From Bubble Graphs to Mind Maps

// April 6th, 2007 // 3 Comments » // Business, Career, Design, Learning, Management, Personal, Programming, Venture Capital, Writing

Bubble Graphs

I can honestly say there are almost no learning techniques from Jr. High that I have carried forward through my short academic life into business. However, there is one gift that a now nameless, faceless teacher once gave me. That gift was the ability to put my thoughts on paper first, and then dork with them and refine them. She (I think it was a “she”) called them “Bubble Graphs”, but the point was to brainstorm about a topic for a speech, a paper, or an argument and document things. Then go back and do the organization and structuring of those thoughts, with a final output being an outline.

Why Netflix Gets It and Blockbuster Does Not

// February 23rd, 2007 // 2 Comments » // Business, Community, Design, Economy, Management, Movies, Programming, Television, Venture Capital, Writing

So I attempted to cancel my Blockbuster.com subscription a few moments ago because of a bad experience, and had to fill out a survey to get it done. There was a comment field where they asked “How Can We Improve? Would you mind taking a minute to explain why you’ve decided to cancel your account?” So, I was willing to help out and wrote the following in my very sick state (the flu or a cold maybe). Upon submission of the survey, a form error was returned on the comment field which reads: “Please type in 255 characters or less for your comments.”

Missing the point

// January 31st, 2006 // No Comments » // Business, Design, Management, Ministry, Miscellaneous, Venture Capital, Writing

I received an email yesterday today from Truewell which had my name and 536 others in the “To:” field, effectively exposing all their wouldbe leads to one another. I post it here as an example of the kind of simple mistake companies make before ever even getting the relationship off the ground. Also note the spelling and grammar mistakes throughout.