Saturday, 14 March 2009 at 3:30PM
Presenters: Merlin Mann and John Gruber
Of course, the title of this session is farcical, but it is what they talked about tangentially.
Their assumptions: all of you make things and all of you want to become better and you want respect and credibility of others.
Walt Disney: “We don’t make movies to make money. we make money to make more movies.”
Topic (or Obsession) times Voice: both are needed.
Whatever your topic, try to figure out how to be better at it than 80% of the rest of the world. Pick your obsession and focus on it to make it have a voice. Think about that person you wish to write for.
Don’t try to be another, unique personality that has been successful. Know what your audience wants, copy the right things from the playbook of others. [Gruber ref to 37signals]
Read @comcast on search.twitter.com for a laugh.
The long-term gains are bring awesome at what you do.
You need a high tolerance for the ambiguity and uncertainty of the results of creating your content. Human attention is valuable and limited.
Tell people what happened, what it means and your opinion.
Give stuff away…. [quote from Mann here]
Don’t do something that initially seems profitable but may screw up whether people like you or not. Don’t make money and crush the bunny.
Don’t become too obsessed with the thing you want to make money on.
Once again, Mann pushes Stephen King’s book, On Writing. I must read that sometime.