxury of options. But if times are tight, fear not. Simplicity can be your best friend. Simplicity means focus.”
Journalism closes a door, brands open a window
Marketeers have come to realise that rather than trying to convince journos to 'print their stuff', they're going all in and hiring them to do what they do naturally, then piggybacking on it and basking in the reflected glory.
Marketers: adjust your settings
“It hasn't been thought through for YouTube. It's a simple case of someone not understanding the platform. It's the online equivalent of having 14-point font on a ten-foot billboard - it just doesn't make sense.”
Should the C-suite learn to tweet?
“For some CEOs in some sectors, being in the public eye will be beneficial. For others, it's counter-productive.”